Politics & Government

City Makes Improvements to Dill's Court Municipal Parking Lot

Sixteen new parking spaces are available to visitors and upgrades were also made to the pavement and signs at the Shaw's lot.

Sixteen new parking spaces and upgrades to the pavement are some of the improvements recently made by the Melrose Department of Public Works at Dill's Court municipal parking lot, according to DPW Director John Scenna.

"Ten news spaces have been created by the project," Scenna said. "Additionally, six spaces that had been previously solely reserved for police use are now open to the general public. That results in the project creating 16 new parking spaces for the general public (nearly a 12 percent increase in parking capacity within this lot)."

With the additional spaces, the parking lot now has 151 parking spaces, according to Scenna.

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Scenna also noted that the lot was completely repaved and a new crosswalk has been added from the sidewalk along Shaw’s to the back entrance of CVS.

Scenna discussed how things are progressing with adding signs to the area to make it more "user friendly" to Melrosians and visitors to the City.

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"We're in the process of doing that. We've changed some signage already and over the course of the next week or so we're going to add some more," Scenna said. "We're working with (the) Planning (Department) to put more signage on Main Street indicating to the public that there is parking for people who don't know there is a parking lot back there."

While the City accomplished its goal of adding 14 to 16 news parking spaces to the lot, Scenna did mention that the original conceptualization that would have added several more parking spots to the site wasn't feasible due to cost constraints.

"The layout didn't change dramatically to add the new spaces, but with the conceptual layout (planners) didn't consider the utility poles that are in the lot and relocating those utilities wouldn't have been cost effective and we wouldn't have gotten as much out of the project," Scenna said.

Scenna said the final layout was a collaborated effort between the DPW, police and Planning departments and was reviewed with all businesses which abutted the lot to gain general consensus and acceptance of the improvements.

Scenna anticipates any remaining work to be done before the 32nd annual Melrose Victorian Fair on Sept. 9.

What do you think of the project? Let us know by posting your thoughts in a comment below.


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