From:	Michael Behrendt
Sent:	Tuesday, February 09, 2016 4:42 PM
Subject:	Mill Plaza - Chesley Drive Homeowners Feb 8, 2016 Letter to the 
Planning Board - email from J. Meyrowitz

To the Planning Board,
Please see the follow up email from his earlier note, from Josh Meyrowitz below.

Michael Behrendt
Durham Town Planner
Town of Durham
8 Newmarket Road
Durham, NH  03824
(603) 868-8064
www.ci.durham.nh.us

  
From: Meyrowitz, Joshua []  
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2016 5:10 PM 
To: Michael Behrendt 
Subject: Re: Chesley Drive Homeowners Feb 8, 2016 Letter to the Planning Board
 
… I do hope that we end up with a revitalized plaza (a potential Town jewel!) without 
damaging its present functions or threatening the delicate balance we've achieved and 
maintained between family neighborhood, commercial core, and masses of students.
 
I'm also glad that you have "toured" the Faculty Neighborhood's one little wooded path 
at the Chesley Marsh, the College Brook Bridge, and the path to Thompson Lane and 
Faculty Road. The one small, but significant correction I would make regarding your 
description of the use of that path in your report (I write from perhaps flawed memory of 
my reading of it) involves your mentioning that it is used heavily by people on Faculty 
Road. Actually, it is routinely used by those living throughout the larger Faculty 
Neighborhood (even when covered with ice and snow). And it's one of the reasons that 
people cite for buying houses here in an otherwise not very "lush" area. And I can 
assure Town officials that any threat to that pedestrian pathway as a resource for the 
neighborhood (and particularly for the schoolkids who have a whole routine for picking 
each other up and chaining through the path through the Plaza and to our schools) will 
meet with fierce opposition that is based on decades of emotional attachment to it. 
 
Also, some of my neighbors wanted to emphasize in our letter the additional concern 
about how the neighborhood kids would maintain their route to school if and when 
construction in the Plaza starts. I thought that that was premature since the current plan 
is rather absurd. But you might want to keep that in mind as a question to ask when and 
if the time is ripe.
 
To keep the letter to a reasonable length, each person on the block passed on adding 
some details/concerns. If the Public Hearing lasts long enough for me to get there after 
teaching on Wednesday night, I will add a few somewhat different thoughts of mine in 
oral comments. 
 
Best, j 
 
Joshua Meyrowitz
Professor of Media Studies
Department of Communication
Horton Social Science Center
20 Academic Way
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH 03824 USA
1 (603) 862-3031 (office & voice mail)
joshua.meyrowitz@unh.edu 
https://unh.academia.edu/JoshuaMeyrowitz