Autos, malls, economy cause Port's decline

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March 19, 2007

Autos, malls, economy cause Port's decline

Angeljean Chiaramida The Daily News of Newburyport Mon Mar 19, 2007, 08:18 AM EDT

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NEWBURYPORT -- Jack Bradshaw fell in love with Newburyport as a child in the 1950s after spending weekends and summer vacations on Plum Island with a special aunt. It wasn't only the beach that captured the Haverhill-born lad's affection. He enjoyed everything about Newburyport: its people, location, history, and especially its bustle.

The Newburyport of Bradshaw's youth was a time of prosperity for the Clipper City. Area factories were humming, providing residents with employment and the salaries to keep the city's economic engine oiled and running at a comfortable clip. With at least five bus companies servicing it, State Street was the hub of a downtown business district offering everything its residents and others needed for everyday life.

At 12 in 1954, Bradshaw grew old enough to get a weekend job at Kennedy's Butter and Egg, a Pleasant Street institution offering staples like milk, cheese, eggs, butter and coffee to the masses. At Kennedy's, Bradshaw became part of the economic and social dynamic that created a vibrant downtown. He treasured every moment.

"On Friday nights, downtown was jammin', just jammin'" Bradshaw said. "There were five of us working at the counter. We were so busy we could hardly close the doors at 9:30 p.m. On Saturday, it all began again. It was a ball, and the people were so wonderful."

Even though he was only 12, the experience made such an impact on the youth that Bradshaw decided he'd make Newburyport his home when he was old enough to do so. He wanted to be a permanent part of what by then had become his Mecca. Someday, he'd be more than a weekend visitor. Someday, his permanent address would read: Newburyport, Massachusetts.

In 1965, after attending college in New York, serving the military in Europe and a working a brief stint with the insurance industry in New York City, Bradshaw asked for a transfer to his employer's Salem office. With his first child on the way, he kept his promise to himself; he and his wife took up residence in Newburyport.

What he found in the city he loved when he returned was not the Newburyport of his youth.

"It was going down. You could hear it going down," Bradshaw said. "There were no buses ... The factories were going fast."

The fate that befell Newburyport was not unique. The 1960s and 1970s were hard times for many small New England mill cities. Newburyport, like Lawrence, Haverhill and Lowell, were hit with a triple whammy of economic and social trends that transformed their financial lives from one of prosperity to one of failure and loss.

First, the factories that were the economic backbone of these communities -- including Newburyport's CBS-Hytron, which employed 3,500 at the time -- were closing or moving, taking jobs � and salaries that made up the regional money supplies � with them. Without the support of the constant stream of dollars from wage earners, stores lining Newburyport's business district became less robust and less able to withstand the normal rise and fall of the economic cycle.

The second blow came from a new commercial phenomenon known as suburban shopping centers. They drew residents away from local, downtown businesses to their retail outlet clusters located in one spot, offering ample and free parking. Some shopping centers, like North Shore Shopping Center in Peabody, even offered entertainment and restaurants. That made the shopping centers social events for what had become car-centered American family life, the third contributing factor in the decline of downtown marketplaces.

"Shopping centers just ate the life out of cities," Bradshaw said, who became a major player in the redevelopment of Newburyport in the 1970s and went on to work in economic development on the state level.

As American's love affair with the automobile grew, it didn't take long for bus service needs to dwindle to next to nothing, Bradshaw said, allowing only those living nearby the ability to patron Newburyport's town center.

Newburyport's downtown staple stores, -- butchers, fish markets and bakeries and those selling clothing, shoes, hardware, furniture, groceries -- as well as its restaurants and entertainment venues like the bowling alley, saw their receipts continue to decline. As stores closed, more residents drove to nearby malls and their more tantalizing department store offerings with easy parking.

Local Newburyport business leaders -- who doubled as its governmental leaders -- saw their own customer bases shrink dangerously. As some businesses folded, others joined the trend to find commercial space elsewhere, and wood continued to cover windows of buildings that formerly held thriving stores and offices.

Bradshaw said, in the late 60s and early 70s, people compared Newburyport with bombed out post-World War II Germany cities.

"This was all vacant," Bradshaw said as he walked down State Street recently. "There was nothing. Nothing. It was Dresden, do you understand? People referred to it as Dresden after the War."

The scene was set for a major decision: Newburyport's center could go one of two ways. It could continue on its path, becoming street after street of boarded-up, vacant, crumbling buildings interspersed with nothing more than gas stations. Or, it could find a way to stem the tide and reverse its downward spiral.

Bradshaw would soon find himself playing a significant part in what would happen next.

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