Turners falls needs some work on the main boulevard; it's coming up and it needs to be trimmed out with the hand of a good urban planner.

The Main Street "boulevard" in Turner's Falls has things that other communities don't have. It has a Thorton Wilder Main Street; a main street framed on both sides by big glass windows trimmed in red brick and Asher Benjamin's classic American mouldings; the universal language of Main Street's most popular architecture. It is authentic as well; not the details of nostalgic reproductions but the real thing. Clearly one can see a town's robust evolution as the falls began to shape the town's destiny by introducing hydroelectric power over 100 years ago.

There had to a be surge of construction for a few of these antiquated years; when the town imported immigrant labor to work the mills that finally had a free utility to drive wheels and pulleys at full capacity. The dry goods store expanded, the cotton goods were displayed, fresh eggs and poultry featured in the windows and a barber shop to push past the sweat and grime and option pride and fashion among the newcomers to the new world.

So what happens 100 years after the industrial expansion recedes? We know the story; the money runs dry and the equity stagnates for a while; before it finds a spark of rejuvination. Turner's Falls has brushed itself off; but it's far from being complete.

Call in the urban planners but this time; get them to live there. There's a bunch of things that could happen to upgrade Turner's Falls and it can be driven from different directions. Excellent school systems could induce new development money indirectly but that doesn't exclude a good amount of civic brainstorming to look at it's overall layout and begin to cultivate it's future.