Creating 'Village Center' in Barrington

The creation of a “village center” in Barrington with new streetscapes, signs, crosswalks and sidewalks gets an initial unveiling at a Barrington Business Association meeting tonight, Sept. 10, at the Blue Water Bar & Grill.

The village center will include that stretch of Barrington that lies between Maple Avenue, West Street, Waseca Avenue and Wood Avenue, said Town Planner Phil Hervey.

“We want to make a more walkable retail area,” said Hervey, “by building on what is already there." 

A representative from the Birchwood Design Group, a landscape architectural firm hired by Barrington, is meeting first the with the merchants to get some feedback to concepts for signage and improving pedestrian traffic to the shops and stores in that part of town center.

Birchwood will then hold a “public walk-about and design workshop” on Saturday, Sept. 21, in the School Committee Room in Town Hall from 9 am to noon.

Birchwood’s “scope of services” includes developing a vision for the streetscapes and a “wayfinding” plan for that area of Barrington, said Hervey. It is collaborating with Surface Matter Design, a Providence graphic design studio, to create the signage.

Hervey said the plan for the village center might also include more convenient off-street parking and links to the East Bay Bike Patch and the Barrington Shopping Plaza. 

It will create a map for the barren kiosk on the bike path near the shopping plaza and a new kiosk to be built at the new park being created at Police Cove.

The cost to create the “village center” must still be determined, said Hervey. Sources of funding for the “village center” could be federal and state grants, capital improvement funds or bonds.