Mayor Ruthanne Fuller and the Planning Department have made some changes to what was a controversial plan to put a public plaza in part of the parking lot adjacent to the Newton Centre Green—making it smaller and thus less controversial—after feedback from nearby business owners.

“This is part of a much larger effort to direct some investment to Newton Centre, that includes complete repaving of the parking lot, lighting improvements, some minor landscaping improvements, and some badly needed accessibility improvements,” Planning Director Barney Heath told the City Council’s Public Safety and Transportation Committee.

The original proposal called for the pilot plaza to take up 16,000 square feet of outdoor space, on top of 52 parking spaces from the Langley Parking Lot—often referred to as the “triangle parking lot”—for the summer months.

But business owners pushed back on the idea, saying parking was in too short supply during peak hours to sacrifice that much parking.

“The release and the rollout of this could have been much improved, so lessons learned there,” Newton Long Range Planner Zachery LeMel said to the committee.

So, the Planning Department came up with a new plan, with a smaller footprint for the pilot plaza in the southwest corner of the Langley Parking Lot (on the opposite end from the Newtonville Books building).

Now, the plaza will only cover about 7,000 square feet and—after some parking spot shuffling—will only take away a net of eight spaces in that lot.

That’s because, LeMel explained, the city plans to make several spaces public that weren’t public before. These include 12 spaces of employee parking, which would be moved elsewhere, two ZipCar spaces and two Blue Bike spaces.

Why not just put the plaza on the Green?

“There are accessibility concerns, getting across grass with a walker or a wheelchair, or a stroller if you have young kids,” LeMel said.

And frequently having large events on grass ruins the grass.

The pilot plaza will be on a five-month trial, open from June through October. If it’s a hit, it could return every year. If it’s a miss, it can go away and never be spoken of again.

When the later permanent improvement work at the Green Heath mentioned is done, that parking lot will actually gain spaces.

You can watch the entire presentation here.

Planning will present the pilot plaza proposal (say that three times fast) to the Traffic Council on Thursday.