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Malden Center
Last night for no terribly good reason I took the orange line up to Malden Center. It was not the most exciting place in the world. The T stop is kind of a dump (they're doing "ADA-related" construction work -- putting in an elevator, perhaps?, but even so) and a bit cramped. My impression is that it was initially constructed as a three-platform orange line station, so if no trains were ever supposed to stop at what's now the northbound platform it makes a little more sense. The commuter rail platform should have a yellow "D.I.B." sign but doesn't.
Malden Center proper should hang off the east side of the T station. It doesn't, really, since the city planners conveniently arranged for a building to be built through the street that would be the obvious connection. So instead the business district is built along a dead-end street a block off from the main road (Route 60). Around 7 PM, there were just enough people to make me paranoid. Everything was closed except for the restaurants, which were predominantly Chinese and noodle-soup places.
It seems like the area has potential, but it'd need some help to actually become a thriving commercial center. Things I had initially thought were a problem, like the T effectively presenting a wall on one end of the area, aren't so bad as just the lack of traffic and it being non-obvious how to get to commerce from the T.
Malden Center proper should hang off the east side of the T station. It doesn't, really, since the city planners conveniently arranged for a building to be built through the street that would be the obvious connection. So instead the business district is built along a dead-end street a block off from the main road (Route 60). Around 7 PM, there were just enough people to make me paranoid. Everything was closed except for the restaurants, which were predominantly Chinese and noodle-soup places.
It seems like the area has potential, but it'd need some help to actually become a thriving commercial center. Things I had initially thought were a problem, like the T effectively presenting a wall on one end of the area, aren't so bad as just the lack of traffic and it being non-obvious how to get to commerce from the T.