One thought: MA has a 5% state income tax, no deductions.

Worcester is centrally located in MA. The city is 'on the move,' growing which is both good/bad. Good: career and entertainment opportunities. Bad: increasing rents, growing pains. Good: More to do than you'd think, many nature trails, snowmobiling/ski-ing in winter. Safe in terms of crime and natural disasters.

Lots to do in central MA, close to Boston (one hour, depending on time of day)

Need a car for sure.

And the impact of the pandemic alongside increase cost of goods/energy.

COVID slowed things down but they're still there!

who says this? WPI is decent but nowhere on the level of MIT. Not even my school claims to rival MIT and it's a widely known engineering school with consistently high rankings

Even check Total Wines' calendar, located in Shrewsbury.

If you're just driving straight it's fine. The problem comes when you have to swerve across traffic at high speed to get into the right lane, which is common in Providence, Springfield and Boston. In fact if you think "driving in the same direction" automatically provides good results I suggest you go check out the Saugus-Peabody section of Route 1.

It's a hike from Douglas, but Yankee Spirits has free whiskey tastings fairly regularly.

Edit: No big whiskey tastings scheduled, but the one in Norwood has a big event with bottle engraving and a couple different whiskey vendors giving samples.

https://www.yankeespirits.com/event/18029

Yeah, I think people in Mass severely overestimate the name recognition of WPI outside of NE.

That's completely false. It's actually statistically safe to drive on highways, since everyone is driving in the same direction.

Thats not accurate. Went to 7 or 8 games last year. Ate lunch/dinner outside the park for all but 1. Plenty of fans around too

Yes, we all hate Boston and many of us left Boston for Worcester because we hate Boston so much. Point taken.

With that said, Worcester doesn't have the economy to support its current population, access to more jobs is a top priority, and not only that but let's say you decrease the train ride from Worcester to Boston to 1 hour. That's going to make Worcester a very reasonable destination for many more people to consider living here, bring in tax dollars, etc.

>Which also makes it difficult to drive across quickly

Good. It's easier and safer to drive more slowly instead of plowing along at 65mph and then having to switch lanes to get off the highway on one of eight thousand looping exits. And we have a blessedly low number of stroads in the city itself.

I went to a bunch of games last season and every time we wanted to grab drinks and late food after the game most options were closed. In most MiLB towns businesses around the stadium adapt to benefit from it. Drink specials, GameDay menus, etc. If people are going to eat and drink Inside the stadium before the game it's probably because that's the best option for them. Like another user mentioned, it's not like the area was thriving before. Seems like the story shouldn't be "ballpark closing businesses", it should that businesses expected the ballpark to save them from their decline without any effort.

Oak barrel tavern advertises whiskey flights on their billboard

I think it was though. You had a bunch of shops and restaurants on Green St. and it was honestly the place in Worcester that felt most like an actual city block. When my cousin came to Worcester to look at colleges, I took them to Crompton/Smokestack/Dive Bar, because that was a good representation of the area. Now two of those 3 places are closed because of the ballpark

Those businesses were never going to last.

Plenty of people find parking down there during the games and it’s never an issue. There’s several garage and lots, plus street parking.

It’s just an undesirable area with not much to offer. Places have shit hours and poor management. Doesn’t help that a lot of the places down there thrive on the college party scene and cater towards that.

There’s also several new places going into the recently closed restaurants.

Realistically, that area needs something that will draw people every day, not just game days.

Let’s not act like that area was thriving before the stadium arrived.

Fellow alum: Yes it is a good school for many reasons beyond the quality of it's teaching. There are however 2 things to consider.

1. Holy hannah is it expensive and I doubt in 10 years it's gotten cheaper. Even with financial aid it's still quite expensive w/o being a household name.
2. It uses terms (basically half-semesters) meaning that after 3 weeks of class you are already at mid-terms. This makes things FAST. Now that has some benefits and coming from the odd way my voc. high school worked was able to adapt but you could see those freshman year who weren't and eventually dropped.

There is definitely more a working in a team aspect compared to what I've heard from MIT - but if you do go just want you to be prepared for how fast it will seem and how much it will cost ya.

Polar park is NOT neighborhood friendly - people aren't using the neighborhood to go to dinner or grab a drink- and for the city to assume that people would was short-sighted and ridiculous.

People go to the game, buy overpriced food and drinks and then they LEAVE. The entire area went through gentrification, landlords got greedy and upped the rent causing businesses to leave.

The city easily swayed to buy a bag of shit because they wanted a stadium so badly that they didn't do their due diligence, and now the people, once again, pay for that, quite literally.

Well-lit sidewalks and bike paths.

Going off of this just like...usable sidewalks. There are so many that just end or have trees growing through them and are all but unusable. For runners like me this is incredibly frustrating. I can't even imagine how someone with mobility issues gets around in this town.

Wait, Encore is high class? I usually just go in wearing jeans and sneakers lol.

We need more housing just for the people already living here.

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I miss a certain dive bar that disappeared in the wake of a minor league stadium. Fuck, now what was it called...