There's a touch of good-natured irony in the fact that today's ribbon-cutting celebration in Paglia Park in Essex will force about a 15-minute shutdown of the town's Causeway around 2 p.m. (See news story, Page 3).
That's because the ceremonial ribbon-cutting — hosted, along with a noon luncheon at Periwinkles, by the Essex Merchants Group — celebrates the fact that, for the first time in four summers, visitors to Essex and residents alike no longer have to endure the downtown construction and traffic lines that had become all too familiar through the state Department of Transportation's Route 133 and seawall construction projects.
A number of state and local officials will be part of today's program — and deservedly so, since it took a lot of people to make this happen and see it through.
But the real credit and congratulations today should go to folks like Main Street Antiques owner Bob Coviello and everyone in the Essex Merchants Group who have indeed found ways to endure this exhaustive project in the midst of an economic downtown, yet never seemed to lose faith in the project's big picture, or the vision it brings to Essex' future.
The completion of this project indeed means a new dawn for Essex. And that's indeed worth celebrating — even if it means one, last 15-minute Causeway delay.
