Just adding some information to Mike Kirby’s recent Paradise City Forum entry on Village Hill which is included below. Click the following link to download the Village Hill notice of project change:
http://www.mass.gov/envir/mepa/pdffiles/npcs/061108em/12629npc.pdf
Comments may be submitted electronically, by mail, via FAX, or by hand delivery. Please note that comments submitted on MEPA documents are public records.
The mailing address for comments due by July 1 is:
Secretary Ian A. Bowles
EOEA, Attn: MEPA Office
William Gage, EOEA No. 12629
100 Cambridge Street, Suite 900
Boston MA 02114
Phone, Fax, Email:
Main Phone: (617) 626-1000, William Gage: (617) 626-1025
Main Fax: (617) 626-1181
Email: env.internet@state.ma.us
—– Original Message —–
From: "mikekirby2003" <makirby@verizon.net>
To: <paradisecityforum@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:42 PM
Subject: PCF Get your letters into MEPA
There are memories in our community that are being irretrievably lost,
and we are and will be the poorer for it. Northampton State Hospital,
the historic 1856 building, has been demolished by state and local
decision. The notion of a hospital serving anybody, no less the
indigent mentally ill, is being obliterated by removing any reference
to a hospital in the proposed new developments up on that hill. And
most recently, one of the bargains made to get the public to accept a
large development of houses on that hill, is being quickly wiped out.
The Citizens Advisory Committee agreed to the city’s recommendation
to remove 1/3 of the commercial development requirement, the
requirement that might actually bring some new economic development
and tax ratables to the city. What is not being touched are the 207
houses in the master plan on the north side of the hill. There is a
requirement that housing and commercial space be developed
simultaneously, so one might think that if 1/3 of commercial space is
deleted, the same should be true of housing, but one would be wrong.
Given the city’s inability to attract commercial development over the
last 10 years, even while the housing market boomed, we should be
able to see where the development on hospital hill is headed.
Housing, which is a net drain on city taxes and services will be the
winner.
The history is gone, the economic development/housing
equality is gone, and then, to heap insult onto injury the proposed
light industrial building on the south campus has no redeeming design
feature. Of the 7 remaining historic buildings which were to be
reused in the original plan, this proposal will take down 3. Slated
for development in their place on the south side of Prince St. (rt.
66) is a new Kollmorgen research and manufacturing center. When you
look at the revised master plan, (copies available at Northampton
Planning Dept and Forbes Library) you will see that this building is
right on Prince St. and that it is fronted by a 450 car parking lot,
also right on Prince St. As Ben Spencer said in a recent op-ed,
the proposed building on this glorious river-view site represents a
unique opportunity. The proposed siting plan is in no way unique. The
proposed building is a very large rectangle. It is standard, it looks
like New Jersey office parks, it looks like So. Calf. office parks,
made for car drivers. The planners should be embarrassed.
Northampton, there is an opportunity for public input by letter until
July 1, the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MRPA) review
period. If each of you who cares about the aesthetics of our
community wrote a simple letter about this site plan, the state
review board could require Mass. Development to modify the design
elements of this plan. Letters can be sent to: Secretary Ian Bowles,
EOEA, 100 Cambridge St, Suite 900, Boston MA 02114. Please be a
squeaky wheel on behalf of our future. We have lost a major piece of
our history; let’s not put up a big metal industrial box and a
parking lot in its stead.
Mike Kirby and Wendy Sinton
