It Takes More Than A Village
Mark Roessler and the Valley Advocate deserve thanks for this series on Hospital Hill. But I also agree with Professor Platt's response that Village Hill would not be a village. It was a "Village" for marketing. What is more unfortunate is that decisions made had nothing to do with good city planning.
Northampton, like all of Massachusetts, is struggling to restore a lost economic base. Massachusetts plans to devote enormous resources to restore it with life sciences. Northampton is a most attractive city to research professionals, especially with the Five Colleges. Hospital Hill is one of the prime development opportunities in Western Massachusetts. Yet marketing to research firms was minimal while the residential "Village" was overdone. Mayor Higgins appoints the Office of Planning and Development and the Planning Board, and chairs the CAC. Positioning herself as city planning director, she has personally pushed through every development decision she preferred over the public's objection. While Northampton struggles for a plan to sustain its downtown business, she made the planning decision to sacrifice the Green Street/West Street neighborhood that supported downtown business, but chose and promoted a "Village" that would not.
The mayor claimed she wanted "affordable housing" to be a "hallmark of her administration," and for people who worked for the city, like policemen and firefighters, to be able to buy a first home in Northampton. This was recently possible because the sub-prime mortgage market had banks throwing money at previously underqualified buyers and the state was supporting this boom in construction with tax subsidies for the developers and builders, many of whom also live in town. It was a feast for the mayor and her would-be supporters, but it had nothing to do with good city planning. Village Hill might become attractive, but it was still going to be a suburb. And Kollmorgen's move from downtown to take the most valuable new development site is the definition of "mindless sprawl."
Mayor Higgins continues to teach her citizens "not to waste time looking in our rear-view mirrors." She and her Office of Planning and Development have invited citizens to offer their suggestions to improve how Kollmorgen will look after its move to Hospital Hill; to say how we wanted the Green Street/West Street neighborhood to look after [Smith College's new] Ford Hall had to be built there; to offer ideas on window detailing for the Hilton Garden Inn and how we might redesign Pulaski Park to keep the Inn from detracting from it. These siting decisions are represented by the mayor as "a done deal." Mayor Higgins tells us Smith and the Hilton people would "sue the city," and Kollmorgen would "leave town," but I've never heard them say it themselves. I also never heard any evidence that the Office of Planning and Development worked with those developers to find alternate sites.
Kenneth Mitchell
Northampton
