All in a golden afternoon, I slid into downtown thinking about the letter I just got explaining that Arnold Ave. must now be repaved. Mayor Higgins decided to permanently cut off all parking to street residents because Smith College needed two wide sidewalks to get to Ford Hall. But of course they would offer treats — the property owners would get money for a daily tea for the inconvenience to their tenants.
Smith College was entitled because they had threatened property owners with an expensive lawsuit, which could be avoided if the owners just gave up their right of way. Some owners had sold all of their property to Smith because it seems the brokers for Smith suggested that they might lose that property to eminent domain. ”Sentence before the verdict.”
Paradise is at the outskirts, Downtown is Alice’s Wonderland. Arnold Ave. does not need repaving. It is a city street created and maintained by resident’s taxes for residents and tenants to park on their rented property. A drive onto Arnold Ave. for an annual visit to a friend has Ford Hall making that someone wonder what mushrooms made breakfast.
Smith asked the city to permit a new one-of-a-kind women’s engineering program by allowing it to erupt in that neighborhood and grace Northampton with a LEED Certified Green building. Ford Hall may not be a LEED Certified Green building and women’s engineering may comprise only a small part. The entrance to Ford Hall is specified for the reasonable campus access on the Green St. side, not Arnold Ave.
Belmont Ave. transformed, courtesy CANN
The evidence could only suggest that Arnold Ave. is being redesigned for the city by Smith for the Lobster Quadrille. Our governors and college continue to educate us on “Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” We weren’t invited to the discussion; our dormouse was but apparently didn’t have time to represent it at the city council. “Would you tell us, please, which way we ought to go from here?” … “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”
Future design of the Green St. neighborhood, courtesy CANN
New sidewalks to be installed between proposed buildings B & C, Green St. eliminated.
