Hampshire College this morning
Yes, that is our Department of Public Works doing construction on private property.
They are building Hampshire College a driveway that will connect the parking lot over on the left with West Street (Rt 116) below.
The construction at top of photo does not involve our DPW. It's the new super efficient Hitchcock Center building, but it does look like it will share the new road being installed by the DPW.
Although the town is getting plenty of loam out of the deal
This is part of a deal made a few years ago relating to the Atkins Corner double roundabouts where the town needed to take some property from Hampshire College and offered construction services instead of cash.
Atkins Corner $6 million double roundabout project. Atkins Market top right
Why didn't the state simply pay Hampshire College for the property in the first place since the $6 million Atkins Corner project was a Department Of Transportation project?
They would have except the town "took over" Rt 116 from Atkins up to town center because they did not like they way the state was going to re widen along the Pomeroy Lane/West Street Village Center.
This also means our DPW has to plow this stretch of road in the winter.
As some of you may remember Hampshire College refused to allow a detour through their campus during the Atkins Corner construction, a project that almost led to the demise of Atkins Country Market.
Hampshire College pays the town nothing for Amherst Fire Department emergency service runs which average close to Amherst College, who pays $90,000 annually. UMass also pays $450,000 annually.
In reality none of the institutes of higher education pay their fair share. But certainly anything is better than nothing.
At least the roundabouts work
I'm sorry but a detour through the heart of campus, which would have meant not only thousand of cars, but also tractor trailers and buses, was not a reasonable request for a project that took years to complete.
ReplyDeleteThe unsightly roundabouts match the other embarrassing entrances to the town, including blighted homes on Main Street, College Street, and Northampton Road.
ReplyDeleteThe roundabouts now constitute a series of intersections that drivers can now navigate through with a greatly lessened chance than before of killing themselves or some other driver.
ReplyDeleteWhat about some roundabouts at the intersections of Route 9 and 116 and Route 9 and South East Street? Traffic gets backed up there way more than at Triangle Street. There can be 2--30 cars waiting to go down Route 9. It's time to look at some other areas of town that are more congested.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this is legal -- public entities are not permitted to compete with private businesses and the town is taking business away from a tax-paying private trucking/construction company (e.g. Karl's) in doing this.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, isn't it just "cost-shifting"? Wages, fuel, depreciation on vehicles -- all of that is coming from a town budget, just like the cash to buy the land would have -- it's just coming out of the DPW budget instead of some other budget.
And when the DPW says it has to replace some of this equipment sooner than it otherwise would have had to (had it not been used for this), no one is going to mention that expense as being part of this. Likewise, when other stuff doesn't get done this summer because the guys are doing this instead, no one is going to notice.
But the town taxpayers are not only competing with private (tax paying) businesses, but don't have a chance to actually see the money they are actually spending when they do things this way. If they did, maybe they would have had second thoughts about not letting the state do the job the way the state wanted to, at state expense...
"....a project that almost led to the demise of Atkins Country Market." I don't think so. Before during and after the roundabout construction Atkins added to the rear of their building, remodeled the front of their store, and now are building in North Amherst. A solar installation was also added, I'm assuming under a leasing contract, so Atkins was/is likely making money there too. If the construction was so harmful to the business then why embark on such major capital investment projects before, during, and after? Atkins was doing fine before, during, and now after that construction and was never a victim of big bad infrastructure improvements.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and arrogant Anons are such reliable sources.
ReplyDeleteI guess the layoffs Atkins had due to slow business were just an illusion.
ReplyDelete