North Amherst center today shows recent improvements via paving and new striping
Click photos to enlarge
Concept D
So after two open public forums and many individual board and committee meetings it looks like Concept D is going to be the choice for significant renovations to North Amherst Village Center.
At Tuesday's second forum sponsored by the Select Board, Planning Board and Public Works Committee, attended by perhaps 45 citizens, Concept D was once again was the clear favorite of the four presented.
Good crowd at Bangs Center for the 2nd public forum on Tuesday night
Now the significant problem is going to be how to fund it?
I'm told just the basic construction aspect is at least $1 million and the combined value of the two properties that would need to be purchased are another $1 million. So a million here and a million there, pretty soon you're talking real money.
Reverting Sunderland Road back to greenspace ties in Library to School and playing field
The town was shot down for a MassWorks grant recently for this North Amherst intersection, and a couple years ago was also turned down for a $4 million grant to redo Pine Street, which the town just now completed on its own dime (or I should say local taxpayers dimes).
Maybe if we showed a little more support at the ballot box for a Republican Governor, those grants would start rolling in.
5 comments:
That is only $5.29 per year for each Amherst resident for 10 years at $2,000,000 and 37819. Alternatively this would put 7.32 kids through K-12 in Amherst or about 10-15 most other places. Alternatively you could provide one good meal per day for each resident for a decade. Alternatively you could be forced to give up one good meal per day for a decade so that this intersection can be "fixed" given how poorly it has functioned.
Funny, though, about the town voting Republican.
The state seems pretty clear that the mass works grants need to leverage public money to get new housing and economic development; pine street didn't do that. This concept might. Imagine a new trolley barn to the north where the garage is. Let's get creative and get CPA money to create proper parking for the library and connection to the field. Add in some new sidewalks, lighting and wifi and you have a winner grant application. That might incentivize the redevelopment of the riverside shops! That's what is exciting about this plan; to do nothing will only push this fragmented and underutilized core area into worse decay
Drunk drivers revving in an inner city residential renting area are a hazard, why not go with a rotary to tame traffic into the now urban zone, this is a new shopping district ?
Larry, forget about not voting for a Republican Governor and start realizing that there are consequences to pissing off a few thousand future state workers each year...
Ed,
We will stop pissing OFF those "future state workers" when they stop pissing ON our town.
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