Triplets!

 3rd tank, also with one foot of the volatile liquid remaining, was buried along eastern side of building

The old expression "bad things come in threes" certainly played out over the past week for a small business located at the highly visible intersection of Main/Triangle/Dickinson Street just below the Emily Dickinson Museum .

The first underground storage tank, resembling a large aerial bomb dropped from a B52, was bad enough considering it lay almost directly under the main entry immediately in front of the building.

Assistant Fire Chief Don McKay was instantly suspicious there would be a second  due to a large connecting pipe visible on top of the tank, which sure enough proved accurate. The third tank alongside the building came as more of a surprise, kind of like the initial discovery.

The first gas pump appeared in Amherst in 1905 on the corner of Kellogg Avenue planted there by Melrose Paige. Probably installed properly, since Mr. Paige went on to become Amherst Fire Department Call Chief in 1911, and by 1925 he was Chair of the Amherst Select Board.

At first, no permit or license was required to sell gasoline, although this being Amherst, regulation soon followed.    The first license to sell gasoline was recorded at the Town Clerk's office in May, 1914.

By the late 1930s Amherst hosted 24 "filling stations" and the citizens did not want a 25th. At a routine Monday night Select Board meeting in July of 1939, eighteen citizens turned out for a public hearing to protest a gas station permit for a proposed business (by a large oil company) on North Pleasant Street.

Their battle cry was a simple but inflammatory one: North Pleasant Street, the busiest commercial street in Amherst, should not become "gasoline alley".

The Select Board denied the permit.

The building on Main Street where the underground tanks were just discovered is located very near Classic Chevrolet, formerly Paige's Chevrolet, founded in 1883 -- the first auto service business in Amherst.

Patterson's Garage, Main Street Amherst circa 1940 

Prior to becoming a pizza shop it was an entrenched location for auto service: Ledoyt's Garage shows up in 1923, two years later becoming Bilger's Garage, and in 1936 Main Street Garage.  Between 1940-1950 the location was operated as Patterson's Garage and, finally, Dick's Auto Service operated by Dick Stedman.

 Amherst Record ad 11/28/1963

A valve fitting found on one of the tanks was manufactured by the Evertite Corporation, a business established in 1935, indicating that Main Street Garage is probably responsible for the tanks -- although they could have gone in years earlier and were added to or replaced after 1935.

Now of course the explosive question:  how many more large underground tanks, with gasoline still in them, remain buried and forgotten around town?

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The tanks, measuring 5 feet in diameter and 16 feet long, were peeled open after a chemical solution poured in to neutralize explosive fumes, siphoned,  and then replaced with an equal amount of concrete.  Old gas was taken to a "waste burning facility" by New England Environmental, Inc so it did not completely go to, err, waste.

Board of Health regulations banning underground tanks in the aquifer recharge zones was a volatile issue in 1983, vociferously protested by local farmers, gas stations owners and others with underground tanks. Those who, according to then Board of Health Chair Davis Ross, "had a vested interest in not being regulated."

Sweet Downtown Addition

Glazed Doughnut Shop, Carriage Shops North Pleasant street

The new gourmet doughnut business -- appropriately called "Glazed Doughnut Shop" -- that opened last month on the northern town center outskirts debuted already using paper coffee cups because they assumed the Styrofoam ban would pass.

This is after all, Amherst. And who would better know Amherst than a pair of ARHS graduates, high school sweethearts no less.  In addition to knowing the town, Keren and Nick Rhodes also know doughnuts -- and how much work it takes to make them right.

Yes, their main competition, with three establishments in town, is Dunkin' Donuts -- but the abbreviated way they spell doughnuts should tell you something.  

More variety than Dunkin'

An Unexpected Find

 Bruno's Pizza, Main Street

While maybe not as dramatic as uncovering an unexploded WW2 bomb, the surprising find on Main Street could probably have done almost as much damage:  two underground gas storage tanks, one 4,000 gallons the other 3,000 gallons, each with many hundreds of gallons of the dangerous liquid still in them, buried and forgotten for almost 100 years.

Looks like something dropped from a B-52

The full-reconstruction Main Street road project, which is expected to be completed next week, as it made its way up towards town center uncovered the long forgotten gas storage tanks, setting in motion a series of public safety responses.

Amherst Fire Department coordinated with Department of Environmental Protection and local Hazmat expert New England Environmental, Inc sampled the soil around the two tanks to test for contamination. And that is probably the only good news, as there was no leakage.

But the first tank had 1,000 gallons of gas and the second one 500 gallons that needed to be carefully siphoned into a truck with a large holding tank. Both underground tanks will stay where they lay but will be refilled with 3,300 gallons of concrete and paved over.

2nd tank was even closer to the building 

Apparently, well before the Main Street business became a pizza shop, it was an auto repair facility -- and since it was on heavily traveled Main Street, it also had gas pumps out front (one regular the other high test).

The shop became a pizza parlor in the early 1980s, called "Whole Wheat Pizza" and was one of the first establishments in Amherst to specilaize in delivery.

Bruno Matarazzo purchased the business in 1994 giving it a new name that it carries to this day.  Bruno sold the business and moved uptown, where he founded Antonio's Pizza. 

Exponentially Expanding Empire

60-62 Railroad Street (left) 64-66 Railroad (right) 

On December 13 the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals will decide if two contiguous Railroad Street properties, currently zoned as "two family" dwellings (allowing eight unrelated tenants per house) can expand by 50%, going from four to a total of six units, or 24 unrelated occupants.

GP Amherst, LLC purchased the properties back in July.  The man behind the LLC is YPT, You-Pan Tzeng, who also owns five properties in town under his own name.   Four more via GP Amherst and another five using KH Associates, or a total of 14 properties.

In the past year, using those two LLCs, he has purchased ten houses. 

Yes, Mr. Tzeng is in the BIG Leagues. A property empire totaling $5 million in valuation, generating $100,000 in tax revenue to Amherst this year.

So you have to wonder if special treatment comes into play -- especially regarding code enforcement?

When You-Pan Tzeng purchased 321 Lincoln Avenue it came with a legally binding "owner occupied" provision, the result of an expansion from one family to the current two family back in 1993.  In a hearing last April, where he tried to get the Zoning Board to remove that provision, a bevy of neighbors descended on the public meeting to vociferously remind the ZBA about the detrimental impact non-owner occupied housing unleashes on neighborhoods.  

The zoning board unanimously reaffirmed the loud-and-clear difference between owner occupied vs absentee owner.  They denied the change in Special Permit.  So then what happened?  Did the house revert back to the original 1996 zoning of only one family (four unrelated housemates), thus costing the new owner $15,000 per year in rent? 

Well, no.  Apparently Mr Tzeng moved his residency from a ritzy $489,300 Longmeadow home to a tiny one-room unit at 321 Lincoln Avenue with seven housemates.  Hmm ...

And when friendly neighbors from the 'hood dropped by to welcome him to one of Amherst's oldest neighborhoods he seemed never to be at "home."  The college-aged roommates never seemed to know of his whereabouts either, and reportedly got nervous when asked about it.

Double hmm ... 

A Brighter Downtown

The Amherst Business Improvement District can't take credit for today's first snowfall, but it provided the perfect backdrop for all the new Christmas, err, HOLIDAY Stars adorning light pole all over the downtown that the BID can take credit for.

Better yet, I'm told the Merry Maple -- in a joint production between the BID and Amherst Chamber of Commerce -- will get a 400% increase in the number of lights, so photographers will no longer have to use their low light setting.

Come watch the lighting ceremony this Friday at 4:15 in front of venerable Town Hall.  (It may now even be visible from outer space).

Flushing Taxpayer $

War Memorial Field Comfort Station vandalism

Sometime over the Thanksgiving weekend, just before the building would be closed up for the winter, a Luddite vandal trashed the overhead sensor mechanism for turning on the lights, as well as ripping out the flushing sensor mechanism from the back of the toilet at the War Memorial/Ziomek Field bathroom.

And it's not the "broken window" theory in practice, since the 50+ year old building underwent a $140,000 refurbishment just this past summer, in conjunction with a $300,000 renovation of the War Memorial Pool.

Alan Snow, DPW Tree Division Director,  confirms the bathrooms  "are unlocked from the beginning of the spring sports season to the last home game in the fall which was held on Thursday (Thanksgiving)."  

The town is, however, in the process of installing remote time locks on all the comfort stations in town that can be set to open and close automatically, and be controlled via the Internet.

DUI Dishonor Role

Amherst police -- and of course the citizenry at large -- received a break from noise/nuisance party houses over the long Thanksgiving weekend.  Thanks be to that.  But APD did deal with the usual assortment of Breaking & Enterings and of course those potential killers on the road:

739 North Pleasant Street/Eastman Lane UMass roundabout.  Early Saturday morning 2:23 AM

Stopped for speeding and marked lanes violation ("all over the road").  Blew a .12% BAC on the Portable Breathalyzer Test and failed the other physical Field Sobriety Test components.

Arrested for DUI Second Offense and marked lanes violations:
Christopher Robert Shippa, 56 Elm St, Hatfield, MA, age 29

And yes Mr. Shippa showed his experience as he refused the Breathalyzer test back at the APD headquarters -- the one that is admissible in court.

Well traveled N. Pleasant Eastman Lane Roundabout intersection UMass/Amherst

Also arrested for DUI about a mile up the road, around the same time (3:00 AM early Saturday): Aiden Mullaney Barett, 323 Apple Valley Rd, Ashfield, MA, age 18