Don't Delay

179 Northampton Road, Amherst

UPDATE:  The commission voted not to implement a one year demo delay but asked the Design Review Board to look over plans for new construction.  Zoning Board will also decide a Special Permit to allow the new home to be two family vs the current one family zoning.

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The Amherst Historical Commission will discuss a possible one-year demolition delay (their maximum authority) for this haunted house located on busy Rt 9, just opposite Amherst College luxurious Pratt Field.

The owner, Peter Wilson, aka Wilson Properties Group, LLC, will not be in attendance tonight as he was never officially notified about the meeting.

In Amherst it is standard practice for the Historical Commission to peruse any demolition permit before allowing the wrecking ball to swing. In September the commission failed to implement a delay on a 100+ year old barn on Lincoln Avenue (possibly connected to poet Robert Frost), thus clearing the way for a housing speculator to construct another rental unit in an area accelerating towards student rental domination. 

If the Historical Commission failed to delay the destruction of the  Lincoln Avenue barn, which was in comparatively good repair, they should not take long deciding to let this scary house fall. 

DUI Dishonor Role

 Drunk drivers also pose a threat to our first responders

One of the more chilling lines buried in a 40 some odd page police log has an almost air of routine to it, perhaps because it was the wee hours of Sunday morning (1:40 AM) on well traveled Rt 9, which is of course what I find so chilling:

"While on a traffic stop, vehicle almost struck me."  The laconic officer pursued the offending vehicle, pulled it over and administered a SFST (Standard Field Sobriety Test) to the driver.  He failed. 

Arrested for DUI and Marked Lanes Violation:

Jacob Bell, 350 Ridge Rd, Athol, MA, age 23

An Expensive View

615 Bay Road, Amherst

Even though the house and entire property are only valued at $343,800 total, safe bet Town Meeting will approve spending $505,000 for the (20 acre) property alone, which is only assessed at $163,500.

Why? Well it is indeed "nice" -- even the reserved assessor noted that on the property card. But one of the main reasons put forth in a memo to Town Meeting is perhaps the most typical argument used over the past forty years for conservation purchases:  

As the appraisal indicates, there is ample frontage and acreage to develop four single-family house lots from the Ricci property. With municipal water on the street and sewer within 300’ of the property, it is a concern of the Town that as the market demand for home sites and housing increases, the owners will seek to develop the property. The adjacent properties to the west succumbed to a similar fate in the early 1980’s as a larger property was subdivided into two large single-family house lots.

Amherst has one of the tightest housing markets in Western Massachusetts, yet we continue to stifle supply in the face of ever increasing demand. In this case, four housing units that will never get built.  And those twenty acres come off the tax rolls in a town where over half the property is already owned by tax exempt entities. 

And it's not like slumlords buy up brand new houses to rent to students. It's the tired older single family units they scoop up and expand the occupancy by two or three times in order to maximize rents.

Interestingly one of the properties refered to in the report to Town Meeting as one of those evil adjacent "large single-family house lots" is the Souweine Top Notch Farm, otherwise known as the "House" immortalized by Tracy Kidder.

Yes, the same book where Mr. Kidder aptly describes Amherst as  “a college and university town, the kind of place that has a fine public school system and a foreign policy.”

If Amherst conservation aficionados had their way, a great book would never have been written. 

Yet the venerable Amherst town seal is a book and a plow.

Property rolls up to the Holyoke Range

UPDATE Tuesday morning. Town Meeting did of course approve the purchase using $151,500 from Community Preservation funds but the bulk of the money ($353,500) will come from a state grant which is far from guaranteed.

Siesta Sunday

Catching some rays

Fiery Friday Finale

Professional Help For Crime Victims

Amherst Police Department 111 Main Street

While the town recently lost a $900,000 federal grant to benefit low and moderate income residents and a $4.2 million state grant for road improvements in North Amherst, a potentially lifesaving Amherst Police Department regional program designed to aid those devastated by the horror of sexual assault or domestic abuse snagged a $300,000 grant from the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.

The money will continue to fund a full-time counselor who splits her time between UMass and the town, add a part-time counselor for Northampton PD, increase training for all three departments and fund an additional full-time Amherst police officer whose exclusive beat will be sexual assault and domestic violence cases.

The renewal/expansion of the program, originally founded two years ago with $174,000 Justice Department grant, comes soon after our comfortable college town was rocked by a series of sensational sexual assault cases.

A long-form narrative first-person piece published on the front page of the Amherst College student newspaper shone a glaring spotlight on the inadequate system the prestigious college used for handling such sensitive matters.

Followed by a shocking incident of alleged gang rape at a UMass dormitory.

And just when you thought it could not get any worse, the heartrending story of yet another Amherst College student ill-served by an in-house amateur response to a situation requiring highly trained professionals.

Trey Malone committed suicide, leaving behind a devastatingly poignant final farewell blaming his self-induced death on the sexual assault by a fellow student, made even worse by the way Amherst College (mis) handled it.

Could this regional civilian advocacy program have made a difference for Trey?  Although funding is provided by the "Office on Violence Against Women" men most certainly are not excluded.

But, since Amherst College didn't report the incident to local police or the district attorney's office, we will never know.

This essential service program has helped hundreds over the past two years, and will now continue to help hundreds into the future.

Smooth Sailing

What a difference a day makes

 
Crew from Lane Construction prepares to mill and overlay S. Pleasant Street, heart of town center.  Early Christmas present for downtown merchants