Important Planning Hire

 147 acres of woodland under purchase and sale agreement for $6.5 million

Last week the Amherst Planning Board voted unanimously (5-0 with 2 absent) to hire Fuss & O'Neill as their go to person for helping sort out all the planning issues associated with the largest and most expensive rental housing construction project in well over a decade, The Retreat in northeast Amherst.

A hiring committee consisting of two Planning Board members and four full-time professional town planning staff made the recommendation for Fuss & O'Neill over two other applicants.

The "scope of work" clause gives an ambitious time table, with a preliminary report within 30 days of starting and a final report 30 days after that.

As soon as Landmark Properties cuts a check for $20,700, the clock starts ticking ...

A Singular Achievement

ARHS graduate Dylan Akalis receives diploma via Holyoke School Committee member Erin Brunelle yesterday in the backyard of this grandfather's house

As graduation parties go it was all wonderfully typical:  Proud parents, lots of extended family, friends, classmates;  well wishers both young and old, with enough variety of race and ethnicity to make the United Nations proud. 

But the b-i-g difference is this party started before the diploma was issued, with the party's guest of honor the only person present in a cap and gown.   And the person who handed him his hard earned diploma was indeed a public school official, but from another city.

Yes for Dylan Akalis it's been an up and down senior year, but the final outcome -- graduating from Amherst Regional High School in spite of being banned from the June 6 graduation ceremony at the Mullins Center -- was still sweet.

Dylan you may remember was bullied by three black youths (physically assaulted by one of them) for use of the supposedly hip version of the N-word to congratulate a black friend for a stellar basketball performance.

School officials did nothing to stop the harassment, so in self-defense Dylan anonymously posted to a Facebook confessions site a threat about bringing a weapon to school.

As a result the High School was closed for a day (even though authorities identified Dylan many hours before the start of the school day) on Monday, January 27th.  Dylan was handed a 12 day suspension for use of the N-word and invoking a weapons threat.

Most hurtful, however, was the erroneous allegation that Dylan was a racist. 

Feeling betrayed by the Amherst schools the family kept Dylan out for the rest of the year, assuming since he had enough credits Dylan would be allowed to graduate and march with his friends at the graduation ceremony.  Wrong.

Amherst school officials did say they would send a high ranking administrator to the planned June 22 party to officially hand him his diploma.  So that was something.  Sort of.

But when Superintendent Maria Geryk fired Dylan's dad a few weeks back for using the common electrician term "master and slave units" in front of a black school employee, Dylan decided he wanted nothing more to do with Amherst school officials.  Ever.  

Thus no official representative from Amherst Regional Public Schools attended the Sunday graduation celebration.

Too bad, because they could have learned a thing or two about family values. 

A Little Inadvertent Damage

Intermittent stream stabilization work performed on Friday at the proposed site of The Retreat

Landmark Properties will appear before the Amherst Conservation Commission on Wednesday to explain the minor damage that occurred near sensitive wetlands on the expansive property they are currently prepping for a major student housing development, The Retreat.

At the contentious May 29 Conservation Commission meeting, a room full of unfriendly neighbors took pot shots at the proposed development by way of environmental concerns.  They even questioned the work ethic of some of the environmental consultants hired by Landmark.

 ConCom hearing 5/29/14

So after the meeting, two of the experts who did the environmental investigation went back out to the site packing a GPS system to double check their previous field work.  They discovered recent damage that was not present on their original walk about last Fall.

Apparently a sub-contractor performing a geotechnical investigation got a little to close to a couple of streams with heavy duty drilling machinery.

 Logging roads wind their way through the extensive woodlands crossing streams

To their credit, Landmark Properties immediately "self reported" the unfortunate incident to wetlands administrator Beth Wilson.  She passed it along to the Conservation Commission, who then issued an "Enforcement Order" to come before them to explain how the incident occurred and plans for restoration of the damaged area, which Landmark Properties is anxious to share.

And yes, they have already enacted safeguards to ensure the problem does not reoccur.

Not exactly a "babbling brook," but an intermittent stream nevertheless

Last Chance For Foodies

Taste of Amherst Saturday 6:00 PM

Today (noon until 4:00 PM) closes out perhaps the best four-day run ever for the Taste of Amherst -- at least as measured by oftentimes finicky New England weather.

And with outdoor events like the Taste, weather alone is a make or break proposition.

In addition to the free trolley maybe the Chamber of Commerce hired a witch doctor to do a marathon sun dance. 

Farmers Market also packed them in on Saturday

Organizers were not overly pleased with the location chosen by a food cart early Saturday afternoon directly across the street.

But when APD tried to move them, turns out their town issued ($100) permit did not contain a "do not compete" with the Taste clause. 

Food Carts have never been overly popular with bricks and mortar restaurants in town

Coulda' Been a College

 

Cowls Tree Farm northeast Amherst

W-A-Y before signing a $6.5 million purchase and sale agreement with Landmark Properties for 147 acres of woodland now destined to become The Retreat, a high-end student housing development, the W.D. Cowls company offered to donate the land for a proposed new unnamed college that seven years later materialized in South Amherst as Hampshire College.

Yes even back in 1958 the property was ripe for development.  Today Hampshire College hosts 1,400 students -- or twice the number of the proposed Retreat, with 641 total tenants.

When You Build It

Excavation work for Kendrick Place @ 57 E Pleasant Street has commenced

It may not look like much at the moment but after Kendrick Place is completed it will be an unmistakable anchor for the north end of downtown Amherst.

The LEED certified mixed-use building will tower five stories (in Amherst, that's a tower) and contain 36 units of high-end apartments over four floors with the ground floor set aside for retail.
  

Archipelago Investments, LLC has already built a similar successful project dead in the center of town, Boltwood Place.

Last month Amherst Town Meeting voted down a simple easement request for the abutting intersection at Triangle and East Pleasant Street, which is required if the town chooses to install a state financed roundabout at that busy intersection.

The NO vote was a thinly disguised NIMBY payback for the Planning Board allowing Kendrick Place and Boltwood Place to be approved without requiring on site parking for tenants, and allowing the projects to go forward with no "affordable" units in the mix.

The town is currently teetering on the brink of falling below state mandated 10% threshold of Subsidized Housing Inventory thus opening up the possibility of a Ch40B mega-development coming to town. 

Mythbusters like roundabouts

A survey contractor measuring the intersection earlier this month

Can You Hear Me Now?

Jones Library this morning

After an outage of four hours and forty three minutes due to server issues the extensive downtown public wifi system is back up and running. 

This total outage was only the second time in six years the system went down, with the first time being the notorious 2011 Halloween snowstorm that knocked out power to the entire town.

Fortunately Amherst Town Hall now has a generator.   So if another major power outage should occur, the Internet around Town Hall, Police headquarters and Central Fire Station will stay up.