Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 10/27/2021
NORTHAMPTON – During a meeting on Oct. 21, the Northampton City Council Finance Committee unanimously gave a positive recommendation to the first reading of an order that surpluses city land for affordable housing and a Community Resilience Hub off Crafts Avenue.
According to the order presented during the City Council meeting, the city has a program to create a Community Resilience Hub “as a downtown facility with a coordinated program for frontline communities and any residents who face chronic and acute stress due to disasters, pandemics, climate change, and other social and economic challenges.” A hub would look to provide access to a resource, a social network, and building social resilience.
Included in the order is information about how the city has already made offers to the Roundhouse Plaza and St. John Cantius Church as possible locations for a Resilience Hub, but Mayor David Narkewicz is also looking at other back-up options for a hub in a new building that would simultaneously be included with affordable housing. The St. John Cantius Church offer was officially rejected. It is still uncertain whether the Roundhouse proposal will be accepted.
“This is an opportunity to take some land that we have that’s not currently in use and be able to advance it for potentially a Resilience Hub,” said Narkewicz. “But, even if it does not become the Resilience Hub, it could provide the support for affordable housing in the heart of our downtown.”
According to Wayne Feiden, the director of planning and sustainability in Northampton, the city initially looked at the space behind City Hall as a spot for a Resilience Hub but found the price too high. As a result, the city is looking to add affordable studio apartments at the very least, or a combination of studio apartments and a hub. Feiden is the lead architect on this project.
The city is still very early in this process, and the site they are looking at may not pan out, but Feiden and the mayor wanted to at least see if the council would support something like this as a project for the future. The city is looking to partner with Valley CDC to see what may be feasible for Northampton when it comes to either or both options.
“I think we still prefer an existing building,” said Feiden, when speaking on where the city would like to host affordable housing and/or a hub. “Our goal is to continue to do our due diligence on either path.”
Another potential location for affordable housing and/or a Resilience Hub would be in the property extending from the Puchalski Municipal Office Building to the Roundhouse bus station, all the way down to the southerly most parking spaces in the City Hall parking lot.
“The cost of construction both downtown and the area near the hillside is more expensive,” said Feiden. “But I also think downtown is where we desperately need the housing and desperately need the hub, and there’s some savings.”
If the city proceeded with a combined use at Roundhouse Plaza, then the first two stories would be used for a Resilience Hub while the next three would be used for affordable housing. The height of the building would almost be identical to the municipal office building, according to Feiden. If the whole building was only affordable housing, then the housing would be four to five stories high.
The biggest issue with the Roundhouse location is environmental issues. According to Feiden, the area used to be a coal gasification plant. To make product, coal would come in to be heated, they would catch the gas that came off the coal, and the sludge would be disposed of. Eversource Gas spent about $8 million cleaning up the city’s parking lot and Roundhouse basement to get rid of the remaining sludge and other product. There is some residue left from the plant, but the studies the city did in the spring show that the residue left poses very minimal risk. Despite this, they still want to do a test in January to make sure the area is clean enough during times when a risk could be higher compared to other months.
“During the pandemic, we were finding that we had a subset of folks who, for whatever reason, congregate housing is not an option,” said Narkewicz. “So, we’ve worked to try to get them in this type of housing. What we’ve really learned from the pandemic is that, for a lot of people, the way to move them into permanent housing is to get them into single residence type housing.”
Gina-Louise Sciarra, the council president, said she is happy that the city is also showing flexibility when it comes to exploring other options in the city. “The importance of creating these smaller units is incredibly important for us,” she said. “I’m very appreciative of this idea.”