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Date: 6/20/2023
EASTHAMPTON — With the Tasty Top Development project underway, one group of Easthampton residents is working to make sure the project aligns with the city’s climate goals.
Per the latest plans for the development, the site includes 10 apartment buildings with a total of 188 units along with three mixed-use commercial units, a restaurant pad site, a bank site, one retail space, a Roots Learning Facility and a Roots Gymnastics facility.
Marty Klein, a board member of the Pascommuck Conservation Trust and one of the organizers of the Easthampton Deserves Better Coalition, said one of the goals of the organization is to educate residents about the Tasty Top Development.
“An important aspect of the coalition is informing the community about what’s being planned here. Based on a lot of people we’ve talked to – we’ve had a table at the farmers market, we had one at the co-op, we had a presence at cultural chaos – a lot of people think it’s just Starbucks going in there, they have no idea that there’s 32 acres behind there where this massive development it planned there,” he said.
The coalition’s biggest concerns about the development are around its climate impacts on the area.
“We’re losing 23 acres of prime farmland, that’s being stripped and replaced with imported soil. We’re in a climate crisis and losing that farmland and I think they’re cutting 4.4 acres of trees and the site is at the edge of some critical habitat along the Manhan River and its tributaries,” Klein said. “It’s going to disrupt the wildlife corridor.”
Klein said that he believes the plans don’t reflect the wishes of what residents have said in the past.
“We’re concerned because over the past 20 years in Easthampton the community has expressed various concerns in documents like the master plan and our open space and recreation plan, and people have expressed an interest in preserving open space and various other environmental issues that are not being addressed here,” he said.
Klein explained that the coalition is made up of a group of local experts with experience in engineering, conservation and more.
“We have a core group of around 16 now, it’s an incredible collection of Easthampton people, we have a civil engineer, we have a conservation consultant, an architect, a landscape architect, a biologist and ecologist. We have property owners in the vicinity, we have business owners in the vicinity,” he said. “It’s really a pretty impressive group of experts who have been looking at what the applicant has submitted and commenting on that if we see issues.”
Klein added that he has a master’s degree in regional planning.
While the coalition has been keeping an eye on the project since December 2022, the coalition officially formed in March.
One of the groups concerns is the increased vehicle traffic along Northampton Street, which already has several drive through businesses.
“As of now they will be adding 4,000 new vehicle trips a day to Route 10, which is already at times very congested, then you add in Starbucks, which is figured to have 1,000 trips a day, so we’re talking about 5,000 vehicle trips a day on a two-lane road that’s already congested,” he said. “I think we all know that the exhaust from those vehicles is really bad environmentally and now they’re talking about adding another drive-up window with a bank building.”
Since much of the coalition’s work has been submitted through public comment to the Planning Board and Conservation Commission, Klein said the city has been able to comment on their work, per Open Meeting Law restrictions on public comment.
While the development has reduced the footprint of its buildings, Klein said the coalition is looking for more.
“We feel that the changes that have been proposed have been pretty minimal, nothing significant really. We would like to see the size or at least the layout of the development on a smaller footprint. Ideally, we would to see some land protected as conservation land because we believe conservation and development can coexist but it takes a cooperative developer to do that,” he said.
Klein said that while the coalition would like to collaborate on the environmental concerns about the development, that has not been reciprocated by the development.
“I think we all support the right of the applicant to build something there under the appropriate regulations and to follow the regulations. We’re not saying no, we’re saying it should be better and there are ways to make it better but it’s going to take some compromise and collaboration,” he said.
One thing the coalition is looking forward to is the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act Office review of the site.
“It’s a broad process and the purpose is to look at environmental impacts of a development from many angles. It’s going to look at air quality, it’s going to look at all kinds of environmental impacts, the lighting and so forth,” Klein said.
Klein also questioned the timing of the MEPA review.
In a previous interview with Reminder Publishing, Frank DeMarinis, president of Sage Engineering and Constructing, Inc., the firm proposing and building the Tasty Top Development, said the MEPA review goes hand-in-hand with a Massachusetts Department of Transportation review, both of which he said were planned to be filed on June 15.
Overall, Klein said he is happy with the community’s support of the coalition.
“I think it’s really impressive to see the people who have joined the coalition and have gotten on board with our mission, it just says something really positive about this community,” he said.
For more information about the Easthampton Deserves Better Coalition head to https://better01027.org/. The latest site plans for the Tasty Top Development are also available at https://easthamptonma.gov/DocumentCenter/Index/535.