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Date: 12/27/2021
EASTHAMPTON – With the New Year upon us, Reminder Publishing looked back and compiled a list of some of the top stories and trends that helped shape the city of Easthampton in 2021. Feel free to share your thoughts or memories of the past year by either emailing us at cmaza@thereminder.com or connecting with us via social media on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ReminderPublishing/) or Twitter (@TheReminderMA).
COVID-19 pandemic continues
The coronavirus pandemic continued to influence policymaking for the city and its schools as variants including delta and omicron compelled decision-makers to remain vigilant.
The city revamped its weekly COVID-19 dashboard at the direction of Public Health Nurse Amy Hardt in April. The dashboard illustrates a seven-day average of cases per 100,000 residents, a seven-day positive test rate per 100,000 residents, a weekly case total, current active cases, total cases to date, total deaths, the percentage of residents in the 01027 ZIP code who have partially received the vaccine, and the percentage of 01027 residents who have fully received the vaccine. The dashboard is updated every Friday and shared with the public.
Hardt announced in August she would be leaving the city for another opportunity and since then, local epidemiologist and college professor Megan Harvey is continuing to administer general data around the city’s COVID-19 cases, trends, and vaccination rate through the dashboard.
The city’s most recent update to its masking regulations, which was approved on Aug. 31 by the Board of Health, requires face coverings in public indoor spaces and at outdoor gatherings of more than 100 people at which social distancing cannot be maintained. Exemptions to the order include individuals with underlying medical conditions as well as while seated and eating or drinking at restaurants/bars and in shared office spaces where 6 feet of distancing is maintained.
On Dec. 6, the city announced free testing would be available in the lower level of the Municipal Office Building in Conference Room B on Mondays from 1 to 4 p.m. and Thursdays from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.
After being closed since March 2020, the Easthampton Municipal Office Building reopened to the public in July. Before reopening its offices to the public, the city hosted outdoor appointments in tents when circumstances and weather allowed. In the midst of the most recent uptick in cases, however, the city announced on Dec. 21 that it would stagger schedules for employees to reduce risk in shared areas and employees were expected to complete work by phone whenever possible and avoid gathering and socializing when possible.
Easthampton Public Schools returned to the classroom on a permanent basis for the 2021-2022 school year in September after the district phased students back into in-person learning in the spring. In March, Easthampton had applied for a waiver to delay the return to in-person instruction, but that request was denied.
Easthampton schools have followed current Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) masking policies, which require masks for the entire school community with certain exceptions. The current masking policy was extended in October until at least Jan. 15, 2022. However, districts with at least 80 percent of its population vaccinated can apply to DESE for the ability to remove the requirement for vaccinated staff and students.
Easthampton Public Schools are also participating in voluntary pooled testing. However, the School Committee voted recently to require weekly pooled or PCR testing for all Easthampton High School athletes participating in winter sports. While individuals for co-op teams such as Northampton, Hampshire Regional and Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School are not required to test under these rules, the committee requested their cooperation.
The Senior Center also reopened to the public on Aug. 2 for indoor and outdoor activities, however, it announced on Dec. 22 it would be closed to the public for group activities and certain other services until Jan. 18, 2022.
LaChapelle winshistoric election
Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle was elected to a third term in the municipal election on Nov. 2, the first to use ranked-choice voting.
In 2019, voters approved the use of ranked choice voting in city election races with a single winner and City Council officially added a new article to their city ordinances that allowed ranked choice voting in certain instances during municipal elections in July.
The mayoral race required only one round to determine the winner with LaChapelle capturing 2,746 votes, or 65.7 percent, to earn another four-year term. Write-in candidate Donald Torrey garnered 770 votes while Eric Berzins, owner of Fort Hill Brewery and LaChapelle’s most visible opponent, received 327 votes. Keith Routhier rounded out the field with 215 votes.
In the case of the 2021 election, the mayor’s race was the only one that qualified as all the district city councilors ran unopposed. Other races used the traditional “plurality” voting system.
In the race for City Council At-Large, incumbents Owen Zaret (18 percent) and Lindsay Rothschild (16 percent) we reelected to two-year terms. Joining them on the council were newcomers Koni Denham (13 percent) and Brad Riley (11 percent). David Meunier (10 percent) and write-in candidate Kae Collins failed to capture enough votes in the race for four seats, two of which are being vacated by current council President Peg Conniff and Erica Flood who did not run for reelection.
District Councilors JP Kwiecinski, Homar Gomez, Thomas Peake, Salem Derby and Daniel Rist all ran unopposed.
Incumbents Cynthia Kwiecinski, Laurie Garcia, Shannon Dunham, and Marin Goldstein joined Megan Harvey and Benjamin Hersey in capturing uncontested seats on the School Committee. Write-in candidate Dave Murrett received just 22 votes.
School District prepares to open Mountain View School
Students in grades 5-8 will return from winter break to a new school building.
When classes resume on Jan. 5, 2022, the new Mountain View School will welcome students for the first time, marking the beginning of the end of the $109 million project at the site of White Brook Middle School at 200 Park St.
As planned, the pre-K-8 school’s middle school wing will open first with elementary side set to be completed and welcome students from Maple and Center-Pepin elementary schools in the fall of 2022.
Currently, Maple School is one of the oldest school buildings in the state and all of the city’s elementary school buildings, including Center-Pepin, are more than 100 years old. White Brook Middle School was built in the 1970s and has had some air quality issues that would not be cost-efficient to repair.
A consolidation committee, made up of Easthampton Public School administrators and staff, began meeting in September to facilitate the transition. The current middle school administrative team and all middle school staff will be unchanged until June 2022.
The city is contemplating potential uses for the soon-to-be vacated school buildings. The Planning Board and City Council’s Ordinance Committee are in the process of considering adding the Center-Pepin buildings to the Smart Growth Overlay District. White Brook’s demolition makes room for a new parking lot.
Local businesses open, expand
Several local businesses either opened their doors for the first time or expanded their footprints or operations in 2021.
Most notable was the July 1 grand opening of a new River Valley Co-op location on Northampton Street, its second store in Hampshire County. The development included a 22,000-square-foot building with a solar array on the roof and solar canopies in the parking lot along with solar light tubes that bring natural daylight into the center of the store, and air sourced heat pumps for their non-fossil fuel HVAC system. A total of 925.95 kWh of energy will be generated annually between the solar canopy over the parking lot and the solar rooftop system.
River Valley made wholesale purchases of $7 million from local farmers and food producers in 2020 and aimed to grow that by close to 30 percent in 2021 with the added sales volume of the Easthampton store. They currently have 420 local and regional vendors. According to River Valley, the new store created approximately 70 jobs.
Cottage Street was especially active with new additions including Breathing Space Yoga, which relocated to Easthampton from Holyoke, Olivia Pearl Interiors, a home décor retailer and design studio, Tsvga Parfvms, a fragrance store, and The Flying Squirrel, a “sister store” to Sonnet & Sparrow.
In the wake of Manchester Hardware’s closure in late 2020, the Aubuchon Hardware store on Northampton Street also underwent a renovation and expansion to accommodate an increase in business.
Cannabis industry continues to grow
The cannabis industry in Easthampton continued to grow not only in number but also in the way those companies can do business.
Cannabis delivery became a reality in 2021. Under the most recent ordinance amendment passed by the Easthampton City Council in June, marijuana delivery operators are now allowed in the city as a warehouse-type business. Operators purchase and store wholesale marijuana in this warehouse-type location under the guidance of several rules and regulations. The operator can then takes orders through a third-party ordering system and deliver the product right to the customers. The City Council’s decision came after the amendment was unanimously approved by both the Easthampton Planning Board and the Ordinance Subcommittee during their own public hearing back in May.
In late July, Easthampton Planning Board unanimously approved a special permit for Clovercraft, doing business as Budzee on 17 East St., to operate as a marijuana delivery operator.
The city also approved the expansion of permissible hours of operation, allowing dispensaries to open earlier. The move came about because of a request by INSA, which sought to gain competitive balance with retailers in other communities.
Pleasantrees, a recreational cannabis retailer located at 195 Northampton St., became the company’s third location nationwide on July 28.
While not a dispensary, HerbAngel LLC – Where High Meets Fashion opened 104 Union St. The shop sells cannabis-themed apparel with an original, trademarked logo and design.
City eyes air quality, infrastructure improvements
On Sept. 1, the Easthampton City Council approved a bond amount of up to $6.4 million across 20 years for upgrades to indoor air quality (IAQ) due to the pandemic, as well as energy-efficient and environmentally-conscious infrastructure improvements in certain buildings throughout the city to help reduce the city’s carbon footprint.
To complete the project, the city is working with Honeywell, which was selected as a partner during a bid process that occurred in late-2020 and early-2021.
The project will include IAQ upgrades at the Easthampton High School, City Hall, the Public Safety Complex and the Water Department. The installation of ultra-violet air-cleaning technologies with sensors that provide continuous IAQ metrics for monitoring and reporting will be included in these upgrades. The project will also provide heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) updates to current deferred maintenance issues in the city, like at City Hall. The broad goal is to filter our air continuously, and prevent the COVID-19 virus from permeating.
Within this scope, rooftop solar will be installed at City Hall, a new canopy structure with solar panels at the Public Safety building and ground mount solar at the Wastewater Plant. The total cost of the project came out to $6.16 million between the five buildings in focus, but $308,345 in contingency funding controlled by the city raised the price to $6.4 million.
The solar energy savings from this project amounts to $130,479, a figure that is guaranteed by Honeywell. If excess savings is achieved, the city gets to keep those.
The total annual cost to the budget over the course of 20 years is $191,898. This money will be taken out of a general fund each year and will not be paid from an increase in taxes. With the guarantees provided to the city, an original yearly bond of $391,000 was reduced to the $191,898 figure.
CitySpace marks anniversary, continues fundraising
CitySpace, the volunteer nonprofit organization that continues to maintain Easthampton’s Old Town Hall as a center for the arts, celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2021. CitySpace was founded in 2006 by Eastworks owner Will Bundy and Ed Check, senior lecturer of theatre at Smith College. The goal of the organization was to manage the first floor, bring “inspiring” arts experiences to its spaces, and reduce the building’s maintenance costs to Easthampton’s taxpayers.
CitySpace continues its efforts to raise money for a $6.9 million renovation of the second floor auditorium to create a 350-seat performing arts venue on the second floor. The conversion of this space is expected to begin in late 2022. As part of its fundraising efforts, CitySpace launched the Take a Seat campaign. The program invites people to sponsor one or more chairs in support of the second-floor space. When they do, residents can choose who or what they would like to pay tribute to on the back plaque of the chair. Residents can commemorate a loved one, an artist, an anniversary, a birthday, an idea or they can include their own name on the back of the plaque. Also, the Beveridge Family Foundation recently awarded CitySpace $35,000 in June.
Recently, an “incubator space” was opened at Old Town Hall in the area formerly occupied by Flywheel Arts Collective on the first floor. This area is for rent for artists in need of a space to rehearse, perform or host events with features including an accessible stage and new lighting and sound systems.
City works to preserve Reservation Road land
On Sept. 22, the Easthampton City Council unanimously passed a series of motions that allows the city to purchase 5.5 acres of land at the end of Reservation Road for protection purposes.
One vote allowed $121,588 to be transferred from the Community Preservation Act (CPA) funding to be used as part of the purchase, while a $245,212 land grant was transferred from the General Fund for the rest of the purchase. The city applied for this land grant back in July.
The Option Agreement signed by the city and Suzanne Scallion and Rosemary LePage, current owners of the land, gives Easthampton up to nine months to acquire the necessary funds for the $367,000 purchase – $350,000 for the land and $17,000 for due diligence – but with the money already approved and collected, City Planner Jeff Bagg said that the city could close on the property by January or February 2022. When the city does close on the parcel, they will seek reimbursement through the land grant.
Kestrel Land Trust, a local conservation organization, will prepare a conservation restriction document for the city as they are acquiring the land, thus preventing any kind of development on those acres, and officially designating the land as protected. The restriction will regulate what activities are permitted on the property and it will maintain the city’s intentions of protecting the habitat.
The access road will stay open for pedestrians up through Mt. Tom, and the trail that runs along the back of the property will be available for hiking purposes and passive recreation.
The current owners sought to develop five housing lots for housing development on the land, but withdrew those plans after considerable push-back from residents and the Pascommuck Conservation Trust and uncertainty about whether the land was a public way.
The conservation of these 5.5 acres was considered a top priority of the city’s Open Space and Recreation Plan updated earlier this year.