Kohl Construction, doing business as Tofino Associates and Northern Avenue Homes, filed an application for Special Permit and Site Plan Review with the Planning Board on November 13. You may download the application (PDF, 15.3MB) and the full-scale architectural plans (PDF, 9.2MB) associated with it. The Conservation Commission and the Planning Board intend to hear […]
Continue reading Kohl Construction Applies for Special Permit and Site Plan Review
Here is a complete Google video of Northampton’s School Committee meeting of November 13. The video is 2 hours and 7 minutes long, and was recorded by Lachlan Ziegler. The agenda of this meeting is available here. In the public comment period at the start of the meeting, two citizens spoke in favor of saving […]
Bloomberg reports today: …Building permits, a sign of future residential projects, dropped 12 percent to a 708,000 pace, the lowest since at least 1960… Compared with October 2007, work began on 38 percent fewer homes… The decrease in starts was led by a 31 percent decline in the Northeast… “We are in a crisis situation,” […]
Continue reading Bloomberg: “U.S. Housing Starts, Permits Drop to Record Low Pace”
Here is a complete Google video of the Northampton Planning Board meeting of November 13, 2008. The video is 2 hours and 49 minutes long.Here are selected highlights of the meeting: 0:00:00-0:58:49Discussion of the Proposed Local Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan (PDF)0:00:00-0:15:50… Summary of planning process and highlights of plan 0:15:04-0:15:28… Planning Board member George Kohout and […]
Here is a complete Google video of the Best Practices Committee meeting of November 12. It’s 2 hours and 57 minutes long. This video is also available in two parts at Vimeo (part one, part two). See the preliminary minutes from the meeting and a picture of the written-on whiteboard here. In many areas the […]
Continue reading Best Practices Meeting of November 12: Video; Discussion of Term Limits
Here are the preliminary minutes of the Best Practices Meeting of November 12. Members debated which recommendations to put forward to the City Council. Accompanying the minutes are pictures of the whiteboard used at the meeting (left and right halves with overlap). The image is also available at higher resolution as a PDF. We will […]
Continue reading Best Practices Meeting of November 12: Hammering Out the Recommendations
A message from Joel Russell, chair of the Northampton Design Forum: The Notre Dame urban design studio has been hard at work since the Design Northampton Week charrette in September. The students have been refining ideas, creating new plans, and illustrating them with more perspective views. Some of this work was presented at their mid-term […]
Continue reading Notre Dame Urban Design Studio Seeks Comments
“We would like to concentrate development closer in, we like the idea of walkability, bikeability, neighborhood center… The thing that happens to us, however, is that we buy that and then somebody builds some horrible thing…and then they say to you, “This is infill, you know. It’s good, it’s infill.” …You know if you walk […]
[11/13/08 update – Notre Dame Professor Philip Bess sent us this comment and authorized us to share it with you: We share your commitment to green space in Northampton, both usable and preserved; and are cognizant of the low-lying downtown areas prone to flooding. I just want to reassure you here that even if our […]
Continue reading Update from Notre Dame; Critique of Northampton Sector Diagram
We are pleased to publicize this flyer from Citizens United for a Healthy Future, also available as a PDF: See also: Saving Paradise: Articles about the Proposed Northampton Regional Landfill Expansion City of Springfield: DPW To Issue Fines to Non-Recyclers This Week (10/14/08)In a continuing effort to increase recycling, the City of Springfield Department of […]