NEWS
OCTOBER 2011
HEART OF NORTHAMPTON
speculative design proposal, City of Northampton, MA
Following a series of development schemes, public involvement and much controversy over the character of a centrally located space in this small New England town, our office is in the process of creating an alternative design, the Heart of Northampton.
The Heart of Northampton showing Pulaski Park tripled to rear of Old South Street, new water front real estate, while tying new Historic Mill River park and Veteran's Field park to Downtown, Maplewood/Conz & West Street Smith campus expanded Green Street area so Route 66 efficiently connects to I-91. It will allow Route 66 traffic with growing Hospital Hill Village traffic to flow best to I-91 down Conz St. This will remove traffic from three neighborhoods and a campus while quickening emergency access to 25% of Northampton via Rt-66.
[1] We should not stuff an over sized mass of "taxable space" into the Heart of town, but instead improve what is there. Pulaski park is a dead end, less than critical mass space and can be tripled in size while connecting both the east and west economic communities to downtown. This serves and enhances the downtown, the Maplewood Street and Conz Street areas and the new West Street/Smith neighborhood. This is the rejuvenation of commercial activity on "Green Street" and its expansion onto West Street after Route 66 is removed from dying there in traffic fumes at the towns worst intersection near Forbes library.
[2] This expands Pulaski Park while tying the new Historic Mill River park to Vets Field Park and adding foot traffic around a pond fountain water feature with the river to all commerce around downtown by creating maximum circulation of all transportation systems [3] foot, bike, stroller, wheelchair and automobile with the quickest emergency access.
SEPTEMBER 2011
ERASTUS HOPKINS HOUSE
We are proposing to save the Historic homestead of Erastus Hopkins, state representative, President of the Conneticut River Rail Road and a key station master in the underground railroad in the 19th century. It is the only documented UGRR structure in Western Massachusetts in the Civil War over slavery. The re-location of the Erastus Hopkins House will ensure its preservation and the education of future generations worldwide, as it attracts tourism to downtown while simultaneously enhancing several historic preservation efforts. Fortunately the owners of the building are helping it to be saved with one possible site becoming an improvement to an existing building that has at least a reasonable possibility to work out for everyone all in our city.
AUGUST 2011
VISTA DOME CAFE
The VISTA DOME CAFE will revive downtown with a new tourist attraction that solves several issues: It restores the falling down dangerous rail road bridge that eats trucks. It provides a cafe which can be modeled as a food tasting menu serving all restaurants who invest in this potential unique site to eat. It should find strong demand just for its own menu due to its unique vista in the air space over a central street. It opens up a public circulation route crossing Main& Bridge St on the opposite side of the down town and serves the new Vista Dome Cafe. It will help open up awareness to the new train service in town. It can expand bike path accessibility to a potential new N/S bike corridor on that East side of the rail road tracks.