Pittsfield Streetscape Project Gets $1.25M Boost
 Rep. John W. Olver said the city should be proud of the progress it's made. |
With the sound of traffic zipping behind him, U.S. Rep. John W. Olver, D-Amherst, made the announcement at the Berkshire Museum on Thursday. The traffic-hour ceremony was held to note the completion of the South Street and Park Square reconstruction and honor the congressman for his instrumental role in obtaining funding for the face-lift of the city's central arteries.
"The city can expect another $1.25 million in available funds," said Olver, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. "That'll get us to the [Joseph Scelsi] Intermodal Center."
These funds are in addition to the $6 million in state and federal funds that has been committed to the Streetscape project.
“You can rightly be proud of the progress you’ve made,” he said. “For years, the project has been supported by your mayor and Downtown Inc. and business owners. It’s a fine example of what can be done when state, local and federal governments form a partnership.”
The project, planning for which began in 2006, is moving into Phase II. It will include sidewalk and traffic improvements, landscape and attractive period streetlights all to the tune of $2 million from Park Square to the Columbus Avenue and Eagle Street intersections with North Street. Construction on this phase is expected to be completed by autumn of next year. Phase I began in April 2009 and included the removal of the Park Square rotary, allowing traffic to flow north and south without impediment for the first time in decades.
According to Steven Valenti, longtime owner of the eponymous men’s clothing store on North Street, the streetscape project was a long time coming and well worth the wait.
"I’ve had the store for 27 years," he said. "I still feel like a kid. I've been working on North Street since I was 14. I always felt like a lone soldier saying that everything was alive and well in Pittsfield. People come here and stay, they no longer just pass through."
Not only is the streetscape project good for local businesses, but also, according to Ruth Blodgett of Berkshire Health Systems, it is good for the health of the city.
"The whole community is abuzz with the positive look and feel of the city," she said. "The wow factor hits me every time."
In fact, Blodgett and BHS are so impressed with the improvements that they are preparing their neck of the woods for the day when project makes it to Berkshire Medical Center.
"We've already started to match our investments to the lighting details of streetscape at BMC," she said. "We want to be ready. We want to create an environment where people want to be. It’s good health for our community."
It’s also good for the economy, according to Berkshire Museum Executive Director Stuart Chase. The museum was one of the first locations to be renovated in conjunction with the streetscape project.
“We’ve had the best visitation ever, despite the construction,” he said. “There is an exciting revitalization happening all over Pittsfield. We’re on the path of reinforcing the Berkshires as a true center of innovation.”
As visible results of Olver's appropriations crop up all over the city, Ruberto expressed his "debt of gratitude” to the congressman for being such an active participant in the city's revitalization.
"It's comforting to have a congressman who spends more time in a community than in an office," the mayor said. "He's in Pittsfield, not on C-SPAN. It's Christmas come early."
