Best Buy In Berkshire Mall To Close At The End of October

By Andy McKeeveriBerkshires Staff
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Best Buy at the Berkshire Mall will close.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Best Buy at the Berkshire Mall will close at the end of October.
 
The retail company informed employees on Sunday that it will not renew the lease for the location, which will leave 63 employees jobless.
 
"The location lease was up for renewal and we made the business decision not to renew," said Best Buy Spokeswoman Carly Charlson on Monday morning.
 
Charlson said the company opts to close stores generally based on increasing lease costs, low sales or the strength of the retail center the store is located in. Charlson didn't specify what factors led to this particular store's decision.
 
"We don't take decisions like this lightly," Charlson said.
 
The Berkshire Mall location, which opened in August of 2002, employed 28 full-time employees and 35 part-timers. Charlson said employees will have an option to be hired at other stores such as ones in Albany or Holyoke and others will be eligible for severance packages. The store's last day will be on Oct. 31 and it hasn't been determined if there will be a close out sale or if the inventory will be moved to another store.
 
Charlson said there are no plans right now to open another location in the Berkshires.
 
The company closes or moves stores on an ongoing basis; in addition to the Berkshire Mall location, the store in Hadley is also slated to close. Customers can now either go to the other stores or receive service online. The closest stores to the Berkshires are in Holyoke as well as in Albany, N.Y., at Crossgates Mall.
 
The Lanesborough location was spared from closing just three years ago when the company closed some 50 stores nationally. The store is one of the largest in the Berkshire Mall so its closure leaves a hole. Representatives from the Berkshire Mall have not yet returned a request for comment about the store's impact on the mall.

Tags: Berkshire Mall,   big box retailer,   

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Lanesborough Administrator Gives Update on Snow Plowing

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

LANESBOROUGH, Mass.— Five staff members plow about 50 miles of town roads during the winter.

On Monday, Town Administrator Gina Dario updated the Select Board on snow plowing.  The county began to see snow around Thanksgiving and had a significant storm last week.

"I just think it's good for transparency for people to understand sort of some of the process of how they approach plowing of roads," she said.

Fifty miles of roadway is covered by five staff members, often starting at 8 p.m. with staggered shifts until the morning.

"They always start on the main roads, including Route 7, Route 8, the Connector Road, Bull Hill Road, Balance Rock (Road,) and Narragansett (Avenue.) There is cascading, kind of— as you imagine, the arms of the town that go out there isn't a set routine. Sometimes it depends on which person is starting on which shift and where they're going to cover first," Dario explained.

"There are some ensuring that the school is appropriately covered and obviously they do Town Hall and they give Town Hall notice to make sure that we're clear to the public so that we can avoid people slipping and falling."

She added that dirt roads are harder to plow earlier in the season before they freeze 'Or sometimes they can't plow at all because that will damage the mud that is on the dirt roads at that point."

During a light snowstorm, plowers will try to get blacktop roads salted first so they can be maintained quickly.

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