NBCC Sets Annual Meeting, Northern Berkshire Hero Award Presentation

Print Story | Email Story
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Northern Berkshire Community Coalition will hold its annual meeting at Greylock WORKS on Friday, June 16, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. 
 
This marks its 37th year as a community organization.
 
This year's keynote speaker will be state Sen. Paul Mark and the coalition will honor George and Nancy Canales with the Northern Berkshire Hero Award for their decades of community involvement, including their volunteer efforts with the LaFesta Baseball Exchange, the SteepleCats baseball team and the North Adams visitors booth.
 
The theme of this year's meeting, "Telling Your Story," will include memories captured in photographs of the past 37 years of work the coalition has done in the community. Some  photographs will be enlarged and displayed throughout the event space and thousands of photographs will be available for attendees to search through and take home. The coalition recently digitally archived its collection of photographs and welcomes the community to take home any photographs they would like to keep. Most of the photographs available are from 1998  through 2002.
 
Tickets for the event are $25 per person. Scholarships are available for community residents who would like to attend. Buffet lunch, coffee and dessert will be provided by M&J's Taste of Home Catering. Registration is available online or by calling the coalition at 413-663-7588.
 
Registration link: https://conta.cc/40HKN9l

Tags: annual meeting,   NBCC,   

If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

2024 Year in Review: North Adams' Year of New Life to Old Institutions

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

President and CEO Darlene Rodowicz poses in one of the new patient rooms on 2 North at North Adams Regional Hospital.
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — On March 28, 2014, the last of the 500 employees at North Adams Regional Hospital walked out the doors with little hope it would reopen. 
 
But in 2024, exactly 10 years to the day, North Adams Regional was revived through the efforts of local officials, BHS President and CEO Darlene Rodowicz, and U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, who was able to get the U.S. Health and Human Services to tweak regulations that had prevented NARH from gaining "rural critical access" status.
 
It was something of a miracle for North Adams and the North Berkshire region.
 
Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, under the BHS umbrella, purchased the campus and affiliated systems when Northern Berkshire Healthcare declared bankruptcy and abruptly closed in 2014. NBH had been beset by falling admissions, reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments, and investments that had gone sour leaving it more than $30 million in debt. 
 
BMC had renovated the building and added in other services, including an emergency satellite facility, over the decade. But it took one small revision to allow the hospital — and its name — to be restored: the federal government's new definition of a connecting highway made Route 7 a "secondary road" and dropped the distance maximum between hospitals for "mountainous" roads to 15 miles. 
 
"Today the historic opportunity to enhance the health and wellness of Northern Berkshire community is here. And we've been waiting for this moment for 10 years," Rodowicz said. "It is the key to keeping in line with our strategic plan which is to increase access and support coordinated countywide system of care." 
 
The public got to tour the fully refurbished 2 North, which had been sectioned off for nearly a decade in hopes of restoring patient beds; the official critical hospital designation came in August. 
 
View Full Story

More North Adams Stories