Letter: Open Letter to Mayor Macksey on Notchview Logging

To the Editor:

Dear Mayor Jennifer Macksey,

Almost two months ago I learned about the logging project that was going to use cancer-causing chemicals near our drinking water supply. Hearing this news terrified me as I lost my father to cancer. At the Sept. 12 meeting, we were told chemicals would not be used; however, when we questioned about future use during this 10-year plan, Mass Audubon and NEFF would not give us a definite answer. Management and operation plans are two different things; they can come back at any point during the next 10 years and use chemicals.

Even after your public apology, you still have not reached out to answer my questions so I will address them here in hopes they will finally be answered.

1. The original plan called for the use of chemicals, for two years you knew this yet stayed quiet. Why? You stood in front of your residents sharing a proclamation of September with Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. This took place right before our meeting, so again, how can you be OK with this plan?

Michaela Lapointe
North Adams, Mass. 

North Adams' Route 2 Study Looks at 'Repair, Replace and Remove'

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
06:02PM / Monday, April 07, 2025

Attendees make comments and use stickers to indicate their thoughts on the priorities for each design.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Nearly 70 residents attended a presentation on Saturday morning on how to stitch back together the asphalt desert created by the Central Artery project.

 

Of the three options proposed — repair, replace or restore — the favored option was to eliminating the massive overpass, redirect traffic up West Main and recreate a semblance of 1960s North Adams.

 

"How do we right size North Adams, perhaps recapture a sense of what was lost here with urban renewal, and use that as a guide as we begin to look forward?" said Chris Reed, director of Stoss Landscape Urbanism, the project's designer.

 

"What do we want to see? Active street life and place-making. This makes for good community, a mixed-use downtown with housing, with people living here ... And a district grounded in arts and culture."

 

The concepts for dealing with the crumbling bridge and the roads and parking lots around it were built from input from community sessions last year.

 

The city partnered with Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program and was the only city in Massachusetts selected. The project received $750,000 in grant funding to explore ways to reconnect what Reed described as disconnected "islands of activity" created by the infrastructure projects. 

 

"When urban renewal was first introduced, it dramatically reshaped North Adams, displacing entire neighborhoods, disrupting street networks and fracturing the sense of community that once connected us," said Mayor Jennifer Macksey. "This grant gives us the chance to begin to heal that disruption."