PITTSFIELD, Mass. - Although Berkshire Community College is the
second largest employer in town, it's easy to drive by it without noticing
it.
The College's sign is small, and its airy, light brown buildings are built
on a hill, architecturally planned to blend with the surrounding oak trees.
The college's efforts to blend in also extend to the surrounding community
of 35,OOO. The school has no drainage problems from its parking areas
because of the hill.
It also hosts theater and dance shows, which are always open to the public.
At the town's request, the 2,500 student school has opened a branch in
downtown Pittsfield.
Grace S. Jones, president of Three Rivers Community College, this week
compared the relationship the unobtrusive western Massachusetts school has
to its community to the relationship her college has to Norwich.
"When you want to make a comparison, you look at the neighborhoods
surrounding other colleges," . Jones said. "People usually like to live
around a school."
Jones is looking for an alternate site outside the city
for Three Rivers' consolidation after the City Council Monday approved a
resolution telling the state it doesn't want the school to be expanded at
the Mohegan campus on Mahan Drive.
Aldermen in favor of the resolution cite traffic and drainage concerns for
their opposition.
City leaders are now supporting the possibility of expansion at the school's
Thames Valley campus.
Traffic
The neighbors of surrounding Berkshire College notice the traffic from the
school, as do neighbors of Three Rivers' Thames Valley and Mohegan campuses.
It would be hard not to because the school is on a dead-end road along with
the houses.
Traffic from the school flows onto the streets where their children play.
The single access road dead-ends into the New York state border and a
mountain range.
Cars turn around in the residential neighborhoods to get back to the school
and into town. Still, neighbors say, it does not greatly affect their lives.
A new upscale neighborhood is being built less than a mile from the school.
"People build houses here because they think their children will take
classes here," Berkshire student Sarah Stzepek, 23, said on her way to
class.
Neighborhood asset
Patricia Masoero, 43, whose home is three-tenths of a mile (from the school,
said she hopesher children, ages 9 and 13, will a be influenced to take
classes at Berkshire, whether it be in the summers while they are in high
school or for a few years after they graduate.
"I don't see how the school's presence takes away from our property values
at all," she said, standing in the doorway of her large, new home.
Her sons play soccer on the college-owned fields within sight of her house.
She does not think college traffic is a big nuisance. "
The plus side for us is that our is street is always plowed. If anything, I
wish the college would continue to expand and grow."
Alumni
Shaun Buckler, Berkshire dean of administration and finance, said part of
the reason the college enjoys so much support from the community is because
many of the town's residents attended the school.
"The school really is a longstanding and vital part of the community," he
"said. "We have never expanded. We're very economically depressed here.
After the General Electric plant closed, many people came here to retrain
themselves. If anything, people want to move closer to us."
Masoero's neighbor, Judy Sayers, said the college had been there long before
any on the houses, so there has never been any resistance to its presence
there.
She is disturbed by the traffic in her neighborhood, but only in the
mornings.
"If I don't get out the door at my prescribed time, I'll be caught in the
college traffic and I'll be late," she said. "But it's a beautiful area, and
the college does not take away from it. As you can see, the new houses that
have been built are very expensive."
jbmiller@norwichbulletin.com
Originally published Sunday, July 13, 2003
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