MCLA Gets $120K Grant for Co-Generation Energy Study

12:45PM / Tuesday, January 03, 2012Print Story | Email Story

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — As the result of an energy study conducted for Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts by the state's Division of Capital Asset Management, the college has been awarded $120,000 to complete a feasibility study.

The feasibility study will determine what it will take for MCLA to renovate its power plant with a co-generation unit, update its boilers to provide additional steam to heat the campus and run the co-generator, and to determine the savings derived from burning wood chips.

The energy study, completed nine months ago, determined renewable energy sources that MCLA might utilize. This prompted the upcoming feasibility study.

"We thought MCLA may be a good candidate for burning biomass in our power plant," said James Stakenas, vice president of administration and finance. "Because DCAM officials thought that biomass conversion was the most appropriate renewable energy source for us, they have funded a feasibility study to determine what it would cost MCLA to implement not only a biomass burning power plant, but also to use steam to not only heat the campus, but to run a co-generation unit so that we could produce some of our own power."

According to Joe Santucci, MCLA's energy manager, "The proposed biomass project is attractive, both financially and environmentally."

"It is very good news for MCLA because it is ultimately having experts tell us how we can use a renewable fuel source not only to heat the campus, but to provide energy," Stakenas said.

Tags: alternative energy, biomass, MCLA,

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North Adams School Project Awards $52M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:10AM / Friday, February 13, 2026

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield.

Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.

The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field.

"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."

Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.

The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells.

Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on.

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