Price Chopper in North Adams to Close

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Price Chopper on State Road is expected to close by the end of the month, putting some 57 mostly part-time employees out of work.

Employees were reportedly informed Monday morning that the nearly 60-year-old supermarket would close on Feb. 27.

"Price Chopper has a long history in the North Adams community and we value the relationships that we've built with our customers, local community partners and teammates," said Mona Golub, vice president of public relations and consumer services, in a statement posted on Price Chopper's website late Monday afternoon. "After thoroughly reviewing the store's current and future viability, we've concluded that closure is the appropriate action to take with this location."

The store was opened by Golub's grandfather, William Golub, in 1960, under the Central Markets name.

The store was not viable property to be renovated into the company's new Market 32 brand, said Golub, speaking by phone. "What was viable in 1959 doesn't necessarily work today."

"We are offering professional outplacement services," she said. The company is also offering some openings to its closest locations for those willing to make the drive to Pittsfield or Bennington, Vt. Severance pay is also being offered upon the length of service.

Mayor Richard Alcombright said he learned of the closure this morning and had spoken with Golub about opportunities for employees. He said it was a sad day for the workers and the many residents of the West End who have depended on the grocery for years.

"It is kind of the last neighborhood market in the city ... there's the quaintness of the market, like a family grocery," he said. "The folks I feel for are the folks at Greylock and Brayton Hill. For many of those folks, transportation is a huge barrier. ... there's going to be a void there."

The mayor thought the small size and loyal clientele could sustain the market and said he told Golub that.

"I think that section of town can sustain a market that size," Alcombright said, adding he often shops for his mother there. "They have very, very good price points."

The plaza is owned by Golub Corp., as North Adams Realties Corp., and also contains a Rent-A-Center and the Oriental Buffet. Golub said no decisions had been made about supermarket's space at this point.

Price Chopper also operated in the former North Adams Plaza on Curran Highway, taking the place of the original Shopwell Supermarket, in the mid-1970s until the 1990s. The plaza was demolished in 2008.

Golub Corp., based in Schenectady, N.Y., dates to 1932, and began expanding what was then the Central Markets chain in the 1950s. It was switched to Price Chopper Supermarkets in 1973, and was notable at the time for its logo: an axe splitting a Morgan dollar coin. The first of the new stores opened in Pittsfield and often featured 24-hour service.

By 2014, the regional chain operated 135 stores in six states with more than 22,000 employees. Golub Corp. announced a five-year $300 million rebranding and renovation of its properties into "Market 32," connoting the company's anniversary date, for at least half its stores.

"It's never easy to close a store, and we rarely do, but we have an obligation to make business decisions that suppport the company's continued health and growth," said Golub.

The Pittsfield location, a newer, larger building at Berkshire Crossings, was among the first to be modernized. The North Adams location is smaller than many of the new supermarkets. There are also Price Choppers in Lee, Lenox and Bennington, Vt.

Updated at 4:10 p.m. with company comments.

Amphibious Toads Procreate in Perplexing Amplexus

By Tor HanseniBerkshires columnist
08:09PM / Sunday, May 05, 2024

 

Toads lay their eggs in the spring along the edges of waterways. Photos by Tor Hansen.

My first impressions of toads came about when my father Len Hansen rented a seaside house high on a sand dune in North Truro, Cape Cod back in 1954. 

 

With Cape Cod Bay stretching out to the west, and Twinefield so abundant in wildflowers to the east, North Truro became a naturalist's dream, where I could search for sea shells at the seashore, or chase beetles and butterflies with my trusty green butterfly net. 

 

Twinefield was a treasure trove for wildlife — a vast glacial rolling sandplain shaped by successive glaciers, its sandy soil rich in silicon, thus able to stimulate growth for a diverse biota. A place where in successive years I would expand my insect collection to fill cigar boxes with every order of insects abounding in beach plum, ox-eye daisy and milkweed. During our brief summer vacation there, we boys would exclaim in our excitement, "Oh here is another hoppy toad," one of many Fowler's toads (Bufo woodhousei fowleri ) that inhabited the moist surroundings, at home in the Ammophyla beach grass, thickets of beach plum, bayberry, and black cherry bushes. 

 

They sparkled in rich colors of green amber on beige and reddish tinted warts. Most anurans have those glistening eyes, gold on black irises so beguiling around the dark pupils. Today I reflect on a favorite analogy, the riveting eye suggests a solar eclipse in pictorial aura.

 

In the distinct toad majority in the Outer Cape, Fowler's toads turned up in the most unusual of places. When we Hansens first moved in to rent Riding Lights, we would wash the sand and salt from our feet in the outdoor shower where toads would be drinking and basking in the moisture near my feet. As dusk fades into darkness, the happy surprise would gather under the night lights where moths were fluttering about the front door and the toads would snatch bugs with outstretched tongue.

 

In later years, mother Eleanor added much needed color and variety to Grace's original garden. Our smallest and perhaps most acrobatic butterflies are the skippers, flitting and somersaulting to alight and drink heartily the nectar abounding at yellow sickle-leaved coreopsis and succulent pink live forever sedums of autumn. These hearty late bloomers signaled oases for many fall migrants including painted ladies, red admirals and of course monarchs on there odyssey to over-winter in Mexico. 

 

Our newly found next-door neighbors, the Bergmarks, added a lot to share our zeal for this undiscovered country, and while still in our teens, Billy Atwood, who today is a nuclear physicist in California, suggested we should include the Baltimore checkerspot in our survey, as he too had a keen interest in insects. Still unfamiliar to me then, in later years I would come across a thriving colony in Twinefield, that yielded a rare phenotype checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton p. superba) that I wrote about featured in The Cape Naturalist ( Museum of Natural History, Brewster Cape Cod 1991).