Gift Shop & Outdoor Rental Store May Open in Cheshire
CHESHIRE, Mass. — Pittsfield resident Jim Czarnecki plans to bring a gift shop and outdoor equipment rental store to town this summer.
Czarnecki introduced himself to the Selectmen on Tuesday, saying he has been in conversation with Jim Reynolds about renting out his store and opening a gift shop featuring arts and crafts from local artists.
He used to own a shop in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza in Pittsfield and has built a list of nearly 125 artists.
Czarnecki, who owns Taking Shape, provides indoor and outdoor fitness training as well as in-home personal training and guided outdoor excursions. He said he would like to bring this to Cheshire with bike and kayak rentals.
"I spent my childhood out here on Cheshire lake because my grandfather was the harbor master," he said. "There isn't a better spot in all of Berkshire county to be able to do all of this."
He said he also may be interested in opening up a café or ice cream parlor.
"It would be all the businesses. The bike rental, the kayak rental, the guided hikes, the gift shop, and the ice cream or café," he said. "They would all feed off of each other and people would come there for one reason and everything else will be there."
Selectmen liked the idea and said they would help guide Czarnecki through the proper permitting process.
"It's good," Chairwoman Carol Francesconi said. "It's very good, and we are excited about it."
In other business, Department of Public Works Director Peter LeFebvre said the Stafford Hill Monument is in bad shape and the town should hire a structural engineer to make sure it is safe.
"I just don't want to see a bunch of kids in there and it falls down ... it might need to be fenced off for safety," LeFebvre said. "I don't think it is in that bad of shape but I think we need to preserve it somehow."
LeFebvre said the town had a study done on the monument 10 to 15 years ago and more cracks are developing. He anticipated that a total fix could cost $250,000
"We have to peruse that fairly aggressively it has quite a few more cracks in the walls lately …I don't want it to all fall down and I would like to somehow get it fixed," he said.
Master Plan Committee Chairman Edmund St. John IV said more than 300 responses were received for the master plan survey. The committee hopes be able to present the findings sometime this summer.
"We had a great response to it ... it was a really in-depth survey," he said. "We are looking forward to tabulating everything and making sense of it all."
Police Chief Tim Garner reporter he had to lay down the rules for a "bunch of zombies" Monday night at Cheshire Elementary School.
Garner said the zombies weren't the actual living dead but a group of kids playing Zombie Apocalypse, a game of tag in which "zombies" wear bandanas on their heads and chase the "living," who wear bandanas on their arms.
"It's basically like hide and seek or tag at night ... I had like 40 kids in the school yard last night at 11," Garner said. "They were coming out of the woods just like you see on the TV."
Garner said there was some damage on the school grounds but nothing serious. He said he asked the kids to just make sure and stay on public property and not to bring the hunt to people's front lawns.
"We had a talk and I told them I rather know what they are doing than have them somewhere else where I don't," he said. "We agreed they were fine until it became a problem."
Tags: new business, master plan, monument,
