Activist Group Wants to Annex Glen
 |
| A recent view of Mount Greylock, taken from the entrance to the Greylock Glen, just below the pond area. (Photo By Glenn Drohan) |
ADAMS, Mass. — The Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, a major statewide lobbying organization, is pushing to stop development plans at the Greylock Glen and wants to annex it to the adjacent 12,000-acre Mount Greylock State Reservation.
The group has already launched a letter-writing campaign to Gov. Mitt Romney, pushing for the annexation, and MassPIRG student chapters at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams and Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield are mounting petition drives.
"We're concerned that developing the Glen is not in the public interest. I think that's the main reason we got involved," said Lisette Singer, a paid MassPIRG campus organizer at MCLA and BCC. "The students feel pretty passionately about this issue. A lot of them are from Adams, and almost all of them are from Massachusetts, so they have a vested interest in this."
They will have a tough fight ahead of them. Town officials have been trying to develop the 1,063-acre Glen in a joint private-public partnership with the state for the past 19 years and have been frustrated by failed efforts that have included golf courses, vacation homes, recreational trails and a 200-room inn.
The 1985 legislation that authorized the partnership mandated "public recreation and economic development," and last week some selectmen complained that the recently released new master plan for the Glen didn't include enough development.
"We want to get something back for our investment in this," Chairman Edward Driscoll said Tuesday. "We're concerned that if it just becomes a small operation with a state park, it will wind up like the rest of state parks because of inadequate funding and programming."
He said the board will pressure the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency and state Department of Conservation and Recreation to provide information about how many jobs the latest development would create and just how much revenue it might add to the local economy.
"Part of the covenant of promises made to the town included some sort of taxable building up there to increase our tax base, which has been shrinking," he said.
Driscoll scoffed at the idea of MassPIRG making any headway with its proposal to annex the Glen to the reservation.
"I really wish MassPIRG understood the issue. It's clear that they don't. The land is only in public hands now because the state took it for economic development purposes," he said. "In a way, I feel sorry for these stooges at MassPIRG. Their hearts are in the right place, but they're just being used by people with an ulterior motive who've been trying to stop any kind of development at the Glen."
Singer said MassPIRG fully understands the issue and believes the Glen should be left as open space.
"We don't think it's necessary for the Adams economy," she said. "We see this as a very devastating thing done ecologically to the Glen, and we're not convinced it will have economic benefits, so why cause that much devastation?"
Alex Peterkin, an MCLA freshman and MassPIRG intern, agreed.
"I've always seen a lot of open, natural land destroyed in my home town of Sturbridge, and I'd hate to see a place a beautiful as the Glen destroyed as well," Peterkin said. "I'm not sure if developing the Glen would bring economic growth to the town of Adams. All the outlooks I've seen are vague."
According to the MassPIRG website, the MCLA and BCC chapters have taken on the annexation of the Glen as a major project.
"Student MassPIRG Chapters are now working closely with Save the Glen to annex the Glen into the Mount Greylock Reservation, under which it would be protected for generations to enjoy," a section under "Student Chapters" reads. But several members of the Adams-based Save the Glen organization said Monday and Tuesday that they have had no contact with MassPIRG in recent months.
Betty Bresett, who has headed the organization, said the lobbying group has helped in previous years with collecting data, and organizing conferences but she knew nothing about the drive to annex the Glen. She said Save The Glen has taken no position yet on the state's proposed new master plan.
"We haven't been active in awhile," she said. "We're hoping to meet before the public hearing (tentatively scheduled for March 2 at the Miller Annex to the Adams Free Library)."
As far as annexing the Glen to the reservation, Bresett said, "Everybody in our group has a different opinion. It's hard to get a consensus."
Heather Linscott, another Save the Glen member, said she and others in the group also have not heard from MassPIRG.
"I'm actually pretty excited about the new plan up there. It's considerably toned down from past proposals," she said.
The draft master plan calls for no golf course, no housing and very limited development, featuring recreational trails, an amphitheater, camping areas with tents and lean-tos, a "rustic mountain lodge of up to 200 rooms and an environmental center with dormitory and dining facilities, among other amenities.
The total area of all structures to be developed, including lean-tos, maintenance sheds and warming huts, could be no more than 75,000 square feet, and the main development area would be limited to only 50 acres in the middle of the site.
But MassPIRG feels even that limited development is too much, according to Singer, Peterkin and other activists, many of whom wrote letters to the editor in this week's Advocate, protesting a recent column in favor of the project (see Page 10). Another of the group's Web sites, masspirg.org, urges residents to write letters to Romney, thanking him for halting trails for off-road vehicles at Myles Standish Forest and urging him to stop expansion of the Wachusett Mountain ski facility and to "annex Greylock Glen" to the reservation.
"Our state forests and parks system is falling apart due to a chronic lack of resources, vision and planning," the website states. "Governor Romney should focus parks agencies on their core mission by pulling the plug on development projects on and around our public lands."
Peterkin said several students from BCC and MCLA plan to attend the public hearing on the master plan and speak against it. Anthony P. McBride, town moderator and a founder of the Greylock Glen Now group, which has long lobbied for a major development, said he hopes MassPIRG — which he believes doesn't understand or care about the history of the Glen — will simply go away.
"We're getting tired of these college people who never worked a day in their lives and these South County interests and plutocratic cultural groups and wish they would stop minding the business up here in Northern Berkshire — mainly Adams," McBride said. "Many of them are from Boston and major cities, so I guess I can understand why they think trees are so beautiful."
Tags: Greylock Glen,
