Letters: Just Do the Math

To the Editor:

The controversy over the removal of conservation land for the purpose of development of affordable housing in Williamstown continues to ratchet up.

Many letters have raised the question of at what cost. Equally as important as being good stewards of conservation land it is likewise as important to be good stewards of those monies that will allow Williamstown to provide the greatest number of affordable, fiscally responsible and ecologically sensible housing to those in need.

The development and infrastructure costs of the conceptual plan to create 41 building lots on the Lowry property would approximate a $45,000 to $50,000 land cost per unit before any vertical construction of housing. That is an infrastructure cost alone approaching $2,000,000.The other vacant town sites, Photech and 59 Water St., along with a third privately owned vacant site referenced to as Cable Mills South, would only require development and infrastructure costs approximating $10,000 to $15,000 land cost per unit before any vertical construction.  

Robert J. Scerbo
Williamstown
April 13, 2013

BHS' New North County Urgent Care Center Opens Tuesday

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:44PM / Monday, December 15, 2025

There is a waiting area and reception desk to the right of the Williamstown Medical entrance. 

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Staff and contractors were completing the final touches on Monday to prepare for the opening of Berkshire Health System's new urgent care center. 

 

Robert Shearer, administrative director of urgent care, said the work would be done in time for Berkshire Health Urgent Care North to open Tuesday at 11 a.m. in a wing of Williamstown Medical on Adams Road.  

 

The urgent care center will occupy a suite of rooms off the right side of the entry, with two treatment rooms, offices, amenities, and X-ray room. 

 

"This is a test of the need in the community, the want in the community, to see just how much we need," said Shearer. "One thing that I think Berkshire Health Systems has always been really good at is kind of gauging the need and growing based on what the community tells us. 

 

"And so if we on day one and two and three, find that we're filling this up and maybe exceeding the capacity of the two exam rooms and one provider, then we look to expand it."

 

Hours will be weekdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and weekends from 8 to noon, but the expectation is that the center will "expand those hours pretty quick."

 

BHS has two urgent care centers in Lenox and in Pittsfield. The health system had tried a walk-in center at Williamstown nearly a decade ago but shuttered over low volume of patients.