Triplex Cinema Receives Grant from Fitzpatrick Trust

10:58AM / Tuesday, October 31, 2023Print Story | Email Story

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass — The Triplex Cinema was awarded a grant of $150,000 from the Jane & Jack Fitzpatrick Trust.

With this grant, The Triplex Cinema Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, joins a group of Berkshire County non-profits that have received major support from the Trust over the years, including Construct, Inc., IS 183 Art School (now the Berkshire Art Center), Jacob's Pillow, the Pittsfield Y and the Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative.

According to a press release, the Jane and Jack Fitzpatrick Trust is a private charitable foundation established in 2004 by its namesake founders, who were known for their tradition of generosity and involvement within Berkshire County.

In issuing the grant, the Foundation said: "The grant was approved knowing how important the Triplex is as an anchor in the community."

"That is exactly how we feel about the Triplex," Nicki Wilson, President of the Board of Triplex Cinema, Inc., said. "That it is an irreplaceable resource to the town of Great Barrington and all of the Berkshires. This grant serves as a major boost toward ensuring the November 17 th re-opening of two of our four theaters and bringing the Triplex back to life. We cannot thank the Trust's decision-makers enough."

Wilson indicated that there will be a "soft" opening of the two theaters at the Triplex on Friday, November 17, with showings of "The Holdovers," Alexander Payne's new movie starring Paul Giamatti, with the new "Trolls" movie opening on Nov. 22.

A third Triplex theater will open in mid-December just in time for the holidays. "Maestro" is scheduled to debut in that theater on Dec. 15 and there will be a talkback after the movie on Dec. 17 with Leonard Bernstein's daughter Nina interviewed by Stephen Wadsworth, a former collaborator of her father's and currently Director of Opera Studies at Juilliard.

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Lee Wants Bioremediation in Housatonic River Vernal Pool Study

05:24AM / Thursday, September 03, 2026

LEE, Mass. — The town has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric to include PCB bioremediation in its vernal pool study on the Housatonic River.

Lee officials are urging the EPA to require GE to add a bioremediation treatment arm to the vernal-pool study or provide the public with a clear explanation for why such testing is being excluded.

"This is exactly the kind of question EPA and GE should be asking before final remedy decisions are locked in," Select Board Chair Bob Jones said in a statement released to the press. "The town is not asking to slow the cleanup. We are asking EPA and GE to make the cleanup smarter, less destructive, and more protective over the long term."

An open house was held in Pittsfield earlier this summer for the Vernal Pool Pilot Study on Reach 5A of the Housatonic River, a five-mile stretch between the river's confluence and Lenox border.

EPA has required GE to conduct a Vernal Pool Pilot Study as part of the Housatonic River Rest of River remediation, comparing excavation and restoration with activated-carbon-based treatments, including a product called SediMite and powdered activated carbon, the town said.

Ten vernal pools will be cleaned of polychlorinated biphenyls in total, five with excavation and five with active carbon, and seven additional vernal pools will be monitored as controls. Construction will be complete around October, but the pools will be left to their natural processes and monitored with surveys and sampling for three years.

The Lee PCB Advisory Committee wrote a letter calling for the 21st-century approach it said could reduce long-term toxicity, avoid unnecessary destruction of sensitive habitats, and improve the effectiveness of the cleanup.

It states that Lee supports the study's purpose and agrees that EPA and GE must understand how cleanup activities affect sensitive vernal-pool ecosystems.

"The current pilot includes 10 treatment pools and seven control pools, while local officials understand that roughly 100 vernal pools may occur in the broader remediation corridor," the Aug. 27 letter reads.

"That makes the pilot study consequential: the methods tested now could shape how many sensitive wetlands are excavated, reconstructed, treated, or left with PCBs managed in place."

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