“It’s going to crumble into the ground before anything happens here,” commented a seasoned observer, pointing up to the roof of the dormant Castle Street Firehouse in Great Barrington that was the subject of so much anguished negotiation over the past two years and then sold to entrepreneur Thomas Borshoff for $50,000. Borshoff claimed he bought it – or rather his entity, Castle Street LLC bought it – in order to transform the venerable, historic structure into a vocational training center.
Since Borshoff finally took possession of it in the summer, nothing has happened: No environmental remediation, no repair of the brick superstructure, all of which was going to potentially disrupt access to other businesses, including the adjacent Mahaiwe Theatre. And the rebuilding was to have begun the minute the sale was closed, Borshoff’s attorney Ed McCormick said.
Is Mr. Borshoff having second thoughts?
Of course, it’s not exactly true that nothing has happened. The town is paying $2,500 a month to lease space (in the building the town once owned) for two inspection services offices (remember, there’s no room in the capacious new State Road fire station for either the Health Inspector or the Building Inspector.) That takes care of Borshoff’s mortgage — and in a couple of years Borshoff will have been paid back the price of the building.
The ground floor isn’t going entirely to waste. Three antique cars are nestled under wraps in the back bay. It is said one of them is leaking oil but at least for the owners’ sakes they’re protected from the onslaught of a Berkshires winter and the ravages of town politics.
Meanwhile, outside the concrete cavern where the two classic cars are resting comfortably, the cars parked adjacent to the firehouse belonging to employees of nearby establishments are being warned to stay away. One employee of the Mahaiwe told us of flyers being snapped to windshields declaring the alleyway to be private property and warning that cars would be towed.
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Remember that scheme, proposed by Richard Stanley, to mount video cameras on the tops of Main Street buildings in Great Barrington to monitor the performance of the cops guiding traffic through the Main Street during the Reconstruction Project maze? The eyes-in-the-skies were to transmit real-time surveillance to – well, it was never determined who was to receive the video feed.
There was one shiny new camera prominently affixed to the roof of Barrington Outfitters, aimed south toward Railroad and Bridge streets.
Now, it’s gone.
We can all resume our normal activities.
And those long suffering traffic cops are no longer on candid camera.
But stay tuned.
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Before there was a weather station atop the fire station, feeding data to the Town Hall web site and its associated weatherbug app for mobile devices; and before, even, Nick Diller assembled his remarkable Anderson Street weather lab, to keep those decades of records of local weather conditions, there were wooly bears.
There’s something about them, as they populate the lawns and fields in fall, that intrigues both young and old. Last year, a seven-year-old of our acquaintance became so fascinated with the orange and black caterpillars that he was observing in Mrs. Lupiani’s second grade class at Muddy Brook Elementary School that he set up his own terrarium in his bedroom to watch them.
Be that as it may, legend has it that these orange and black striped caterpillars predict the oncoming winter. If the area of the orange stripe is larger than the black stripes, the winter will be mild. The wooly bears we noticed this year had much more orange than black, contrary to official prognostications for a cold winter. Are these caterpillars in denial?
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For the past few weeks we’ve been wondering what would be going into the retail space that’s being remodeled next to the Emporium on Main Street. An acquaintance, a merchant from whose establishment he has a birdseye view of the work going on across the street, speculated that it was going to be the South Berkshire Mad Macs outlet.
As devoted Apple computer users since 1984, we were delighted. We’ve been customers of Mad Macs since they were on Dalton Avenue in Pittsfield, where they shared a floor with Arlo Guthrie’s merchandise operation.
Since then, they’ve become a licensed Apple retail store as well as repair center, established an office on North Street, and this fall opened a branch in Williamstown. Could South County really be next in line?
We called Mad Macs owner, Scott Kirchner.
“We’d love to be there in Great Barrington,” he said. “It’s on my mind every day. It’s not out of the question. Apple has approved the plan to open in Barrington. It would be service at first, with a little retail. Then full retail.”
But unfortunately, he’s not the business that’s moving to Main Street.
At least, not yet.
“Start a campaign,” Kirchner advised. “If I had a couple hundred emails from people wanting us to come to Great Barrington, I’d be there tomorrow.”
Click here to send a message to Kirchner.
