At the May 20th Special Town Meeting, members will be asked to vote on an article that would give an easement over town-owned land to the Amherst Cinema project. The land is a forty-foot wide strip along the western side of the Cinema building. The purpose of the easement would be to allow the Cinema building to be widened so it will be able to have three theater spaces in it.
While I think it would be wonderful to have a functioning theater and arts building in the center of Amherst, I think it would be terrible to have a failed attempt at a large arts center there. Unfortunatly, I'm not optimistic about its chances of success. Current cost estimates for building renovation and new construction are about $6 million, a daunting challenge for fund raisers.
Even more difficult than raising funds for this constructing this project, it seems to me, will be finding enough audiences able and willing to pay enough for tickets to keep the place in operation if it opens. I keep thinking about the Academy of Music, a truly historic and beautiful building that regularly gets good-sized crowds for both films and live performances, but which still has to do fund raisers and ask for state funds to help maintain or moderinize its facilities. People living in the Amherst area think it's normal to go to Northampton for art and entertainment; it seems to me that people living on the western side of the river don't think of coming this way for entertainment.
And then there's the question of parking. I am very concerned about the loss of parking spaces in the center of Amherst necessitated by this proposal. The competition for our local businesses as well as for the audience for non-blockbuster movies is clearly downtown Northampton, and, hard as it sometimes is to park there, it's easier than here. The Academy is next to one of Northampton's largest parking lots (admittedly, up a steep flight of stairs, but that works for most people). The Pleasant Street cinema is near both surface lots and Northampton's parking garage. The Amherst Cinema is next to a small parking lot that is going to be made smaller by this proposed easement. Certainly the Amherst parking garage will be finished soon, and it will increase the number of spaces downtown, the increase won't be enough to mean we can eliminate other spaces around town and not miss them. Barring a significant recession in the area (perhaps brought on by excessive budget cuts by the state), I think all the parking spaces downtown will be used long before the Cinema project opens.
We already have a thriving art, performance and community center that needs this parking: the Jones Library. In my experience, whenever a major event is happening at the Jones that lot quickly fills, as does the one behind the Library (including the CVS section, which is not really parking for the Library at all). I asked the Library how many public events happen there in a month, and the answer is about 60, if you count both gatherings sponsored by the Library (such as mothers singing with babies) and those put on by community groups. I hope we will also need those spaces for visitors to the Amherst Historical Society's event at the Strong House. The owners of the corner property at Amity and South Prospect are planning to build a bank, which will make the parking situation worse. I don't think we have a surplus of parking spaces for the public in that part of town.
In the meantime, I've learned that some of the people who live in the neighborhood are thinking about a coordinated project of new commercial buildings facing Amity Street, a large Visitor's Center with meeting rooms and a connection to the Cinema building, and parking in the back. From the drawings I've seen it looks interesting to my mind, far more appropriate for that location than the bank but it has some major drawbacks: it doesn't fit the current zoning, the land owners aren't involved, and the bank (as far as I know) will be constructed on the corner where the ³Academy Square² idea has a combined commercial-residential building.
I'm sorry this idea didn't receive neighborhood support earlier. If my memory serves me, there have been several attempts in the past that did include at least some of the property owners. Way back in the early 1980s, when I was on the Planning Board, David Williams proposed a combined commercial and residential facility, with a parking garage behind the buildings; it, too, was called "Academy Square." It needed a zoning change, however, and couldn't get it in Town Meeting. Later, the area was considered as one of the three possible sites for our parking garage; again, the idea was to have commercial buildings at the sidewalk facing the street.
Personally, that was my preference at the time. I'd still like to see something interesting and coordinated happen on that large corner, but it's very hard with some many owners and competing interests. The more that gets built, or remodeled, the harder it will be to put anything together that's bigger than one lot. I suppose it's too late all the way around, but in my fantasies the arts folks, the commercial folks and interested neighbors would halt all their plans and see get together to see if they can't come up with something. It would certainly be more coordinated and aesthetically pleasing, and it might even be cheaper than redoing a brick barn into a charming performance space.