Briefings: Housing, bank building planned for city
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EASTHAMPTON
Firefighters extinguished a Jan. 3 kitchen fire at the John F. Sullivan senior housing complex on Everett Street and, luckily, none of the tenants there was seriously injured. The man living in the apartment was taken to the hospital for evaluation.
It was a good result, said Fire Chief David Mottor. But one firefighter noted after the blaze that there was no sprinkler system in the 40-unit, elderly apartment building. Why not?
Mottor said last week that he is concerned that such buildings do not by law require fire sprinklers, but that there is not much he can do about it. Such requirements are set by state codes.
"Those type of facilities are a prime example because you have people who are physically handicapped that may have a problem getting out of the building," Mottor said.
Mottor said that a building code change five years ago required various types of buildings to have fire sprinkler systems. Three-family developments or greater now require sprinklers, he said. Or if a building owner guts a building "to the studs," the renovations would have to result in sprinkler compliance, he said.
"If they were to build that building today, it would have to comply," Mottor said.
New or altered commercial buildings that are 7,500-square-feet or greater also require sprinklers, he added, as do schools and apartment buildings.
Big plans
After Stop & Shop received the go-ahead to build a store on Northampton Street, development news in this city has been kind of quiet. Until now.
In the past two weeks, the city has received plans for two major developments. Boston-based Arch Street Development is proposing to build 50 affordable apartments in the long vacant 125,000-square-foot Dye Works Building at 15 Cottage St.
And Northampton-based Valley Community Development Corp. has proposed building a 38-apartment affordable housing complex at 69 Parsons St., the site of a former funeral home.
Add to that Easthampton Savings Bank announcing its ambitions to build a 28,000-square-foot bank branch and offices on Northampton Street.
The bank will apply for a special permit in the next two months, said Thomas Brown, the bank's senior vice president for retail banking.
If the bank gets its approvals, the new branch would open in the spring of 2012.
Matt Pilon can be reached at mpilon@gazettenet.com.
