The apartment building proposed for the corner of Hawley Street and Phillips Place in Northampton has a footprint of 11,537 square feet and a mass of 58,250 square feet, with 70 bedrooms in 5 stories. The proposed development occupies the entire site. There is no green space. All existing trees bordering the site were cut down before a permit was submitted. This is not in-fill; it’s invasion.

By comparison, Thornes Marketplace has a footprint of 16,700 square feet, and it’s only three stories. Almost all buildings on Main Street have much smaller footprints, and only a few are as tall. For example, the Courthouse, Chase Bank, and Urban Outfitters all have smaller footprints.

In the neighborhood, the residences average around 2,500 square feet total living space, and even the church is smaller than the proposed building. The only building with a similar footprint is 33 Hawley St., a former lumberyard, yet the proposed building will dwarf the Northampton Center for the Arts by at least 20 feet in height.

How is this possible in a residential area on the National Register of Historic Places? Because it’s the kind of development that the Planning and Sustainability Department wants. Beware social engineers. Their plans always end in tears.

This is all being done in the name of housing, but what about the housing that exists and the neighborhoods that make Northampton a nice place to live? How does destroying these neighborhoods contribute to sustainability? Doesn’t our low-carbon footprint, our gardening, our solar panels, our walk to downtown lifestyle count?

H. Leslie Wolfe

Northampton