An interesting footnote to Amherst’s development scene: As one project moves ahead downtown and another is outlined in North Amherst, two public art installations are getting their due.
The survival of one mural is assured. The fate of another will be discussed. The community’s wider debate about projects like these naturally center on the impact they will have on people living and doing business nearby. But the fact that public art comes into the conversation is a credit to Amherst’s public and private stewards. These murals are more than paint on walls. They weave a sense of history into everyday life and show that people in Amherst value more than tax revenues.
At the site of the former Carriage Shops, way around back overlooking the West Cemetery, Emily Dickinson is perhaps the star of the Amherst History Mural that David Fichter created just over a decade ago. Now, Emily and the others featured on the mural will be taking a trip. Fichter will spend weeks this spring documenting the existing mural so he can repaint it in a new location, as part of the One East Pleasant mixed-use development on the site.
The developer, Archipelago Investments, has commissioned Fichter to recreate the piece on a new brick wall. While the mural will be absent from town for roughly two years, when it returns it will stand in a more visible location – as befits a public art installation.
Fichter told Gazette reporter Scott Merzbach he’s happy his project will get “a second life,” and remain a part – with some tweaks – of the town’s cultural landscape. That may be true as well for the lesser-known mural celebrating agriculture that Arielle Jessop painted just last year on the former W.D. Cowls Inc. sawmill building in North Amherst’s growing Mill District.
Up in this neighborhood, a sense of history is plainly evident, particularly in the old sawmill building; after being part of the Cowls forest products operation for decades, the sawmill suffered a fire, was rebuilt in 2003 then closed in 2010 as the company shifted directions. Rather than produce wood for construction projects, Cowls’ leaders have turned toward development, using their considerable local real estate holdings.
Last week, the company announced it is working with a Boston developer, Beacon Communities, on a mixed-use project for Cowls Road that would be situated in part on the site of the old sawmill. The project needs a site plan review from the Planning Board, but the area is already commercially zoned – and would be the third piece of expanding business in this village center. Last summer, Atkins Farms Country Market North opened in the Mill District, joining businesses operating in the new Trolley Barn project nearby.
Residents have been watching these projects warily, and will have a chance to comment on the suitability of yet more growth here. One thing they’ll hear about is a tentative plan by Cowls to preserve the mural Jessop created on the side of the old sawmill.
According to Mollye Wolahan Lockwood, the company’s vice president of real estate and community development, if that doesn’t work out Cowls will consider commissioning Jessop to create additional works in the district.
Public art cannot, and should not, mask problems with the suitability of development. Those debates must play out elsewhere.
But with both of these murals, an appreciation of history, and the town’s agricultural origins, helps new things fit in with the old.