■The first patients moved into the new $3.5 million addition to The Cooley Dickinson Hospital yesterday. The 50,000-square-foot addition consists of three main components: an emergency department, out-patient facilities, and a physical therapy department.
■The appearance of downtown Northampton would be noticeably changed by the Pleasant/River Urban Renewal Project, despite the fact that plans call for little demolition and no construction of buildings by the city. The most obvious change would be the addition of a traffic island through the middle of most of Main Street, with new traffic lights and some new sidewalk paving along the street.
■A spokesman for The Home Depot says his company is optimistic it will reach an agreement with the owners of land on Routes 5 & 10 near the Northampton-Hatfield line to purchase a site for a store there. Spokesman John Simley declined to provide any details on the negotiations until they are made final.
■Blues tunes will replace punk-rock this year at the Three-County Fairgrounds, where an older, and slightly grayer, generation of music lovers will likely turn out for the event. The Pioneer Valley Blues, Brews and BBQ festival will feature a wide range of national and regional blues artists.
■With location shooting scheduled in Amherst and Pelham next week, the Emily Dickinson Museum and Wildwood Cemetery are set to star along with “Sex and the City” actress Cynthia Nixon in a feature film about the life of the reclusive 19th-century poet. The bulk of the Dickinson biopic “A Quiet Passion,” has been shot over the past month in Belgium, where a set including a replica of the interior of Dickinson’s home was built on a soundstage.
■The University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Old Chapel, built in 1885 as the New Chapel, has earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places and will reopen next year after two decades on the sidelines. Closed since 1996 because of deterioration of the tower, the chapel will undergo a $21 million renovation.