BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY AUG. 23, 2021) — Once in a while the management at the Berkshire Eagle “gets it.” For example, their recent article actually questioning the organizational chaos in downtown Pittsfield, where insane traffic patterns have put small businesses out of business, driven respectable people away, and welcomed the “armies of the road.” Of course, it came only after THE PLANET had hammered at this a few weeks prior.

At other times, the newspaper gets it wrong straddling the fence. In the new hole, this can get by. In the editorial space, however, such waffling comes off  limp and listless.

Take the paper’s editorial on the proposed pump track at Springside Park.

Please.

In today’s column THE PLANET presents the Eagle editorial annotated with a response by Royal Hartigan of the Best Friends of Springside Park, the group that’s fighting this large, expensive development that threatens to tear out the heart of what remains of this woodland refuge.

Hartigan’s responses, in italics, address the Eagle‘s editorial point by point.

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EAGLE HEADLINE: OUR OPINION: Compromise needed at Springside Park

HARTIGAN, FOR BEST FRIENDS: In response to the Eagle editorial of July 22, 2021, there is no compromise when one group obtains what it wants and opponents – in actuality the park – get nothing. The only real compromise that would satisfy each side is to have the full mountain bike complex in Pittsfield at another location and maintain Springside as it is intended.

At 237 acres, Springside Park is by far the largest of Pittsfield’s 33 parks, playgrounds and conservation areas. It has an interesting backstory, one that has a connection to the Miller family, and by extension, The Berkshire Eagle. which the Miller family owned for many years.

EAGLE: In 1910, former Pittsfield Mayor Kelton Miller, who served as the editor
of The Berkshire Evening Eagle, and his wife, Eva, donated the original
10 acre tract that became Springside Park to the city of Pittsfield. In
1939, the Millers’ sons, Donald and Lawrence, donated an additional 74
acres that included the what is now known as Springside House, the
rambling estate that Abraham Burbank originally built as a private
residence in the mid-19th century. The rest of the park was cobbled
together from additional tracts of land donated to the city by prominent
city individuals and organizations all the way up through the 1970s.
Springside Park contains gardens, an arboretum, athletic fields,
playgrounds, even a pond located within the park’s borders. There have
been two zoos. The entire area was listed on the National Register of
Historic Places in 2008. The park means a lot to a number of people. Its
adherents love the area deeply.

HARTIGAN: The ‘historic and continuing love’ stated in the editorial is precisely for its mostly undisturbed natural open space, exactly what would be lost with the addition of an intrusive recreational facility in the middle of the park. The runoffs and numerous other effects of asphalt and other constructions will affect the nearby wetlands and extend to other areas of the park as well.

EAGLE: Now a group of mountain biking enthusiasts wants to establish a mountain
biking skills course and pump track in the park on a 2.3 acre tract
located near the softball and Little League field behind Reid Middle
School. The Park Commission has given the proposal provisional approval.
Formal approval won’t be considered until the Conservation Commission
conducts a site review of the area because it is located near a buffer
zone that surrounds a wetland.

The Epic Scram Eagle AXS mountain bike, cost $8,838.99. The bike advocates claim their project is for underprivleged kids. Yes, kids who can afford almost 9 Gs. Cost of helmet and gear excluded.

Given all of its attractions, and the love so many feel for the area, we agree that Springside Park may not be the best place in the city for a mountain bike course. But we also believe that given the park’s overall size, placing a mountain bike skills course and pump track in a small area that is already located near athletic fields, and is behind a school, if it is set up correctly, won’t damage the aura that has made
Springside Park so special to so many.

HARTIGAN: Springside is not the best place for a complex, in fact it is not appropriate at all. The park’s size will not be able to survive such an invasion with toilets, 10-20 foot high metal fences, potential concessions and lighting, paved access roads and expanded parking areas with hundreds of parked cars overflowing into natural areas, documented at the current bike races this summer. The area proposed is not small, and the mountain bikers are already causing damage throughout the park on the trails they have constructed since 2013. The true intent of the proposal reveals its goal as the entire park, since no industry or group would fund a 2-3 acre complex for a half-million dollars.

It’s easy to see why the opponents are against the idea. On paper, the proposal appears immense. According to the plans presented to the Park Commission earlier this week, the course includes five separatesections, the pump track, a skills training zone, a “flow zone” jump area, a dual slalom course, and rest and access areas. The pump track include 9,172 square feet of asphalt coverage. The rest and access areas include a 4,000 square foot crushed stone pathway. Five wooden construction features, two ladder drops, one wooden berm and two wooden “take-offs” would be built in the flow zone jump area. It sounds more like an amusement park than a mountain bike course.

The proposal is immense, and will be used as an amusement park for the sole use of mountain biking, not for the general public, itself a violation of the intent and trust of the people of Pittsfield. And it is not just 5 sections, it is actually at least 8-10 or more, including the access roads, parking, metal barricades surrounding the complex, and ‘hard infrastructure’ like toilets, and possible concessions and lighting mentioned above. Its designer-stated but vague gradual expansion over time gives future political cover and will allow for unlimited encroachment in the park engulfing the whole park landscape, since it will be impossible to stop bikers from using their newfound ‘skills’ across the full area of Springside.

EAGLE: Yes, a mountain bike course would definitely change that area of the
park, but it’s a small section that’s already being used for athletic
activities. Placing the park in that area won’t rob the rest of
Springside Park of the natural beauty that means so much to so many. And
that natural beauty should be protected at all costs. We recommend
restrictions on the park’s hours, and a moratorium on further
development within Springside’s boundaries. When it comes to
development, a mountain bike course should not become the “tip of the
iceberg” when it comes to development, as one letter writer recently
stated.

HARTIGAN: The addition of a centrally-located bike complex will rob the park of its beauty, since the proposed site is not small. Most of the proposed section is not already ‘used for athletic activities,’ as the Eagle claims, it is pristine woodlands and meadows. Restricting park hours and access for a tiny minority of bikers is an abuse of its public nature. Stating a ‘moratorium on future ‘development’ has been used for proposed invasions of the park by single-interest groups, including the 1980 tennis courts, the 1990 golf course, the 2003 soccer fields, the 2004 and 2007 dog runs, and the 2019 pickleball courts. Each one had no effect on the actual projects, most defeated via public knowledge and input, sadly missing in the current proposal’s process put before an unelected city body not answerable to the public.

To any objective observer of the proposal and process so far, as well as national documented national research on mountain biking, such proposals are in fact the ‘tip of the iceberg’, since the essence of mountain biking is to continually seek new trails – legal or illegal, the latter prevalent throughout the Berkshires at October Mountain and Pittsfield State Forests, Greylock and other venues – for the thrills of a new, unknown obstacle course. This has already happened at Springside with illegal minds near the Doyle complex and Garland avenue, both used by mountain bikers. There are at least 9 major venues in the Berkshires with over 30,000 acres and 400 miles of mountain bike trails. So why Springside, except for a large and undisclosed national center?

If you want to blow 10 grand on a mountain bike, why not the Santa Cruz Blur, going for $10,500. It’s “for The Children.”

EAGLE: The designers who presented their proposal before the Park Commission
(the project has yet to be put out to bid) appear to at least understand
what makes Springside so special. In their proposal, they state the park
is designed to “minimize impact on the natural environment” and the
photos they provided with their presentation bear that out. The facility
will also be funded, designed and maintained by the nonprofit New
England Mountain Bike Association, which will not have exclusive rights
to the property in any “way shape or form,” according to Pittsfield’s
Open Space and Natural Resource Program Manager Jim McGrath.

It will be
a public facility in a public park available for use by the general
public. The Miller Family’s original intention was to have Springside be
a public, free, open space for all. This facility will fit into that
definition. The rest of Springside Park needs to stay that way, too.

HARTIGAN: The presenters’ own design from 18 May admits and documents the loss of Springside’s naturalness, with clear-cutting of trees and bulldozing of its landscape, destroying the eco-system and causing habitat fragmentation. Their photos – not of Springside but from a designer’s graph – only propose an abstract design without the reality of its actual effects. To simulate a sensitivity to an environment does not equate to an intended or realized outcome.

On the contrary, the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA) will control and have exclusive rights to the area and eventually all of Springside as a ‘mountain bike central’ for the region and the U.S., as revealed at its website in a 1 January 2021 posting. The entire complex will be surrounded by a high metal fence with steel gates, preventing any other park visitors from using the area. This will turn it into a restricted, single-use facility, betraying the intent, meaning, and trust for Springside, in the editorial’s own words, as a ‘public, free, open space for all,’ and not the few who seek adventure at the expense of the vast majority of the park’s visitors. To state otherwise as the Eagle does, is to defy reality.

It is not a ‘public facility’ if the vast majority of people – picknickers, bird watchers, nature lovers, walkers, among many others, are denied access to that area because they don’t have ultra expensive mountain bikes and gear bought from the mountain bike industry that supports this intrusion.

Mr. McGrath, NEMBA, and the designers were quoted or referenced at length in the Eagle editorial. Is there a reason its editorial board did not seek out those who advocate for maintaining Springside as a natural resource for the city? A fair investigation and discussion would require this engagement prior to deciding on a point of view. This has not happened, yet is a responsibility of a free press to determine the views of all concerned.

Again, we ask why?

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Dr. Mike Vandeman is one of the world’s leading authorities on the impact of mountain biking of local ecologies and biodiversity. Here is his three-point reply to the Eagle editorial:

1. The author doesn’t understand that the impact of the bike park will be orders of magnitude greater than anything that already exists in the park. Mountain bikes are machines, and machines multiply one’s impacts. In fact, that is the purpose of a machine. Living things are delicate. Machines have no business being on any unpaved trail.

2. They also don’t understand that the impacts won’t be restricted to the bike park. No one uses a bike park with the intention of restricting that kind of behaviour to the bike park. They will continue the same destructive behaviour in the rest of the park and in other parks. In fact, they already are. That’s what the mountain bike races are about.

3. All mountain bikers are capable of walking, and therefore already have the same access to the park that everyone else has. That is sufficient. Bicycles are machines, and have no rights.

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Backers tried to sneak this plan through beginning last year, not counting on any meaningful resistance. As time has gone by, one can understand the urgency they feel in having this business conducted behind closed doors, or does Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski have no problem with one of their greatest public resources destroyed by public officials on behalf of a for-profit private developer?

As the public slowly becomes educated on this issue, look for the advocated to become more shrill and desperate. They fear they are walking into a benevolent time bomb set by We The People.

THE PLANET has a feeling that’s exactly what will happen.

Maybe as soon as this week.

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“Don’t you long for a time when a bicycle wasn’t a vehicle for corrupt politics?” — Sir Donald Turpentine, Knight of the Bath.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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