Preliminary designs show a facility with a kitchenette, bathrooms, storage space and a multi-purpose room, all with easy access to a dock on the river.
Members of the Smith College crew team practice this spring on the Connecticut River in Northampton.NORTHAMPTON – The state is about to announce a $100,000 grant that will help kick-start a $4.67 million project to create a boathouse on the Connecticut River in Northampton.
The Connecticut River Community Boathouse would serve as a center for non-motorized boating for high school and college teams, community organizations and, through the Northampton Recreation Department, the general public. In a letter to State Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg thanking him for his help in securing the funding, Mayor Mary Clare Higgins wrote, “We are proud to host a boathouse that will serve youth, collegiate, and master rowers and community human-powered boaters from throughout our region.”
Rosenberg is scheduled to be in Northampton Wednesday, along with state Rep. Peter V. Kocot, D-Northampton, and Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Richard Sullivan, to announce the state grant. Rosenberg said Monday that he helped get the money released after Kocot succeeded in including it in a transportation bond bill.
“It will help take the next step in planning and designing the facility,” he said.
The boathouse has been a long-time goal of area rowers, who have had to pursue their passion out of temporary facilities on the Oxbow. Interest in the sport has mushroomed over the past decade, with Northampton High School developing an avid crew team. According to Higgins, rowing is now the single most popular sport at the high school.
The boathouse would be located on the property of Lane Construction, which owns 22.5 acres of land between Damon Road and the Connecticut River close to Interstate 91. That land includes 1,300 feet of river frontage. According to a budget that Higgins included in her letter to Rosenberg, the project would be financed through fund-raising and in-kind donations, including the Lane Construction land, valued at $500,000. Smith College, the high school crew team and Northampton Youth and Community Rowing will embark on a $1.5 million joint fund-raising effort. Smith and various city departments will also contribute their time and expertise. In addition, the project will seek $100,000 in Community Preservation Act funds.
Rosenberg said the boathouse would greatly enhance the use of the Connecticut River by many parties.
“It could serve the University of Massachusetts and others of the Five Colleges,” he said. “We don’t have a quality facility of this sort in the region.”
Preliminary designs show a facility with a kitchenette, bathrooms, storage space and a multi-purpose room, all with easy access to a dock on the river. The design also shows more than 100 parking spaces. Under the tentative plan, Lane Construction would retain some of the parcel for its offices. Smith College would use some of the space for its rowing, kayaking and canoeing programs, all of which are in demand.
The facility would be located near the terminus of the old Northampton-New Haven Canal, traces of which are still in evidence there. Although not a part of the boathouse project, planners hope the facility’s presence will provide opportunities to interpret and present some of the region’s industrial and cultural history.