CONWAY — A nearly half-century local legacy has ended. Conway School of Landscape and Design is selling its 35-acre South Deerfield Road property and permanently moving elsewhere.
“We’re obviously deeply grateful for 42 years of support and engagement,” said school Executive Director Bruce Stedman on Monday. The school will continue to help local communities with landscape and design projects.
“Over a number of years, we decided the school was better served, the students better served, if we had a location in the (Pioneer) Valley more closely aligned with urban projects. It was primarily the realization that we can serve much more effectively —the rehabilitation of communities that need it — if we were closer,” he continued.
Last year, Conway School of Landscape and Design shut down a majority of its operations in Conway, its namesake, moving to a mill building on 180 Pleasant St. in Easthampton. The school is leasing space there, thought it is looking to purchase a permanent facility somewhere near an urban center down the road.
Moving was influenced in part by a changing environmental and technological landscape, and because students had difficulty commuting to the school’s rural property — which is up a dirt drive far from the road.
The school’s educational focus is on the effects of climate change, and resilience to that change, particularly on urban spaces and post-industrial cities. Stedman said that’s easier to teach closer to affected cities and towns.
“There was some concern that every student, basically, needed a car to get there,” Stedman said. He also noted “the difficulty of getting internet capacity in Conway, but that was not a major factor. The biggest factor is from the students.”
Conway School of Landscape and Design was founded in 1972 by Walter Cudnohufsky in a small sugar shack next to his barn on Delabarre Avenue. The school then moved to a 600-square-foot building on Route 116, built in 1986 as a house, remodeled in 2003. It’s now for sale (either residentially or commercially), through Cohn and Company Real Estate Agency, at $485,000.
“He (Cudnohufsky) imagined he would only have it there for a few years,” Stedman said. “Forty-two-odd years later, we’ve done that.”
Stedman added that the local realty agency is “actively” seeking out and talking to potential buyers.
While the school is leaving the town’s limits, its name will remain. Stedman noted, “We’re not ever going to change the name, as long as anyone who’s here now is there.”