Editor’s note: As part of the Greenfield Recorder’s end-of-the-year features, we are publishing in two parts our choices for the top 10 newsmakers of 2025. They are listed in no particular order.
Affordable Homes Act sparks ADU debate
Passage of the Affordable Homes Act in 2024, which allows accessory dwelling units up to 900 square feet to be built by right in single-family zoning districts, prompted the region’s cities and towns to review and update their ADU ordinances and bylaws.
In Greenfield, heated debate over the city’s ADU zoning ordinance found its way to various City Council and Zoning Board of Appeals meetings in 2025.
In what was described as a “protest vote” at the last City Council meeting of 2025, councilors failed to meet the necessary vote count needed to amend, and bring into compliance with state law, Greenfield’s ordinance on ADUs. The vote failed to pass an amendment allowing the construction of one ADU on a two-family or multifamily home parcel by right, as required by the Affordable Homes Act.
Although Greenfield had already amended its ADU ordinance to allow one ADU by right on lots with single-family homes in accordance with the state law, the Attorney General’s Office, in reviewing East Bridgewater’s ADU regulations, had issued a decision earlier in the year regarding ADUs on two-family or multifamily home parcels. The decision found that “a municipality cannot limit protected use ADUs to lots with only single-family homes on them,” according to a Frequently Asked Questions page on the state’s website.
The ADU votes came after residents Al Norman, Mitchell Speight and Joan Marie Jackson, in April, brought forth a proposed zoning ordinance amendment package, in the form of a citizen’s petition, to further regulate ADUs — a measure that failed at City Council.
Elsewhere in Franklin County, at Leyden’s Town Meeting, residents also approved an ADU bylaw that aligns with state law, permitting property owners to construct one ADU of up to 900 square feet by right. Residents also approved revisions that make Leyden’s regulations more flexible than state law, increasing the maximum floor area of an ADU from 900 to 1,200 square feet, and allowing an additional ADU to be built with a special permit.
Zion Korean Church moves back to Barre
After the Franklin County YMCA’s plans in 2024 to demolish the former Zion Korean Church on Main Street in Greenfield attracted significant pushback from the Historical Commission — members of which wished to see the church salvaged for its historic relevance — 2025 saw the church’s dismantling and relocation to Barre.
The commission voted unanimously in January to rescind the demolition delay it placed on the former church, contingent on the execution of a Barre farm owner’s offer to dismantle and relocate the 182-year-old church, bringing it back to its original hometown.
“In some way, the whole thing is just mind-boggling,” Historical Commission Chair Margo Jones said. “What are the odds that Barre would come along and save the day?”
Philip Stevens, owner of Carter & Stevens Farm LLC in Barre, oversaw the crew that took the 463 Main St. church apart. The move, which occurred in April, to his family farm and brewery, called Stone Cow Brewery, marks Stevens’ 11th time relocating a building.
“Our entire organization, from our board, to myself as CEO, to our staff, is just really pleased and excited that the church is going to be safe — the church is going to be reconstructed in its original town. And we’re all so excited, and that’s from a historical perspective and from a community perspective,” former YMCA CEO Grady Vigneau said in February. “This has been a long process with the city, but I am very, very pleased and very proud of the way the city and the community were able to work together and come to an optimal solution to a very difficult situation.”
Northfield EMS
Northfield EMS made several strides toward moving into a new facility in 2025.
At the beginning of 2025, it looked like the ambulance service was going to be moving to the Valley Concrete & Construction facility in Bernardston, but the company pulled the offer after the town was unable to reach a purchase-and-sale agreement deadline.
With Northfield EMS now operating in the four towns of Northfield, Bernardston, Gill and part of Erving, Chief Matt Wolkenbreit said the service was in need of a living quarters upgrade for staff, especially during overnight shifts. In July, Northfield EMS paramedics and EMTs settled into a temporary addition next to its current base of operations at 41 Main St., a roughly 700-square-foot trailer with two bedrooms, a full bathroom, laundry units, an office space, a kitchen and a living room for on-duty crew members.
Plans for a new permanent EMS facility are moving forward with the approval of three articles at the November Special Town Meeting. Articles 2, 4 and 5 rescinded a 2024 vote to approve the purchase of the Valley Concrete & Construction property and authorized the purchase of 39 Main St. and the neighboring 41 Main St. in Northfield.
Shane Burke and Megan Sullivan, who own 39 Main St., are essentially donating the property to the town, which will pay them $1 and cover $110,000 in closing costs, demolition and abatement of the house, which sustained heavy smoke and water damage in a fire in June.
Combined, the two properties form a single conforming, buildable lot, and a unified parcel allows for proper sanitary waste management, including septic placement that would be challenging on just the 41 Main St. lot, Wolkenbreit told Special Town Meeting voters.
Tree House Brewing Co.
Over the course of Tree House’s Summer Stage concert series last year, Deerfield received 49 noise complaints, according to Assistant Town Administrator Greg Snedeker. Residents expressed frustrations with noise from the summer concerts at Selectboard meetings throughout the year.
“There has been noise — it’s not music, it’s noise — since the very first concert,” Bev Boykan of Whately Road told Selectboard members at a September meeting.
For future concerts, the brewery will have new rules to follow, including cutting off outdoor concerts at 10 p.m. instead of the previous 10:30 p.m. cap, and hosting no more than two concerts per week in September and no concerts on Aug. 26 and Aug. 27, the first days of school for Frontier Regional School students.
To follow other conditions in the entertainment license, Tree House’s sound engineer or production manager must “make all reasonable efforts” to follow the World Health Organization’s “Global standard for safe listening venues & events,” which recommends a 100-decibel limit. The brewery’s public address system company, Klondike Sound LLC, must also conduct a sound study “to determine effective means of mitigating low-frequency sound waves (propagation) during outdoor concerts” and report the findings to the Selectboard before the 2027 concert season.
“We intend to be the best neighbors we possibly can be. We want to be as reasonable as possible and we do value the residents of this town,” Sarah Morin, chief growth officer at Tree House, said at the Dec. 22 Selectboard meeting when the new entertainment license conditions were discussed.
Deerfield dog shelter
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Regional Dog Shelter made progress on its plans to construct a roughly 7,000-square-foot building off the cul-de-sac at the end of Plain Road East in 2025, with hiccups as abutters voiced concerns.
The Friends of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Regional Dog Shelter, the nonprofit formed to raise money for the shelter’s services, acquired the land in March 2024 for $135,000 and sought to move to Deerfield to expand the shelter’s space and increase the services it offers after outgrowing its current site in Turners Falls.
After five months of hearings, as well as a peer review in April for the proposed shelter that found no “fatal flaws” that would pose a risk to public health or safety and a sound study on the shelter’s projected impact, the Zoning Board of Appeals approved two special permits for the new, expanded facility in July.
The key challenge the ZBA needed to address during the hearings was language within Section 3710, which allows the board to grant a special permit exempting a project from the noise ordinance as long as the board “determines that no objectionable conditions” are present. That benchmark has been the crux of opponents’ arguments, as the town’s bylaws do not lay out a decibel limit.
With special permits for the shelter approved, Marcia Miller, president of the Friends of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Regional Dog Shelter’s board of directors, said next steps include waiting on final approval from the town and leveling out the footprint of the expanded shelter. She hopes to break ground in the spring.