Amherst eyes art bridge linking UMass campus with downtown

AMHERST — For more than six years, Amherst town officials and the University of Massachusetts have sought improvements for North Pleasant Street, which links the southeast edge of the campus to the northern end of downtown. They want to boost commercial vitality and provide new places for students, faculty and staff to enjoy.

With the Gateway Redevelopment District stymied by concerns that included potential redevelopment of the vacant land that was once fraternity row, a subcommittee of the University-Town of Amherst Collaborative is examining whether a so-called art bridge might be more appropriate.

“This creates arts as a focus to create a beautiful artery between the town and campus,” said Shawn Farley, director of marketing at the Fine Arts Center at UMass.

The corridor could include physical art such as sculptures, areas for performances and space for open-air markets, Farley said. Such an art bridge might also serve to address the continuing problems of students walking through residential neighborhoods, she said.

Meeting for the first time since October, the steering committee for UTAC endorsed a proposal from the culture, arts and living subcommittee to seek a grant, for between $50,000 and $500,000, through the National Creative Placemaking Fund of ArtPlace America, a collaboration involving the federal government, private foundations and financial institutions. An application is due Wednesday.

“We thought, what a perfect opportunity because our committee is taking on the issue of town-gown collaboration, and taking on arts to leverage that issue,” Farley said.

While just a preliminary application, if accepted into the program on May 31, a community development project could be planned.

“At that point, it gets really involved,” Farley said, observing that the group would have about 3½ years to complete a project.

Last year, ArtPlace funded a program called Artes Pa’lante in Boston that, according to its website “will ignite the Latin Quarter through planned, interactive and spontaneous outdoor arts interventions that connect residents, multi-generational artists and businesses with each other.”

UTAC was created as a recommendation from a town-gown study by U3 Advisers, jointly funded by the town and UMass, and is an advisory council to the Amherst town manager and UMass chancellor on topics such as identifying sites for undergraduate mixed-use development, pursuing public-private partnerships and creating a so-called anchor strategy for the university that embraces the town in its economic success.

The town-gown study also recommended that Amherst hire an economic development director.

Geoffrey Kravitz, who began in that position in January, said many people have approached him over the past two months asking about UTAC’s work.

“They have high hopes for what we’re doing to do,” Kravitz said.

Neither of the other two subcommittees, which have met several times, have concrete proposals yet.

“I don’t think the housing committee is at the point to start recommending things” said co-chairman John Kuhn, principal of Kuhn Riddle Architects.

But Kuhn said his committee plans to be action-oriented and find ways to bring the town and university together on projects.

The economic development committee is examining the vitality of downtown and the research done at the university, said co-chairman Eric Nakajima, former director of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute.

Research at the university could be one of the major tools to economic development, said Katherine Newman, provost and senior vice chancellor at UMass.

The Institute for Applied Life Sciences, with some of the most advanced nanotechnology in the region, could create spin-off companies that will remain in the area.

Newman pointed to the Mass Mutual Data Science Center office on the main level of Kendrick Place, where between 50 and 100 students from UMass data science program are being recruited to work. The location is in downtown Amherst and close to the UMass campus. “It’s not an accident they located there,” Newman said.

She also sees potential for a program that will start in 2017 bringing foreign students pursuing master’s degrees in engineering to campus for six to eight weeks during the summer.