Tilting at windmills again on Greylock
By Glenn Drohan - November, 12 2003
You’ve got to admire the persistence of Tony McBride, the local undertaker who quipped some 40 years ago that the obituary had not yet been written for a tramway on Mount Greylock. McBride now seems to have re-ignited the Greylock Glen Now committee in Adams — a group of local cheerleaders who unsuccessfully exhorted the Michael Dukakis administration and later the William Weld administration to finish what they had set out to do at the Greylock Glen — that is, develop the thing, for goodness sake! Never mind that 1,200 condominiums or 850 single-family homes and a golf course would have eaten up much of the public land and been an eyesore and a playground for the rich just below the state’s highest peak.
Tilting at windmills again on Greylock
By Glenn Drohan - November, 12 2003
You’ve got to admire the persistence of Tony McBride, the local undertaker who quipped some 40 years ago that the obituary had not yet been written for a tramway on Mount Greylock. McBride now seems to have re-ignited the Greylock Glen Now committee in Adams — a group of local cheerleaders who unsuccessfully exhorted the Michael Dukakis administration and later the William Weld administration to finish what they had set out to do at the Greylock Glen — that is, develop the thing, for goodness sake! Never mind that 1,200 condominiums or 850 single-family homes and a golf course would have eaten up much of the public land and been an eyesore and a playground for the rich just below the state’s highest peak.
Over the past two years, those townspeople who still want a glen development have waited patiently as the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency has tried to hammer out a new plan — so far one that calls for a very modest proposal for an environmental center and recreational trails.
That patience has evidently worn thin, as McBride and his newly charged group are now calling for the state to repeal the state legislation that has protected the 12,000-acre Mount Greylock Reservation from downhill skiing, tramways and chair lifts. McBride also wants the state to allow a hotel and a restaurant on the reservation (although both already exist at the Bascom Lodge).
Trouble is, Mount Greylock is a statewide icon and a rallying point for every environmental group in existence. Greylock Glen Now should leave the mountain and the reservation alone and stick to the glen itself. State Rep. Daniel E. Bosley, D-North Adams, kindly suggested as much when he advised the town to try to get the glen land back from the state — which, after all, essentially stole it while whispering sweet promises, all of which have been broken. If McBride thinks environmentalists have been tough on the glen, wait until he sees the tiger that leaps to the defense of the reservation.
The group is Greylock Glen Now, not Greylock Reservation Now. It should stop tilting at windmills, climb down from its soapbox mountain and pursue a dream within its means.
http://www.iberkshires.com/story.php?story_id=12614
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