Small things crop up in Amherst, Hadley

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on September 28, 2007

The Taj Mahal it is not. But at least its customers won't have a hard time finding the Bank of America on the corner of East Pleasant and Triangle streets.

"Like many other forms of new commercial architecture, the whole building is designed as a sign," said Amherst's planning director, Jonathan Tucker.

The miniature building, an "ATM vestibule" in the description of Bank of America spokesman Ernesto Anguilla, was the bank's choice to replace the previous building that burned down on Aug. 15, 2006.

"We did determine when looking at the site that we could service our customer base, locally, with an ATM vestibule, but we did want to leave space to stage special events around student rush time," Anguilla said. Bank of America is the country's largest banking system with more than 5,700 banking centers nationwide and 300 in Massachusetts, and "They're all shapes and sizes," Anguilla said.

Tucker has been fielding a lot of complaints about the diminutive savings institution, one of the first examples of architecture to greet visitors to Amherst coming from the north.

"I would just point out that the Planning Board did say No,'" to it, Tucker said.

The Zoning Board of Appeals approved the ATM, though, so the bank, such as it is, appears to be here to stay.

Before the fire, which caused an estimated $555,000 damage and reduced the bank to a standing vault, there were four tellers, loan and investment officers and a vestibule with 24-hour ATMs.

In a letter to Bank of America, Alexander Hoar and Pam Rooney, of nearby Cottage Street, called the pint-sized building "a poor reflection of Bank of America as either a national presence or as a community partner."

Some people have complained it looks like a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Others are chagrined that the bank will be paying a smaller property tax bill in the coming year.

David Burgess, Amherst's chief assessor, said he hasn't measured it yet, but he will by the end of June 2008, and the bank will start paying taxes in fiscal year 2009.

"It will not be high," he said of the bill. The old building was assessed at about $300,000. "The new building won't be assessed at anywhere near that," Burgess said. "It's basically a building to house an ATM; it's not like it's a fully operating bank."

Mini-kiwis

If Harry Vandoloski's Hadley-grown kiwis were a bank, they would be the new Bank of America on East Pleasant Street. They're that small, about the size of a grape.

Vandoloski, of Middle Street, a mail carrier, has been selling them, this year, at a small farmstand on North Lane, about midway along the "back way" from Amherst to Northampton.

You don't have to peel the mini-kiwis, and they're not fuzzy. They taste like a traditional kiwi but sweeter and the ripest ones have the consistency of pudding.

It's too late to buy them this year, as the season is over. It was only a few weeks long and ended a few days ago.

"It's only a few weeks between ripe enough and going overripe," Vandoloski said.

Some years, he harvests no mini-kiwis at all.

Vandoloski, who likes growing unusual things, first bought some kiwi plants about 20 years ago. He grew them for seven years before they bore any fruit, and when they finally did, they were rock hard in October. So it took him seven years to figure out traditional kiwis wouldn't work.

Ten years ago, he found a nursery in Oregon selling hardy varieties of the fruit. He bought several kinds, some of which haven't borne fruit yet. The mini-kiwis started appearing about five years ago.

They can be a handful, as the vine begins sprouting in the early spring and will die if there is an early frost.

"You have to pick them when they're hard, because if you wait until they're soft, they'll fall apart like a toasted marshmallow on a stick," Vandoloski said. He uses a refractometer, a hand-held optical instrument, to measure the sugar content, so he knows when to pick them.

"You have to have a male and female and they grow an enormous amount of foliage, about 20 feet a year, and you have to prune back about 70 percent of the growth. You have to have a structure for them to grow on," he said. "It's like a huge monstrous weed, it would overwhelm a normal yard."

In short, "It's probably not a commercially practical crop," Vandoloski said. No matter. "I've been called eccentric," he said. "I just have to do some things like that."

Meetings

MONDAY: Select Board, 6:30 p.m., Town Room, Town Hall.

TUESDAY: Public Works Committee, 7 p.m., Town Room, Town Hall for presentation of University Drive plans.

WEDNESDAY: Select Board, 5 p.m. Town Room, Town Hall; Public Shade Tree Committee, 4 p.m., First Floor Meeting Room; Planning Board, 8 p.m., Town Room, Town Hall.

THURSDAY: Jones Library Board of Trustees, 7 p.m., Trustee Room, Jones Library.

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.