What's the dirt on Northampton, Hadley, Amherst and vicinity? (Boston: fit in, section 8)

[VADude]

It's looking more likely that we'll be moving up to this area in a few years. We liked a lot what we saw when we visited over the summer, but no place is perfect. What are the drawbacks to this area of the Pioneer Valley. Regarding Northampton, yes, I know about the large number of lesbians. It's not a problem.

It one community preferable to another? Why or why not? Are there any bad neighborhoods? Does the crime rate get higher as you move south toward Holyoke? Is the area a hotbed of meth labs? Is the groundwater or Connecticut River polluted? Are all the students in the area a pain in the a** certain times of year?

If you lived there would you move back again? Why or why not?

Thanks. Nothing like talking to a local!

[in_newengland]

Originally Posted by VADude

It's looking more likely that we'll be moving up to this area in a few years. We liked a lot what we saw when we visited over the summer, but no place is perfect. What are the drawbacks to this area of the Pioneer Valley. Regarding Northampton, yes, I know about the large number of lesbians. It's not a problem.

It one community preferable to another? Why or why not? Are there any bad neighborhoods? Does the crime rate get higher as you move south toward Holyoke? Is the area a hotbed of meth labs? Is the groundwater or Connecticut River polluted? Are all the students in the area a pain in the a** certain times of year?

If you lived there would you move back again? Why or why not?

Thanks. Nothing like talking to a local!

There are a lot of threads on this same topic but it's a good place to live, a bad place to find a job. Amherst is overrun with students who get out of control, Holyoke is high crime, the water is pretty good, the Connecticut River has been cleaned up for many years now. I would not move back due to colder weather than the eastern part of the state and too many students.

[tovarisch]

I love living here; only thing I miss is the ocean. No noticeable meth labs. Natural beauty, nice people, arts scene, "old New England" quality, good politics (I'm on the far left) -- what's not to love?

[Austin023]

The general area has a great natural beauty to it and a lot of interesting places to visit--very old New England feel.
I went to school at Umass and lived in Amherst off campus for 3 years. I will be moving back to the area soon, after 10 years of living in the South.
Well, Amherst/Sunderland/Pelham have a lot of students due to the colleges and Umass, but it certainly is a cool area to live in if you like a college town/feel. Pretty liberal politics and a lot of good academic resources at your disposal.

Northampton is more mixed in terms of student/resident population--has a good amount of students but not over run with them like Amherst as it only has Smith college. It is a pretty educated area as you'd expect, very liberal too. Job market is not especially great if you're not connected to the colleges in some way; cost of rent/housing is high in Northampton compared to its neighbors. Real crime is not much of an issue at all. Northampton has a very nice library, and several independent book shops and academic resources, etc. Many interesting restaurants/cafes.
Holyoke/Springfield is a whole different story: depressed neighborhoods, high unemployment, high crime, but cheap rents.

Greenfield to the north: semi-run down in places but has an active downtown; not many students at all, not that many jobs or good pay but it is right on I-91. Housing is pretty cheap compared to Northampton or Amherst but has little student element to it--its much more just a regular town. Rather conservative/less affluent than the college areas. Older buildings and typical common in its downtown, some old mills which are mostly now defunct; areas around town are quite picturesque.

[FCMA]

Amherst - student slum full of frat boys on cocaine, awaiting the two glorious days when 1) a local sports team gets in the playoffs or championships, so they have an excuse to riot and vandalize stuff, and 2) the day they can move back to their parents' basement in Mansfield and continue going to Nickelback shows at the Comcast Center, safe in the embrace of copious Dunkin' Donuts and long commute times. Rural outskirts and neighborhoods don't have that as much, but you're isolated and paying a lot to live in those scenic areas with Ph.D.-educated neighbors. Nice town center with local restaurants, retail, and bookstores. UMass is a concrete wasteland, but the main economic driver of the area, and a good school for those who utilize it correctly. Amherst College is a lovely little liberal arts campus with a classic feel. Hampshire College is an alternative utopia on an old farm with shabby seventies buildings (but still very high tuition!), where students don't receive grades and build-your-own-major is the norm.

Hadley - this is the area's premiere strip-mall, and you'll find Wal-Mart, Target, Whole Foods, a real mall, gas stations, etc, all backing up to dairy farms. Hadley smells like Ohio (i.e., manure), because there's real actual dairy farms still functioning there! This odor wafts over to UMass, to make that aforementioned type of suburbanite students annoyed, and seal their conviction that they must return to Mansfield at all costs because even though it's actually not that rural around Amherst, it's the most rural place most of these kids have ever been ("waaaah gross, it smells like faaaahms - I can't wait to get out of this horrible cowww town and back to "Real" Massaholechusetts!"). Beautiful scenic dairy and crop farmland and old houses from the 1700s once you get off Route 9 and head north or south of it on roads like Route 47. Their zoning and master planning prevents these areas from getting screwed over, promoting farm conservation, except of course on Route 9. Hadley has an interesting deal with the chain-store gods - sacrifice Route 9 for the sake of saving the character of the rest of town. I can't say I blame them. Pretty sure the tax rates reflect that deal with the "devil" too - you'd pay much higher in Amherst or Pelham for example. It's an interesting in-between area with nice outskirts, and if you don't mind driving a few miles either direction to Amherst and Northampton for a downtown, it will suit you well.

Northampton - cultural "urban" hub for the area. Unique downtown filled with independent shops that depend heavily on students' possession of Mommy's/Daddy's credit cards to survive. Despite the pretension, there's a lot of interesting cultural events that come along with this, so can't criticize this phenomenon too deeply - it helps Northampton survive and grow. Great restaurants running the gamut from ethnic to downscale, to very nice local coffee shops, to extremely upscale attempts at Manhattan ambience. Music venues bringing national and regional pop acts to the Iron Horse Entertainment quasi-monopoly of Calvin Theater (big names of various genres), Iron Horse Music Hall focusing more on folk and acoustic, and Pearl Street Nightclub focusing on more edgy music including hip-hop, punk, electronic performers. Local music scene to be found at The Elevens, Sierra Grille, Bishop's Lounge, Hinge, and house shows. Neighborhoods around Smith College and out to Florence and Leeds (each with a separate center, but within Northampton city limits) are quite nice. Real Estate prices have stayed high for the area because of the destination appeal of Noho, and the very pleasant quality of life. You won't have the student zoo problems of Amherst, but you can always head over there for performances at the colleges, for the restaurants, or Amherst Cinema, the one independent cinema left in the area (Noho's Pleasant Street Theater closed over the last couple years). There's a few low-income housing areas in Northampton, but not much in the way of real crime going along with it - these areas on the outskirts mostly are where the holdovers from pre-gentrified Northampton live, and they call it 'Hamp instead of Noho, and will regale you with memories of when Northampton more resembled Chicopee or something back in the 60s to early 80s when it turned the corner from blue-collar to Ph.D-collar, urban retiree-collar, and trust-fund-collar. King Street is north of downtown and is Noho's strip mall of fast food, Stop N Shop, auto dealers, etc, and even a Wal-Mart, before they came to their vegan locavore senses and opened the River Valley Market Co-op at its far northern end. Northampton tends to be the place where post-Umass and other five-college graduates hang out before figuring out what else to do with their lives - those types compete for retail, waiting, and coffee shop jobs, and mostly live east ('hoods along Rt 9 coming west into downtown) and south of the downtown (along and around Rt 10 towards Easthampton), so avoid that area if you don't want to witness a high level of young hipster-y drama, though those areas have convenience factor for the downtown.

Easthampton = Northampton's younger brother, where a dedicated core of people open interesting local shops and venues, and maintain art studios and such in old mill buildings, in the hopes of replicating Northampton's lifestyle but on a tighter budget and with more of those curmudgeonly blue-collar leftover people around to harsh their ultraliberal mellow. Easthampton is quite nice, but some neighborhoods do have a bad vibe man! Worlds colliding!

Greenfield = Northampton and Amherst meet Athol. Cheaper and more removed from immediate college-town vibe - a strange mix of socioeconomic strata converge here. Traditionally a factory town producing tap and die products for tool-making, that went away, but it started to get influenced by the colleges. This is where you might find that meth lab - but, but - you'll also find comfortable Volvo drivers shopping at the local co-op and farmers market, embracing heartfelt but slightly unbearable political folk music performances focused on world peace, and being all condescending about their destitute neighbors' need for a discount store (Wal-Mart has been continuously warded off since 1993, keeping Greenfield's 1950s-era Wilson's Department store successfully undead and fascinating in its zombieness), but their presence and affluence also keeps the place from being totally dominated by the down-n-out, and you'll also get a few amenities from the college towns like good local coffee shops and restaurants, a brewpub, and a downtown movie theater. You just need to not mind the loitering factor of mostly harmless Section 8 people - it's not Springfield, here in Greenfield these folks are pretty much too lazy to mug you. Job prospects are slim around Greenfield, but it's mostly a nice place to live! Good town for young families on a budget as it's quite affordable compared to Northampton and Amherst but you can get to either in under 30 min.

Surrounding rural towns (Whately, Hatfield, Williamsburg, Leverett, Montague, Wendell, Conway, Ashfield, Colrain, Shelburne, Gill, etc, etc) to the area: sublime old New England towns full of forests and farms, swamp yankees and neo-hippieish communes, and even a few wealthy and semi-famous (e.g. Bill Cosby, John Hodgman) living in relative harmony, eating local food, meditating about world peace and personal self-realization on hilltops, and enjoying supreme natural beauty but with relatively quick access to the central towns for entertaining and shopping. Again, slim job prospects without a long commute, and a big caveat that many of these still have dial-up internet!

Also, your question about the water - when I was living there every year the city would send out notices about the public drinking water and it's elevated level of... something probably not good. I can't remember exactly what, but it was disconcerting.

Also also, as you go south past the "Tofu Curtain," aka the Holyoke Range and Mount Tom range of hills, the "Happy Valley" slips away and suddenly you are back in the "real" America of greater Springfield. Read into that assessment whatever you will

[Boston_Burbs]

Worth noting that Hadley has an endowed high school (supported by a charitable trust). Which makes it the best public school in Western, MA (IMO) AND keeps tax rates hovering around $10/k which is much lower than the surrounding towns (half of Amherst)

[VADude]

I appreciate all the replies, particularly yours FCMA. I should have mentioned our motivation: as a retirement area. I am hoping to retire in 2015 and while the prices in NoHo seem high by Northern Virginia standards they are quite affordable, which means we should be able to pocket $100K or so in equity after the real estate deals. Having a lot of students doesn't bother too much, as long as it's not like three months at a time of Spring Break week in Daytona Beach (done that). I'm more inclined to NoHo than Amherst, but finding retirement housing (in another thread) is something of a challenge as we are looking for something reasonably spacious but low maintenance.

I guess what I am hearing is that my sense of the area is vindicated: it will be a good choice for us because we prefer the northern climate, the liberal area, the natural beauty and there are things to do. It's reasonably close to civilization with Boston less than two hours away and not much more to NYC. I understand that Amtrak will be coming to NoHo.

If these are the worst things that the Pioneer Valley can throw at us, it will make a great choice for retirement.

One concern is the air quality. A rating on retirementliving.com gave it a relatively bad air quality. I assume this is due to fumes coming up from NYC. You certainly wouldn't suspect it from its natural beauty. The air seemed clean and healthy to me during our summer visit.

Does anyone have a recommendation for temporary housing? Ideally we'd find just the right house but I'm told it's a good idea to live in a place for a year before deciding on a place to live.

Hadley's strip mall is one of the uglier sides of the area but every area needs at least one. NoHo has one as you head north.

I noticed some areas of NoHo that looked somewhat run down just north of the downtown area. Is this an area to worry about? Does it attract any crime?

Thanks again for your thoughtful replies.

[tovarisch]

Not that you'd care, but calling it "NoHo" (or "Noho") brands you as an outsider, or at least that you've been here less than 20 years. It's still Hamp to a majority, as it is to all natives and those who moved here to fit in.

[VADude]

Thanks. What is the pronunciation of Holyoke?

[Austin023]

Originally Posted by VADude

Thanks. What is the pronunciation of Holyoke?

Local pronunciation is more or less like "HolyOak" as one word, no break from "Holy" and "Oak". I'd say pretty much anywhere in New England it would will be said that way.