AMHERST — Recognition for their continuing efforts to sustain the local economy and small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic was recently accorded to the leaders of the Amherst Business Improvement District and the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce.
At the Oct. 29 legislative breakfast sponsored by the chamber, state Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst, presented citations to Claudia Pazmany, the chamber’s executive director, and Amherst BID Executive Director Gabrielle Gould, for the innovative work they and their staff members undertook.
“The chamber and the BID executive directors sprang into action to craft a safety net for small business owners and their employees, transforming the Downtown Amherst Foundation into a grant-making organization for small businesses, raising money and helping small business owners access the federal PPP program to protect the paychecks for hundreds of community residents who were employed by them,” Domb said.
Domb noted that Gould and Pazmany also negotiated pauses in rent from small businesses, scheduled vaccine appointments and clinics for restaurant workers, created a virtual tip jar to support service staff in restaurants and purchased hundreds of meals from local restaurants and distributed them to food-insecure families.
The outreach and assistance also brought in about $2.1 million in state small business grants to support 60 small Amherst businesses.
“Their energy, creativity and focus on supporting our small business owners, our local economy, and the workers that help these businesses operate has been relentless and optimistic,” Domb said.
Domb also used the occasion to acknowledge other entities in town, from the Amherst Survival Center and Not Bread Alone soup kitchen to Family Outreach of Amherst and the food pantry at the First Baptist Church Food Pantry.
The Amherst Education Foundation announced that the 27th annual Trivia Bee, held virtually with hosts Domb and Tony Maroulis, vice president of real estate and community development for W.D. Cowls, raised $13,860.
The money will be used to support grants for teachers and other school-related programs. A recording of the competition can be viewed at youtube.com/watch?v=0_eZfo4BCQw/.
The Amherst Community Land Trust will provide a $125,000 subsidy to an income-qualified household to purchase a single-family home in town.
The land trust will own the land under the home and a long-term ground lease will give the homebuyer an exclusive right to use the land, while a permanent affordable housing restriction will limit the future resale price of the home.
Complete applications will be accepted until Nov. 30, with a lottery to be held Dec. 15.
Applications should go to Valley Community Development in Northampton. For more information, call Donna Cabana at 413-586-5855, ext. 180.
Amherst is moving forward with constructing a more formal parking area for the Podick and Katherine Cole conservation areas in North Amherst.
Although a dirt driveway to access a small lot exists across from the intersection of Sunderland Road and the Route 116 bypass, Building Commissioner Rob Morra recently presented plans to the Design Review Board for an improved parking lot.
The idea is to have 13 new parking spaces on a compacted gravel lot that would be set 30 to 40 feet off Route 116, but still screened by vegetation, Morra said. Two handicapped spaces would be reserved, and a kiosk and a bike rack would also be installed.
The lot will be similar to one built at Sweet Alice Conservation Area in South Amherst.
University of Massachusetts chemical engineering researcher Sarah Perry is part of a multi-institutional team awarded a National Science Foundation grant totaling $1.8 million for a project that could improve the stability of future vaccines.
A $649,767 portion of the four-year grant that was awarded to Perry will support her work on the “A Computationally-Driven Predictive Framework for Stabilizing Viral Therapies” project.
Rather than stabilizing vaccines mostly through trial and error, Perry’s team will combine experiments in the lab with a machine learning algorithm to sort through massive amounts of complex data produced to extract the best results.
MONDAY: Town Council, 6:30 p.m.
TUESDAY: Community Resources Committee, 2 p.m.
WEDNESDAY: Community Preservation Act Committee, 6 p.m.