Getting to the Heart of Pittsfield

A Q&A WITH MAYOR PETE MARCHETTI

By Anastasia Stanmeyer // Photos By Olivia Douhan

The city hall council chambers were packed. Overflowing, in fact. Family, friends, residents, the press, former mayors and council members, state elected officials—even Governor Maura Healey was on hand. The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Girl Scouts Troop 64912, the invocation by Father John Salatino of St. Mary's Parish in Westfield, and the benediction by Salatino and Rabbi David Weiner of Congregation Knesset Israel in Pittsfield. There was even a special performance by 413 Cheer youth members. It was a real community event—the swearing in of the city clerk, new council members, school board members, and mayor. The naming of each elected official’s loved one in attendance and the drawing of council seats made this occasion even more special. 

After Mayor Pete Marchetti took his oath of office, a few short speeches were made. One was by Healey. “Pittsfield is a special place, and mayor, I want you to know that,” she said. “It's an important part of our state's history and our identity. It's the hub of regional activity and economy. Most importantly, Pittsfield has always struck me as a place where people work really hard, and they care for one another. Times may be challenging, times may be difficult, but it's about resilience. And it's about perseverance. And it's about evolution.”

Marchetti represents that evolution. He began his first public speech in the new post by saying that he might not be known as a trailblazer, “but I am honored to be Pittsfield’s first openly gay mayor.” Marchetti was a council member for 16 years before becoming mayor, and those years weren’t continuous. He served under mayors Sara Hathaway and Jim Ruberto. Marchetti ran for mayor in 2011 and lost by a slim margin to Dan Bianchi, then served as city council president under Mayor Linda Tyer from 2016 to 2022.

His recent mayoral campaign was on a platform of “One Pittsfield.” To ready himself for office, Marchetti met with city department heads as well as individuals from 1Berkshire, Downtown Pittsfield Inc., the city’s TDI (Trnasformative Development Initiative), and other stakeholders. Days before taking office, in the starkly quiet city council chambers, I sat down to talk with Marchetti.

What are the top challenges for Pittsfield?

We have so much need, but not as many resources to meet the need. That's the biggest challenge. We talk about mental health and substance use problems. Do we have the manpower? Do we have the financial resources to do what we need to do? We talk about roadwork that's desperately needed in Pittsfield. Do we have the resources, and do we have the money to do 204 square miles of roads? We are a city that has banked on deferred maintenance. Can we continue to look the other way and use the band-aid approach? Or do we need to spend the time to put the resources into our buildings before it's too late? We have city buildings such as the old Hibbard Elementary School that is being used for storage. There has to be a better place for storage, and can we transform that building into a housing project? In Pittsfield and the Berkshires, we need low-income housing to market-rate housing and everything in-between. We know that we've got a jumpstart on housing with the White Terrace apartments and transitional housing that will be built on West Housatonic, but we're still in desperate need for more.

What else?

There's room for improvement in the school system. When I grew up, the way you define a family is different than defining a family today. The schools are competing with a whole mess of issues. It’s not just about providing education; it's also providing an entire support system for students, such as mental health, substance use disorders, and homelessness.

Do you feel that the city is situated to help with all that?

I think that we need to begin that process. That’s the logic behind the new mental health and substance use disorder task force. What state and federal resources can we bring, along with city resources? What help can we get from the agencies that have been doing the job for years? Also, when we look at the salary of social workers, which is on the low end, and we look at the stress level of being a social worker, how long can one continue before they burn out and decide that there's got to be a better life path for them? How do we address all those issues?

What's Pittsfield's biggest asset?

We are a community that pulls together in time of need. What would be really great is finding a way to tap that so we're always coming together. There are a lot of great ideas from members of the community.

Yes, we know that people come together in times of crises.

I also think we come together on good things. I’ve run the Pittsfield Fourth of July parade for a number of years. In 2019, we were running out of funding. The community rallied behind the city that year, did a short fundraiser, and put the parade back on the block. There are a number of occasions like that.

How would that approach be especially helpful?

It is very helpful when we start to redefine neighborhoods or allow the neighborhoods to redefine themselves. I spent a decade or so working with neighborhood initiatives, primarily in Morningside, and another initiative was underway in West Side. It was an initiative to gather the neighbors together to improve their community. How can we come up with another iteration of the neighborhood initiative so that the government does not tell a neighborhood what they want, but the neighborhood tells government what they want? There's been a lot of conversations about the West Side, there's been a lot of conversations about Morningside, and there were a lot of conversations about downtown. What does downtown look like? Is it a police officer on every street corner? Is it a police officer mirrored with a social worker so they can really tackle problems? How can the community be a part of that process?

Is there any example of coming together from the past?

For years, Pittsfield had an ethnic fair, and that has gone away. How do we bring it back? Talk about the diversity in Pittsfield today—we have a dozen-plus ethnic restaurants in the city right now. How do you pull all that together? How do you create a welcoming space?

What is the mechanism to make that happen?

The city has done surveys in the past. How do you ensure that you get out into the community and hit the neighborhoods you really want to provide input that may not necessarily do that on their own? There are a number of organizations like Habitat for Humanity that can get the information out and get it back. You can do a town hall forum. Asking the community to come together and provide input will be helpful in the big picture. After a couple of them, folks will say, “Hey they really are listening, and look, this is my friend's idea. I was at that meeting when that idea came forward.” When we start to implement some of the ideas, I think people will be like, “Hey, this really can work, and how do I become involved in it?”

What is your vision for downtown Pittsfield?

We first start with changing the design of the bike lane. We talked heavily in the campaign of bike lanes between the sidewalk and the curb. Downtown merchants also are advocating for diagonal parking. There may be some issues from a public safety standpoint that need to be ironed out, but we'll explore the options. As we try to bring more people downtown, we want it to be pedestrian-safe and walkable. We also need to do a better job of advertising the programs that we have for downtown. With grants that are happening between BBEC [Berkshire Black Economic Council] and Downtown Inc., there are seven new businesses or pop-up businesses that are making their way to downtown. Let’s acknowledge where we are in terms of empty storefronts, but let's also acknowledge the fact that we've started to fill some of those. We will increase police presence but, more so, with a social worker. What we hear most about are the panhandlers, and some folks are just congregating downtown. I don't believe that's the job of the police to deal with people with mental health or substance use issues. We need to attach a social worker to address those issues and combine that with a police presence. We’re establishing meetings with all the downtown stakeholders. Let’s get everyone in the room. Let's have a conversation. This is part of the team-building.

What’s your vision?

I would love to, one by one, fill the storefronts. We are well on our way, but from the second floor up, we need more living spaces as we transform the downtown into a livable, workable, and enjoyable place. I would like to see more activities happen in our downtown over the course of the summer. One of them would be to bring back the ethnic fair.

What is the benefit of pop-ups?

They fill a vacancy, and they fill a need. It's the possibility of transitioning a new entrepreneur into a permanent workspace if they get the right assistance. There are some building owners who are doing pop-ups at a reduced cost to give them that opportunity. That also helps with the perception of downtown not being vacant. There's a lot downtown that we need to highlight: The Marketplace, Steven Valenti, good ethnic restaurants, Hotel on North, Dorey & Ginger, Dottie’s, and now Dorothy’s.

What is your long-term vision?

To create some form of downtown pedestrian mall. We know communities like Northampton; Burlington, Vermont; Faneuil Hall in Boston. How can you create that kind of atmosphere in our downtown? If you start on South Street with the Colonial Theatre and take it all the way to Wahconah Park, you've got a lot of places to visit in that area.

What’s holding it up?

One of the things that has been ingrained in my mind from when I sat on the council with Mayor Ruberto is this: A thriving downtown can only take place when the two adjacent neighborhoods are also thriving. We have more work to do in both of those neighborhoods—Morningside and West Side. I was at a meeting the other day, and someone told me there are 5,000 people who are employed downtown. Where are they? They’re working from home. That’s a business decision that the city is not going to be able to influence one way or another. If I could not have to lease space, or if I could sell my building and still get the same product, why wouldn’t I do that? I look back at 2020 with the city closing, the state closing, the nation closing because of Covid, and I said to myself, “How are we going to do city council business? By Zoom? What’s Zoom?” We have to embrace where we are now and fill our downtown vacant buildings with apartments. Pittsfield is a great place to live.

Are there many vacant buildings downtown for apartments?

The old Berkshire Bank building is one. And Allegrone’s is working on another. There are still a handful of buildings in-between. Some will say if you build it, they will come. I think if you build it and create the right atmosphere, they'll come. As we're building out apartments, we also need to be filling the storefronts and making downtown the place to be. The investment with Hot Plate has started that process. You have a place to go. We need to provide Thistle & Mirth a little bit of help to get them back to where they were. Why should it be for me to decide what the next generation wants? Why aren't we calling them and saying, “Hey, let's have a focus group. What do you want to have for nightlife?”

How do you make this a reality?

I think it's a twofold approach. It's being somewhat of a salesperson and knocking on specific doors and saying, “Hey, would you move your business?” There are some opportunities where you have successful business folks with a shop in Great Barrington that might want a second shop. Let's be strategic about what we fill them our storefronts with. What are we missing? What do we want? Then let's go looking for those kinds of businesses.

What is your sales pitch?

If people are coming to the Berkshires from a tourist standpoint, it is our opportunity to build North Street as a des- tination. We have the Colonial Theatre, Barrington Stage, Berkshire Museum, Beacon Cinema—we have the attractions to provide a space for a thriving downtown. If we highlight some of our long-term business owners, we can show the success they are having, and we can do even better with the expansion of other businesses.

Does the presence of the juvenile court on North Street deter new businesses downtown?

We can’t tell a business owner what they can or can’t have in their building. We can ask that this is the environment we want for downtown, though. The other issue is access to transportation. Can people get there if we move it elsewhere? In a perfect world, if can move it to a good location, why wouldn’t we do that?

Has your perspective changed through the years?

I've always felt that Pittsfield has promise. There have been a lot of success stories over the last couple of decades. One of the biggest is how we survived our major industry leaving town and reinvented ourselves. Let's talk about the PEDA [Pittsfield Economic Development Authority] property on East Street and the millions of dollars that are going into Site 9 for redevelopment. It is a completely redeveloped three parcels of land that says, “Hey, Company, A, B or C, we're open for business. Come on in.” We're out recruiting businesses. We've had some success and some development, but there's still a lot of space there. How do we strategically line that up? That'll be part of my focus. We’re finally at that stage where we're going to redevelop the property. It’s going to be completely done by October. We can't wait for it to be done and then say, okay, now we are going to go find businesses. We need to multitask. Here's the design, this is what it’s going to look like, this is what it looks like now. Can we bring you in?

Pittsfield has an added responsibility as the county seat. Is that at the forefront of your mind?

I want to start building the county team. I know Mark Pruhenski from Great Barrington, the town manager. I know the town manager in Richmond, the town administrator in Adams. One of the things that we're missing is a county coalition. Town managers already have their working group. How about giving the two mayors a seat at that table? The other piece is that we say that we're in the Berkshires and we're isolated. The Massachusetts Municipal Association provides a lot of networking for elected officials across the Commonwealth. I went to a training at Holy Cross with nine new mayors and four mayors that had been around. They gave us a lowdown of what to expect. They heavily emphasized getting involved in the Massachusetts Mayors’ Association because there are 51 of us, and we can network and share ideas.

What do you love most about Pittsfield?

Interestingly enough, I grew up as a bowler. I donated a lot of my time to youth bowling organizations in Pittsfield, Berkshire County, and statewide. My down time was about going bowling. I’ve got myself to a place where nature has become a thing for me. I'm not sure if I'm ready to go hike up Mount Greylock, but I could walk through Canoe Meadows and head out to Burbank Park and do some state forest stuff. You’ve got to breathe every once in a while. Most of all, though, it’s the people. No matter where you go, people are always nice.

A new television program, One Pittsfield with Mayor Peter Marchetti, airs the second and fourth Monday at 5:30 p.m. on Pittsfield Community Television CityLink Channel, or on PCTV Select available at pittsfieldtv.org, on Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV devices. A livestream will be available on City Hall–City of Pittsfield Facebook page.