About NMH Northfield

Northfield to make list of NMH priorities

August 3, 2006
By JANET BOND, The Recorder

NORTHFIELD — The selectmen have set the day after Labor Day as their day to labor over a list of what the town might like to get from the former Northfield Seminary for Girls.

Presented with a letter from the town’s new Open Space Committee that supported one proposal that might be brought to Northfield Mount Hermon School’s Board of Trustees, the selectmen were galvanized into action this week.

They decided Tuesday to canvas other town boards and to develop a list of priorities with which to approach NMH.

The town has been looking at the private preparatory school’s holdings in Northfield since NMH decided to consolidate to one campus, the Mount Hermon campus in Gill, two years ago.

The town’s seniors are interested in land on which they can have a modern senior center and the police would like a police department, for example.

NMH has basically told the town to make a wish list and asked that the town understand that the school’s first priority was to find a use for the Northfield campus.

The town’s NMH Transition Committee has thrown its support behind asking the school for a parcel called the Mill Brook Conservation Area, a 117-acre parcel that has cultural and environmental meaning to Northfield.

In a letter to the selectmen, the Open Space Committee recommended “that the Transition Team pursue and move forward with negotiations with Northfield Mount Hermon.”

That letter reminded selectmen to their responsibility to negotiate for the town and to the need for a list of priorities with which to begin those negotiations.

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