Editor's Note:
Part One of this series was the story of how a 37-acre parcel of land in Leeds came into the possession of the Beaver Brook Nominee Trust, headquartered at the offices of Patrick Melnik, a Northampton attorney and developer. Originally owned by Fred Whitburn, a retired supply clerk at Westover, the land was sold to Beaver Brook by home health aide, Richard LaRose, acting as executor of the Whitburn estate. The trustees of Beaver Brook are Melnik's brother-in-law, John Hanley of New York City and Alice Melnik, Patrick's wife. Hanley is chairman emeritus of Scientific American. To see the documents listed in bold italic, click on them. Look at the bottom of the page for "buttons" to click on to continue in the document or return to the text.

In the late fall of l998, a pre-development map of the wetlands on Fred Whitburn's acreage accidentally blew into a neighbor's back yard. It triggered alarm throughout the close-knit Leeds community. The first thing a developer does is to lay out where the wetlands are for his engineers and the local conservation commission. It was a clear signal that the new owners of Fred Whitburn's land planned to develop their acreage.

Selective logging by Karl Davies, Atty. Patrick Melnik's partner in a Chesterfield real estate development, began in January of l999. And maybe it was the logging and its scars that raised the temperature right away. Twenty five people showed up for the first neighborhood meeting in December, and many of them showed up at the next meeting of the Conservation Commission, where they asked that the logging be postponed. At one point a letter signed by neighbors found its way to Melnik's desk. George Kohout of Evergreen Road remembers how incensed Melnik was. He was angry that people were addressing their concerns to him, rather than to John Hanley, his brother-in-law.

"What are you doing dragging me and my wife into this business?", he told Kohout. "This is not our development. We've got nothing to do with it."

The Killam Associates of Hadley were hired to prepare plans and do the engineering. Four options were laid out. The smallest development was a 17-unit flag lot subdivision, the largest was a 36-unit subdivision. Hanley favored a 27-unit subdivision off a single cul-de-sac. As part of his development proposal, he agreed to donate 10 acres of land to the city for conservation purposes. This long narrow parcel paralleled the Beaver Brook and abutted on its western end a 3.9 acre plot of land claimed by the city's conservation commission. The two pieces would form a green belt linking Route 9 and recreational land along the Mill River.

Often city-owned parcels are small, wet or otherwise unmarketable, but this nearly four acre plot is a valuable piece of land. Its western edge is the old railbed that is now a hiking trail, and its northwest corner is the beautiful stone viaduct that spans Beaver Brook and looks over the Mill River. The land slopes up to a bluff overlooking the river and has buildable sites on the high ground. Earlier, in November of l998, on the recommendation of the Conservation Commission, the City Council voted to acquire the parcel, then of unknown ownership, by eminent domain, and appropriated $2,900 as a damages payment for the landtaking. On Dec. 9, l998, the city filed its notice of taking with the Registry of Deeds, acting to "preserve critical views along the rail trail." more>>>