FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                  

Contact:  Dave Traggorth
Mitchell Properties
617-542-6500

Interior Renderings Released for Cable Mills
Images provide detailed view of residence interiors when completed

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA (July 28, 2009) — Mitchell Properties, LLC, developer of the Cable Mills project and Harsch Associates, exclusive marketing representatives in Williamstown, announced the release of the interior renderings of Residence 302 at Cable Mills. The images provide scaled, three-dimensional views of the kitchen and of the living/dining rooms of Residence 302 and are a preview into what will be built inside these historic mill buildings along Water Street.

“People have loved the exterior rendering we have; showing the building’s relationship to the river, the landscaping, and how meticulously the masonry will be restored, so we wanted to give a glimpse into the equally impressive interiors that are planned,” said Dave Traggorth, project manager for Cable Mills who announced the release via Twitter, the project website www.cablemills.com, and the Harsch website www.harschrealestate.com.

Jim Alexander, principal of Finegold Alexander + Associates, and architect for Cable Mills along with notable area projects such as the Mohawk Theater in North Adams was pleased with the resulting images that are based on his design. “It can be difficult at this stage in the process for some buyers to imagine how historic mill buildings with 14-16’ ceilings, exposed brick and beam, and oversized windows create wonderful living spaces, but these images show how years of experience with these types of buildings and hundreds of hours of design time can yield exceptionally comfortable, beautiful living spaces that people could call ‘home’ and will enjoy for years to come.” 

Tom Greenwood, of Sofield Studios in New York and Berkshire native from New Ashford, was commissioned by Mitchell Properties to complete the images in a collaborative process that took several weeks. “Each component of these images – from the stainless steel appliances and granite countertops in the kitchen to the exposed brick walls and oversized windows in the living and dining rooms was based on the actual construction drawings and specifications developed by FA+A and Mitchell Properties.” Tom went on to explain that in order to make the image as realistic as possible the he obtained photographs taken by Paul Harsch of the brickwork in the actual space that will become Residence 302, and used the images as the basis for the exposed brick in the rendering. 

Residence 302 is one of 30 residences currently available for purchase at Cable Mills. Residences start in the $250’s and Residence 302 with 2 bedrooms and 2 bath is offered by Harsch Associates for $449,900. Kevin White, Director of Sales for Cable Mills said that “while each residence is unique, every one has similarly large windows, tall ceilings, and quality finishes, allowing people to imagine how their particular residence will look when completed even if it is not Residence 302.”

Mitchell Properties has commissioned several additional images from Sofield Studios. “Natural light, exposed brick, oversized windows, and tall ceilings are the perfect canvas for any style — be it contemporary or more traditional, so we look forward to showing some of the different options in these magnificent spaces.” said Paul Harsch of Harsch Associates. 

Traggorth said that the team has been busy and responding to over 400 inquiries from people living in the Berkshires and across the country, providing tours of the building, and preparing for the start of construction. “We’re excited to now have the complete picture – between the tours, exterior renderings, and interior renderings, our efforts have been focused on showing how Cable Mills will become a fantastic place to live.” But more than anything he said, “we look forward to making it all a reality.” He noted that initial masonry restoration and stabilization work is scheduled to begin within weeks. 

###

About Cable Mills
The Cable Mills project is the renovation and rehabilitation of the former General Cable Industries facility by Mitchell Properties LLC into a community of luxury condominiums and townhouses along the Green River on Water Street in downtown Williamstown. Occupancy of the first phase of units is planned for the Fall of 2010. For more information visit the project’s website www.cablemills.com  

About Mitchell Properties
Mitchell Properties is a Boston based real estate development company owned by Bart Mitchell, who graduated from Williams with the Class of 1980. After successfully completing numerous Boston residential projects, Mitchell Properties has developed an expertise in residential and mixed-use projects, including new construction and adaptive reuse of historic structures.  Mitchell Properties has gained a reputation for creating highly successful residential communities with an emphasis on unique design, quality construction, green living, beautiful landscaping, stylish interior finishes, and exceptional management.

About Harsch Associates
Harsch Associates, established in 1979, has been involved in a wide variety of projects within the county including land, commercial and residential sales and development. Paul Harsch, himself a 1969 graduate of Williams College and president of the firm has 34 years of real estate experience and Kevin White, the head of the marketing team for Cable Mills, has specialized in his career in sales of new condominium and town home developments, the most recent of which was an exclusive 6,000 acre golf course community in Colorado. For more information visit www.harschrealestate.com

About Finegold Alexander + Associates
Established in 1961, Boston-based architectural firm, Finegold Alexander + Associates provides clients with creative and innovative solutions to contemporary design opportunities.  The firm maintains high standards for design, construction and environmental sustainability. In its relationships with clients, consultants and its employee-community, the firm creates an environment which supports the belief that architecture can elevate the human spirit. For more information visit http://www.faainc.com/

Harsch Associates has been drawing visitors by the hundreds and thousands to its latest feature, live video tours of homes in the Berkshires, Williamstown, North Adams, Vermont towns, Hancock, Lanesboro, and soon in New York. The videos show homes as well as Berkshire land offerings. Ironwood features a home with indoor riding ring and magnificent stables, Sweet Farm features 12 lots in an 18 lot subdivision and Candlewood Dr. is a typical Williamstown neighborhood Cape style home at an affordable price. There is the Victorian Lady in North Adams, home of MassMoca and soon Harsch will feature a live video in the production phase, of Cable Mills Condominiums, with 30 units now being offered in preconstruction marketing.

The Harsch Associates website has been earning accolades and outstanding visitor traffic since it first was created 11 ½ years ago. It is now in its third generation and growing being one of the first and among the few and only sites to be able to offer every single listing in the Berkshires as well as neighboring Vermont MLS. The agency also serves neighboring NY state.

The Harsch Associates web site attracts thousands of visitors a month. A recently completed indendent research firm had this to say about the Harsch site:

A website grade of 89/100 for harschrealestate.com means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 89% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

The website harschrealestate.com ranks 132,785 of the 1,165,767 websites that have been ranked so far.

 The Harsch website ranked 89 while its closest competitors’ sites ranked 42 and 32 respectively. “We are totally dedicated to a constant upgrade and enhancement of all of our marketing strategies from print media to the internet in order to give our clients the very latest and greatest advantages in reaching the buying and selling market today. Catching the attention of more buyers and sellers of real estate is the edge we offer. From day one of my career some 35 years ago this September, I have sought to do a number of things better than anyone else in my market and among those has been pursuing my education and skills in real estate and another has been to be the top marketer which today means being on top of the net and the tools available to us there. It is very gratifying to see the facts prove this out. Having a site that is twice as effective as our next closest competitor makes me feel very reassured we are on top of our game and yet we are constantly striving to improve our site, day in and day out.

There are plenty of other ways in which we are considered leaders in our field. One of those is by offering our clients a real set of choices in the forms of representation, from buyer and seller agency to the newest option in MA for which I myself helped create the legislation that was adopted just a few years ago, Facilitation also called Transaction Brokerage.

I pledge to always strive to stay at the forefront of the changes and advancements and enhancements in the real estate profession. That is my nature and that is what our most discerning clients expect and the rest benefit from.

Paul Harsch

UTUBE Comment posted on July 24th!
Comment on your video: CANDLEWOOD 0001

Beautiful video!!!

MASSACHUSETTS

The leaf peepers have it all wrong. It’s in the full bloom of summer that western Massachusetts really shines.

By Susan Spano
Reporting from Williamstown, Mass.
July 10, 2009

In the cold, dark, dead of winter, when my thoughts turn to summer, I think of it in New England. I think of still nights with plenty of stars and the conversation of cicadas, the Boston Pops at Tanglewood, swimming in a lake, Friendly’s ice cream and sweet corn on the cob.

Much has been made of New England’s colorful falls, but my cup is filled by its deep green summers.

I carry memories of them from when I worked at a summer stock theater in western Massachusetts in my college years. The theater where I learned my lines has closed. But the rounded old mountains are still here, so last month I returned to the Berkshires to spend a few summer days in Williamstown.

This was my first visit to Williamstown, a bit off the beaten track compared with other Berkshire towns, such as Lenox and Stockbridge. Williamstown is 40 miles from the nearest superhighway, reached along winding country roads dotted with classic New England barns and covered bridges. But it took me less than three hours to drive here from Boston to Springfield on Interstate 90 and then north toward Vermont on Interstate 91.

Right away I could tell I was in Massachusetts because everyone sounded like Tom and Ray Magliozzi, of National Public Radio’s “Car Talk.”

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has many idiosyncrasies: You buy beer in a package store. If you want a milkshake, you order a frappé, and in the western part of the state, at least, submarine sandwiches are grinders.

At Greenfield, I turned onto Massachusetts 2, the old Mohawk Trail, blazed by Native Americans and used by Colonial-era pioneers. It roughly follows the Deerfield River northwest past placid New England hamlets — Shelburne Falls, home of the Yale lock, and Charlemont with its Big Indian souvenir shop, a relic of the 1930s.

Soon the road started to climb into the mountains, cresting at 2,240-foot Whitcomb Summit and rounding a hairpin curve where the view opens over the town of North Adams.

Beyond it, Williamstown lies in the hills underneath Mt. Greylock, the highest peak in Massachusetts. I’m told that on a clear day you can see New York’s Hudson River Valley from its 3,491-foot summit.

Henry David Thoreau liked to sit up here, looking over the roofs of Williamstown and its ivy-clad college, founded by New England Congregationalists in 1791. “It would be no small advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain,” he wrote.

Ephraim Williams, a colonel in the Massachusetts militia, gave his name to the town, college and students who call themselves Ephs. He died in 1755, leaving his fortune to start a free school in a western Massachusetts community that would change its name to Williams. West Hoosac stepped forward and got the school, now known as Williams College.

As soon as I arrived, I checked into the Orchards Hotel on the eastern side of town where I got a room the size of a suite for $140. There are less expensive lodging options too, including mom-and-pop motels that keep shipshape for alumni and parents.

Then I took a look around, which didn’t take long. Williamstown has one stoplight on Main Street, a public library, a white-steepled Congregational church and a Civil War monument. The business district on Spring Street boasts a pharmacy, deli, bank, post office and movie theater. Its Starbucks is Tunnel City Coffee.

Down the street I found the campus store selling, among other things, T-shirts that reflect the longtime rivalry between Williams and Amherst in nearby Pioneer Valley. One shirt said, “Friends don’t let friends go to Amherst College.”

Together with Wesleyan in Connecticut, Williams and Amherst are part of the Little Three sports conference founded in the 1920s, their answer to the Harvard-Princeton-Yale Big Three. The root of the Williams-Amherst rivalry dates to 1821, when a group of faculty and students abandoned Williams to start Amherst, which left the little college in the mountains on the brink of closing.

It managed to survive quite handily, I discovered while reading brochures in the Bascom Hall admissions office a few blocks west of Spring Street. Williams now has 2,000 undergraduates (a quarter of the population) and a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 7. It costs about $50,000 a year, including room and board, but half the students receive financial aid. Williams’ endowment is said to be valued at $1.9 billion, among the largest in the U.S.

Campus tours weren’t offered when I was there the week between finals and graduation. So I set out to see the college on my own, though it had turned into a rainy afternoon, with black clouds casting shadows on freshly mown campus lawns.

At a crosswalk on Main Street, which bisects the campus, I saw a group of pink-cheeked students heading into the mountains, carrying backpacks and sleeping bags.

Many Ephs are outdoors enthusiasts, seizing opportunities to hike, bike, ski and kayak. The Williams Outing Club was one of the first alpine organizations of its kind in America, founded in 1863.

Main Street is lined by some of the oldest and handsomest buildings on campus, including the president’s house, Gothic Revival Thompson Memorial Chapel, cupolaed Griffin Hall and Hopkins Observatory with its 19th century telescope.

Others are fine examples of contemporary architecture, especially the ‘62 Center, opened in 2005 and named for the Williams College class of its chief donor, investment banker and Coca-Cola Co. director Herbert A. Allen. It houses the theater and dance departments, but come July and August, the Williamstown Theatre Festival takes occupancy.

You’ll find summer stock theaters all over New England, part of what’s known as the Straw Hat Circuit. But the one founded in Williamstown in 1955 is on a different level, a Tony Award winner in 2002 for the consistent quality and ambitiousness of its productions. It gives the town a cosmopolitan air, attracting some of the country’s most accomplished directors, designers, playwrights and actors. On a summer afternoon visitors might see Joanne Woodward, Kate Burton or Blythe Danner and her daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow.

I visited Williamstown before the summer theater season opened but wandered around the smashing, window-lined ‘62 Center, designed to incorporate the old Adams Memorial Theater, first home to the theater festival.

The Williams College Museum of Art is in a contemporary building nearby, unmistakable because of the bizarre bronze eyes (big enough to sit on) by contemporary French artist Louise Bourgeois. Even if there were no Clark Art Institute, the college museum, one of the best in the country, would still attract art lovers to Williamstown. It is said to contain the world’s largest collection of paintings by Charles and Maurice Prendergast, one of four extant copies of the official 1789 printing of the Bill of Rights and iconic masterpieces that include Marc Chagall’s “Flying Cow” (1912), Frederic Remington’s “Bronco Buster” (1895) and Andy Warhol’s “Jackie” series (1964).

The rest of the campus — residence halls, vast sports fields and reedy Eph’s Pond — spills north toward the Hoosac River, which merges with the Green in Williamstown. The two fast mountain streams attracted paper and textile mills in the 19th century, along with workers from Italy and Poland.

The mills lie derelict, big, brick, broken-windowed behemoths. One of them on Water Street is being turned into condominiums, according to a sign. Given the soft economy, the conversion’s prospects would seem doubtful, except that another old mill complex in neighboring North Adams recently returned to vibrant life as Mass MoCA, New England’s premier museum of contemporary art.

The big houses I saw around town, set behind gates way back from the street, were built by rich city people, including Cole Porter, who spent most of the year at his New York City apartment in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. But one summer in the 1940s he wrote “Kiss Me, Kate” in Williamstown.

Eventually, I returned downtown for the early showing of “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29″ at Images Cinema. The documentary tells the story of the legendary 1968 Yale-Harvard football game, with Tommy Lee Jones playing for underdog Harvard and Brian Dowling quarterbacking for undefeated Yale. In the last 42 seconds of play, Harvard rallied from a 29-13 deficit.

Afterward I dined on English pea risotto and a steak at Mezze. The stylish bistro’s menu features locally produced ingredients, among them Cricket Creek Farm cheddar and Mighty Food Farm spinach. This is an obsession at restaurants all over town, reflecting the rise of small, artisanal farms in western Massachusetts run by a new breed of New England farmer. They send tender, organic asparagus, wild strawberries and baby lamb to area markets.

It was still drizzling the next morning, so I went to the Clark Art Institute, set at the base of a hill about half a mile south of town. It opened in 1955 as a showcase for the collection of paintings amassed in the early 20th century by Singer Sewing Machine Co. heir Robert Sterling Clark and his wife, Francine. It was a good way to spend a rainy day.

The Clarks had an eye to go along with their deep pockets. Almost every item in the museum is a stunner: Frederic Remington’s “Friend or Foe,” known as “The Scout” (1902-1905); Winslow Homer’s moody “Sleigh Ride” (1890-1895), Jean-Leon Gerome’s “The Slave Market” (1867) and “Nadar Elevates Photography to the Level of Art” (1862), a delightful cartoon by Henri Daumier showing the French photographer taking pictures from a hot air balloon.

I saved the best for last — the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist galleries, with paintings by Renoir, Monet and Pissarro in such profusion that you’d think you were at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

When the rain stopped late that afternoon I drove to the summit of Mt. Greylock and sat for a spell on Stony Ledge, Thoreau’s old perch, trying to figure out why I love the Berkshires.

None of them would take your breath away, not even Mt. Greylock. But there is something about them that goes beyond fall foliage and hiking trails, that speaks of a younger, fresher North American continent. Maybe it’s because they were the first range of peaks encountered by pioneers heading west, before anyone knew about the Grand Canyon or the Yosemite Valley.

Or maybe it’s the way they catch and hold the dying light of a summer day, like gold coins in a green pocket.

susan.spano@latimes.com