Massachusetts
It Was a Three-Bedroom Colonial. Now, This Rural Massachusetts Property Feels Like ‘Disneyland.’
As a child, Michael “Mick” Kittredge III lived in what he remembers as a conventional home in western Central Massachusetts: a three-bedroom Colonial that his dad and mom purchased for $144,000 in 1984.
However by the point he was 10, Mr. Kittredge mentioned his father—Michael J. Kittredge II, the founding father of Yankee Candle Co., who died in 2019—had transformed the inconspicuous property right into a veritable Magic Kingdom within the small rural city of Leverett, inhabitants below 2,000. Within the span of a number of years, the elder Mr. Kittredge had scooped up sufficient neighboring properties to create an property of greater than 100 acres, some spilling over the border into Amherst. Immediately, the property options, amongst different outsized facilities, a water park, an arcade, tennis courts, a live performance corridor and locations for friends to remain.
“It was like having Disneyland within the yard,” mentioned Mick Kittredge, now 32, who co-founded Kringle Candle Co. along with his father in 2009. “Once I was younger, it was just about only a common home.”
Kittredge Household (3)
Now, an almost 60-acre portion of the property is coming onto the marketplace for $23 million, mentioned itemizing agent Johnny Hatem Jr. of
Douglas Elliman.
The gated property has a roughly 25,000-square-foot primary home, two 4,000-square-foot guesthouses, two automotive barns, a clubhouse, an out of doors pool and a pool cabana with a full kitchen and bar. The arcade and water park are inside a separate 55,000-square-foot, two-story constructing, Mr. Hatem mentioned.
A roughly 10-acre parcel with an 8,500-square-foot house and a guesthouse is listed individually for $3.99 million. An extra parcel, with an apple orchard, can be being offered individually. “This place is simply too huge for one,” mentioned Mr. Kittredge.
On a current August afternoon, Mick Kittredge navigated an Indian bike across the property’s winding paths and gardens, which join the principle home to the outbuildings.
The late Mr. Kittredge based Yankee Candle as a teen within the Nineteen Sixties after making his mom a candle out of melted crayons as a result of he was too poor to purchase her a present. He parlayed the pastime right into a enterprise and offered 90% of Yankee Candle in 1998 for about $500 million.
By then, the property was properly below manner.
Situated about 90 miles from Boston, Leverett is a middle-class city identified for its proximity to Amherst and close by schools, together with Smith School and Mount Holyoke School in addition to Deerfield Academy. The median listing worth for a single-family house was $650,000 in July 2022, in line with Realtor.com. (
Information Corp,
proprietor of The Wall Avenue Journal, additionally operates Realtor.com below license from the Nationwide Affiliation of Realtors.)
Mick Kittredge mentioned the situation was a pure alternative for his dad, who grew up about 15 miles away in South Hadley. Leverett can be about 12 miles from Yankee Candle’s primary manufacturing facility and unique retail retailer in South Deerfield.
After buying the unique house on 1.84 acres, Mr. Kittredge snapped up adjoining land because it grew to become out there, information present. Mick Kittredge estimated his father invested $50 million in each the land acquisitions and the a number of renovations through the years.
The property has a Bellagio-inspired indoor water park with slides, waterfalls and palm bushes.
Surette Media Group
A 55,000-square-foot constructing homes all types of leisure, together with a two-story arcade.
Surette Media Group
The indoor tennis court docket doubles as a flex area with a 4,000-square-foot stage, an oak bar and a hearth.
Surette Media Group
The property has a three-lane bowling alley.
Surette Media Group
An indoor basketball court docket.
Surette Media Group
A clubhouse on the property opens to a pool.
Surette Media Group
“It was like a endless building website,” he mentioned, including that his father didn’t have a grasp plan however designed the property for entertaining and pleasure. “He was a dreamer and visionary, and constructed it alongside the best way.”
The renovated primary residence, accomplished in 2010, has six bedrooms, 11 fireplaces and a three-story nice room. There’s a large kitchen with 5 islands for meals prep and 7 sinks, in addition to a separate industrial kitchen on a decrease degree. There are additionally 4 eating rooms, a 10-seat theater and two wine cellars.
The outbuildings mirror the late Mr. Kittredge’s ardour for vehicles, tennis and music. He constructed two automotive barns that may maintain a mixed 80 automobiles. One additionally has a mechanic’s bay with a carry and area for laundry and detailing, in addition to a pool desk and bar. The property has 4 tennis courts—two clay courts, an articifial-grass court docket and an indoor court docket. The late Mr. Kittredge, who performed guitar, drums and piano, additionally had a big guitar assortment and constructed a recording studio in his primary house.
Within the late Nineteen Nineties, he commissioned what he referred to as a spa constructing: a 55,000-square-foot construction centered round numerous actions. It has a 4,000-square-foot health club and therapeutic massage remedy rooms, a three-lane bowling alley, the indoor tennis court docket, an arcade, a billiard room and the indoor water park.
The constructing’s massive flex area might be transformed right into a live performance corridor with a 4,000-square-foot stage and a 25-foot oak bar. “The dance flooring goes out, the tables go down and the lights go up,” Mick Kittredge mentioned. “It’s a wild transformation.”
Mick Kittredge mentioned his father gave the builder 12 months to finish the venture in order that it could be finished in time for his third wedding ceremony, which befell on the property in 1999. (Mr. Kittredge’s three marriages resulted in divorce.)
Mick Kittredge mentioned his dad had a aptitude for theatrics, and fortunately indulged his son’s pursuits on holidays and birthdays. He had a Santa—typically a Yankee Candle retailer worker—fake to slip down the chimney at Christmastime, and when Mick Kittredge was going by means of a Batman section, his father constructed him an underground batcave. “He simply tried arduous to maintain that childhood marvel alive for me,” he mentioned.
For a celebration, the elder Mr. Kittredge had a household pal costume up as Batman and carry out choreographed struggle scenes. Batman confirmed up in a batmobile that Mr. Kittredge owned that had been utilized in one of many Warner Bros. films, Mr. Kittredge recalled. “I assumed Batman was as actual as Santa was to another child,” he mentioned.
Christmas dinners repeatedly included 400 friends, he added, and there have been quite a few fundraisers, galas and live-music performances by the Doobie Brothers, KC and the Sunshine Band and others.
The property was at all times busy, however his father designed for his household a non-public area in the principle home with a main bed room, sitting space, kitchenette and two further bedrooms. It was a retreat Mr. Kittredge mentioned his father shared along with his third spouse and their two daughters.
“My dad constructed this place for his household, as a result of he was very poor rising up,” he added. “He actually wished to have the ability to give his youngsters and his household a life-style he by no means dreamed of getting.”
Surette Media Group (3)
He mentioned his father saved including and renovating till 2012, when he suffered a stroke that impaired his speech and mobility.
Just a few years in the past, Mr. Kittredge mentioned, his father offered off a parcel the place he had a small farm, and grew his personal greens and raised pigs, chickens and cows.
Mr. Hatem mentioned the worth of the principle property in the marketplace displays its location in a distant a part of the state. He mentioned he might see the property interesting to a automotive fanatic or enterprise govt, and even used for company retreats. “It’s an property for internet hosting,” he mentioned.
Write to E.B. Solomont at eb.solomont@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Firm, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Massachusetts
Slow zone warning: Massachusetts’ job market is stuck in low gear – The Boston Globe
This column is from Trendlines, my business newsletter that covers the forces shaping the economy in Boston and beyond. If you’d like to receive it via email on Mondays and Thursdays, sign up here.
When it comes to producing new jobs, Massachusetts is putt-putt-putting along in the slow lane. We’re doing 40 miles per hour on the Pike with the hazards flashing as other states blow past.
The state’s job market is decelerating, underscoring a concern shared by many in the business community that myriad factors are eroding the state’s competitive edge. It’s not just the new millionaires tax — though there’s plenty of griping about that — but also issues that dishearten low- and middle-income residents: sky-high housing costs, unaffordable child care, and long commutes, to name a few.
The news: Massachusetts employers expanded payrolls by 27,100 jobs, an uptick of 0.7 percent, from November 2023 to November 2024, according to US Department of Labor data released on Friday. The total includes a paltry 800 jobs added last month, but at least that broke a four-month string of losses.
- In New England, only Connecticut saw a slower hiring rate (0.6 percent) over the past 12 months. In New Hampshire, jobs increased by 2.1 percent, while Rhode Island posted a 1.7 percent gain.
- Hiring rates in states that are considered key competitors outpaced Massachusetts. New York, North Carolina, and Florida were each up 1.7 percent, while Texas was up 2 percent.
A telling stat: Our state has roughly the same number of jobs as it did in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Nationally, payrolls have risen 4.6 percent.
Why it matters: Massachusetts, a graying state with high business costs and a modestly growing population, has trailed the nation’s job creation rate for much of this century.
The labor market is cooling across the country. But the expansion of remote work since the pandemic, an ever-rising cost of living, and the widening appeal of the Sun Belt states threaten to put Massachusetts even farther behind.
Meanwhile, unemployment is rising, hitting 4 percent in Massachusetts last month, the highest in three years. Massachusetts is just 0.1 percentage point below the national rate, down from a gap of 1 percentage point in May.
The big picture: The state’s economy is solid, but cracks in the foundation are becoming more visible.
- Hiring in the past year was narrowly concentrated, with two-thirds of new jobs coming from health care and more than a quarter from government.
- The leisure and hospitality sector added 5,700 jobs. But gains in hotels and restaurants were muted by the disappearance of 4,000 jobs (4.6 percent) in arts, entertainment, and recreation.
- The information sector — which includes software and Web developers, telecom engineers, and cybersecurity specialists — shed 4,100 jobs, or 4.3 percent of its total.
- Education lost 1,600 jobs, a small hit (less than 1 percent) that nonetheless doesn’t bode well for an important sector that includes beleaguered private colleges and universities.
What’s ahead: The new year may prove pivotal for the economy.
President-elect Donald Trump is seeking to pump up growth with tax cuts and deregulation.
But the Federal Reserve is treading carefully with additional interest rate cuts, worried that Trump’s agenda, which also includes steep tariffs and sharp restrictions on immigration, might fan inflation.
Whether the job market stabilizes or continues to deteriorate hinges in part on how adeptly the Fed can push inflation lower without throttling the economy.
Final thought: In Massachusetts, the hiring slowdown has coincided with a spike in the number of people entering the labor force, largely due to international immigration, both legal and illegal.
Some 73,000 residents landed work in the past year, the Labor Department data show. But the ranks of the unemployed rose by more than 29,000 to more than 153,000 — a combination of workers who were laid off, quit, or are new job-seekers.
There’s not much Governor Maura Healey and the Legislature can do about inflation and interest rates. But they can hit the gas when it comes to making Massachusetts a more attractive place to create jobs.
Larry Edelman can be reached at larry.edelman@globe.com.
Massachusetts
Maura Healey says Massachusetts is ‘not a sanctuary state,’ shelter costs will decrease
Gov. Maura Healey pledged that the cost of running emergency shelters housing migrants and locals would decrease from its historic levels and pushed back on conservatives who have labeled Massachusetts a “sanctuary state” harboring illegal immigrants.
In an end-of-year interview with the Herald ahead of her third year in office, Healey cast blame on the federal government for immigration issues in the Bay State, but said the expected $1 billion tab taxpayers are set to carry in each of the next several years will eventually deflate.
“It’s going to go down,” she said from inside the State House. “This is not a permanent situation, and it certainly is not sustainable, which is why I felt comfortable making the policy decisions that I have made to ratchet down the numbers.”
Only migrants who are legally allowed or paroled into the United States can access the emergency shelter system, which Healey has placed a set of increasingly restrictive changes on ever since she declared a state of emergency in August 2023 amid an influx of migrants.
The restrictions, including a 7,500 family cap on the system and limiting length of stays, appear to have had some effect. State officials reported spending less on state-run shelters in fiscal year 2024 than originally anticipated — $856 million rather than $932 million.
The cost is still above the $325 million the state has historically spent on emergency assistance shelters, which were set up under a 1980s law to house homeless families with children and pregnant women.
Arriving migrants and the money spent to take care of them have become a flashpoint on Beacon Hill, where Republicans routinely tried this year to implement residency requirements on shelters and cut back spending.
Top budget writers working for Healey are expected to ask the Legislature to approve another round of spending early in the new year to cover shelters for the remainder of fiscal year 2025. Without another injection of cash, money is expected to dry up in January, officials have said.
Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican, said even though new arrivals “forced” Healey to cut shelter costs and reduce the number of families relying on state aid, that has not stopped her from asking for more dollars to fund the system.
“The cost is overwhelming,” he told the Herald in an interview this past month. “In my opinion, what cost containment looks like is reforming the amount of time that people from out of state coming into the state can stay. You want to say 30 or 60 days? Okay, that’s a good reform.”
Healey said the measures she has taken are working — though they have faced harsh criticism from some advocates — and are buoyed by the fact that 65% of families who have recently sought shelter from the state are from Massachusetts.
“We’re not a sanctuary state,” Healey said. “We have a limited budget, and the emergency shelter system really was meant for Massachusetts families who were experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity and needed a place to go that was temporary.
“We’re trying to get to that place where emergency shelter is temporary and that it’s really there just for a limited purpose for a family,” the governor added.
But even as Healey touts her changes to state-run shelters, she has started to face a wave of conservative criticism for running what Republicans say is a “sanctuary state” just as President-elect Donald Trump has promised to undertake mass deportations when he takes office next year.
The term “sanctuary state” generally refers to a state or municipality’s willingness to offer more protection to undocumented immigrants.
But just because a city or town in Massachusetts considers itself a “sanctuary” does not mean there is no federal immigration enforcement, said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of Boston University’s Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic.
“There are gaps between some of the statewide laws and city policies that remain vulnerable and will still feed non-citizens into ICE custody,” Stokes told the Herald.
In Massachusetts, many point to a 2017 ruling from the Supreme Judicial Court that bars state and local police from detaining a person solely on the basis of their immigration status, a decision that has since been used to prohibit interactions with federal immigration officials.
Healey said she believes “violent criminals should be deported if they’re not here lawfully” and that local, state, and federal law enforcement should work together to investigate and prosecute crimes and remove people from the country who are criminals.
But the first-term Democrat said she does not back “showing up at a hotel, and rounding up groups of people who are suspected to be here unlawfully, who are here working, and just deporting all of them without a process.”
Healey said, “I think what we need to do is work together here in Massachusetts to do both things: investigate, hold accountable, deport as necessary folks who are here unlawfully, who’ve engaged in criminal activity, absolutely, and also stand up for and protect the people who have been working here, going to school here, raising kids here, to ensure that they are not scared to go to the doctors or drop their kids off or school or go to work.”
Massachusetts
Why Mass. state universities are getting $14M to increase graduation rates
When the state started directing SUCCESS funding to community colleges, it contributed to a 10% increase in student retention between 2022 and 2023.
Now, the hope is to see similar results at state universities by utilizing the same pot of money.
The Healey administration announced last week it will extend SUCCESS funding for the first time to the state’s nine universities — to the tune of $14 million.
The money, coming from the fiscal year 2025 budget, will support programming aimed at increasing graduation rates, particularly among historically underserved students.
According to the Department of Higher Education’s most recent data, more than 30% of state university students don’t earn a degree within six years of enrolling. For Black and Latino students, the number is more than 40%.
- Read more: Number of Black students at Harvard Law drops by over half after SCOTUS ruling
“We’ve made progress in making it more affordable for students to enroll in college, and this program will now lift barriers that arise on the way to graduation, especially for first-generation college students who cannot draw on a parent’s experience to navigate earning a degree,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.
In a similar effort, the UMass system recently announced it will offer free tuition and fee support for in-state undergraduates whose families earn $75,000 or less.
The SUCCESS expansion does not include the five UMass campuses.
The SUCCESS Fund (which stands for Supporting Urgent Community College Equity through Student Services) was created in fiscal year 2021 specifically for the state’s 15 community colleges.
The SUCCESS grants for state universities will further the initiative, enabling campuses to create new services to support vulnerable or historically underserved students, “including students of color, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, and students who are low-income or first-generation to college.”
Dr. Linda Thompson, chair of the Massachusetts State Universities Council of Presidents and president at Westfield State University, said the funding expansion will help the institutions reach more students looking to advance their education.
“We are confident the funding initiatives brought by the Healey-Driscoll Administration will reach those individuals who want to stay in Massachusetts, build businesses, support our economy, and strengthen their families,” she said.
- Read more: Teaching at community colleges is getting tougher. Why do employees stay?
The dollars per university are based in part on the number of Pell Grant-eligible state university students and enrollment numbers. They are as follows:
- Bridgewater State University: $2,895,955
- Fitchburg State University: $1,297,587
- Framingham State University: $1,315,502
- Massachusetts College of Art and Design: $890,286
- Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts: $684,096
- Massachusetts Maritime Academy: $713,536
- Salem State University: $2,050,053
- Westfield State University: $1,532,795
- Worcester State University: $1,620,191
In addition to the $14 million for state universities, the state fiscal year 2025 budget also invests $14.7 million in community colleges, for a total $28.7 million investment in SUCCESS programming.
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