Town of Athol Athol, MA

Bidwell Site Master Planning Services

Once used for agriculture and logging, the Bidwell Site is a roughly 100-acre expanse of undeveloped forestland along the Millers River, traversed by the Rabbit Run Rail Trail and anchored by an aging agricultural barn in need of repair. With grant funding in hand, the Town of Athol set out to determine what this landscape could become next — and turned to the community to help answer that question.

BSC led a community-driven planning process to explore the site’s redevelopment potential. A panel of local experts spanning conservation, open space, business, and real estate weighed in, grounding the conversation in both the site’s local character and its role within the broader region.

To bring residents into the process directly, BSC hosted an open house-style public engagement session, where attendees moved freely between stations to review maps and visual graphics and speak one-on-one with consultants, town staff, and each other. That input shaped an initial design concept outlining potential redevelopment activities for the site.

The project culminated in a report presenting three distinct redevelopment concepts, ranging from passive recreation to active recreation to a blended vision combining housing and recreational uses, followed by a final community presentation attended by 75 residents.