North Adams Enjoys Institutional Advancement

Community Spotlight

Laurie Lammare says the reopening of North Adams Regional Hospital will bring convenience to local residents.

For Laurie Lammare, the reopening of North Adams Regional Hospital (NARH) is a story that touches her professionally and personally.

Professionally … she is now system vice president and COO of NARH, now part of Berkshire Health Systems, moving from an administrative role at BHS to leading the 130-year-old hospital through the next chapter in its intriguing history.

And personally … well, she was born at NARH, her children were born there, and she fully understands the importance of this institution, on many different levels, to the North County communities it serves.

“Being able to offer such services to so many people was exciting work,” said Lammare, a North Adams native, of the long road to reopening the hospital and restoring inpatient service, noting that it was a crushing blow to the community when NARH was closed by its previous owner in 2014 after years of financial struggles and bankruptcies.

Its reopening in March, a decade to the day after it closed as an acute-care hospital, and its subsequent designation as a Critical Access Hospital (CAH) in July, brings new levels of convenience and accessibility to care for people who previously had to travel to Pittsfield for such care — or to visit those who were receiving care.

The reopening of NARH is one of the better stories involving this community of roughly 13,000 people, the second-largest in Berkshire County. But there are others, many of them involving the other major institution in the city — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA).

Indeed, the school, formerly known as North Adams State College, recently earned the sixth spot on U.S. News & World Report’s list of Top Public Liberal Arts Schools in the nation, after earning the seventh spot for the previous three years. The college’s continued commitment to affordable education and economic prosperity is reflected in additional 2025 U.S. News rankings: the fifth-highest performer on social mobility for liberal-arts colleges in Massachusetts and second-highest performer on social mobility for public liberal-arts colleges in the country (more on what that means later).

“Part of re-establishing the inpatient beds at North Adams was really a strategic step in expanding access and reducing the healthcare barriers that the community may have found in traveling down to Pittsfield.”

“It’s always nice to go up, in this case, from 7 to 6,” MCLA President James Birge said of the public liberal-arts ranking, which puts MCLA just behind the service academies and a few other schools. “But the more compelling information is that this is the 10th consecutive year we’ve been in the top 10 nationally, and we’re really proud of that.”

Meanwhile, MCLA continues to add new programs. In 2022, it was radiological technology, and in 2023, it was nursing. This year, it’s a music, industry & production major that drew 60 applications.

James Birge says MCLA’s rise in the rankings speaks to its broad mission and its success in carrying it out.

This new program will help students contribute to a changing economy in the Berkshires and North Adams, one that has shifted from manufacturing to the arts, and is perhaps best captured by the conversion of the former Sprague Electric complex into MASSMoCA, the largest modern-art museum in the world.

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at North Adams and the many forms of progress there.

Turning Back the Clock

Tracing the history of North Adams Regional Hospital, Michael Leary, director of Media Relations for BHS, said its creation was inspired by a horrific rail accident in 1886 — roughly a decade after the opening of the Hoosac Tunnel — known locally as the train wreck at Bardswell Ferry.

The Eastern Express, traveling east toward Greenfield, came off its rails and plunged down a rocky embankment to the Deerfield River, south of Bardswell Ferry. Ten people were killed, and another 31 injured.

“North Adams was a pretty significant city in Massachusetts at that time, but it didn’t have a hospital,” Leary said. “As a result of that catastrophe, some community members got together and formed what came to be known as North Adams Regional Hospital.”

NARH operated for more than 100 years, under an organization known as Northern Berkshire Health Systems, but by the start of this century, it was struggling mightily, he explained.

“They ran into significant reimbursement and financial issues and could not sustain the hospital. They declared bankruptcy at least twice, maybe three times, in the 2000s, and when push came to shove, they could no longer make a go of it. Cash flow had significantly decreased, they were unable to pay their vendors, and they declared bankruptcy in 2014 a final time and closed just days later.”

“We went from a long weekend to 10 days where we helped students adjust to college life — with coursework, social adjustments, connecting to other people on campus who are first-year students.”

State officials and the Department of Public Health asked BHS to step in and at least reopen emergency services, Leary said, adding that the system did this and subsequently purchased the property through bankruptcy proceedings, naming it the North Adams Campus of Berkshire Medical Center and opening several outpatient services there, including imaging, wound care, surgical services, laboratory services, and orthopedics.

In 2023, following changes in the law regarding eligibility for CAH designation — which is granted by the federal government and limited to small, rural facilities that meet certain criteria to qualify for federal support in maintaining services that would otherwise not be financially and/or operationally viable — such status was attained, and BHS moved to reopen the facility under its original name, North Adams Regional Hospital.

The importance of the hospital to the region was summed up by U.S. Rep. Richard Neal in comments made at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the reopened NARH.

“Throughout my career in public life, I have stood by the notion that legislation changes lives. Today’s announcement is a living example of that belief, as the reopening of North Adams Regional Hospital will have a profound impact on communities throughout North County for years to come,” Neal said. “There are stark inequities in rural and underserved communities as it relates to our nation’s health system. That is why I have long advocated for changes that will address health equity and allow everyone to have a fair and just opportunity to achieve their highest level of health, regardless of who they are or where they live.”

Lammare, who had been with BHS in various capacities for 34 years before being chosen to lead NARH, concurred.

North Adams Regional Hospital reopened in March a decade to the day after closing as an acute-care hospital in 2014.

“Part of re-establishing the inpatient beds at North Adams was really a strategic step in expanding access and reducing the healthcare barriers that the community may have found in traveling down to Pittsfield — and to better serve the Berkshire County community members in a coordinated effort through the larger healthcare system,” she said, adding that the hospital reopened with 18 beds and can expand to 25 given guidelines regulating CAHs. The current census is only about five patients a day, but that number is expected to rise with the start of flu season.

School of Thought

Birge told BusinessWest that the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings help convey MCLA’s broad mission — and its success in carrying it out, especially over the past several years.

Indeed, in addition to providing a quality liberal-arts education, the school has also been a prime mover in that category known as social mobility; the college has been acknowledged on the list of national liberal-arts colleges for social mobility since that ranking was established in 2019.

Specifically, social mobility measures how well institutions graduate students who receive federal Pell Grants, typically awarded to students whose families make less than $50,000, said Birge, noting that most Pell Grant money goes to families with income below $20,000. More than 41% of MCLA undergraduate students receive Pell Grants, and 49% are the first in their families to go to college. Overall, 95% of MCLA students receive some kind of financial aid.

Beyond these rankings, MCLA is seeing other forms of momentum despite slower enrollment this fall, in part due to well-documented problems with federal financial-aid applications, but also due to MassEducate, the state’s free community-college program, which has resulted in fewer transfers to MCLA and other state colleges and universities. (For the long term, Birge noted, free community college will benefit such schools because it will put more students in the transfer pipeline.)

This momentum includes the highest retention rates in more than a decade, which has made up for some of the first-year students the college lost for those reasons stated above. This improvement in retention came about due to some new initiatives at the school, starting with a transition from a traditional first-year student orientation to a 10-day onboarding process.

“We went from a long weekend to 10 days where we helped students adjust to college life — with coursework, social adjustments, connecting to other people on campus who are first-year students,” Birge noted. “Additionally, we invested in more academic advisors on campus a year ago, and as a result, not only did students have a major advisor among their faculty, they had a success coach who walked them through things throughout the year, like how to deal with homesickness, adjusting to college, and time-management skills. In addition to academic advising, they also had personal-life advising.”

The reopening of NARH is also a benefit for MCLA because students in its health programs can now do clinicals at that facility rather than driving to Pittsfield, said Birge, adding that the school also partners, on many levels, with MASSMoCA, where a number of students find internships or employment.

And then, there’s the new major in music, industry & production, which Birge said has “struck a chord” locally.

“The Berkshires have kind of a music vibe,” he explained. “There’s Tanglewood; there’s a world-class recording studio just down the street, Studio 9 at Porches Inn; and we have some faculty members that excel at music theory and performance, and they put together this neat little program.”

It’s one of many developments of note — both literally and figuratively — in this community that continues the process of transitioning and evolving.