GREENFIELD — With her new job as Greenfield’s community and economic development director, Northampton resident Amy Cahillane says she’s found “a hidden gem.”

“It has so many things … a movie theater, live music … and a lot of opportunity,” Cahillane, who takes over the position on Monday following the May retirement of MJ Adams, said of Greenfield. “It has the best of both worlds.”

For the last seven years, Cahillane has served as the first executive director of the Downtown Northampton Association, which was founded in May 2016. Cahillane said after six years of leading the organization, there’s a lot that she’s proud of — but in the last year, the return of the Taste of Northampton food festival was a particular high point.

“It hasn’t happened for 15-plus years,” she said. “We brought it back and had about 10,000 people in the middle of Main Street. It was amazing.”

Before joining the Downtown Northampton Association, Cahillane, a graduate of Smith College, was a practicing attorney. After temporarily living on the West Coast, she moved back to the Pioneer Valley with her husband and 1-year-old son, where she has been for the last 17 years.

As a practicing lawyer, Cahillane also got involved with the nonprofit community. In particular, she became involved with — and later served as president of — the Northampton Education Foundation.

“I started spending a lot of my time in the nonprofit community, and trying to volunteer and be involved in events here in Northampton,” Cahillane said. “It’s where we were making our home and raising our child.”

It was that community involvement, she said, that led to her position with the Downtown Northampton Association. It was the perfect blend of her “odd background” of legal and nonprofit work.

“Over the past seven years, my job here — really, during COVID — started to move away from being events and into advocacy for small businesses,” Cahillane said. “My thinking started to switch to economic development, to how we can support our business community, how we can encourage more people to move into Northampton.”

When the position opened in Greenfield, she reviewed the job description carefully and considered her work at the downtown association — a job she really enjoyed.

“When we started to merge out of COVID … I realized my skill set and passion and interests were really on the economic development side of things,” she explained, “and less so on the logistics of planning an event.”

Cahillane said she’s a familiar shopper and diner of Greenfield and is excited to start thinking about its future.

“It’s still relatively affordable, so it can attract new businesses,” she said. “It also has a pre-existing base of residences, properties and business owners doing amazing things.”

She said she wants to let more people “know what Greenfield is all about” while also preserving affordability.

“I’m hoping to spend a lot of time talking to a lot of people,” Cahillane said. “I think the [Wilson’s Department Store redevelopment on Main Street] is a particularly wonderful use of that building. I love that Greenfield has the opportunity to expand and I think putting housing above it is going to build a good base of foot traffic, so that speaks to my heart in a lot of ways.”

Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne.

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