Williamstown Garage Site Cleanup Pegged at $15K

By Stephen DravisWilliamstown Correspondent
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The Affordable Housing Trust heard an update on additional cleanup at the old town garage site.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Affordable Housing Trust Fund's Board of Trustees on Wednesday evening heard an update on the status of cleaning up soil contamination at the former site of the town garage.

The chairman of the Affordable Housing Committee, who also serves as a trustee for the trust, told her colleagues that the committee has received an estimate of $15,000 for additional cleanup at 59 Water St., a parcel that is being eyed for developing subsidized housing.

"This is work that has been ongoing since last summer that the Affordable Housing Committee has paid for," Catherine Yamamoto said. "Tests were done on the site that determined it had contamination from underground storage tanks."

Yamamoto said her committee has a proposal in hand from environmental engineering firm O'Reilly, Talbot and Okun of Springfield. The proposal, which will be taken up at the AHC's Feb. 12 meeting, says the contaminated earth could be removed and the surrounding areas tested within six weeks of the committee's decision to approve the expenditure.

The trustees decided to let the Affordable Housing Committee continue to deal with the issue, but trust Chairman Stanley Parese noted that if for some reason the committee decides not to authorize the expenditure, the trustees would revisit the issue.


Tuesday's meeting of the housing committee promises to be eventful. Yamamoto also told the trustees that the Feb. 12 session will include a face-to-face meeting with John Ryan, the consultant hired jointly by the trust and committee to assess the town's affordable housing needs.

He plans to share preliminary data and further discuss with the committee what questions to address in a final report that is expected at the end of March, Yamamoto said.

Otherwise, it was a fairly uneventful meeting of the trustees, who took the opportunity to thank the town's Community Preservation Committee for recommending the town approve a $200,000 grant to the trust at May's town meeting. Town meeting OK'd a grant in the same amount in 2012, moments after it authorized creation of the trust.

"We're very pleased and appreciative that the Community Preservation Committee saw fit to recommend that the Affordable Housing Trust again receive $200,000," Parese said. "It's certainly generous relative to their funding capabilities but modest relative to our task at hand.

"Ultimately, town meeting makes the funding decisions."


Tags: affordable housing,   affordable housing trust,   

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Williams Seeking Town Approval for New Indoor Practice Facility

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week gave Williams College the first approval it needs to build a 55,000-square foot indoor athletic facility on the north side of its campus.
 
Over the strenuous objection of a Southworth Street resident, the board found that the college's plan for a "multipurpose recreation center" or MRC off Stetson Road has adequate on-site parking to accommodate its use as an indoor practice facility to replace Towne Field House, which has been out of commission since last spring and was demolished this winter.
 
The college plans a pre-engineered metal that includes a 200-meter track ringing several tennis courts, storage for teams, restrooms, showers and a training room. The athletic surface also would be used as winter practice space for the school's softball and baseball teams, who, like tennis and indoor track, used to use the field house off Latham Street.
 
Since the planned structure is in the watershed of Eph's Pond, the college will be before the Conservation Commission with the project.
 
It also will be before the Zoning Board of Appeals, on Thursday, for a Development Plan Review and relief from the town bylaw limiting buildings to 35 feet in height. The new structure is designed to have a maximum height of 53 1/2 feet and an average roof height of 47 feet.
 
The additional height is needed for two reasons: to meet the NCAA requirement for clearance above center court on a competitive tennis surface (35 feet) and to include, on one side, a climbing wall, an element also lost when Towne Field House was razed.
 
The Planning Board had a few issues to resolve at its March 12 meeting. The most heavily discussed involved the parking determination for a use not listed in the town's zoning bylaws and a decision on whether access from town roads to the building site in the middle of Williams' campus was "functionally equivalent" to the access that would be required under the town's subdivision rules and regulations.
 
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