Planning Board members Ann McCallum, left, and Carol Stein-Payne review a map of the Village Business District at Tuesday's meeting.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board on Tuesday narrowed down its choices for a proposed expansion of the Village Business District.

 

The expansion is being considered in light of a proposal from Williams College to build a new inn near the bottom of Spring Street. The proposal has been met with enthusiasm from downtown merchants, and the Planning Board is aiming to get the expansion question before the voters in time for May's annual town meeting.

 

At issue now is how much of expansion the board prefers.

 

On Tuesday night, after a lengthy conversation that included representatives from the college and its design team, the board directed Town Planner Andrew Groff to come back to its Feb. 10 meeting with two proposals — one with a larger expansion than the other. The board hopes to pick one and send it on to the Board of Selectmen to begin the process of getting it on the town meeting warrant.

 

Three of the members of the five-person panel came with draft proposals of their own.

 

The most expansive came from Chris Winters, who argued that the board should take the opportunity to maximize the business district into areas where no businesses are currently proposed.

 

Amy Jeschawitz and Carol Stein-Payne also offered suggestions for how the district lines could be redrawn. Jeschawitz drew up three different plans with varying square footage. Stein-Payne suggested a zone that she designed in hopes of convincing the college to locate the new hotel on Latham Street, closer to the downtown businesses than the college currently is considering.

 

Attorney Jamie Art, Williams Vice President for Public Affairs James Kolesar and engineer Vincent Guntlow of Guntlow and Associates represented the college in the discussion. Also present but not participating in the conversation was architect Ann McCallum, a member of the Planning Board who has recused herself from the topic as she is a part of the college's design team.

 

In fact, the entire Planning Board stated some conflict of interest on the question. Winters, Stein-Payne and Chairwoman Elizabeth McGowan are college employees; Jeschawitz works in the hospitality industry. The board held the meeting under the commonwealth's Rule of Necessity, which is designed to address situations in which town committees could not have a quorum if all members with a conflict recused themselves.

 

Kolesar said the college considered several different locations for the proposed inn — including an orientation on Latham Street similar to the one Stein-Payne suggested — but found that the most practical location with the least impact on the current Spring Street neighborhood is one set back from the road to the south.

 

In fact, Kolesar said, building anywhere closer to existing development would hurt businesses already in the district — the opposite of the college's motive for moving its hospitality business from the current site of the Williams Inn to the Village Business District.

 

"Putting it right on the street has a number of adverse effects," he said. "Among the adverse effects is it disperses retail parking in ways that harm downtown merchants."

 

The college's representatives emphasized repeatedly that the college has not determined the final footprint for the proposed hotel. Before it invests money in serious design work, it wants to make sure there is a parcel in the Village Business District large enough to accommodate any inn.

 

A preliminary estimate by Williams College of how a new 60-room inn (with 40-room seasonal annex, to the south) could be situated on land at the south end of Spring Street.

"We're still early in the overall design scheme," Art said. "The issue here is what's the envelope in which the design team can go to work and develop a plan that can go to the Zoning Board and ultimately back to you."

 

While members of the board argued that a smaller "envelope" is needed to bring the inn closer to the rest of the commercial district, McGowan pushed for a smaller district expansion for another reason.

 

Her comments focused on her concern that parking at the rear of the proposed hotel property would be too close to the college's Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, a research center for faculty.

 

McGowan said she wanted to "protect" the Oakley Center.

 

Winters pointed out it is not the job of the Planning Board to save a landowner from itself and that the college would not do anything to hurt its own academic asset.

 

"This applicant, like any applicant, we can expect to act in its own self interest," Winters said.

 

In other business on Tuesday, the Planning Board unanimously approved the college's plan for the creation of a new academic quad where the former Sawyer Library now stands. The proposal impacts parking in the area because Chapin Hall Drive, off Main Street, would now be a two-way, dead-end street ending at the turn off for the First Congregational Church parking lot.

 

Several parking spaces on the current, one-way Chapin Hall Drive, would be lost but replaced by a new parking lot on the north side of Chapin Hall, Kolesar explained. In fact, there will be a net increase in 13 spaces, including two new handicapped accessible spaces, after the project is completed, he said.

 

The proposal to redo Chapin Hall Drive will be in front of the Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday, Art said.

 

Tuesday's expansive Planning Board meeting also included an update on the board's progress toward creating a solar installation bylaw. Currently, the town has no solar bylaw, and it is seeking to avoid a situation faced in some towns — notably Adams — where developers have sought to build large-scale solar projects where no regulations are in place.

 

Massachusetts law does not allow towns to prohibit solar projects but does allow them to regulate them, Winters said.

 

Nancy Nylen of the Center for EcoTechnology and the town's Carbon Dioxide Lowering (or COOL) Committee addressed the board and asked that it try to make the proposed bylaw friendly to the kind of large-scale community solar farm that the COOL Committee has contemplated after the success of the Solarize Mass initiative in Williamstown last year.

 

Finally, Selectman Andrew Hogeland addressed the Planning Board in his capacity as a member of the newly formed Economic Development Committee. The EDC is appearing before all relevant town boards and committees to ask whether they have input or suggestions for changes to town regulations that could foster economic development.

 

In response, the Planning Board discussed one concrete step that members thought they could pull together as early as this spring in time for the May annual town meeting: the lowering or elimination of off-street parking requirements for businesses on Water Street (Route 43).

 

McCallum said she knows of specific entrepreneurs who have abandoned plans to open businesses on Water Street because of the requirement.

 

The town lifted a similar requirement for Spring Street businesses in recent years. However, Groff noted, Spring Street has a paved municipal parking lot whereas Water Street has an unpaved lot that serves as a de facto parking lot.

 

McCallum said she would work on a proposed parking bylaw to discuss at the Feb. 10 meeting. Groff encouraged the board to pursue the question but counseled caution.

 

"Any change in zoning needs to be carefully studied," he said. "You don't want to have unintended consequences."