WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The most recent Planning Board meeting about a possible zoning change for the Waubeeka Golf Links property spun from a discussion about whether the owner should be allowed to pursue a hotel at the site to a debate about whether he should be asking the question at all.

 

Board member Ann McCallum changed the nature of the discussion with her opening statement at the Dec. 8 meeting.

 

"I met last week with Bernie English, who used to own the Orchards [Hotel]," McCallum said. "[English] was of the opinion that it would be really, really, really hard to operate a financially successful hotel on his site.

 

"If we went through this [planning process] ... would we get the hotel of our dreams? Would we get that lovely Equinox Hotel with the porches slung over the back? And I'm thinking: No, we're probably not going to get that. We're going to get something that's a comedown from what we all imagined."

 

Waubeeka owner Michael Deep this fall asked the board to develop a zoning change that could be brought to the annual town meeting in the spring. He would like to be able to talk to a partner about the possibility of adding a hotel and a reception center to replace the outdated clubhouse and restaurant at the course. Deep hopes that the added revenue stream will keep the golf course itself viable in a time when golf courses nationwide — and particularly in the Northeast — are struggling to survive.

 

McCallum, in a meeting telecast by the town's community access television station, Willinet, argued that Deep's plan won't work and, therefore, "I personally am not ready to stand up in any strong way for this bylaw amendment."

 

"One of the things that has made me more lukewarm to this — even though it's not what we're supposed to be doing as planners — is the financial aspect," McCallum said. "If the golf course is already hemorrhaging money and hotels are really hard to make a buck on, now we're expecting this hotel to not only keep itself going but generate enough money to bail out the failing golf course?"

 

McCallum's line of reasoning appeared to confound at least one of her colleagues on the five-member board.

 

"So let me get this straight," board member D. Chris Winters said. "We, with absolutely nothing on the line, are substituting our wisdom about what's a good business move over someone who is putting their dollars, their reputation, their livelihood on the line?"

 

"I don't want to stymie anyone's attempt at making a good business," McCallum replied.

 

"Then let's don't," Winters said.

 

The discussion drew a mix of reactions from the floor at the meeting.

 

"I'm mystified by the conversation you're having about controlling entrepreneurial instincts," Oblong Road resident Joan Blair said.

 

"In actuality, at the end of whatever decision we make, the market is going to define this. Mr. Deep will build it or he won't. It will succeed or it won't."

 

Blair also indicated she shared McCallum's skepticism about the prospects of a hotel and golf course and that she was struggling with the "dichotomy" of the discussion.

 

Carol Guernsey of Hancock Road, whose property abuts the golf course, said there is too much uncertainty to consider a zoning change.

 

"I would be really hesitant to vote for something unless I had some kind of ... I'm not saying a guarantee it would be financially successful but an idea that the person who brought it to us thinks it has a good chance to be successful," Guernsey said.

 

Cold Spring Road's Anne Hogeland urged the Planning Board to think about "not only ... whether this would be appropriate or viable at this location but also what are the unintended consequences on the neighborhood."

 

Hogeland pointed specifically to increased traffic volume at the "notoriously dangerous" Five Corners intersection of Route 7 (Cold Spring Road) and Route 43 (Hancock Road).

 

Her husband, Selectman Andrew Hogeland, spoke from the floor to say the Planning Board should not spend too much of its time on possible overlay district.

 

"I share almost all Ann [McCallum's] skepticism that this is every going to get done," Andrew Hogeland said. "The economics of this — and it's not my job — are incredibly challenging. The idea there will be a hotel there someday is pretty remote, in my view."

 

The Planning Board, Andrew Hogeland said, has bigger fish to fry.

 

"I want to give the opportunity, but this [draft bylaw] needs to be crafted," he said. "I'm most of the way toward Ann [McCallum] of wondering if this is ever going to happen.

 

"I care a lot about your home office stuff. I care a lot about the stuff you're going to do on housing. I care a lot about health care. If the choice is to invest time on this instead of those ... there are things in your pile that are very interesting to me in terms of broader impact on the town."

 

Selectman Hugh Daley reiterated Winters' concern about the Planning Board picking and choosing which business proposals make financial sense.

 

"If you get into the business of business plan review, you're heading down a bad road," Daley said. "You need to create rules that you can live with that don't hamstring entrepreneurs and then let them try.

 

"If you decide before he puts a shovel in the ground that it can't work, then it will never work."

 

Daley and Hogeland both served on the town's Economic Development Committee, which spent a year working on a plan that includes, in a section titled "Town Regulations and Administration, including Zoning and Planning," the following:

 

"One critical component to facilitating economic development is to ensure that the applicable regulations are fair, reasonable and achieve their proper goals without undue burden on businesses and individuals subject to them."

 

The Planning Board also at the Dec. 8 meeting revisited the issue of whether Waubeeka's desire for a zoning change are best addressed by an overlay or the creation of a new zoning district to cover not only the golf course but the surrounding Five Corners area, where several businesses operate either as pre-existing non-conforming uses or under the commonwealth's "Agricultural Use Exemption."

 

The board's newest member, Sarah Gardner, re-raised the issue, which appeared to be settled at prior meetings when the board concluded that while it would like a broader solution, the narrower, overlay district was more likely to pass at town meeting.

 

Town Planner Andrew Groff reiterated that he believes the overlay could survive a legal challenge that it represented "spot zoning." But at the meeting's end, the board decided to keep the new district as one of the potential solutions on the table at its January meeting.

 

The next Planning Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 12.