Williams Science Center Project in Front of Zoning Board
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday evening will continue a hearing to consider Williams College's new science center.
The college and its consultants were before the board on Jan. 21 to discuss topics ranging from stormwater management to light pollution to the height of the new, 170,000-square-foot science center.
ZBA Chairman Andrew Hoar explained at the January meeting that because of the college's educational use exemptions, the board cannot require the institution to comply with town zoning regulations.
Nevertheless, the college applied for a special permit for the noncomplying structure.
"This board cannot necessarily rule a height of a [college] building is incorrect, but we're asking what can we do to mitigate that," Hoar said in a meeting telecast on the town's public access television station, WilliNet. "For example, the building at Weston Field exceeds by 7 feet, but to do anything less didn't work. We had to decide if that 7 feet was significant enough to be detrimental to the neighborhood.
"Here, we have a building that exceeds 35 feet by quite a bit ... but when you look at it in relationship to the other buildings around it, how much are we going beyond the aesthetic?
"We can impose some criteria and ask them to meet those things, but we can't necessarily tell them they have to shorten their building."
The board asked the college to bring a three-dimensional model of the planned project in the context of the buildings around it to the Feb. 4 meeting.
As for storm water, the project's civil engineer told the board that the site will include 20,000 gallons of storage for rainwater to be used in the heating and cooling system. Other water collected will be reused for toilets.
"The good news for this project is less water will go into Christmas Brook, and it will go at a slower rate and it will be cleaner," college attorney Jamie Art told the ZBA.
The board asked for assurances that runoff will be controlled during the construction period, which Art said would run through 2020.
The board was told that the project's general contractor will be required to keep records about its erosion controls during the project and to show those records to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The January hearing also addressed the often expressed concern that parking by the college's contractors during the construction period will eat up the available spaces in the Spring Street business district.
Merchants fear a repeat of last summer's issues during a renovation project at the college's Spring Street tavern, when workers' vehicles filled the public lot at the end of Spring Street.
Art said contracts for the project will include a clause that workers will not use that lot and told the board that the college has "a lot of parking spaces" that can be used during construction.
Art said the solution likely will shuttles from lots as far away as Poker Flats (near Cole Field House). He also said the college is talking to the town about borrowing space at 330 Cole Ave., the former Photech property.
In addition, the college and Chamber of Commerce are looking at how many all-day spaces in the public lot are used by employees of downtown businesses. And he suggested that after that analysis is done, the Board of Selectmen might want to consider limiting the number of hours a vehicle can stay in the lot.
"What we can control as part of this project is directing contractors away from it and enforcing it as part of the contract," Art said.
"How do you enforce it?" ZBA member Leigh Short said, alluding to the fact that the Spring Street lot is public lot.
"It would be the general contractor's job to enforce it," Art said. "It's going to be a challenge. It's a real issue. We know it's there."
The college's executive director for design and construction, Rita Coppola-Wallace, told the ZBA that the school anticipates 200 workers on the construction site during peak construction periods.
Thursday's continuation of the January meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Town Hall.
Tags: science center, Williams College, ZBA, zoning,
