Neighbors Raise Concerns About Proposed Williamstown Hotel
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Zoning Board of Appeals last week decided to gather more information before deciding on an application for special permits that would allow construction of a three-story, 95-room hotel on Main Street.
Navin Shah is asking the town to allow him to build the hotel at 430 Main St. (Route 2), the site of the former Grand Union that has been home to an office building in recent years.
After the ZBA heard a presentation from the development team on Thursday about the reasons for the special permit, the board heard a number of concerns from nearby residents about issues ranging from traffic on the road to traffic on the local wifi service and from visual impacts of the three-story building to environmental impacts of proposed alterations to the wooded area behind the planned hotel.
The panel decided to continue the Dec. 15 hearing until Jan. 19. In the meantime, it scheduled a site visit for 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 28, to gather more information about the property and assess how the proposed 32-foot structure will impact neighbors in the adjoining Colonial Village neighborhood.
At issue before the ZBA are requests for basic special permits to allow Shah to build the kind of hotel he envisions. Such a land use is allowable by right in part of the 430 Main St. parcel, which spans business and residential districts.
According to the application, special permits are required because the planned square footage of 53,000 square feet exceeds the allowable 20,000 square feet and because the project would impact three existing non-conformities at the site: the impervious surface area, the stormwater system and the use of acreage that spills over into the residential district to the north, or rear of the property.
Although the proposed hotel would increase the 32,500 square feet of the existing office building (a non-conformity in itself), the increased square footage comes entirely from the additional story, engineer Vince Guntlow told the ZBA. In fact, the hotel would have a smaller footprint than the existing building, dropping the acreage covered from 28,500 square feet to 19,000 square feet.
"The building was designed to minimize site impact," Shah's attorney, Steve Pagnotta, told the ZBA. "We'll be reusing much of the site that currently exists — the parking, the retention pond behind the building. We're seeking some special permits to reduce some of the site impact — reducing the number of parking spaces, reducing the amount of impervious surface on the site. We're also reducing the footprint of the building but increasing the total square footage.
"The building itself has a design intended to be a three-story brick building intended to fit with the architecture of Williamstown. In many respects, the site meets the criteria for a hotel in Williamstown."
In the town's Wellhead Protection District, which overlays the business district on that part of Main Street, a special permit is required if the impervious surface of a development exceeds 15 percent. Currently, the site has 39.5 percent impervious coverage; the hotel group wants to continue the non-conformity but with a reduction of about 5 percent, down to 34.7 percent impervious coverage, Guntlow said.
As for the building design itself, architect Ann McCallum told the ZBA she envisions a red brick building that echoes the architecture of North Berkshire's historic mills, one of which recently was converted to high-end apartments on Williamstown's Water Street.
"There will be a small meeting room and a larger meeting room, but no function room, no restaurant," McCallum said. "There will be a breakfast room, but the only food available at the hotel will be breakfast. There will be a small bar — designed to be like the one at the Orchards [at 222 Adams Road].
"There will be an indoor swimming room, so we again have the possibility of the pool parties that our families love, an exercise room and terrific views of the mountains out the back."
After meeting with the some of the abutters, the hotel team decided to move planned building 40 feet to the east in order to minimize the visual impact on neighboring homes to the west and north.
Some of the neighbors mentioned that they appreciated that decision, but everyone — aside from the development team — who spoke from the floor of Thursday's meeting asked the ZBA to at least consider greater restrictions if they approve the special permits at all.
Six residents submitted written comments to the board as well.
"My family and I are distressed at the thought of a monolithic hotel going up in such close proximity to our quiet residential neighborhood which includes five-plus small children under the age of 7, 10-plus teenagers and 40-plus senior citizens," Norma Miller of Orchard Lane wrote. "Colonial Village is one of the only enclosed, flat neighborhoods which is a lovely, quiet, safe neighborhood at present.
"The thought of our neighborhood safety and relative obscurity from Route 2 being threatened by such a large, imposing and potentially detrimental development which can potentially house 100-plus people including employees at one time, is very distressing."
At the meeting, Orchard Lane's Alexander Davis told the board that that the residents had several "quality of life concerns" both about the potential construction period and the end product.
"The proposed building will be twice as high as the current building," Davis said. "There will be a dozen guests on that [west side] of the building with clear line of sight into our homes. None of the homes were built with that in mind."
Davis also mentioned environmental concerns, including plans to alter the manmade retention pond and the wooded lot at the back of the property.
"With the considerable landscaping changes being proposed here and the slight reduction through grading of the catch basin, we're concerned about flooding."
McCallum told the board that the developer wants to do clear some of the smaller trees at the back of the property to create an amenity for hotel guests.
"I was down there walking around the area, and I could see as I walked along the right hand border, there's a road, and as you walk around there you can see fields and the river, mountains," McCallum said. "I could see that between the hotel and view, there were trees on our property. If you look them down, you'd get this lovely view."
Another Orchard Lane resident told the ZBA that the tree removal could exacerbate existing water problems for residents.
"I'd love to have it be aesthetically pleasing and have a park there, but I know [the vegetation] retains a lot of water," Martino Donati said.
In a letter to the Zoning Board, Cory Campbell of Orchard Lane urged it to get expert opinion before allowing alterations to the property.
"Request that the Conservation Commission conduct an environmental impact study, particularly with regard to improving storm water drainage originating from the proposed property, and into Lot 26 [the portion of the Main Street parcel in the residential district] and adjacent properties," Campbell wrote.
While most of the concerns raised at the hearing addressed impacts on the neighborhood, a couple of the letters and at least one speaker at the hearing pointed to impacts on existing businesses in town.
"I share with other hotel owners the concern about our livelihood," said Kjell Truedsson, the owner of Main Street's Maple Terrace Motel. "We have 406 hotel rooms in Williamstown. We have nine B&Bs and, in addition, we have over 100 Airbnbs. We already feel the impact of the Airbnbs. And marketing for [the proposed] hotel can only be from taking tourists and school visitors from the smaller operators.
"I thought the community we served for a long time would protect us to some extent from implementing chain hotels in the Village Beautiful."
ZBA member Lawrence Wright told Truedsson that the board's job is to enforce the town's zoning bylaws, not weigh the economic impact of development.
"We have to go with the bylaws passed at town meeting, Wright said. "If they have the right to build something in this zone, we can't say, 'Not today.'
"We have to work with what the town has given us. This is a legal construction in this zone according to the bylaws."
Wright's colleague, Keith Davis, agreed.
"It's the only application, and it's legal in this zone," he said. "So any developer has a complete right to come before the board and ask for a hotel in this zone. Our concern is … to mitigate the effects on the neighborhood. Whether it's a good project or not, we have no decision on."
Tags: motels, hotels, ZBA,
