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Early morning work in Williamstown's Spring Street parking lot on Wednesday.

Williams College Redoes Section of Pavement in Spring Street Lot

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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Workers remove pavement in preparation for repaving in a small section of the lot.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Repaving work in the Spring Street parking lot was isolated to a small section at the east end of the lot and is expected to be wrapped up by the end of the day on Wednesday.
 
The college's senior project manager Wednesday morning characterized the project as "punch list work" on a multiphase rebuild of the parking lot that was completed last year.
 
"It's just one section of pavement that, when we paved last fall, did not come out well due to cold temperatures," Jason Moran said.
 
Early Wednesday morning, personnel from Pittsfield's J.H. Maxymillian Inc. were on the site stripping pavement from about 10 parking spots. In addition to the heavy equipment needed for the job, about one full row of the lot — one quarter of the spots — was tied up with the project.
 
However, the "auxiliary" parking bay to the south of the main lot was open to the public. The smaller lot, about half as big as the main lot, is designated for use by the recently opened Williams Inn during periods of high demand.
 
When the inn needs the extra parking, the south lot will be accessible only by key card. But since the inn opened earlier this month, there has been no reason to keep the gates to the smaller lot closed, Moran said. And Wednesday's work was scheduled for a time when the college knew the inn's spaces would be open to the public.
 
Williams College owns the entire parking lot and keeps the majority of it open the public 365 days a year.
 
By Thursday, Moran said, the lot should be back to normal with no visible sign of Wednesday's pavement work.

Tags: parking,   paving,   spring street,   Williams College,   

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Williamstown Affordable Housing Trust Hears Objections to Summer Street Proposal

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Neighbors concerned about a proposed subdivision off Summer Street last week raised the specter of a lawsuit against the town and/or Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity.
 
"If I'm not mistaken, I think this is kind of a new thing for Williamstown, an affordable housing subdivision of this size that's plunked down in the middle, or the midst of houses in a mature neighborhood," Summer Street resident Christopher Bolton told the Affordable Housing Trust board, reading from a prepared statement, last Wednesday. "I think all of us, the Trust, Habitat, the community, have a vested interest in giving this project the best chance of success that it can have. We all remember subdivisions that have been blocked by neighbors who have become frustrated with the developers and resorted to adversarial legal processes.
 
"But most of us in the neighborhood would welcome this at the right scale if the Trust and Northern Berkshire Habitat would communicate with us and compromise with us and try to address some of our concerns."
 
Bolton and other residents of the neighborhood were invited to speak to the board of the trust, which in 2015 purchased the Summer Street lot along with a parcel at the corner of Cole Avenue and Maple Street with the intent of developing new affordable housing on the vacant lots.
 
Currently, Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, which built two homes at the Cole/Maple property, is developing plans to build up to five single-family homes on the 1.75-acre Summer Street lot. Earlier this month, many of the same would-be neighbors raised objections to the scale of the proposed subdivision and its impact on the neighborhood in front of the Planning Board.
 
The Affordable Housing Trust board heard many of the same arguments at its meeting. It also heard from some voices not heard at the Planning Board session.
 
And the trustees agreed that the developer needs to engage in a three-way conversation with the abutters and the trust, which still owns the land, to develop a plan that is more acceptable to all parties.
 
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