WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday gave the green light to Williams College's reconstruction and reimagining of its Davis Center.

 

The Davis Center, known as the Multicultural Center until 2012, currently is housed in three former residences on the south end of campus off Walden Street.

 

Last year, the college announced plans to remove one of those buildings and a second, currently unused, building, renovate the two remaining buildings (Jeness House and Rice House) and build a major expansion on one to create space to handle the center's programming.

 

"The Davis Center is the heart of the college's effort to build an inclusive campus," college counsel Jamie Art told the ZBA. "It's the home of more than 20 student affinity groups and houses programs to make sure all students thrive academically at Williams.

 

"It is housed right now in three residential buildings built in the 1800s. … They're not laid out to house these kinds of academic programs. The occupancy loads are not sufficient to hold the growing programs happening there."

 

The college previously received the OK of the town's Historical Commission to remove the 19th century buildings and the Planning Board, which needed to sign off on the parking plan for the renovated Davis Center.

 

"This is the last stop on the permitting path other than the building permits," Art told the ZBA.

 

The college asked the board for relief from a provision of the zoning bylaw that limits lot coverage to 20 percent on a parcel in the town's General Residence district.

 

Although the Davis Center itself is located entirely in the town's Village Business District, where there are no lot coverage restrictions, the center is part of a "super parcel" that includes the college's Science Center. Several years ago, the ZBA granted relief from the lot coverage requirements to allow the Science Center project to continue.

 

"This won't be a surprise to anybody who has been on the board for a long time," Art said. "This will be the fourth time we've been before the ZBA in relatively recent memory to request relief on this parcel.

 

"If you go back to the Science Center, we were at about 30 percent [lot coverage], and that has crept down. I think we're at 26.67 percent now, and after this project, we'll be down to 26.65. It's effectively the same building lot coverage after the project as there are in the current conditions.

 

"We're still non-compliant."

 

And, as in previous appearances before the board, the college cited case law in Massachusetts that grants educational and religious institutions relief from local bylaws if those laws are unreasonable as applied to the application.

 

"It's the same analysis that applied before in the Science Center permitting," Art said. "And, really, the central question is whether the application of the zoning requirements to the project further a legitimate municipal concern to a sufficient extent to require the development plans to be altered.

 

"We think, in this case, there's no legitimate municipal concerns here. We feel like over time we've been improving this site and its functioning, and, despite the technical non-compliance with the bylaw requirements, we have adequately addressed the legitimate municipal concerns that motivate the lot coverage requirement."

 

Specifically, Art pointed to stormwater management in and around the parcel that includes the Davis Center and the Science Center. 

 

"We're building a building that is compliant with the [zoning bylaw's] height requirement, and there is a tradeoff between the height requirement and lot coverage," Art said. "So we're maintaining the status quo and improving further the stormwater management. Peak runoff rates are reduced for all different size [rain] events. … Post construction, there's improved performance of stormwater management on the site."

 

The college's investment in stormwater management in recent years has included installing a detention system under the municipal parking lot at the bottom of Spring Street and rebuilding the culvert that carries Christmas Brook into the Green River.

 

"It required a lot of work and a lot of disruption, but it has performed well over the last year or so despite an unprecedented amount of rainfall in the summer," Art said.

 

After hearing a presentation from the college's development team and asking questions about the planned pedestrian access to the Davis Center from Bank Street and details on the demolition and construction project, the board voted 5-0 to grant the relief required to move the project forward.