Austen Riggs Foundation requests transitional living facility in Lenox

12:00AM / Thursday, December 12, 2002Print Story | Email Story

The Austen Riggs Foundation has asked to open a transitional living facility in Lenox. Their hearing with the Zoning Board of Appeals began Dec. 4; it has been continued to Jan. 8. at 7 p.m. Riggs has had a purchase agreement for some time with Alice Maleski for the Lilac Inn, 33 Main Street, Lenox. Sydney Smithers of Cain, Hibbard, Meyers & Cook, in Pittsfield represented Riggs before the ZBA. Dr. Edward R. Shapiro, Medical Director and CEO of the Austen Riggs Foundation; Dr. Gerard Fromm, Director of the Erik H. Erikson Institute for Education and Research at Riggs; Dr. Donna Elmendorf, Director of Riggs' Therapeutic Community Program; Chauncy Collins, Director of Operations and Finance at Riggs; and Robert Hoogs, architect at Foresight Land Services spoke for the Austen Riggs Foundation. Collins said Riggs had been looking for another facility for the last two years. The Lilac Inn had recently been refurbished as a Bed and Breakfast. It was already up to code in many areas, the sprinkler system for instance, that Riggs would need to address. And the location was to Lenox as the main Riggs facility is to Stockbridge, in the heart of the downtown. In October, Smithers said, Riggs asked to change the Lilac Inn from residence category one, bed and breakfast, to residence category two, "to allow the building inspector to go through the appropriate analysis of a proposed educational use," under Massachusetts law. Under the Dover Amendment, non-profit educational uses are allowed in any zone. The local zoning by-laws may regulate their size, setback, parking etc. If any local zoning by-laws would effectively prohibit a non-profit from having an educational facility in a pre-existing building where it is allowed to be, then the town cannot apply those zoning regulations. In case of conflict over an allowed use in a pre-existing building, Smithers said, case law has developed the Tufts analysis. The local building inspector is required to consider the proposed use and the town's zoning requirements, and determine whether it is appropriate to apply those requirements. Lenox Building Inspector William Thornton declined to make this analysis. He said he did not feel he had the ability to do so, and passed it on to the ZBA. It is now, Robert McNinch clarified, the ZBA's job to vote to uphold or deny the building inspector's denial of Riggs' request for a change of use group permit under the state building code. It takes a 4-1 vote. Hoogs discussed the site plan of the existing site. The Lilac Inn sits at the intersection of Main and Sunset streets. The site plan covers the inn building and the parking area behind it. The building would not change externally, Hoogs said. Riggs would remove the front driveway. They were proposing to enlarge the rear parking area for eight parking spaces including a handicapped space. There is a ramp leading in from the parking area already. Smithers said the Lenox by-law determined the parking for an educational use by staff and class size. Neither category applied to this use; Riggs would comply with whatever parking the ZBA felt appropriate. The parking lot has an existing fence to the south. Riggs would put up a screening fence around the rest of the parking area, Hoogs said. The Lilac Inn sits on 3/10 of an acre. The building takes up 18 percent of the lot. Its setback varies from 9 feet to 70 feet. Section 9.18 of the Lenox, which regulates non-profit educational uses, requires a 200 foot buffer. In order to comply with this regulation, Riggs would need a 6-acre lot that would extend up Sunset Street to West Street and encompass both Main Street banks. Smithers summed up his argument: the Austen Riggs Foundation is an educational facility. It is allowed to set up a facility in the Lilac Inn, which is a pre-existing building. The Lenox zoning by-laws relating to dimensions and setbacks of educational buildings would effectively prohibit Riggs from using the Lilac Inn as it is allowed to do. Therefore, under state law, Riggs is exempt from those zoning restrictions. Any by-laws that do not prohibit Riggs from its educational use of the building are binding. Representatives from Riggs then spoke about the Riggs treatment philosophy and programs. Shapiro said Riggs was unusual, increasingly so in current health care. Riggs had an open door policy. It turned 'treatment resistant' patients into people taking responsibility for their own lives. Most contemporary psychiatric care focused on regulating behavior with locks and restriction, he said. Patients entered Riggs as citizens. Riggs' main campus is on Main Street in Stockbridge across from the Red Lion Inn. "We're an enormously large institution, right in the middle of town, and no one knows we're there," Shapiro said. Riggs patients lived and worked in Stockbridge as well, and many continued to live in Stockbridge and Lenox after they left Riggs. Riggs selected patients very carefully, Shapiro said. They took only five percent of those that applied, because the patients had to be able to handle an open setting. "Many are in a fair amount of trouble. They're depressed. They have been through trauma. They learn to translate . . . behavior into language." Once they took this step, they no longer needed intensive therapy. No Riggs patients were addicts, because they had to be able to take responsibility for themselves. Some have had addiction as a secondary diagnosis, Shapiro said. Riggs patients went through intense psychotherapy four times a week, he said. They also had access to a varied activities program: local artists taught pottery, photography, painting, weaving and other arts and crafts. Shakespeare & Company actors led the Riggs theater. Shawn Considine and Clifford Snyder questioned definition of Riggs as an educational institution. Shapiro said Riggs had a formal fellowship program that offered focused professional education for psychologists and psychiatrists. Riggs also sponsored one joint residency with the Cambridge Hospital. Fellows participated in psychotherapy, group work and other parts of the Riggs program, seminars and case conferences. Fromm said at the Erikson Institute, as part of the clinical program, Riggs offered seminars, attended national conferences and presented research nationwide. The Erikson Institute also offered outreach: consulting with schools and pediatric groups, awarding scholarships to Lenox High School seniors and giving lectures for professionals. Within the Riggs program, the staff gave training and educational programs for the patients, Shapiro said. The patients learned life skills - cleaning, shopping, getting along in groups. The program offered resume writing and job training, and helped many patients to reapply for college. These training programs would apply to the specific program proposed in Lenox. Smithers said under Dover Amendment, an educational use is defined broadly; an institution does not have to grant a degree to qualify. According to case law - Smithers cited a court ruling from 1997- the proper test in deciding whether an organization was an educational one, was whether the organizations articles permit it to offer educational programs. Case law defined 'education' as a process of developing or training someone's capabilities as a human being. Classroom and teacher structure was not required. The definition encompassed the use of a structure as a residence if the residence was part of an organization that taught skills to aid the residents in their transition back to society. The ZBA asked Smithers why Riggs did not apply for a special permit for their transitional living facility. Smithers answered that the by-laws could not require a religious or an educational use to apply for a special permit for an exempt use. In other words, Riggs was already exempt from the by-laws, so Riggs could not apply for a permit under them. When the Bible Speaks campus came to Kemble Street, the court excised sections of the Lenox by-laws for the same reason. Considine asked whether there was a reason Riggs did not chose to rely on the Fair Housing Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act. Smithers said education was part of Riggs' mission. Riggs had presented no evidence that either of these acts would apply to their patients. He had not even asked whether Riggs patients would be considered people with disabilities. Elmendorf then explained the Riggs step-down residential programs. Riggs had three residential programs in Stockbridge, she said. They had 40 beds in their hospital and residential programs in the main building. When patients left these facilities, they went to the Elms, an 8-person residence on the Riggs grounds. There, they learned cooking and household operations and resolved problems within the group. They moved on to the Lavan program, another 8-person facility down the street, where residents were somewhat more independent. The new Lenox program would resemble the Lavan program, she said, but as it would be slightly farther away, the Lenox program would house patients still farther along in their treatment. All of these patients would have access to all Riggs facilities, including therapy sessions four times a week. Riggs also had a day program, Elmendorf said. Approximately 20 day patients lived in Lenox and Stockbridge and surrounding towns and returned to Riggs daily. And the last step in the program before leaving, the aftercare program, helped patients to make their final adjustments to the outside community. The Elms program was at capacity, Elmendorf said. The Lavan had an opening but expected to fill it by the end of the week. Patients stay in these residential programs from six weeks to a year. "We do have a bottleneck," she said; "We have patients waiting four or five months to move to the Elms." Riggs was thinking of reworking the Lavan program to look more like the Elms program, she said. Also, patients ready for day treatment often had a hard time finding apartments because housing was so scarce in South County. It was especially hard to find housing in the springtime. The plans for the proposed Lenox facility were still in development, Elmendorf said. Riggs was not currently planning to have staff living at the facility full-time. Staff would be on hand for house meetings two or three times a week, to resolve conflicts and help the residents interact with the community. "If these patients needed a full-time staff presence, they would not be here" in the final stages of their program at Riggs, she said. Patients who were struggling could step back up in the program, and Riggs services would always be available to them. Riggs had a daily review of all patients, she said. And they have seen in other houses that they would hear from a struggling patient or from the patient's housemates, if there was any friction. The ZBA had a stack of correspondence, including a letter from the Stockbridge police chief. They postponed reading it until the next hearing, in order to allow anyone who could not come in to the next meeting a chance to speak. A Lenox resident for the last 10 years, opened the floor. He was a former Riggs patient, he said. He had paid rent, bought cars and worked in recreation in town. "I like to think of myself as an asset to the community," he said. A New Jersey resident, who lives on Sunset Street on weekends, said Riggs sent a brief notice out to the neighboring residents before the meeting. She suggested the ZBA should have legal counsel to respond to Smithers. She had been attempting to read up on relevant case law in the past three days. She was also concerned about traffic impact and "the perception that residences where former addicts lived could attract drug dealers." Considine said the ZBA had a letter from the Stockbridge chief of police, who could speak to that issue. She also said the ZBA had the Lenox Town Counsel to consult, and that the speaker was welcome to submit her reading of the case law. Another former patient living on Franklin Street responded to a skeptical comment on Riggs' educational programs. Learning 'shopping, cooking etc.' was code for 'getting your life together and finding out who you are,' she said. She came to Riggs with an eating disorder; no addictions. When she first came, she was scared of the idea of a psychiatric hospital. "You're scared what kind of loonies you're going to be around . . . That element of fear and not knowing contributes to 'not in my backyard' response. I feel very strongly . . . about this, and how Riggs saved my life." She stayed in the area after she left Riggs. She married a Pittsfield native. They have a 2-year-old son. She takes him to day care at the Lenox Community Center. Considine assured everyone present that people would be welcome to comment further at upcoming meetings. All the members of the ZBA are familiar with the Riggs campus and have been there many times, so they did not schedule a site visit.

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McCann Recognizes Superintendent Award Recipient

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:32PM / Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Landon LeClair and Superintendent James Brosnan with Landon's parents Eric and Susan LeClair, who is a teacher at McCann.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Superintendent's Award has been presented to Landon LeClair, a senior in McCann Technical School's advanced manufacturing course.

The presentation was made last Thursday by Superintendent Jame Brosnan after Principal Justin Kratz read from teachers' letters extolling LeClair's school work, leadership and dedication.

"He's become somewhat legendary at the Fall State Leadership Conference for trying to be a leader at his dinner table, getting an entire plate of cookies for him and all his friends," read Kratz to chuckles from the School Committee. "Landon was always a dedicated student and a quiet leader who cared about mastering the content."

LeClair was also recognized for his participation on the school's golf team and for mentoring younger teammates.

"Landon jumped in tutoring the student so thoroughly that the freshman was able to demonstrate proficiency on an assessment despite the missed class time for golf matches," read Kratz.

The principal noted that the school also received feedback from LeClair's co-op employer, who rated him with all fours.

"This week, we sent Landon to our other machine shop to help load and run parts in the CNC mill," his employer wrote to the school. LeClair was so competent the supervisor advised the central shop might not get him back.

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