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Help for the college-bound who excel at music or journalism: The Daniel Pearl Fellowship

If you are a college-bound senior who lives in or near Berkshire County and excel at either music or journalism,  it's time to apply for the Daniel Pearl Fellowship.  (LINK)

After Stanford University, Pearl began his journalism career in The Berkshires at The Transcriptand Berkshire Eagle, moving on ultimately to The Wall Street Journal. His life ended with hisbeheading by extremists in Pakistan. After his death, his family, the publisher of The Eagleand others established a small scholarship to encourage brilliant youth with similar talents.

Amid Mike Deep controversy, public gets a chance tonight to quiz four of five Planning Board candidates at 7 p.m. at WES

CORRECTION: This post was updated on May 9 to correct a reference in the third-to-last paragraph to state that Deep's proposal at the time of writing sought up to not more than 40 acres for development.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Four out of five candidates vying for two seats on the Williamstown Planning Board will be on hand tonight (Wednesday) from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. to present their platforms and credentials to voters in a forum that will also be telecast live on WilliNet, the town's public-access cable channel.  A fifth candidate, Sarah Gardner, is providing a pre-taped video statement because of a schedule conflict.  

FOLLOW TWITTER STREAM - #ephplanning

The Williamstown Planning Board Candidates Forum was organized by The Greylock Independent and will take place in the auditorium of the Williamstown Elementary School. The public is invited to attend.  "We are hoping to telecast the discussion live on either Channel 16 or 17 on WilliNet, but for technical reasons, that may not be possible," said town resident and Greylock Independent member Bill Densmore, who will serve as moderator. "So if Williamstown voters want to ask questions, they should try to be there."

Meanwhile, the town is working to craft a proposal that both Deep and two-thirds of the town would vote for.  Deep has made six points about his project.  And he has exchanged thoughts with this writer. Declaring that if he doesn't get the zoning he wants, he'll build 120 units of affordable housing at Waubeeka.

Densmore said residents could also email questions to [email protected] or tweet with the hashtag #ephplanners.  Statements submitted by the candidates will be posted a day in advance of the forum at http://www.greylockindependent.com or at http://newshare.com/planning

For the forum, each candidate was asked to submit  (1) a 300-500 word candidate statement —whatever you want to say—plus (2) a short bio statement. At the forum, candidates will each make a 90-second statement on why they are running.  Each candidate will be invited to direct one question to all or one fellow candidate. Densmore will ask one or two questions, and will forward questions from email, Tweets or from Williamstown residents in the audience.

The current Planning Board is embroiled in controversy over a possible time-sharing hotel development in South Williamstown proposed by North Adams entrepreneur and landlord Michael Deep. 

• Candidates for election to the two years which remain of one five-year term are Chris Kapiloff, Anne Hogeland and Bruce MacDonald
• Candidates for election to one full five-year seat are Sarah Gardner and Susan Puddester. Candidate Lindsay Errichetti decided this week to withdraw her candidacy. 

Gardner is currently serving by Nov. 30 appointment of the selectmen and planning board after the elected member, Carol Stein-Payne, resigned part-way through her five-year term.  However, Gardner, a lecturer and associate director of the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies, has filed seeking election to a full five-year seat currently held by Williams College art-history professor Elizabeth McGowan, who is not seeking re-election to that seat.   Thus there is no elected incumbent running for either seat, one of which is for a full five years and the other of which is for a partial term.

Gardner was appointed by 5-4 vote. In March, the Planning Board split, 3-2, with Gardner in the majority joined by Planning Board members McGowan and Ann McCallum, to give a thumbs-down recommendation to voters on Deep's proposal.   Because Deep is not a Williamstown resident, Deep's attorney Stan Parese obtain signatures of 19 other town residents and filed by citizen petition a Town Meeting warrant article that would change zoning for a portion of the Waubeeka Land LLC property so that he can pursue what he has called a "country inn" lodging development on at least up to 40 acres.

The planning board does not "approve" zoning changes, and doesn't have a process for doing so. It does have a process for drafting proposed zoning changes, and that has been short-circuited by Deep's warrant article, because, according to Deep, he grew tired of waiting for the Planning Board review process to play out.

Wednesday's forum will not focus exclusively on the Waubeeka controversy, Densmore said. "We hope candidates will articulate their views on how the town should manage its zoning and planning, and their visions for the future of land and buildings use in town," he said. 

RELATED LINKS:

• Greylock Indepent coverage of the Waubeeka controversy
• VERBATIM: The three things Williamstown's planning-board majority seeks from Mike Deep | Anne McCallum
• VERBATIM: An appeal for jobs and development in Williamstown | Amy Jeschawitz
• VERBATIM: Statement to town officials from resident Jamie Bairstow of Blair Road 
• TEXT: Michael Deep's proposed zoning change for his Waubeeka Golf property to permit time-sharing hotel development
• TEXT: Analysis of Deep's proposed zoning change warrant article by Andy and Ann Hogeland 

Williams provides architects' rendering of Spring Street bookstore building

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Williams College made public on Wednesday the latest architects' rendering of a new, 15,000-square-foot, three-story bookstore building at the corner of Spring and Walden streets. Construction is set to begin later this year.

In providing an image of the rendering, Frederick W. Puddester, Williams VP for finance & administration and treasurer, said the design was reviewed by the school's internal bookstore committee in a process that has involved "quite a bit of consultation."  The evolution of the building has also been the subject of ongoing stories in the student newspaper, The Williams Record.

"In the decentralized way that decisions are made at a college, especially Williams, it's long been the case here that design decisions are made by each building committee. In this case that was the Bookstore Building Committee. They’re Amy Johns (Zilkha Center), Dave Pilachowski (Librarian), E.J. Johnson (Art), Karen Shepard (English), Ken Jensen (Facilities), Lee Park (Chemistry and Associate Dean of the Faculty), Matt Sheehy (Finance), Rita Coppola-Wallace (Design and Construction), and Mike Wood (Project Manager)."

On Jan. 20, Puddester spoke about the bookstore building, saying it would house a cafe, a new text book and retail trade bookstore on two stories and office space on the third story.  The college's building plans were also outlined in an Oct. 5, 2015, public talk at Images Cinema by Rita Coppola-Wallace, the school's executive director for design and construction. Her talk was covered by iBerkshires at the time.

This week, Puddester added in an email accompanying the rendering: 

"As yet another layer of consideration, the college established last year a Design Review Committee, which has on it four faculty members and three members of the design and construction office," Puddester said in an email this week. "The four faculty members are Provost Will Dudley, E.J. Johnson, Mike Lewis, and Marc Gotlieb, the last three of whom bring particular expertise.

"A high priority for all these groups was, of course, how the building will relate to the street. It does that through scale, materials, and literal openness through large doors that’ll allow activity from the store to spill out to the east and south. The generally accepted wisdom is that public design decisions lead to bland and less effective buildings. I wasn’t in Williamstown at the time, but the common understanding is that's how the current Williams Inn came to look the way it does. There was a stronger design, which after some public resistance was watered down to what most people subsequently concluded was visually disappointing."

Town Planner Andrew Groff says the college must submit a site-plan review for the bookstore building to the planning board, which must confirm that it complies with the town's development standards and compliance alternatives.  After that approval, the college can apply for a building permit. 

Town manager Hoch's comments to Williams about proposed 100-room inn on Spring Street -- Problem with Option B seen; concern about Main / Water streets intersection congestion

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Major changes in parking at the bottom of Spring Street, and more traffic congestion at Main and Water streets, could occur if a plan by Williams College to erect a 100-room hotel is approved by Town Meeting voters in May, according to an analysis by Town Manager Jason Hoch.

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UPDATE: In a presentation to the town's planning board on Tuesday, March 15, Williams said it is currently considering submitting "Option A" (image at right).  The planning board voted, 5-0, to recommend that the town's voters approve, at May town meeting, a zoning change to allow Williams to proceed with formal planning of the hotel project.

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 In a Nov. 13, 2015, email to James Kolesar, a college official, Hoch commented on a "pre-regulatory" filing of plans for the hotel as drawn for the college by its architects, Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc. -- the same firm which has designed a new bookstore building for which construction is about to begin.

The "town lot" at the bottom of Spring Street is actually on land owned by Williams College. Hoch suggest the relocation of Walden Street if a hotel is built in order to create a single, four-way intersection at the bottom of Spring Street.  "Option B seems very problematic from a traffic perspective with congested drop off and bus loading areas," he writes.

 There is no suggestion in the "pre-regulatory" filing that Cambridge Seven consider any other locations for an inn in town other than the two sites at the end of Spring Street. Williams has said that it would close and raze the current Williams Inn if it gets voter permission for a zoning change to build an inn on Spring Street.

 Here is a text of the email. To view the details "pre-regulatory" filing submitted last year by the college to the town, click HERE.

 Town Review Comments – 13 November 2015

From: Jason Hoch
Date: Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 9:18 AM
Subject: FW: Inn site study
To: Jim Kolesar

im –

Thank you for the opportunity to review the site study for the Inn. Our staff has reviewed the report with an intent of offering general observations about findings and potential areas for further study before finalizing. We did not review it as a full pre-regulatory type filing as we understand this is a draft and there is ample time for formal review later.

The most notable issue of concern is the further deterioration of service at the Water/Main intersection.

I am happy to discuss the items noted below in greater detail with the project team or to provide additional clarification. Further, please feel free to attribute any of these comments and subsequent analysis that may be added to the report as resulting from the Town of Williamstown’s informal review if it is helpful to differentiate from the College’s initial plans.

Land Use

One of the key recommendations of the 2002 Master Plan is that the Village Business District needs to be gradually expanded to accommodate more business space as this is lacking in town. Additionally, tourism should be pursued as a major avenue of economic development. Option A seems to accomplish these goals more effectively than Option B as it preserves the Town Parking Lot as a future site for mixed use development once the parking situation is addressed by using another site in the future for parking. A mixed use building at the Option A hotel site would be less ideal than on the Town Parking lot site as a mixed use building would more heavily rely on pedestrian traffic. A hotel on the other hand is an ideal anchor institution and generates its own pedestrian traffic and is ideal for the Option A site as long as steps noted in the report to ensure pedestrian connectivity are taken into account.

Both Police and Fire Departments expressed concern about fully restricting the existing Denison Park Drive such that the hotel has only one main access in Option A. They would prefer having a secondary access. This can be a bollard protected emergency only lane similar to the installation at Weston Field. The same observation holds for the Annex as shown in Option B.

The Fire Department notes that access to two sides of the buildings is necessary for appropriate fire protection. In both options, the annex shows little to no accessibility for fire lanes.

Traffic

Placing the hotel at the Option A site preserves more of the existing traffic pattern and does not force as any vehicles towards the Hoxsey Street intersection which will be difficult to improve from a LOS perspective.  ased on the report, one can surmise that the proposed Walden Street extension to South Street could  enhance LOS at all area intersections.

The Town needs to consider methods of improving upper Water Street due to the serious LOS at this area.  itigation might have to be considered during a hotel permitting process, as this LOS will decrease further.

A roundabout could be a major improvement to the Water Street intersection. Traffic volumes at this  ntersection however, are near the upper limit for capacity of a single lane urban compact roundabout on a  eak hour basis. This should be studied further. From a design perspective, a significant amount of pavement  lready exists at the Water/Main/Waterman intersection and could likely be reconfigured without significant  oss of additional land or existing parking on Water Street.

Option B seems very problematic from a traffic perspective with congested drop off and bus loading areas.

The report notes that the existing Latham / Denison/ Spring / Parking lot intersection is problematic, and  angerous for pedestrians. Serious design attention must be paid to this site in the development process. If site A is selected the College could consider relocating Walden Street during the process of reconstructing and expanding the Town parking lot to create a 4 way intersection with significantly improved site lines. This approach, when combined with the separate Walden Street Extension could provide one continuous through street from Water Street to South Street which could offer an overall reduction of volume on Main Street.

Wetlands & Site Technical Analysis

Guntlow’s wetlands report is excellent and captures the concerns shared by the Community Development ffice and he Conservation Commission when the project was discussed last year.

We have no comments on the geotechnical work.