Great Barrington — A troublesome brownfield on Bridge Street is on track for the construction of affordable housing, but plans for the rest of 100 Bridge, a $40 million retail, office, housing and open space development on the former New England Log Homes site, appear to be up in the air.
Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire (CDC) Executive Director Tim Geller sat before the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) last Thursday (June 9) to explain that the board now has a responsibility to weigh in on only the affordable housing element of the larger development on 8-acres of prime yet contaminated land due to high levels of dioxin and pentachlorophenol concentrations.
Geller told the Edge that the reason the $12 million affordable housing project required permitting separate from the larger development, was that the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) would have applied the same financial constraints to the entire site, despite the affordable housing piece being financially independent. The DHCD oversees affordable housing built with public money.
“DHCD would have oversight of the financial books of all the market-rate residential and commercial projects,” Geller wrote in an email. “Clearly too onerous for private developers.”
At Thursday’s meeting, Geller also said the CDC is asking the town to waive its building permit fee, estimated at $56,000, and the sewer hookup fee, estimated at $27,000, to help hasten the project’s movement.
The site is surrounded by a residential neighborhood; the wastewater treatment plant sits at the rear, and the Housatonic River on its western edge. The CDC owns the site and from 2014 to 2015 tried to clean the soil to solve the pollution problem. The state shut the pilot bioremediation project down due to some cleanup hitches and said encasing, or “capping,” the soil was the best way forward.
The larger plans for the 100 Bridge complex include an anchor store to commit to the location, which would give that part of the project solid financial footing. Talks with the Berkshire Co-op Market have been on and off for the last several years, since the Co-op wants to expand and has seen 100 Bridge as an ideal spot just down the road. But Co-op board president Dan Seitz still says there is “nothing concrete,” and that the store is still sorting through other options.
The affordable housing units will be constructed in three buildings on two acres that back up against the sewer plant. And ZBA members and residents who live near the site expressed concern over a number of potential issues.
“It is my observation that it’s too bad that [the housing] is wedged between a sewer waste plant and a toxic waste field,” said board member Michael Wise.
Given that the site over the years has become a seemingly endless maze of trials, Geller remained remarkably optimistic throughout the meeting. “It’s quite likely that we’ll end up remediating the entire site at once, with temporary caps over sites that will eventually become buildings.”
The CDC also has plans for market-rate housing on either side of the central retail and office space structures, and Geller said it was “more than likely that the affordable housing piece and a significant piece of the market-rate housing will get built at the same time.”
But, he assured the board, “what isn’t built will be remediated.”
Board member Carolyn Ivory, who also lives near the site, alluded to the scraggly eyesore the site has been and still is, wondering how to make it look more appealing while the work continues, especially since the green tarps have torn away from the fencing. “Can something nicer be put there?” she said.
Geller said something would.
But questions about the rest of the development were snipped by Geller. “As far as ZBA’s purview, we’re really considering just this and not anything beyond. It makes your life a lot easier and takes away a lot of the questions. I’d like to think you have the best of both worlds here.”
But not everyone was sold on that.
“I’m just concerned about the worst case scenario,” Wise said. “All that’s before us is the two acres, therefore one of the things we have to keep in mind is the possibility that nothing happens to the rest of the site for some indefinite period of time, and what will it look like if that is the case? Will it be AstroTurf? Will it be a chain link fence because it’s too dangerous? Will it be a parking lot for the town?”
Geller reached into his technicality toolbox. “It’s not in your jurisdiction to determine what happens at the rest of the site,” he said.
But, Wise said, the board still has to work at “deciding what this is, and where it fits into the rest of the neighborhood.”
Geller said starting the affordable housing piece is critical as an incentive to get market rate housing developers interested in building there. “We’re only gonna move the dirt once,” he added, referring to the soil remediation. Geller said the market rate housing would likely be built more quickly than the affordable housing.
Wise, however, was still fretting about splitting the site into two for purposes of permitting. “The lawyer in me points out that this is an end run…by segregating this…arguably….we now define that problem away, and we have just evaded compliance with these principles.”
“That’s only if you’re looking at the site as a whole site,” Geller said. “Now, it’s not within your jurisdiction.”
“It isn’t today,” said board member John Katz.
Geller noted that 100 Bridge was “a project that is always going to be stressed financially,” and so asked for the fee waivers, and said there was “a very persuasive argument” to do so.
Geller said the town was to benefit by moving it closer to the 10 percent affordable housing encouraged by the state for financial incentives, and which is a requirement under the zoning bylaw in that area, said Town Planner Chris Rembold. Great Barrington currently has between 7 and 8 percent affordable housing units.
The whole development, as originally envisioned, had enchanted the community with CDC estimates that it will stuff town coffers with around $400,000 in annual revenue.
Geller said once ZBA issues its permit, then the CDC will apply for state funds, and once that is in place he can spend money on design work.
All the other environmental permitting will still be enforced, Geller said.
But as the site sits smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood, people are worried. Residents there have already dealt with a messy bioremediation project that raised fears of health dangers –– air quality studies revealed none –– but there are still other problems.
“Will all the toxicity be removed?” asked Jana Vilner, about soil under the affordable housing units.
Geller explained there would be “some form of cap or another; either an earthen cap or foundations or parking lots…the toxic dirt will be buried deeper.”
He said the toxins are so bad there isn’t a licensed facility that will accept them. “There’s not place in the country to take it, and [the site is] in a floodplain so can’t bring in new stuff. We’re stuck with keeping the dirt on site, so how do we make it safe?”
He added that Ransom Environmental Engineering as well as Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) are right now “putting that puzzle together.”
Mark and Adrienne Cohen said the sewer plant was already noisy and that “chemical smells” occasionally issued from it. They wondered if more volume from the housing units would also increase the smell and noise.
Geller said the CDC’s storm wastewater impact study for whole site showed “negligible impact on the capacity of the plant. We have a lot more capacity because the Rising Paper [mill] is no longer putting stuff in the system.”
But Adrienne Cohen used the opportunity to press for a cover over the plant. It was done on Martha’s Vineyard, she added, and reduced smells and noise. “I don’t think that’s a huge expense,” she said. “There’s a high cancer rate in our neighborhood.”
Meagan Flynn said she said she can hear the noise, “even with ear buds.” She researched acoustical barriers and silencers, and said there were “simple measures to limit noise.”
“Let’s work with the town to try to get that done,” Geller said, looking over at Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin.
Tabakin said she was “happy to have meeting to discuss it,” adding that already, “a lot of money and effort was made to bring [the sewer plant] up to code compliance.”
Geller said one of the CDC’s projects in collaboration with Construct, Inc. was the Pine Woods affordable housing development in Stockbridge, which sits next to the sewer plant. “There is virtually no quality of life impact,” he said of units that are about 150 feet away from the plant, about the same distance they would be at 100 Bridge.
“I’m in this business because I’m passionate about it, because I want to create safe housing for people who can’t afford it,” Geller said. “I would not put it here if I thought there would be a quality of life impact.”
The public hearing was continued to June 28 at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall.
