Great Barrington — Even before a divided Planning Board last week recommended the Selectboard issue a special permit for a 95-room boutique hotel, a steady stream of objections over the proposed design of The Berkshire resulted in new ideas and suggestions by residents, some of them architects, that the developer says he will consider.
The Planning Board continues with its site plan review next Thursday, October 22 at 7 p.m., Town Hall, where it will likely put binding conditions on the project as it moves on to the Selectboard for a final decision on November 9.
Hotel developers Vijay and Chrystal Mahida’s proposal for The Berkshire was lauded on the one hand by those thrilled to see a decaying building in the heart of town go on the tax rolls to the tune of $450,000 a year, create 30 or so full-time jobs, and a new source of pedestrian money for downtown businesses. On the other, protests over the demolition of the historically designated former Searles Middle and High School complex, as well as concerns over the design, siting, and traffic flow around the new building, raised eyebrows and hackles among residents already reeling from still-torn up roads after a summer of construction and new, over-sized traffic-light poles courtesy of the MassDOT’s Main Street reconstruction project.
Ever the self-appointed town peacemaker and reason-seeker, Selectboard member Ed Abrahams stepped into the hotel fray, first with an editorial calling for community involvement in projects, rather than post-decision-making grumbling. Abrahams asked the developers to go to the Design Advisory Committee, even though the committee, composed of at least three architects, has “no teeth,” as member Jonathan Hankin pointed out. Seeing the meeting fill up with residents fretting over the hotel plans, Abrahams asked “the unhappy people” and the developers if they would be willing to listen to each other.
They said they would, and they have.
Planning Board member Jack Musgrove helped with this process as well, he said, because he wished the hotel would “face the town” rather than Bridge Street, and interact with not only hotel guests, but local residents.
“A hotel in the middle of town should be an amenity to the town,” he said. “Rather than wait for events, I felt we had to seize some initiative, and show them what an alternative might be.” Musgrove added that a few residents, who also happen to be architects, made some sketches based on alternative concepts that pulls the hotel closer to Bridge Street, adds a wrap around veranda porch echoing the porches of the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, and makes the whole complex more pedestrian-accessible. The sketches, still under lock and key, were presented to the Mahidas along with Iredale Mineral Cosmetics CEO Jane Iredale and COO Robert Montgomery, owners of the site, Musgrove said.
Current plans, developed by Michael McKewon of BMA Architects – an Amherst, New Hampshire-based firm that specializes in hotel chain design — show the hotel set back from Bridge Street, with its official entrance in the back, off Church Street, near the main parking lot. Though there is a way in from Bridge Street, some design board members felt the pedestrian entrance wasn’t clear enough, and that it didn’t interact with the street in a way that would allow more interface with people on foot. Musgrove said he thought residents would be more likely to drink and dine at the AAA Four-Star hotel’s bar and 60-seat farm-to-table restaurant if the design were more open and veranda-like. Musgrove also said he would love to see the hotel make better use of its location on the Housatonic River (with its walking path and gardens).
Musgrove didn’t like the 10-foot retaining wall between the adjoining Iredale Mineral Cosmetics headquarters — the renovated former Bryant Elementary School — and the parking lot planned at the corner of Bridge and School Streets, where a parking lot currently exists next to the old gymnasium. He didn’t think that would be such a nice view from Iredale’s building, either.
Vijay Mahida told The Edge that while “he’s always open minded,” he and his wife, Chrystal, have worked on this plan since last December, and carefully thought through every element, particularly the hotel rooms’ views through the eyes of his guests.
“I’m open to suggestions or meaningful tweaks,” he said, “but at this stage to change the whole project is not feasible. But I will be open and will review it in the next few days.”
Shifting around the buildings, he said, would shift the views as well.
“Do you want to see the laundromat or the ballpark?” he said, referring to the laundry on School Street, and the baseball field directly across Bridge Street. Mahida also owns the Day’s Inn and the Marriott Fairfield Inn and Suites in Great Barrington, and the Hilton Garden Inn in Lenox. He started in the hotel business as a room cleaner when he moved here from India roughly 20 years ago.
Mahida said that it is his “pocketbook on the line,” and that his family is working hard to secure a loan for the $22 million to $24 million project.
Abrahams said that design questions have nothing to do with whether the project is legal, since it does upend the town’s recently enacted 45-room limit through a historical designation loophole. He also said he didn’t know whether 95 rooms was a good thing, adding that he doesn’t have an opinion yet, and is waiting for the hearing. Right now, he says, it’s all about looks, and he’s heard from both sides.
“Some people are saying it looks like it was plucked from the interstate in New Jersey; others say it’s clean and bright.”
“What I want is for people to learn from this whole process,” Abrahams said, repeating his oft-heard refrain, “don’t wait till it’s over, then complain.”
Great Barrington resident, political and local activist Mary Pat Akers is not one to sit around. Abrahams said they spoke about her concerns over the project design after Akers came to the design meeting. “The product of the planning board exercise last week is that now people have offered up ideas and alternatives, hoping for a project that works for both the developer and the community,” Akers said. “The process worked. It’s not a done deal, it’s a give and take.”
The planning board’s site plan review can only do so much, however. It deals with zoning matters and things like lighting and traffic movement. “We can’t tell them to turn the hotel around and put the door somewhere else,” Musgrove said, as one example.
“It’s admirable that Vijay is entertaining any of this,” said Planning Board Chairman Jonathan Hankin. “It’s a very complicated site between the flood plain and the traffic and where traffic can enter and exit. Though people may not like the façade, a lot of problems have been solved. It’s very limited what you can do with traffic on that site.”
The board, Hankin added, “can impose reasonable conditions — can reconfigure site-related issues. But it’s not our job to redesign it.”
Musgrove said that while much of the charm was sucked out of the Searles building over the years, the original Searles “had a little charm.”
The proposed hotel, he said, “needs more charm.”
