Great Barrington — As the town’s newly formed economic development committee ponders strategies for how to improve Great Barrington, housing, the high cost of living and incentives for smart commercial development have emerged front and center.
One obstacle retailers and other business owners often complain about is the thin labor pool that makes staffing difficult in southern Berkshire County. The problem is caused in no small measure by the lack of affordable housing, officials say.
At a special joint meeting of the planning and select boards on June 27, town planner Chris Rembold told attendees the state goal for affordable housing in individual municipalities is 10 percent of the available housing.
Click here to see what constitutes “affordable,” according to Chapter 40b, the state’s affordable housing law created in 1969 that allows developers to skirt local zoning bylaws in order to increase the stock of affordable housing in municipalities that haven’t met the 10 percent state goal.
In some cases, failure to meet the goal can expose a town to a so-called hostile 40b application, in which a developer can run roughshod over municipal master plans and the wishes of residents and town officials alike — all in the name of increasing the affordable housing stock.
See video below of part 1 of the June 27 special joint meeting of the Great Barrington planning and select boards:
Rembold said that, as of the 2010 census (the latest for which reliable numbers were available), Great Barrington’s share of affordable housing was about 7.5 percent. Since that time, however, the town has added a fairly large number of affordable housing units.
In addition, there are 45 more planned for 100 Bridge Street and another 40 to 50 at 910 Main Street in the town’s smart growth overlay district. Both of those projects are being developed by the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire.
“So there’s another 80 to 90 units still to come,” Rembold explained. “That should put us at or above the 10 percent threshold, so we may have a safe harbor where we can’t be vulnerable to a 40b application.”
While it is a relief to meet the state goal and decrease exposure to a hostile application, Rembold nonetheless called 10 percent “a low bar” and pointed to “inclusionary zoning policies,” a tool in place in several town zoning districts that, as defined by the state, “require a portion of the housing units in certain real estate developments to be reserved as affordable to low- and moderate-income households.”
And of course, there is the matter of a shortage of market-rate rental housing as well. There are few such formal incentives to build market-rate rental housing, as there are with affordable housing.

Planning board Chair Brandee Nelson said she was talking recently with a developer who told her building anything in Great Barrington for under $250 per square foot is almost impossible.
“And that’s just the cost of the unit, not including the cost of the land or cost of permitting,” Nelson said. “So we’ve been focused on trying to reduce the number of hoops you’ve got to jump through, soft-cost-wise, and what you have to spend in permitting time.”

In addition, the town has made conversion of a single-family unit to a two-family apartment building almost everywhere “by-right”—meaning that it can be accomplished without jumping through hoops or seeking special permits that can be expensive to obtain. The town has also passed new rules making it easier to add accessory dwelling units, including so-called “tiny houses.”
“We need to explain to people that we need to employ a variety of strategies to make people welcome in this community,” said Nelson.
Sam Nickerson, along with Ian Rasch, was the developer of 47 Railroad Street, a downtown apartment building with ground-floor retail completed last year.
Nickerson said when his company, Framework, first proposed the 47 Railroad Street project, which included only 13 market-rate apartments, he learned that it was the first building permit taken out in the town for a structure containing more than four apartments since 1990.
See video below of part 2 of the June 27 special joint meeting of the Great Barrington planning and select boards:
Nickerson said increased density requirements in the MXD zone that passed at this year’s annual town meeting were “counterproductive.” Nickerson and Rasch have proposed another mixed-use development on the newly created MXD (mixed-use transitional) zone.
Manville Place was proposed about a year ago in the MXD zone near South Main Street. In the words of Nickerson, it was an effort to address an “absolute crisis” in the Great Barrington rental market. Manville Place faced opposition from neighbors.

Two of them, Donald E. Willis Jr. and Priscilla Ann Willis, have sued the town in state Land Court, asserting in an appeal that the decision of the selectboard in granting a special permit to the developers was “arbitrary, capricious” and “exceeds the authority of the board.”
In a separate appeal, the planning board was also targeted for lack of notice for a site plan review session. Nickerson and Rasch moved to dismiss that appeal but were denied. Click here to read a recent email (with attachments) from Donald Willis updating Manville Place opponents on recent legal developments. Those appeals are still pending in Land Court.
“Almost every development that’s come before us has had somebody who is opposed to it,” Nelson said.
Nickerson said the lack of market-rate housing is a problem not only in Great Barrington but nationwide, along with an “oversupply of single-family homes.” The greatest area of housing growth, he said, “is for seniors who don’t want to take care of a big house anymore.” He called them called “new renters.”

“The old housing stock just doesn’t work,” Nickerson explained. “It’s not accessible. It doesn’t have elevators, so you really need to fit the need that’s here, and I see this all the time. We have a waiting list of something like 30 people at 47 Railroad. And a lot of them are seniors who need this because the existing housing stock is just not getting the job done.”
At the economic development committee meeting on July 17, the conversation turned to possible incentives the town can provide to prospective businesses or housing developers.
Rembold explained that some larger cities offer tax incentives to lure investors but that’s not really an option for a town like Great Barrington.
“We can’t offer a lot of money,” Rembold explained. “We’re not big enough and we’re constrained by Mass. General Law.”
One thing the town has started to accumulate is surplus properties. The town has managed to sell some of them, such as the old Castle Street firehouse adjacent to Town Hall, though the buyer has done little with the property, so it continues to deteriorate.

Then there is the matter of the former Housatonic School, which the town has owned since at least 2005 and whose problems in attracting a suitable buyer have been well publicized lately.
But there are other properties the town owns, most of which have been acquired through foreclosures for nonpayment of taxes. Most are polluted. The town recently acquired Cook’s Garage in Housatonic, squeezed in between two mills on the east bank of the Housatonic River in the village of Housatonic.
And there is also Ried Cleaners, which the town foreclosed on earlier this year. Both Cook’s and Ried’s are polluted. In Cook’s case, it’s hazardous building materials, underground storage tanks and possible asbestos. In the case of Ried’s, the building has become infamous locally for its toxic underground plume, which includes tetrachloroethylene, a chemical solvent used in dry cleaning. Work to determine the extent of pollution at both sites is ongoing.
“We have a $300,000 EPA grant to try to figure out how to clean up these properties,” Rembold said.

There are others as well. The town owns a single-family home at 40 Grove Street abutting the Grove Street park. And there is also Stonegate, an old mansion that was most recently used as a time-share lodging complex. For the time being, it is still in private hands.
“It is a timeshare unit, so there’s probably 100 owners, some of whom have paid taxes, some of whom have not,” Rembold explained. “It’s kind of a land-court nightmare scenario.”
The town also owns several other properties that Rembold said are “literally under water” or in a floodplain and practically useless, which makes not paying taxes on them a fairly easy decision for the owner.
Rembold pointed to others that are derelict but privately owned. On Main Street, the former Hong Kong Buffet, which, at various times in its history, has been The Deli, Whittaker’s and Carpenter’s Variety, remains privately owned but is not paying taxes and is also “heavily contaminated” from its days as a gasoline station.

“Maybe we will be the happy owners at some point,” Rembold quipped. “The town is often the owner of last resort.”
People often ask Rembold about the abandoned Getty gas station at the northern end of Main Street. It is privately owned by a real estate company, which is paying taxes on it. Rembold did not know if it was polluted but said the underground tanks had been removed. The lot formerly hosted a mill, so it’s possible there is pollution from those days.
“The fact is taxes are being paid on it, so we have no influence directly over what happens at that site,” Rembold said.
There have also been success stories. In 2013, developer John Delmolino purchased and demolished the former Betros property, a crumbling former convenience store and apartment building at Cottage and Main streets. He built a modern structure with 2,500 square feet of retail space. It now houses Lennox Jewelers and Eco Dry Cleaners.
See video below of the demolition of the former Betros market and package store, courtesy Google user Nick103170:
In 2014, Regio “Ray” Almori, who owns the Plaza Package store, bought three dilapidated and dangerous properties, known as the Ely Block, from 177 to 185 State Road. The properties had been abandoned and derelict for at least 20 years. Almori later demolished them and planted grass.
“We’ve been lucky that some of these sites have been developed without our involvement,” said Rembold.
The economic development committee meets next on Wednesday, July 31, at 6 p.m. at the Great Barrington fire station. The redevelopment of the Housatonic School is on the agenda.