Great Barrington — Flying church developer Paul Joffe says we can all stop worrying.
Plenty of work, he says, is and has been underway at the 150-year-old former Methodist church on Main Street that, last year, was jacked up to make room for a second level. We just haven’t noticed it, he added, since we all feel rather let down after the end of the drama in which we watched it rise even closer to the heavens.
And we knew, when the project was announced in May 2015, that we were in for at least a two-year wait for what will be retail and offices on the lower level, a 79-seat restaurant above, and a food/coffee kiosk in a garden between it and Rosseter Street where the parish once stood. He’s roughly on schedule, he says–maybe another year and a half, though he’s not sure.
He reminded me that, while he’s borrowed some from Pittsfield Cooperative Bank, he’s using mostly his own money, and construction projects tend to go “faster” when they’re financed. “Pittsfield Co-op is betting on Great Barrington,” he added. “And I appreciate that.”
“It’s kind of a hand-built place,” Joffe also reminded me, when I went there and actually stood with him and two busy plumbers under what was once a church.
This isn’t Joffe’s first church, either. He fixed one up in Kingston, New York, too. And he’s renovated six buildings of a similar age in Brooklyn. He’s hands-on because he wants to give it the special touch. “I’m doing a lot of this myself,” he said, pointing to a row of raw ash logs from his property in New Marlborough holding up some critical steel beams that are, in turn, holding up the church.
“Modern code calls for 100 pounds per square foot for a commercial space,” Joffe told me. “What if there’s a wedding up there and they’re all doing a jumping dance in the same place?”
Below, two plumbers were working in the foundation stone to install pipes. All the plumbing is going in now, he said, and that includes the waste lines and grease traps for the restaurant. He has to use large, cast-iron pipes for such a massive undertaking.
Next is leveling out the foundation, pouring the slab, and installing a vapor barrier and perimeter drains to keep it “nice and dry.” Sewer and sprinkler lines will connect to the town system by the end of summer.
He was mum about potential tenants, not wanting to let any air out of his suspense balloon.
He did not appear concerned, however, observing that, if his engineer’s office — Nick Anderson of Berkshire Engineering in Lee — is an economic gauge, “it looks like the Berkshires is really busy.”
He said he thinks the community got nervous when all the dramatic construction work stopped, possibly because of the hullaballoo over the former Castle Street firehouse, which a developer purchased from the town for a song several years ago and still sits decrepit and unmaintained.
“I’m happy people are excited by [the project] enough to be concerned,” he said.
Joffe reminded me he hasn’t received any public money for this redevelopment.
Above all, Joffe says he didn’t want this project to “come out with a cookie-cutter, half-modern look.” No, he wants wants this to be special, he says, and doing that takes time.
“For this place to look old and beautiful,” he said, “it’s got to be hand-built.”
