Great Barrington — If a proposal to create a new apartment complex on Maple Avenue comes to fruition, it could substantially increase the town’s stock of badly needed market-rate rentals. Some neighbors, however, are skeptical.
The proposal from developer Jon Halpern of Great Barrington Development LLC would convert a now-empty nursing home at 148 Maple Ave. into 48 market-rate apartments. Click here to see the proposal before the town planning board, which includes findings from the board concluding that the project “is in the best interests of the town.”
“We have a desperate need for more housing and we need more rentals,” planning board member Jonathan Hankin said in an Edge interview. “If this doesn’t happen, then the building will just sit there empty. It will become like the Searles school.” It was a reference to a proposal, still on hold, by a prominent Berkshire County hotelier to turn the abandoned and deteriorating Bridge Street school into an upscale boutique hotel.
The site of the former Kindred Nursing and Rehabilitation Center sits on 4.1 acres with 49 parking spaces and is a two-and-a-half-story building of some 33,000 square feet. The proposal would add a full extra story, bringing the total square footage to more than 44,000 with 50 parking spaces.
Of the 48 apartments, four would be studios, 36 one-bedroom and eight two-bedroom. One apartment will house a live-in resident manager. Halpern has provided letters from the Great Barrington Fire District and the town Department of Public Works attesting to the fact that water and sewer infrastructure is adequate to service the proposed building.
The building has been vacant for almost six months after the nursing home closed and was acquired by Bear Mountain Healthcare of Thomaston, Connecticut. As The Edge reported in April, the company wanted to re-open it as a “completely positive” COVID-19 facility, or “recovery unit” housing patients who “need 24-hour care but don’t have to be in a hospital environment.” Instead, Bear Mountain decided to sell the property.
The developers also say the project is consistent with Great Barrington’s award-winning master plan, which can be viewed in two volumes: here and here. The master plan states flatly that “redevelopment and reuse of existing buildings and infrastructure preserves open spaces.”
Halpern says the proposal would preserve 2.5 acres of wooded land, protect scenic views, redevelop a dilapidated building and protect historic character. And since it will offer a fitness facility and a pet grooming space for residents, it will promote mixed uses as well as sustainability and energy efficiency. It is also an example of adaptive reuse.
“The proposed project will re-purpose an existing building and maintain the community fabric,” the proposal says.
“It absolutely fits with the master plan,” Hankin said.
In addition, the apartment building will meet or exceed LEED Gold Level, a coveted energy and environmental design rating. It will also have a roof prepped for solar array placement, along with highly efficient heat-pump heating and cooling systems.
Since the property is zoned residential, the project will require a special permit from the planning board. But the proposal is caught in something of a zoning limbo. At a special town meeting in September, voters approved Article 24 — a change to the town’s zoning bylaw allowing the conversion of nursing homes to multi-family housing with a special permit. The problem is that all changes to town zoning codes must be reviewed by the state attorney general, and that has not yet been completed.
“The [attorney general] must approve the bylaw, but in the meantime the planning board will open the hearing process,” town planner and assistant town manager Chris Rembold told The Edge. “But a decision cannot be rendered until the AGÂ approval makes the bylaw official.”
“It’s just a formality,” added Hankin, a retired architect. “It’s rare that they do not approve these things. I don’t anticipate there’s going to be any problem with it, but until we get that approval, it’s not legal.”
Officials expect the approval to come soon, but perhaps not in time for the hearing, so Hankin does not anticipate that the planning board will vote on the proposal when it holds a public hearing on the special permit via Zoom on Thursday, Dec. 10.
Interestingly, the Kindred property and another nursing home, Timberlyn Heights, half a mile west on Route 23 and owned at that time by the same company, were both noncompliant with the town’s zoning bylaw until more than five years ago. Both were operating as nursing homes in residential zones.
Great Barrington established zoning in 1932, well before either Timberlyn or Kindred were built. No one is sure why they were allowed to build in the first place. Kindred was also renovated in 1975, so it is not clear why yet another building permit was issued when the business was clearly nonconforming. On July 13, 2015, the selectboard issued special permits to bring them belatedly into compliance with the town’s zoning bylaws.
Two Maple Avenue residents have expressed significant concerns. Amanda Hanlin-Hochler lives with her family at 193 Maple Ave., just beyond the Newsboy Monument.
She delivered to The Edge a statement she had sent to Leigh Davis, a member of the Great Barrington Selectboard. Hanlin-Hochler raised a number of concerns, including the likelihood of increased vehicular and pedestrian traffic caused by the addition of more residents in the 48 new apartment units, which, she said, citing census data she had unearthed, “could more than double the number of residents on our street.”
“This hardly maintains the ‘character’ of our current neighborhood,” Hanlin-Hochler said. “It also is not fitting with the small-town feel to have a large commercial apartment complex move into our small town.”
Hanlin-Hochler added that she and many of her neighbors do not object to the building’s reuse as an apartment building, but do take issue with “the proposed size of the project.”
“I wanted to let you know as a representative of our town that we are not ok with this project as proposed and strongly recommend that it goes back to the drawing board,” Hanlin-Hochler told Davis.
Carol Purcell has lived at 120 Maple Ave., next door to the building in question, for more than 40 years. She said she thought the proposal was way too large for the neighborhood, which is already a busy commercial corridor that combines routes 23 and 41.
“An example of overreach would be too many neighbors — a complete change from the quiet neighborhood that has been in existence since I moved here in 1978,” Purcell said in an interview. “This would utterly change our quality of living.”
The project manager for the development is Samuel VanSant, brother-in-law of Great Barrington town manager Mark Pruhenski. However, as the town’s chief operating officer, Pruhenski serves at the pleasure of the selectboard and does not vote or deliberate on development projects.
The public hearing on Thursday, Dec. 10, will begin at 5 p.m. via Zoom. Instructions on how to join the meeting will be available when the agenda is posted on the town website.
