Great Barrington — Searles, it appears, will be saved.
But it depends whom you ask, and how you define “saved.”
The Monument Mountain Regional High School auditorium last night saw a strong turnout at the Selectboard’s public hearing to determine whether it should issue Vijay and Chrystal Mahida the five special permits required to build a 95-room luxury hotel on the site of the former Searles Middle and High School, which will be mostly razed.
The hearing was also an unveiling of the Mahidas’ redesigned hotel plans that attempt to maintain part of the historic integrity and feel of the 116-year-old building. The Mahidas, of 79 Bridge Street Realty, LLC, will save the original brick in the middle front and middle rear façades, preserve other historic elements and add features that will connect the hotel to Bridge Street and the rest of town. They also plan to incorporate historic elements both inside and outside the hotel, using recommendations from the Historical Commission, they say.
Historical Commission Chair Paul Ivory, however, got up and said the commission’s recommendation “applies to the entire building.” The Historical Commission designated Searles a historic structure last June. But the building is not on the National Historic Register, and it is not currently protected by any state or federal laws, according to Town Planner Chris Rembold.
Ivory’s statement came during the public hearing. Before that, both Mahidas’, their architect, engineer and director of operations made their cases in a presentation.
The hearing came after months of controversy and mixed public reaction over a design that bore little resemblance to the school, yet will remain on its footprint.
In a split and controversial vote, the Planning Board recently gave a recommendation that the Selectboard issue the special permits. The project is still in the midst of Planning Board site review and still requires more vetting by the Conservation Commission.
On the one hand are the Mahidas, a local hard-working family who snowballed one motel into four total ventures, each one highly successful. On the other are locals who, while noting the struggle to keep up with mounting property taxes, still want a village feel to the town. Despite the Mahidas’ assurances that they care as much as anyone else, and being Great Barrington residents themselves, many are unconvinced that the hotel won’t turn into a big troublemaker on a number of fronts.
“We operate our business from the heart,” Chrystal Mahida said. She added she was surprised at “malicious attacks by people who don’t run successful businesses here,” and who know little about the Berkshire hotel industry. She explained that local interior designer William Caligari had been hired. Caligari is noted for his work on Canyon Ranch both in Lenox and in Tuscon, Arizona. Caligari will also be responsible for integrating historic elements into the design.
Architect Rolf Biggers explained how the original character of the old school would continue by creating a front-to-back grand entry hall. Stone and brick will be reused, he said, and replications of original features would supplant what will not be saved. “The materials and design still reads as a school,” he said.
David Carpenter, Director of Operations for the Mahida Hospitality Group, said hotels have always been “gathering places” in these New England towns, and The Berkshire will do just that.
The Mahidas plan a 60-seat “farm-to-table” restaurant at the hotel.
Over the last few months the hotel has seen support for replacing a vacant–some say decaying–building and expanding the tax base. Others criticized plans for the AAA four Diamond hotel because it skirts the town’s 45-room limit bylaw through a historic designation loophole given to several vacant old buildings in town. Historic preservation of such a structure gives a developer the right to exceed the 45-room limit. Town attorneys recently dissected the bylaw and informed the Selectboard that the bylaw permits going beyond 45 rooms if a portion of the building is saved.
Attorney Jeremia Pollard of the Lee firm of Hannon, Lerner, attorney for Citizens Upholding Bylaws, maintained that “through rhetoric, the bylaw is being misinterpreted completely.”
The Selectboard has final discretion to interpret the entire matter at this point.
But it was the original design of the hotel that had some residents up in arms. It was too chain-like, too bland, too unconnected to the street and the rest of town. The list went on. What really aggravated people was that it wouldn’t look anything like Searles.
Now that the new proposal has fixed some of those concerns, the issues boil down to the bylaw, the size, and disagreements over the hotel’s true economic benefit to the town.
Selectboard Chair Sean Stanton, after warning that he had a gavel “and I know how to use it,” noted that the board’s job is to determine whether the project’s “benefits are greater than their impact.”
Twenty deep, residents lined up for the microphone. They complained of violating the sprit of the 45-room limit bylaw, possible congestion in town, and other things.
“There’s no preservation here,” said Valerie Locher. She said while she thought the Mahidas were “stellar, honest parts of the community,” she said there was too much “financial finagling” to get around the bylaw.
YogaGB owner Scott Moraes said he worried that “affluent people” may not have an interest in “staying in a 95-room hotel that overlooks an old baseball field.”
Elizabeth Orenstein noted that the Conservation Commission “refused to endorse the project.” She said “we need more green spaces,” especially near the Housatonic River.
Maia Conty said the project “will divide our community” because the focus is on “strangers coming in.” She said it would gentrify the area, something she said would be “alienating.”
There was innuendo. Marc Fasteau suggested the Mahida Group hasn’t had their plan vetted by a hotel industry analyst. The hotel, however, uses PFK Hotelexperts consultancy for market analysis for its projects, say the developers. Both Fasteau and former Finance Committee member and former Iredale Mineral Cosmetics employee Sharon Gregory (Iredale currently owns the Searles School and is under contract to sell it to the Mahidas) have questioned the idea that the hotel would generate $450,000 to the town in combined property and lodging taxes. The surprise of the evening came from Mahida Group attorney Kate McCormick, who said local accounting firm Smith Watson & Company, which reviewed PFK’s numbers, said the hotel would generate $575,000 in combined tax revenues, and that $450,000 was conservative.
“The people predicting failure [of the hotel],” Vijay Mahida said, “I never met with them, they never tried to reach me. That people who don’t understand the Berkshire lodging market are predicting failure is very sad.”
The Mahidas’ 95-room Marriott Fairfield Inn and Suites on Stockbridge Road generates the most tax revenue in town for a single property.
“I’m proud of my success and I’m not going to apologize for my success, and I appreciate the opportunity from the town,” Mahida said.
Mahida had collected 250 letters of support for the hotel from residents, property owners, downtown merchants and even high school students, McCormick said.
Former Selectboard and Planning Board member Tony Blair reminded the assembly that the town no longer owns Searles, and said he was on the Searles School reuse task force. He recalled how much time and energy went into trying to find a new life for the building after the school district left the compound in 2005. He said now that it was privately owned, “the town is limited,” and should only consider whether it would support a hotel with more than 45 rooms. “This is the best possible reuse for this,” Blair said.
Barrington Brewery and Crissey Farm owner Gary Happ was passionate. “My clients cannot find hotel rooms in Great Barrington in those busy months,” he said. “There are not enough hotel rooms in town. We need the tourists. When those clients go to Air B & B, the town sees no revenue.”
“We are slowly strangling in this town,” said town resident Robert Waller. He said Searles was a “great white elephant” that needed to go on the tax rolls to “allow some tax relief for residents.”
Several residents worried that a better offer may never come. “There are no other viable options on the table right now,” said Finance Committee member Leigh Davis. Others worried about what they thought was a Hilton Hotels connection. Mahida has said that The Berkshire would not be branded but may use a Hilton reservation service.
Steve McCalister is a historic architect whose office at Clark and Green happens to be “next door” to Searles. He says he “isn’t seeing the vandalism,” and the school he says, “seems to be in good shape.” He said he objected to the Mahidas’ talk of “green” development when they are tearing the building down, “the first violation of green.”
Bobby Houston, an abutter developing a pocket neighborhood at the old Dolby Florist site, says, “when people say the building is derelict, I say prove it. He noted that Saint James place around the corner is being restored completely intact. Houston has made a public though unofficial offer to buy Searles and turn it into residences.
Houston’s group, Save Searles School, had collected the signatures of 60 local business owners and merchants who are opposed to the project. Those will be forwarded on to the Selectboard for review.
Karen W. Smith said the “bylaw was written to be vague.”
“Because things change,” she said. She noted that “three banks have already vetted this [hotel] and are ready to give $25 million.”
Monument Mountain High student Kosta Cami said he knows
Vijay and Chrystal. He also said the leaky roof at Monument was a problem, alluding to a recent $11 million estimate to repair a 50-year-old deteriorating school that the town twice refused to renovate because it would require tax increases.
“Through this project, we can get the money to repair our school,” he said.
The Selectboard’s public hearing for special permits will continue to January 20 at 7 p.m. at Monument Mountain Regional High.
The hearing was taped by CTSB-TV.
