Great Barrington — A new market-rate apartment complex is one step closer to becoming a reality after the selectboard gave it a positive recommendation for a special permit to the town planning board Monday night. The vote was unanimous.
“I’m in favor of this project because I think it’s something that we need,” said board member Kate Burke.
“I’m personally very excited about this project,” added her colleague Leigh Davis. “We need more rental housing.”
See video below of the selectboard and Great Barrington Redevelopment discussing the company’s application for a special permit. The presentation for 148 Maple Ave. begins at 30:00:
Not everyone is thrilled with the proposed apartment complex, however. As The Edge reported last week, several neighbors had expressed concern about increased traffic and possible changes to the “character” of the busy neighborhood in the Route 23 corridor.
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 for the required special permit before the board. The packet of material includes findings from the planning board concluding that the project “is in the best interests of the town,” one of the criteria for granting a special permit of this sort.
Halpern’s team was on hand Monday night to make the case before the selectboard. Great Barrington attorney Charles Ferris, Boston architect P. Nicholas Elton and local project manager Sam VanSant presented material and took questions.
The site of the former Kindred Nursing and Rehabilitation Center — and later Great Barrington Healthcare — sits on 4.1 acres with 49 parking spaces and is a 2-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 only two additional parking spaces.
Of the 48 proposed apartments, four would be studios, 36 one-bedroom and eight two-bedroom. One apartment will house a live-in resident manager. Halpern’s team 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 apartments are said to be market-rate rather than affordable, but Halpern did not say in his proposal what sort of rents he expected to charge. Under questioning from Davis, VanSant said the studio apartments would be approximately $1,000 per month, the one-bedroom units $1,200, and the two-bedroom apartments $2,300.
Selectboard member Bill Cooke, who also chairs the town’s Affordable Housing Trust, said the rents appear to fall within the range of affordable, as defined by the state and the area median income.
The building has been vacant for the six months since the nursing home closed after it was acquired by Bear Mountain Healthcare of Thomaston, Connecticut. As The Edge reported in April, the company wanted to reopen 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 to Great Barrington Development.
“The town needs rental housing,” Ferris said. “Over the past 20 years, the arc of development has been upscale condos and high-end housing.”
Indeed, when Sam Nickerson, the developer of the 47 Railroad Street mixed-use building, first proposed that downtown 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 four apartments or more since 1990. Nickerson characterized the state of the local rental market as “an absolute crisis.”
The 148 Maple Ave. developers also say the project is consistent with Great Barrington’s award-winning master plan, which states flatly that “redevelopment and reuse of existing buildings and infrastructure preserves open spaces.”
In response to neighbors’ concerns, Ferris cited a traffic study indicating that traffic increases will be minimal and that the proposal would preserve the open space around the building. The property is zoned R1A, or medium-density residential.
“We are actually returning this to residential use,” Ferris added. “It’s a residential neighborhood. In that sense, it’s more consistent with current zoning.”
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 process has not yet been completed. But the approval process is typically a formality, so town planner Chris Rembold had recommended that the hearing process begin anyway.
The planning board’s public hearing on Thursday, Dec. 10, will begin at 6 p.m. via Zoom. Click here to read the agenda and for instructions on how to attend the meeting via Zoom.
