Stockbridge — After years of sitting in limbo, the former DeSisto School at 35-37 Interlaken Road in Stockbridge may finally be destined for redevelopment.
The town’s Select Board unanimously approved a measure on February 27 providing its members have the discretion to approve a proposal for the site that includes a hotel, residential components, and an events center. That hearing will be continued to April 17, at 6:30 p.m., in Stockbridge’s Town Hall, with a peer review to be conducted in the interim.
During the project’s initial January 16 hearing, attorney Jonathan Silverstein, on behalf of the 35-37 Interlaken Road Realty Trust and its Trustee Patrick J. Sheehan, outlined the proposal for the 314-acre tract that is highlighted by a 19th-century home. In disrepair, the proposal involves renovating the façade of the main building.
The property has seen its share of development pitches over the past nine years, with the latest iteration set to incorporate a scaled-down project from 2016 including the construction of 24 homes, 132 hotel residences, nine hotel suites, 17 acres to be cleared for agricultural use, four workforce-housing units, and no residential sites in the rear of the parcel. The sweeping grounds in front of the main building, pursuant to the proposal, may be used for overflow parking given certain large events that would be held at the property, an attribute to make the project economically viable.
The proposal falls under the town’s Cottage Era Estate Adaptive Re-Use or Rehabilitation bylaw, Section 6.6, that aims to provide a mechanism for the town to preserve its historic structures in exchange for a carefully curated project to reuse a qualifying property. The bylaw provides that no new “detached” structures can be added within 200 feet of the principal building on the lot. However, the Trust plan calls for two buildings to be added on both sides of the main building, connected to that main building by covered walkways.
At the session, the dais was faced with determining whether those walkways were sufficient for the two new buildings to be considered part of the main house and not detached in violation of Stockbridge’s Cottage Era Estate bylaw.
Silverstein presented Select Board members with two Land Court cases in which the deciding judges both found covered walkways to out buildings from the main structure constituted “detached structures,” even with the connections. He distinguished those cases, stating that the DeSisto main house and new structures to be connected by insulated and heated corridors are all part of the same resort, “an integrated whole” as opposed to separate uses for each building. Those cases, according to Silverstein, focused on bylaws that were not the same as Stockbridge’s pertinent regulations and their decisions—in 1987 and 1993—are decades old. Finally, he argued that another local bylaw related to the building height and square footage of Cottage Era Estate projects pointed to an interpretation that enclosed walkways between a new structure and the main building makes that configuration “attached” and, therefore, satisfies Stockbridge’s requirement.
Town counsel Christopher Heep, who attended the meeting virtually, said he submitted a letter to the Select Board on February 26, reviewing the same case law Silverstein presented, with those judicial opinions being the only relevant interpretation of what is a detached structure for Cottage Era Estate purposes. “There is no case that compels the conclusion that the proposed buildings here are attached by virtue of the proposed walkways,” Heep said. “What we do have is two Land Court cases from a while ago in which the court found that two buildings were properly considered detached despite the walkways that were proposed to connect them.”
He described those cases as “helpful guidance” but told the dais that either interpretation—that the walkways between the new structures and main house enable them to find the project in compliance with the Cottage Era Estate bylaw or that the new structures are truly detached so that the project violates the Cottage Era Estate bylaw—would be supported, leaving the decision in the hands of the three board members. “It is reasonable to conclude in either of the two ways as long as you’re doing it with the understanding that you are applying the Cottage Era Estate bylaw in the appropriate manner to the project before you,” Heep addressed board members.
For Select Board member Patrick White, the two side-by-side buildings to the main structure “[are] inconsistent with the purpose and intent of this bylaw as a preservation bylaw.”
Although most public comments in last month’s hearing opposed the project, supporters for the proposal outnumbered naysayers during the recent session, reasoning the tax benefits the project will bring to the town, employment opportunities, and willingness of developers to work with local officials in crafting the site.
“I think we have to consider the practicality of what’s before us,” said resident Mark Mills, who is also an alternate member of the Stockbridge Zoning Board of Appeals. “We have this wonderful old building that’s in a state of extreme disrepair and getting worse by the day, winter after winter. It’s a disaster in the making. If you’re going to save it, you’ve got to have some other kind of development—fix up the front of that building, prop it up, get it up to standards. But, in order to do that, the economics of this require other buildings not too far away. You obviously have more density if you have buildings closer to the main building, but that density is what’s required to make the deal work.”
Mills reflected on the new plan as having a reduction in density from the developers’ first proposal and acknowledged that residents close to the site “are unhappy about it” but reminded the Select Board of their role to look to the future of the town. “To have this 200-foot [bylaw interpretation] get in the way of the whole project, or saving this building, is counterproductive,” he said.
Select Board member Ernesto J. “Chuckie” Cardillo pushed for the project to pass the evening’s first hurdle, not to “green light” the proposal but to at least get the development to a peer review. White voiced concern over the multiple connections between the buildings and that his colleagues should take “the entirety of the project into account” over the next several months of deliberation.
“The bylaw basically envisions, ‘What does it cost to protect the building,’” he said, noting the plan includes preserving the façade of the main building and not more. “I’m just letting you know that this is how I’m going to evaluate the overall decision is ‘what are we getting in terms of preservation and what does it cost in terms of preservation,’ and that should drive what we give in terms of additional uses or additional density.”
