An artist's concept of the planned development at 330 Cole Ave. Townhouse-style apartments line a pedestrian walkway toward the existing mill building, seen in the rear of this drawing.
Affordable Housing Committee Chairman Van Ellet with committee members, from left, Alison O'Grady and Joan Rubel.
Tuesday's meeting of the Affordable Housing Committee draws a large crowd to the Selectmen's Meeting Room.
Berkshire Housing Development Corporation President and CEO Elton Ogden answers a question from Selectman Hugh Daley.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Affordable Housing Committee was looking for input on a housing development for the former Photech mill site, but much of the feedback on centered on whether the Cole Avenue property should be developed at all.
Several residents of the north end neighborhood who attended Tuesday's informational meeting spoke about problems with the site itself and issues with the existing neighborhood that could benefit from an infusion of capital.
"The town doesn't really understand Mill Street and Arnold Street," said Kevin Kennefick of Cole Avenue, whose property abuts 330 Cole Ave., the former Photech property.
Kennefick said he went door to door in the Arnold and Mill Street neighborhood to let his neighbors know about the Jan. 12 Affordable Housing Committee meeting, and he got two reactions.
"No. 1: Affordable housing? Great. No. 2: No one cares about us," Kennefick said. "The town does not care about Mill Street. They never have, and they don't. I would ask the town to think about what we're going to do with Mill Street and Arnold Street.
"What are you going to do when you rob capital from a neighborhood that needs it? Are you creating affordable housing or are you destroying a neighborhood?"
The 330 Cole Ave. property was awarded by the Board of Selectmen to Berkshire Housing Development Corp. of Pittsfield in spring 2014 after BHDC was one of two respondents to a request for proposals drafted by the Affordable Housing Committee.
The mill site, which was seized by the town for back taxes at the turn of the 21st century, has been the subject of a couple of different development plans over the years. The committee focused its attention on the site when the Board of Selectmen decided in 2013 not to try to develop another town-owned parcel off Stratton Road.
Kennefick at Tuesday's meeting echoed concerns of another Photech neighbor, Clark Semon, who at a December hearing questioned the wisdom of the town concentrating subsidized housing in one neighborhood.
"The hardest thing the town has to do and the Affordable Housing Committee has to think about is what are you doing for the neighborhood," Kennefick said. "Basically, what the town is doing now is putting a large percentage of their affordable housing in one part of town, and that's been proven across the country to be bad planning.
"We need diversity of economics in our town."
Town officials argued that the 46 units of affordable housing planned at 330 Cole Ave. will help Kennefick's neighborhood.
"I understand the neighborhood's apprehension about how a development could change the neighborhood, but ... there are lots of different ways of defining diversity," Anne O'Connor said.
O'Connor, who was elected to the Board of Selectmen in spring 2015, after the Photech site was awarded, noted that she lives in an affordable housing development herself.
"'Low income' doesn't mean these aren't diverse people and an asset to the neighborhood," she said. "I think we should be open-minded and not filled with apprehension."
Earlier in the meeting Berkshire Housing's Elton Ogden explained that 100 percent of the 46 units planned for 330 Cole Ave. will be designated affordable for families making 60 percent of the area median income; 10 percent of the units — or about five — will be set aside for families earning less than 30 percent of AMI.
"It strikes me that at 60 percent AMI, we have the potential to have a fairly diverse population," AHC member Joan Rubel said. "Young couples starting out, working people in the community, a fairly interesting mix of people.
"We have the potential to lift up that part of town and create economic viability for the little shops in that end of town."
Even if the development makes sense from an economic standpoint, Kennefick and other residents of the neighborhood argued that the 330 Cole Ave. location is too close to the Hoosic River and too susceptible to flooding for a subsidized housing project.
Kennefick pointed to what happened at the site during Tropical Storm Irene, referring specifically to the storm's impact on the remaining mill building, popularly known as "the cube."
"The cube was not just wet," Kennefick said. "The cube was in the river.
"The entire development, except for the front left of the front section, would be wet [in a similar storm]. Everything along the river would have been compromised."
An aerial view of the current concept for 330 Cole Ave. The existing mill building, or cube, is in the center, surrounded by townhouse-style apartments to the east and west.
BHDC and its architect, Springfield's Dietz & Co., plan to reuse the cube for 24 one- and two-bedroom units. The remaining rental units would go in newly constructed townhouse-style structures.
Ogden said the project's architects and engineers will continue to look at the potential for flooding at the site. Charlie LaBatt from engineering firm Guntlow and Associates noted that the first floor of the cube is 6 feet from ground level.
Kennefick, as he has in the past, warned that climate change is only going to make severe flooding events like Irene more common in the future and cautioned against building so close to the river.
"I always have voted for development on that property," he said. "I'm a business person. I think brown fields should be put back on the tax roll.
"After [Irene], I'm completely against putting anything on that land. As a business person, I'd never take the risk."
Not all of the comments at Tuesday's meeting were so negative.
After architects from Dietz fleshed out some of the ideas first introduced at a December hearing, Ann McCallum, a member of the Planning Board and architect herself, and resident Bob Scerbo, a housing developer, offered suggestions on how the plans could be modified to make the new construction fit more with the character of the existing neighborhood.
And Selectman Hugh Daley encouraged Berkshire Housing to work with federal funders to create set-asides at 330 Cole Ave. for Williamstown residents. Ogden and Affordable Housing Committee Chairman Van Ellet both noted that such set-asides are rare and hard to come by but said they will be pursued.
The development team working on reusing the former mill property already has shown a willingness to respond to community input.
Architect Kerry Dietz recalled that the initial concept in response to the town's RFP called for the demolition of the mill building and erection of a single three-story apartment. That plan drew criticism from neighbors who worried it would ruin the existing views.
"It was one big building," Dietz said. "It was an apartment building. We started to look at the site a little differently after that [negative feedback]. We began seeing the cube as an asset, and that caused us to look at this a little differently."
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