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Williamstown Planners Flip on Waubeeka Land 'Bonus' Issue
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
10:40PM / Wednesday, May 04, 2016
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The Planning Board voted 3-2 to recommend a square-footage limit linked to conserved land for the proposed Waubeeka Overlay District when the question goes to town meeting.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The "bonus" is back.

Less than a week after the Planning Board decided to pursue an amended Waubeeka Overlay District bylaw that did not require the owner to trade conserved land for additional building square footage, three members of the board did a 180 on Wednesday night.

After a heated 90-minute discussion, the board voted 3-2 to send town meeting an amendment to the citizen's petition overlay bylaw that would force Wabeeka Golf Links' owner to set aside more than 100 acres for 60,000 square feet of development.

Under the amendment co-authored by Planners Sarah Gardner and Ann McCallum, a property owner would be able to build up to 50,000 square feet with an additional 10,000 square feet if he or she puts four acres into conservation for each 1,000 square feet over 50,000.

In other words, to build up to 60,000 square feet (including a hotel, pro shop, banquet facility, restaurant, maintenance buildings, etc.), the owner would need to put 40 additional acres in a conservation restriction, above the 67 acres Waubeeka owner Michael Deep agreed last week to put in a conservation restriction. That would be more than half the property.

That concession, to put 67 acres of the property in conservation, was a major reversal of the position maintained by Deep and his attorney, Stanley Parese, since the Planning Board began weighing the possibility of a zoning change at the site back in September.

It was at the end of a marathon meeting on April 28 that the board determined that the only issue left to be resolved was whether development on the Waubeeka Golf Links property should be restricted by the square footage of the buildings or by the acreage of a building "envelope."

Rather than hash out that one issue, the board decided to adjourn and reconvene on Wednesday evening.

Before it could get to that question, board member Elizabeth McGowan introduced the amendment by Gardner and McCallum that used square footage (the method the pair argued for on April 28) and reintroduced the "conservation bonus" feature the board explicitly decided not to pursue at last Thursday's meeting.

The reinsertion of "conservation bonus" language into the amendment drew harsh criticism from board member Chris Winters.

"What the Gardner draft does is reverse face on what this board came close to an agreement on last week," he said.

"We hadn't come to an agreement," interjected McCallum.

"We came to an agreement but for one question," Winters continued. "Sarah [Gardner] drafted something that took us back, extracted more concessions from the applicant even though we said we were happy with the concessions he had made. This takes us back on the deal."

Winters eventually voted against the "Gardner draft" along with Chairwoman Amy Jeschawitz in the minority of the 3-2 decision.

Gardner, McCallum and McGowan argued that the "conservation bonus" was a necessary environmental safeguard in order for the overlay proposal to pass by the needed two-thirds majority at the May 17 annual town meeting.

"If we think about community support, I had many, many emails after the last meeting saying, 'I'm not going to support this. You've gone way too far. There's no protection. You need to put that CR back,' " McCallum said. "In order to gather in the biggest number of people to support this, maybe we need the CR put in after we reach a higher [building] threshold.

"That's why we put the CR back in — because we were losing support of many people in this room."

As he frequently has, Winters argued that the board cannot tell the landowner what is in his best interest.

"The applicant has stated they are prepared to fail at town meeting, and they would prefer an acreage-controlled bylaw," Winter said. "It's not our job to protect the applicant from the embarrassment of failure."

Nine months, 11 meetings and at least 20 hours of discussion into a debate that began on Sept. 1, tempers were clearly growing short.

At one point, Gardner attempted to make a point about "right sizing" a hotel on the site, and she mentioned that the Planning Board had heard testimony that in order to be viable, a hotel needs 60 percent room occupancy.

"Who did we hear that from?" Winters interrupted.

"Foster Goodrich," came the reply from the floor of the meeting.

"An abuttor," Winters noted.

"That's common knowledge among hoteliers," said Hancock Road resident Sherwood Guernsey, an attorney who has addressed the board on several occasions pushing for conservation restrictions as a requirement of development at Waubeeka.

"Are you an expert on hotels?" Winters asked.

Guernsey responded, "As a matter of fact I've done a lot of work in that industry."

"And you're an abuttor," Winters shot back.

At that point, Jeschawitz intervened attempted to bring the conversation back to the issue at hand, but even she appeared to be exacerbated at one point.

Jeschawitz attempted to draw a parallel between the Waubeeka Overlay District and another bylaw on the town meeting warrant, the expansion of the Village Business District to accommodate Williams College's plans to relocate the Williams Inn.

Jeschawitz pointed out that the the latter proposal sailed through the Planning Board with relative ease and without the "marketing studies" or "schematic design" or "credentials" of a potential developer demanded of Deep.

"We have not seen a plan [for the college inn]," she said.

"I have seen a plan," McCallum interrupted.

"We have not seen a plan," Jeschawitz said, emphasizing the plural pronoun.

At another juncture, Winters accused his colleagues of trying to "kill this on Day One," an allegation that McCallum dismissed as "ridiculous."

It is unlikely Parese or Deep could live with any more conserved land than the 67 acres they conceded at the April 28 meeting, but they did not address it directly on Wednesday.

Parese did argue strongly for an acreage-constrained bylaw, explaining that the square-footage restriction would unnecessarily constrain a resort property on the site and attempted to illustrate.

"In one of the [schematic designs], the swimming pool is in a three-sided courtyard of the hotel and open to the 200 acres of the remaining golf course," Parese said. "It's invisible to anyone from the road, and it makes sense because people at the pool don't want to look at Route 7.

"If we decide to put a roof out there, to have it be an indoor pool — that's a three-story property surrounding a two-story roof — I'm probably losing a banquet room for a visual outcome that is of no consequence to anyone."

Parese said that if the town approves the overlay district and if Deep can find a resort developer interested in building on the site, then professional designers in the field would figure out how best to use the 10 acres of developable space, which would have to include all parking for the hotel.

And, as he has in the past, Parese emphasized that development on the property would not be "by right" but "by special permit," which would open up new regulatory hurdles.

"I was here when the select board had a meeting to consider the town meeting warrant, and there was a question from the floor on parking and traffic at the Williams Inn site," Parese said. "The answer was there was going to be a lot of work on that, and we need to let the Zoning Board do its job. That's the answer.

"This is not a special permit hearing."

McGowan replied that while Parese was correct, it is town meeting, through zoning changes, that establishes the rules by which the ZBA operates.

This year's town meeting promises to be at least as contentious and possibly as confusing as the last nine months of Planning Board meetings have been at times. Jeschawitz at the end of Wednesday's meeting advised voters to read up on the Waubeeka issue, as she expects multiple amendments on the citizen's petition to make their way to the floor of the meeting.

In the long run, Winters was not optimistic that anything would pass that would give Deep an opportunity to build a revenue-producing hotel on the South Williamstown site.

"I will vote 'no' because it is not in the best interest of the town," he said of the Gardner draft. "And I look forward to the [approval not required] to come to this board next year when the owner wants to chop up the property [for housing lots]."

Waubeeka: Gardner Amendment by iBerkshires.com

 

Waubeeka: Acreage Proposal by iBerkshires.com

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