Several long-discussed building projects in town broke ground in 2024.

 

Perhaps no public project has generated as much discussion over the last decade as the proposed new fire station. In September, the long-planned project finally began to come to fruition.

 

By the end of the calendar year, the foundation was laid and part of the structure was starting to take shape. Officials in the Williamstown Fire District hope to have the $22.5 million project ready for occupancy so the department can move out of the cramped and outdated station on Water Street.

 

The Prudential Committee, which oversees the district, currently is working on two fronts: monitoring progress on the new station and finding a new chief to lead the department that will call it home after this year's announcement that longtime Chief Craig Pedercini will be retiring early in 2025.

 

One of the town's biggest private building projects in a generation reached a milestone this year when the developers of the Cable Mills residences broke ground on the third and final stage of the Water Street complex.

 

Phase 1 was the restoration and conversion of the historic mill building to housing units — first marketed as apartments and later transitioned to condominiums. Phase 2 was newly constructed condos on the mill property. Phase 3, when it is finished, will be a four-story, 54-unit apartment building.

 

Thanks to support from the town and its Affordable Housing Trust and the low-income housing tax credits that were key to financing Phase 3's construction, 28 of those 54 units will be set aside for residents making up to 60 percent of the area median income.

 

Even before Williams College demolished the former Williams Inn at Field Park, speculation had begun that the site would be used for a new art museum, which the school talked about relocating to Southworth Street back in 2015. This fall, Williams broke ground for a new 76,000-square-foot museum on Field Park at one of the main gateways to town.

 

It will be a couple of years before the Williams College Museum of Art is ready to move from its current home at Lawrence Hall, nearer to the center of campus.

 

But by the end of 2025, the college's student-athletes may be using a new multisport indoor practice facility currently under construction on Stetson Road. The new facility was necessitated by the condemnation of the former Towne Field House, which was razed in 2024.

 

When built, the new facility will have three tennis courts, a three-lane 200-meter track and the capacity to host preseason practice for the school's baseball and softball teams.

 

It is worth noting that of the three major construction projects currently underway in town, only one, the third phase of Cable Mills, will contribute to the town's property tax base.

 

The slow growth of that base is very much on the minds of Town Hall staff and the members of several elected and appointed boards at a time when the cost of delivering town services continues to spiral upward.

 

The town's Finance Committee has been beating the drum for a few years on the need to foster "new growth" in the tax base. In 2024, local business owners ramped up the conversation by pointing out a lack of vitality in the town's main shopping district.

 

Spring Street, at the heart of the commercial district, saw the departure of two businesses within a month of one another this year. It also saw the arrival of a new business offering a trendy beverage option for downtown visitors. 

 

The town's Planning Board has been doing its part to promote growth in one major sector of the local economy: housing. And in May, town meeting agreed by a sizable majority that one of the board's ideas, allowing "cottage court" developments in the General Residence district, is worth a try.

 

The board has spent its 2024-25 term, in part, talking about bringing a like-minded proposal for the town's rural residence districts. But planners have said that an open space residential development proposal is unlikely to be ready for the town's legislative body until May 2026 at the earliest.

 

Town meeting 2025 could see two bylaw proposals in the housing arena — one generated by the Planning Board and one by a business owner in South Williamstown. The former is a long-discussed regulation for short-term rentals that planners hope will ensure the town's housing stock remains available for full-time residents instead of converting to full-time "Airbnb" sites. The other is a request by the owner of the Sweetwood assisted living community to create a path to converting the site to multifamily housing.

 

The town's most high-profile elected body made it through a 2024 marked by passionate debate by residents and divisions among the five members.

 

In the winter and early spring, several board meetings saw standing-room-only crowds as supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza pushed the board to sign on to a resolution intended to pressure the U.S. government to stop supplying the weapons used by Israel in its war against Hamas. In the end, the board voted, 4-1, against signing on to the petition, with the majority of the board expressing hesitation to take a stand either way on an international issue that they were not elected to consider.

 

One of the five members who voted on that question was not on the board by the end of the year. Long-time Select Board member Andrew Hogeland resigned from the body to move to Connecticut.

 

The vote to appoint his replacement came after a lengthy debate and one failed vote to support another of the three applicants. Matthew Neely was named to the body, but the differences of opinion among board members continued to bubble up.

 

Hogeland's departure was not the only significant resignation in 2024, and it did have a reason that the public got to hear.

 

Jason McCandless resigned abruptly as superintendent of the Mount Greylock Regional School District without explanation in May. The departure came shortly after an emotional School Committee meeting in which parents of students in the district gave specific examples of incidents of bias against their children. But the former superintendent in Lee and Pittsfield declined to draw a direct line between the two events. One thing is certain: McCandless did not leave in the middle of a three-year contract to retire. In June, he was named the principal at WEB Du Bois Middle School in Great Barrington.

 

The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee appointed Assistant Superintendent Joseph Bergeron to serve as the interim superintendent. The panel also decided not to rush into finding a permanent replacement but instead aim to have McCandless' successor in place in time for the start of the 2026-27 academic year.

 

Meanwhile, the diversity, equity and inclusion work that McCandless emphasized during his tenure in the district's corner office continues. It is a pillar of Mount Greylock's District Improvement Plan, it was the impetus for bringing in facilitators from the U.S. Department of Justice for a districtwide conversation and it is the reason the Select Board earmarked the last of the town's American Rescue Plan Act funds to support a consultant's review of the district's policies.

 

The affordable housing units in the aforementioned Cable Mills Phase 3 will add to the town's stock of income-restricted units. They may even push the town over the 10 percent threshold the state requires to avoid housing development through the Chapter 40B process, which gives developers relief from local zoning laws.

 

But 2024 saw evidence of the challenges faced by those who would build more affordable housing in town. A proposed project on Water Street was abandoned after a group of neighbors threatened to challenge the proposal in court.

 

Meanwhile, the local chapter Habitat for Humanity was delayed in its bid to build four single-family homes on a town-owned parcel on Summer Street when neighbors challenged a decision by the local Conservation Commission — a decision that later was affirmed by state regulators. The next stop for Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity is the Planning Board, which will conduct a Development Plan Review, likely in early 2025.

 

Other stories that stood out in Williamstown in 2024 included:

 

Town meeting OK'd allowing the town to fly the Pride/Progress flag on town flag poles. ... The Select Board considered but took no action on designating an off-leash area for the Spruces Park on Main Street, an issue that has been percolating since a 2023 town meeting article that would have clarified a requirement for leashes at the site in the town park. ... Williams College saw an evacuation after a suspicious package was found in a class building in May and a full shutdown of campus after a bomb threat in July. ... The long dormant Green River Farms property was sold to Green River Regenerative Farm Inc., which plans to implement the regenerative principles on the 224-acre property. ... Plans are in the works for a new mountain bike trail on private land and a major renovation for the town's skate park on Stetson Road near Cole Avenue. ... Officials at the Milne Public Library are beginning discussions about a new or renovated building. ... The Williamstown Theatre Festival saw a major change to its operations with a de-emphasis on fully staged productions. ... And the town decided in February to end the practice of allowing parked cars on a dirt lot known as the "Town Garage site" on Water Street.