Williamstown Zoning Board Considers Plan for Art Museum / iBerkshires.com

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday began reviewing the development plan for a new Williams College Museum of Art at the intersection of Routes 2 and 7.

College attorney Jamie Art, museum director Pamela Franks and members of the design team met with the board to discuss the project to replace the current museum in Lawrence Hall on Main Street.

First, a number of approvals are needed from city officials: the Planning Commission, which will determine whether the new museum has sufficient parking, and the ZBA, which must issue a special permit.

Part of the permitting process is the assessment of the development plan.

Although the museum is largely designed in accordance with urban development standards, as a commercial building of more than 230 square meters it requires a revision of the development plan.

The museum is designed on a 76,800 square foot area and the planned three-story structure and site require a number of municipal zoning exemptions.

The new museum will specifically exceed the 35-foot (10.6-meter) height limit set by city law. However, architect Jonathan Malloy of the New York architectural firm SO-IL noted that the height will only be exceeded at one point on the building and will be roughly equal to the height of the former inn, the building’s former occupant.

The project also includes leveling the parking lot, with a 2.4-meter elevation at several points, exceeding the maximum change of 1.8 meters set out in the bylaw.

As with many college projects, the ZBA allows educational institutions to obtain exemptions from local zoning regulations based on Massachusetts general law and legal precedent.

“Learning with art is at the heart of everything we do,” Franks told the board. “Faculty in every department on campus teach with the collection.”

Franks said the university’s art museum is “very different from other museums, which are much more public-facing.”

Board members later cited WCMA’s connection to the campus community when they pressed the university for information about how it plans to ease pedestrian traffic to the new museum location, across North Street (Route 7), relative to the rest of campus.

“The main population is going to be students, right?” David Levine asked the development team. “You should have some reasonable estimates (of pedestrian traffic). You need that before you start thinking about how you’re going to manage the traffic flow.”

Pedestrian access is one of the design elements covered by the ordinance that must be assessed by the ZBA.

Keith Davis, president of the ZBA, suggested that the college and the city consider a plan to install flashing pedestrian lights at the northeast intersection of Routes 2 and 7, similar to the way crosswalks are now marked along Main Street (Route 2).

Two residents expressed their concerns about the project during Thursday’s public hearing.

Jeffrey Strait of North Hoosac Place and Patrick Bandy of Main Street, both neighbors of the former inn site, asked the ZBA for more specific information from the university about the plans for vegetative screening on the western edge of the new museum grounds.

Both Strait and Bandy said they were excited about creating an art museum for a neighbor, but were concerned the completed project would create too much of a visual nuisance for the adjacent neighborhood.

Felicity Purzycki, the college’s landscape ecology coordinator, described the landscape plan for the new site, including replacing trees that may need to be cut down during construction.

Davis wondered whether the completed building would have the same opacity as the building that protected neighbors from the former inn.

“Not at the initial planting,” Purzycki said. “But the forest is not in great shape now. I would say within five years we will exceed the current screening.”

Art, the college’s attorney, reminded the ZBA and the public that Williams is not seeking an exemption from the city’s ordinance’s requirements for screening commercial developments. This point was later reiterated by Davis in response to Bandy.

“They have to do adequate screening,” Davis said. “If they don’t, you can have the zoning officer enforce that.”

Enforcement measures could include fines, withholding annual occupancy permits for the museum or suspending future building permits for the applicant, Groff said Friday morning.

“Even though it is not explicitly stated in the ordinance, we have always allowed a few years for plantings to reach the required condition,” Groff wrote in an email response to a request for clarification of the city’s enforcement options. “It is very difficult to achieve the requirement (height and density) directly with nursery stock in the standard sizes prescribed in the ordinance.”

Davis on Thursday asked the university to come up with an architectural rendering of the view of the museum from the Fort Hoosac neighborhood at night, when the project is completed.

The university team pointed out that the museum is open primarily during the day, with perhaps one evening a week when it stays open until 8 p.m. That’s a far cry from the main library, which is open late into the evening and has a windowed east wall that sheds light onto the Southworth Street neighborhood.

While he acknowledged that the new WCMA will comply with the screening ordinance and that its usage patterns will be very different from those of the Sawyer Library, Davis said he thought of the library as “probably our biggest mistake” when he asked for a rendering of the view from Fort Hoosac Place.

The ZBA will seek the rendering and answers to some other questions raised on Thursday when the hearing continues on Aug. 15. It also hopes for a parking decision from the Planning Board, which was supposed to weigh in on the WCMA proposal on July 16 at a meeting that was postponed because of a power outage that affected City Hall.

If the museum is eventually permitted and built, the building and grounds would surround the renovated student residence that serves as the town hall on three sides. The college already owned the former hostel site, which extends to North Street south of the town hall.

On Thursday, Art told the ZBA that Williams purchased the Northside Motel north of City Hall with the intention of demolishing the building as part of landscaping for the museum. According to documents filed with the land registry, the council paid $1.8 million on July 9 for the property, which is owned by Vipulkumar and Niketa Patel. The Patels have owned the motel since 2004.

Keywords: WCMA,