Susan Puddester, left, and Sue Metzner of Higher Ground report to Williamstown's Spruces Roof Group on Monday evening.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A leading state housing official has told the town a project proposed for the end of Southworth Street could be fast-tracked for completion as soon as November 2015.

 

But it is going to take a lot of work and a lot of coordination among town committees to make that happen.

 

Selectmen Chairwoman Jane Allen said Monday evening that Undersecretary for Housing and Community Development Aaron Gornstein last Thursday visited the town and was impressed by the donation of nearly four acres by Williams College to a non-profit group led by Higher Ground.

 

Gornstein discussed the specifics of the timeline facing residents of the likely-to-be-closed Spruces Mobile Home Park and indicated that the Southworth Street project could be built in time to accommodate some of the residents who would be forced to vacate the park, Allen said.

 

That assumes that the project's lead developers — the Boston-based Women's Institute and Berkshire Housing Development Corp. — can line up funding and the town can complete zoning and environmental permitting for the project by early next spring.

 

At Monday's meeting of the Spruces Roof Group, which Allen also chairs, she emphasized that those town approvals will need to be given high priority in order to keep the project moving forward.

 

"That's why we're here — to make sure all the town committees understand the emergency," Allen said.

 

The town this month applied for $315,000 from the federal Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program. Williamstown was encouraged by state officials to apply for a share of the $7.21 million for which Massachusetts is eligible under the U.S. Housing and Urban Development program.

 

Most of the $315,000 would go toward infrastructure to extend Southworth Street into the parcel, which lies just west of the Proprietor's Field senior housing complex. The remaining $15,000 would be for administrative costs, Allen said.

 

The notion that the the Higher Ground project conceivably could be under construction as soon as fall 2014 came as a pleasant surprised to Higher Ground director Sue Metzner, who attended Monday's meeting to discuss the non-profit's survey of former and current Spruces residents.

 

"The quickest we were told by the Women's Institute you could get something done is four years at the earliest," Metzner said before Allen shared the details of Gornstein's visit. "So when we've had conversations with people at the Spruces, they've looked at us and said, 'If we want to live in affordable housing in Williamstown, we're going to have to move twice?' We've said yes."

 

Under the terms of a FEMA grant by which the town is taking possession of the mobile home park, residents would have to vacate by late 2015, assuming the town takes ownership this fall in a vote by a special town meeting. Were the town not to take possession under the FEMA Hazard Mitigation Program grant, the park's current owner, Morgan Management, likely would close the park on its own.

 

Metzner and Higher Ground Case Management Supervisor Susan Puddester told the Spruces Roof Group on Monday that Spruces residents on Friday began receiving registered letters from Morgan Management informing them of Morgan's intent to sell the property to the town. Under Massachusetts law, the residents have a 45-day window from receipt of that letter to exercise their right of first refusal.

 

Once that window closes — assuming they choose not to exercise their right — the town would be able to hold a vote to take possession of the land. And the town, as the new owner, would need to give residents two years' notice of intent to close the park under Massachusetts' Manufactured Housing Law.

 

Another detail from Gornstein's visit: "He said maybe it would be wise for us to focus on one project," Allen said.

 

The one project in town that is furthest along is the Higher Ground site, but even that proposal is not to the stage where a specific number of units is on the table. Allen said Women's Institute for Housing and Economic Development Deputy Director Mollye Wollahan told her the Southworth Street site might include in the neighborhood of 40 units.

 

Since there were 225 households at the Spruces before 2011's Tropical Storm Irene and 65 homes currently on the site, those 40 units only would address part of the need created by the storm.

 

Affordable Housing Committee Chairwoman Catherine Yamamoto, who serves on the Spruces Roof Group, said Monday her committee supports a town collaboration with Higher Ground on developing the Williams College site, but the AHC wants to keep moving on other potential housing sites.

 

Allen expressed concern that the AHC was spending $12,000 to hire a consultant to help develop requests for proposals to develop town-owned sites on Water Street and Cole Avenue.

 

"Maybe that's peanuts in this business, I don't know," Allen said.

 

But she indicated that the town needs to put as many resources as it can behind the Higher Ground project.

 

Affordable Housing Trust Chairman Stanley Parese, who also met with Gornstein, said he did not have the impression that the state wants Williamstown to drop all other efforts, but Parese would do so if it was the only way to keep the Higher Ground project moving forward.

 

"As for the Affordable Housing Trust, I think the belief is that the Higher Ground project on the college site is the most realistic opportunity the town has to take an important step forward," Parese said. "If in that process ... we get signals from Boston or the developer that everything else needs to shut down and we need to do this, I have no problem doing that.

 

"That's not the understanding I had from Aaron [Gornstein], but if that's what needs to happen ... this is the priority. Whether it's 30, 40 or 60 [units], we're not going to get it anywhere else in the time frame that needs to happen."

 

Allen shared one more tidbit from Gornstein: that the town need not worry about Higher Ground or any other proposal competing for funding with the development of the former Cable Mills site on Water Street because "funding for that is all but in place."

 

Yamamoto said that tracked with what she has heard from Cable Mills property owner Mitchell Properties.

 

"They were optimistic they'd get funding in the next couple of months and start construction in the spring," Yamamoto said.

 

Mitchell Properties' David Traggorth repeatedly has ignored requests from iBerkshires.com for comment on the Cable Mills project, which is in line to receive $1.5 million in town Community Preservation Act funds if the project ever actually gets under way. Town officials who have talked with Mitchell Properties say the developer plans 13 units of subsidized housing in the mostly market-rate project.

 

Mitchell Properties' website, which this spring claimed the project would start "early summer 2013" currently says it will start "spring 2014."