Williamstown residents and local officials brainstormed about the types of housing developments they would like to see.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — About 30 community members gathered Monday evening to share their thoughts about how the town should develop a 1.27-acre Water Street parcel that formerly was home to the town garage.

 

And although no firm decisions were reached, the people who hope to frame a plan for affordable housing at 59 Water St. came away with plenty of data about the types of housing residents want to see there and which types they do not.

 

Not surprisingly, the participants in the session expressed a desire for something attractive on the town-owned lot. But the opinions of what constituted "attractive" were diverse.

 

The event was hosted by the town's Affordable Housing Committee and facilitated by Jennifer Goldson and Connie Kruger, the consultants hired by the committee to help it craft a request for proposals, or RFP, to solicit ideas from developers.

 

Goldson showed the attendees 22 slides depicting existing housing developments and asked for their gut reactions to each image. Participants voted on a scale of 1-5 (ranging from undesirable to desirable) using electronic devices that instantly captured the polling data.

 

Some of building styles appeared to be instant misses with clear majorities voting in the "undesirable" or "somewhat undesirable" categories. Others produced poll numbers that were all over the map. A couple of developments showing single-family units elicited equal numbers of responses at each extreme of the spectrum.

 

Goldson emphasized that the point of the meeting is to give direction to the AHC and its consultants, but even the RFP writers do not have the final say.

 

"Ultimately, the style will be determined by the developer," Goldson said. "But we do want, in the RFP, to give a sense of community preference."

 

Actually, as owner of the property, the town would make the final decision. At some point, the Selectmen will decide whether to accept one of the proposals that the RFP generates. But it's the developer's job to craft a proposal with a building style that works for the site given the criteria laid out in the RFP.

 

Kruger noted Monday that the Water Street lot has been "RFP'd" before, but the previous round yielded no development plans that were acceptable to the town. In the intervening years, the town — through the Affordable Housing Committee — has paid to remediate soil contamination at the site. This summer, it was declared a clean site by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

 

After gathering community input from Monday and an Oct. 10 listening session focusing on the town-owned former PhoTech mill site on Cole Avenue, the committee plans to draft an RFP for each site or one to cover both. The goal is start seeking proposals in mid- to late-November with an eye toward receiving feedback from developers by mid- to late-December, Kruger said.

 

"It still could be two to four years if everything goes according to our schedules," before anything is built on the site, Kruger said.

 

Monday's listening session was divided into three parts: a primer on affordable housing generally and the needs of Williamstown in particular, the slide show and "voting" on different housing styles and small-group discussions with participants divided into working groups of four or five to address a series of open-ended questions.

 

In the closing minutes of the two-and-a-half hour meeting, the groups reported out their responses to the questions, which included:

 

"What special features or local uses of the site should be considered/preserved if the site were developed?"

"What advantages and disadvantages for the town/neighborhood might there be to developing this site?"

"How can the site serve identified local housing needs?"

"What special features or local uses of the site should be considered/preserved if the site were developed?"

 

A few themes emerged from the reports of those groups:

 

♦ Several of the groups expressed a desire for "mixed use" development on the site with retail space on the ground floor and housing units above.

♦ A couple specifically mentioned that the development should take advantage of the natural topography by building up several stories (assuming elevators are part of the mix); one group suggested a multitiered building that would create a gradual slope down from the ledge that faces the northern side of the site.

♦ Participants noted the two current use of the Water Street site and a couple of groups noted specifically their hope that some parking could be preserved there. One group stressed that any development of the popular unpaved parking lot include plan to address the loss of spaces.

♦ Groups noted that the nearby Green River could be enhanced for recreational use if and when more people move into the neighborhood.

♦ At least one group advocated for rooftop gardens to be incorporated into the new housing.

♦ Green space was a priority for several of the residents, although groups noted that the that objective is hard to reconcile with another objective that seemed pervasive in the room: high-density development. Although the site is just over an acre, a conceptual design already exists courtesy of Williamstown architecture firm Burr & McCallum that shows 46 units in a combination of town houses and apartments.

 

That notion of density highlighted an aspect of the Water Street lot that always is in the background when it is discussed in relation to the town's affordable housing needs. Although one- and two-bedroom apartments might be the best solution on the small lot, that sort of housing is exactly not the kind of housing desired by soon-to-be-displaced and former residents of the Spruces Mobile Home Park.

 

Affordable Housing Committee Chairwoman Catherine Yamamoto has noted repeatedly that 59 Water St. is one possible part of the solution to the town's housing needs, even though the housing at the site may not be the best solution for all of those who need subsidized housing in order to stay in town.

 

On Monday night, Kruger reinforced the notion that it will be a challenge for the town to accommodate the exact needs of the Spruces population in an affordable housing context.

 

"Different people want different kinds of housing," Kruger said. " A lot of the models we have that are realistic ... based on funding ... promote multifamily housing."