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Williamstown's Spruces Reuse Committee Seeking Input, Funds
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
03:35AM / Friday, January 30, 2015
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Spruces Land Use Committee members Selectman Andrew Hogeland, left, and Chairman Dr. Thomas Hyde at Wednesday's meeting.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Spruces Land Use Committee on Wednesday began making plans to ask the town for money to fund a conceptual study of what can be developed on the site of the soon-to-be-closed mobile home park.
 
The ad hoc committee is charged with coming up for a plan to reuse the 115-acre parcel, which will come into the town's possession in early 2016, after the mobile home park closes for good under the terms of a federal Hazard Mitigation Grant.
 
Nearly a third of that site — 41 acres — is currently developed and in use for the park, whose remaining residents are in the process of relocating.
 
Those 41 acres are the main focus of the committee, chaired by Thomas Hyde.
 
Much of the remaining land is currently in agriculture by a longstanding agreement between the park's owner, Morgan Management of Rochester, N.Y., and the Chenail family, who operate a local dairy farm.
 
That arrangement last year received the blessing of the Board of Selectmen, who gave permission for the Chenails to continue farming in 2015 while the town operates the mobile home park under a lease agreement with Morgan Management. The town will take over the property under the terms of a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that includes restrictions on development.
 
Hyde kicked off Wednesday's meeting by reading a long list of possible uses considered by the committee when it last convened some months ago. The list included hard-surface tennis courts, a performance space with a gazebo, space for a farmers' market, a fenced dog park, athletic fields, and a community garden.
 
But Hyde emphasized his list is by no means final.
 
"I think we still have to be open to the community about any other suggestions it might have," Hyde said. "I think we need to make the community know that these meetings are open to the whole community, especially as we look at specific topics."
 
And the committee discussed Wednesday the creation of a survey that could be included in an already planned townwide mailing to solicit feedback from the public.
 
A group of Williams College students surveyed residents on behalf of the town previously, but the return rate was relatively small.
 
Architect and committee member Elizabeth Bartels said the committee needs conceptual designs.
"It was a smallish survey, but I thought it was a useful start," said Selectman Andrew Hogeland, who serves on the Spruces panel.
 
Even as it continues to gather ideas about what to do with the land, the committee also focused on moving its work forward, discussing how it could get a request for funding into the town's fiscal year 2016 budget.
 
The committee agreed its first expenditure would be to pay for a conceptual design of what could be situated on the parcel.
 
Elizabeth Bartels, an architect who serves on the committee, said what the committee needs is something between a conceptual design and a schematic, which would be a more definitive plan. And the committee may want to solicit several different alternative designs.
 
That solicitation would be made through a request for proposals, but before the committee issues an RFP, it needs to have a budget to pay for any work it orders.
 
How much of a budget? That is the committee's first question to answer. And to do so, it plans to survey a handful of design firm to get a ballpark estimate of the potential cost.
 
At Bartels' suggestion, the committee will use its next meeting, on Feb. 11, to finalize a broad outline of the kinds of projects it would like to see in an initial concept.
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