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Williamstown ZBA Continues Hearing on Lehovec Property Hotel
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
01:02AM / Monday, April 24, 2017
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Thursday's Zoning Board of Appeals hearing draws a crowd at Town Hall in Williamstown.


Attorney Donald Dubendorf addresses the ZBA on behalf of the developer proposing a 77-room hotel on Main Street.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday decided to continue its hearing on issuing special permits to allow a 77-room hotel at 562 Main St.
 
At the end of a marathon meeting marked by repeated concerns from neighboring residents, the ZBA voted to hold a site visit before its May 18 meeting, at which it hopes to conclude its deliberations.
 
Local hotelier Vipul "Vinny" Patel is seeking the town's permission to construct a three-story hotel on the parcel known as the Lehovec property, next to the former Agway that currently is being converted to an Aubuchon Hardware location.
 
Residents of the nearby Colonial Village residential neighborhood and across Main Street (Route 2) from the Lehovec site addressed the board with questions about traffic, lighting, sight lines, stormwater management, overburdened utilities and signage.
 
It is the second time in six months that residents of that neighborhood have come to Town Hall to raise concerns about a proposed Main Street hotel. One of the themes that emerged at Thursday's meeting was that members of the neighborhood feel they are being surrounded by large-scale commercial development.
 
"I understand you're taking each of these requests sequentially on their own merits," Thomas Gais of Orchard Lane told the board. "However, when you analyze the effects on utilities, the stormwater, water supply, Internet and transportation, do you take into account also the effects of two adjacent or nearly adjacent hotels or do you consider this assuming no other hotel is built nearby?"
 
Attorney Donald Dubendorf and engineer Charlie LaBatt, representing Patel, told the ZBA that the traffic study supporting their proposal was done by the same firm that did the study for the 430 Main St. proposal. The two properties would be served by separate water and sewer lines. And any hotel that ends up being built would have its internet service apart from that which serves Colonial Village — just as the 430 Main St. developer has promised.
 
As for water, LaBatt said a berm planned for the east side of the 562 Main St. location will prevent runoff from the hotel or its parking lot from encroaching on the Colonial Village neighborhood to the east.
 
Stormwater runoff figures to be a major topic of discussion when the Lehovec property proposal makes its next stop at Town Hall: Thursday, April 27, before the Conservation Commission.
 
The 200-page traffic study from West Springfield civil engineer Fuss & O'Neill reads, in part, "The additional traffic generated by the proposed project will result in incremental increase in peak period traffic volumes on Main Street that will have minimal impact on traffic operations."
 
But the residents who cope with Main Street traffic every day seemed unconvinced.
 
"Yes, they mention they did an analysis, but I leave out of Colonial Village every day, and it's extremely difficult to make either a right or a left," Gais said. "Now it's possible that we have two more hotels within several hundred feet from one another. I'd think the town would have to consider putting a light somewhere.
 
"I don't know how that's of any significance to your decision. But right now it's already a big problem with traffic. I'd think the town would have to take into consideration dealing with the traffic."
 
The ZBA spent considerable time looking at one element of the Lehovec property project that will impact traffic patterns: a proposal to gate the end of Linear Park Drive at Main Street and reroute vehicular traffic to Linear Park through the hotel parking lot.
 
The change was suggested by town officials, not the hotel developer, because town officials wanted to reduce the number of curb cuts at the site and deal deal with what is believed to be a difficult "attack angle" into Linear Park Drive from Route 2.
 
Berkshire Drive resident Jack Madden told the ZBA the town should keep Linear Park Drive as it is.
 
"I would urge the board to require Linear Park Drive to remain open," Madden said. "It's easier to get in and out for anyone using that facility down there."
 
Dubendorf noted that if the roadway is gated and traffic is rerouted through the hotel lot, the town would be responsible for signage making it clear how to access the park. That said, Dubendorf emphasized that the developer has no real preference one way or another about creating a dogleg from the parking lot onto Linear Park Drive.
 
"If the board wants us not to do that … it's the board's decision," Dubendorf said.
 
Williamstown's community development director, who staffs the ZBA, said if the board decides it is not an appropriate change, the town will come up with something else, but he explained why the element was included in the project.
 
"One of the provisions of the development standards calls for separation of curb cuts," Andrew Groff said, noting lowering the number of curb cuts promotes safety. "One idea would be to eliminate that [Linear Park Drive] curb cut, which does have a bad attack angle, and bring it to a safer curb cut."
 
The ZBA hearing, which ran for more than two hours, took a linguistic detour when resident Ben Sosne of Colonial Avenue argued that the hotel proposal as drafted misapplies the bylaw, essentially because it conflates uses "permitted" in the Limited Business District with uses "allowable by special permit."
 
A hotel falls into the latter category, and, therefore, needs to be treated differently from a land use perspective when dealing with the fact that the 562 Main St. parcel straddles Limited Business and General Residence districts, Stosne argued.
 
"There are plenty of uses allowed by right in Limited Business," Sosne said. "If the applicant wanted to build a restaurant or an antique shop, they'd be within their rights because it's permitted to extend 30 feet into General Residence. Here, they're not doing a gift shop. They're doing a hotel, which is not a use permitted but a use allowed by special permit."
 
Dubendorf said that Sosne's argument, taken to its extreme, would make Williamstown's zoning bylaw unworkable.
 
"The words 'permitted' and 'allowable' throughout the bylaw are used as synonyms," Dubendorf said.
 
ZBA Chairman Andrew Hoar appeared to favor the idea that if the ZBA permits something, it is a permitted use.
 
"I don't think this board can defend [the bylaw] or argue because I know it was not written all at one time," Hoar said. "It's gone through many amendments. That may be part of the problem. In some places, ‘permitted' and ‘allowed' were used interchangeably … because it may have been five years between when amendments were written.
 
"I'm going to keep reading this over and over, but I appreciate [Sosne's] opinion on it. I'm not dismissing it."
 
Prior to Thursday's hearing, the town requested guidance from town counsel at the law firm Kopelman and Paige, but the attorney did not respond between the time Sosne's April 18 letter arrived at Town Hall and the April 20 ZBA hearing.
 
As for screening, the developer has proposed planting 6- to 8-foot trees on the eastern edge of its property to create a natural screen from the neighborhood. 
 
The residents suggested that a more appropriate requirement would mirror the 18- to 20-foot trees required as part of the special permit for the 430 Main St. site, the former Grand Union property.
 
"I would urge the board to use the need for those variances to do a little bit of horse trading [with the applicant] and ameliorate the negative impacts the residents fear," said Roger Lawrence, a resident of South Street who lives nowhere near the Lehovec property but who is a frequent commenter on development ideas seeking approval at Town Hall.
 
The screening question is one reason the ZBA scheduled a site visit for May 18, at which time the board also likely will address Sosne's concerns about the ambiguity created in the bylaw's language.
 
But for many of the residents at Thursday's meeting, it was clear that semantics took a backseat to the real-world impact of development encroaching on their neighborhood.
 
Robert Kavanaugh of Colonial Avenue told the ZBA he lived in Colonial Village for 37 years and did not understand why the town would disrupt the character of the neighborhood at a time when it is encouraging the development of "walkable neighborhoods."
 
"Somebody has to step back and look at the big picture and say, 'Is this what we want for Williamstown?' " Kavanaugh said. "I think we can do better."
 
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