The college is recommending people who normally use the lot between the field house and the Facilities Building to plan on parking in the Weston Field/Taconic Golf Club lot, the municipal lot on Spring Street or the former town garage site on Water Street during the demolition.
A moving truck last week pulls away from the side door of Williams College's Towne Field House.
Williams College Senior Project Manager Shaun Garvey talks about the demolition plan before the Conservation Commission.
An overhead view of Towne Field House with is labeled with features of the demolition plan as part of the college's application to the town.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Conservation Commission Thursday gave the green light to Williams College's plan to demolish its Towne Field House.
The college was before the panel to request a negative determination of applicability under the Wetlands Protection Act for the demolition project near Christmas Brook.
The commissioners found that the college, which plans silt sacks in all storm drains and a silt fence along Latham Street, which runs between the field house and the brook, had adequate erosion measures planned.
The plan also calls for a wash area for trucks entering or leaving the demolition site. Williams Senior Project Manager Shaun Garvey said the water from the wash station will be filtered on-site before being discharged.
Prior to the meeting, Garvey said the college hopes to begin demolition on or about Nov. 6 and it hopes to have it wrapped up before the end of the calendar year.
Perhaps the biggest public impact during that time will be the loss of parking spaces around the field house.
Garvey Thursday said that all of the spaces in the western half of the faculty and staff lot adjacent to the field house will be lost as parking spots during the demolition.
The row of spaces nearest to the field house will be inside the fence surrounding the demo site. The second row of spaces will temporarily be part of the driving lane into the parking lot and job site.
Including the permitted spots to the west of the field house, between 60 and 70 current parking spaces will be lost during the demolition.
"Parking is going to be a challenge, but only for about two months," Garvey said. "Once demolition is over, I'll take the fenced-in area in to about the perimeter of the field house itself."
Williams' last home football game against Wesleyan University is Nov. 4, two days before the target date for the demolition project.
Garvey said that the college is recommending people who normally use the lot between the field house and the Facilities Building to plan on parking in the Weston Field/Taconic Golf Club lot, the municipal lot on Spring Street or the former town garage site on Water Street during the demolition.
As for the demolition itself, Garvey explained that the college plans, for now, only to raze the existing Town Field House structure to grade and not do any excavation. In fact, the field house's indoor track will remain in place after the building comes down while the college comes up with a plan for that part of campus.
The track will be fenced in and off-limits to the public, however.
"It won't be like a public playground,'" Garvey said.
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Williamstown Planners Talks Housing Development, Water Protection
By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week talked about balancing housing and land conservation in the rural parts of town and protecting the aquifer that supplies drinking water to most of the town's inhabitants.
The bulk of the meeting was dedicated to discussing projects that the board wants to work on in the year ahead, including initiatives in a couple of areas — short-term rentals and housing lot sizes — that have been on the board's radar for years and one new initiative that was brought to the board by a member of town's staff.
The meeting began with the approval of a subdivision on Water Street.
The owner of the former Grange Hall site sought and received the board's approval to subdivide the property into four lots, in accordance with the bylaw. Three new housing lots of about 1 1/4 acre each with 70 feet of frontage will be carved out of the lot, where the owner last year gave up on a proposal that would have created 16 units of mixed-income housing after neighbors threatened an appeal of the Chapter 40B development.
Planners Kenneth Kuttner and Roger Lawrence later gave their colleagues on the board a presentation about how the town could implement an open space residential development bylaw that would couple conserved land with smaller lot sizes for homes.
Currently in RR2, the town's largest rural residential district, homes are permitted on a minimum lot size of 2 1/2 acres.
Kuttner and Lawrence have been studying whether Williamstown could follow the path of other towns in the commonwealth and allow smaller home lots on a single parcel if the majority of that parcel is left undeveloped.
The Planning Board last week talked about balancing housing and land conservation in the rural parts of town and protecting the aquifer that supplies drinking water to most of the town's inhabitants. click for more
The district's construction adviser, Bruce Decoteau, provided the committee with a number of updates in a brief session at the current fire house on Water Street.
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Three years after it received the final permitting, the third and final phase of the Cable Mills housing complex is on track to break ground later this year. click for more
His draft bylaw only would apply in the town's residential districts, meaning that in commercial districts, any home could be on the market for services like Airbnb or Vrbo 365 days a year. click for more