News from the Planning Board: Part 2

Last Tuesday, at the Planning Board meeting, Brian Cohan and Michael Charles, the principals of Benchmark Development in Great Barrington, made a preliminary presentation to the Planning Board to get initial feedback. The project being proposed is for 11 Warren Street, property owned by the Galvan Foundation. Benchmark is planning to develop the property in partnership with Galvan.

Before looking at what's being proposed, it's worth remembering what was once there. The buildings that were on the east end of the block appear from the center and to the right of this late 19th-century photograph.

This is the building that stood at the southwest corner of Warren and First.

The screen capture below, from the 1959 film Odds Against Tomorrow, shows the first block of Warren Street in the late 1950s--intact on both north and south sides. 

 

Here's another picture of the block taken in 1973. 

Not long after the picture above was taken, all the buildings on the south side of this block of Warren Street were demolished as part of Urban Renewal in Hudson. The one building that was spared was 1 Warren Street, where Kasuri is now located. What was constructed in place of these buildings in 1975 was a strip mall called Parkview Plaza. Complete with off-street parking, it was meant to lure shoppers back from the malls of Greenport. In 1978, three years after it was built, without a single store ever having opened in the ill-fated mall, the bank foreclosed and took possession of the building.

In introducing their presentation, Cohan and Charles called the site an "iconic location" and talked about the use of traditional materials and the desire to design a building that "mixed in" with the architecture of Hudson. Their presentation included many renderings of the proposed building, including a cross section that shows parking below, retail on the first floor, and three stories of residential apartments above.

The apartments in the building--it is anticipated there will be 75 to 80--are to be market rate rental apartments. The parking garage at the bottom of the building, to be accessed from Cherry Alley, will contain 90 parking spaces. The last five renderings above, which don't present the context of the proposed building with great accuracy, were, Cohan and Charles explained, created to demonstrate that the structures on the roof, which are "mezzanines" that are part of third floor apartments, are set back in such a way as to be not visible from the street.

Reacting to the plans presented, Planning Board member Laura Margolis said, "I like this project," and spoke of the "intent to honor the historic integrity of Hudson. Steve Steim said the idea of "activating the space is exciting," but expressed concern that "mixed use developments can feel kind of artificial." He asked about the quality of the materials that would make the building "feel a little less artificial." Larry Bowne commented, "There's a way to honor scale and proportion and integrity of materials without engaging in a kind of Disneyesque, ersatz thing. . . . My own bias would be not to imitate the past."

Theresa Joyner asked who the tenants of the building would be. "My biggest concern is the need. Will it benefit the citizens?" She was told that this was a mid-market project to meet a significant demand for rental housing of all types in Hudson.

In his comments, Clark Wieman returned to the topic of design, commenting that "Hudson has a predilection towards historicism." He went on to say there is a kind of "faux historicism in development that people seem to know and like and approve." He argued there was a way "of referencing historic stuff without having to replicate it." It is of interest that Wieman, as director of planning and capital projects for Cooper Union, worked with Morphosis Architects to design and build the academic building at 41 Cooper Square, which was completed in 2009.

Wieman also expressed concern about the setbacks in the proposed design, saying that in an urban area setbacks can be unused and dangerous.

It will be interesting to watch how this project, proposed for one of Hudson's most significant locations, develops.

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