One Man’s Save, Another’s Bye-Bye

By Mickey Friedman
October 30, 2015

Eileen Mooney’s NEWSletter, the remarkable compendium of all things Great Barrington, has a comprehensive report on the planned demolition of the Searles School and the construction of the Mahidas’ 95-room hotel.

This project, on the heels of Great Barrington’s downtown re-do, has many heads spinning. And there is much debate and discord. Which has prompted Selectman Ed Abrahams to chide citizens for their complaints, urging instead a polite compliance, and compliant politeness. There is no place for name-calling, Mr. Abrahams tell us, because everything is more complicated than the complainers realize. Reminding us that this Main Street makeover is exactly what the complainers voted for:

“The decision was made, by a committee of taxpayers, elected by other taxpayers, after doing exhaustive research, all of it in front of the public at open meetings and, finally, approved by the voters.”

First, no one’s name-calling. People, seeing their homogenized makeover, are annoyed at the decisions the decision-makers have made. Because great numbers of them passionately testified that while they appreciated the need to address the problems of Main Street and cracked sidewalks, nonetheless wanted to preserve the unique, quirky small-town-ness that made Great Barrington a joy to live in and a destination for shopping and dining. And they rightly feared losing local control in exchange for the free millions the town manager and Selectboard yearned for.

Suggestions that made it to the white board never to be considered again. Urging, for example, that we keep the right turn lanes up to Fairview Hospital and onto East Street, suggestions swatted away like mosquitoes by the expert designers.

I remember a Town Meeting vote to appropriate money for planning — what we needed to spend to garner state funding. But I and others remember being told we’d have another opportunity to vote on the final project. The vote that never happened.

Mr. Abrahams counsels us: “If a citizen makes a suggestion that is not adopted by an elected board, it might not be because they weren’t listening. There may be a reason involving consequences you haven’t thought of, or competing issues, or someone else may have suggested the opposite. Or they might disagree with you.”

True, but perhaps Mr. Abrahams, a party now to the inside negotiations, doesn’t quite understand voters who often feel they’re not given all the relevant information or imagine themselves ill-served by those who asked for their votes. Never clearly told how much we actually spent for the planning of our New Jersey Turnpike-like traffic poles, the bizarre bump-outs, loss of parking, the sharp granite curbstones, and the uninspired and sure to be difficult to plow new sidewalks.

Like the bizarre details of The Old Firehouse sale that dribble out to the citizenry months after they might have informed our votes. Making our votes a joke.

Which brings me back to the latest lapse of representative democracy. Many of us voted for a zoning bylaw to limit new hotel construction to 45 rooms. Voting to preserve our small town feel, after several decades of unbridled development on Route 7 north from Belcher Square.

Then the Planning Board asked us to create exceptions to the 45-room limit “when hotels and motels are proposed as a component of a project that redevelops or reuses historic structures.”

I voted in the hopes a wise developer would build in the Housatonic Mills and to save and re-use historically significant buildings. Or that Searles might provide needed and affordable housing. How about you?

Now this same exception, with the benefit of some complex lawyering, has allowed 79 Bridge Street LLC to demolish the Searles School and put a large 95-room hotel in our downtown.

First, the Historical Commission, believing the developers wanted to reuse Searles, affirmed it’s historical significance. Then the developers and three members of the Planning Board decided it was impossible to save Searles. And with the historical exemption in hand the lawyers and developers and three members of the Planning Board re-interpreted “redevelops or reuses.” Reuse still means reuse but redevelops means tear down and completely replace. Maybe they should have told us that before we voted for their bylaw.

So now my vote to save and reuse the old mills means I want to destroy and disappear the Searles School. In favor of a large non-historic hotel.

What about asking an unbiased independent consultant to assess whether we can save Searles? And an independent consultant to determine what we can reasonably expect in tax revenues. Then, what if, as Eileen Mooney suggests, the Selectboard halts the approval process to return to the voters to clarify our intent for a room-limit.

But I’m guessing town officials imagine they know better. Because democracy is a pain, and it’s always inconvenient to ask what the voters want. And inconvenient to represent us.

So just in case I’m saying: Bye Bye Searles.

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This column was published first in The Berkshire Record of October 22, 2015.

You can purchase Mickey Friedman’s novel “Danger Times Two: An I Ching Mystery” at Amazon.com.