Housatonic School is for sale — RFP in the works
Great Barrington — Following in the footsteps of the old Searles School, the former Housatonic School may soon be on its way to filling town coffers. Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin said Monday (November 24) she has worked out a timeline and “suggested process” for an “adaptive reuse” of the “challenging” old school building in the middle of Housatonic Village.
The property has sat vacant for nine years since the school regionalized into Berkshire Hills Regional School District’s two new buildings on the campus next to Monument Mountain High. School district offices were forced to move out of the Housatonic School into Stockbridge Town Offices after the Town asked the district to leave in order to reuse the building. According to School Committee Chair and Selectboard member Stephen Bannon, the chairman of the Selectboard at the time said the Housatonic School would be “used to house local artists and they wanted us to leave as soon as possible.”
Tabakin said the Housie Dome — a gym and community center – -will “remain as community facility” as will the neighboring park and playground. She asked the Selectboard to authorize her to solicit three or four proposals and select an attorney — other than town counsel — specifically for this project.
Tabakin said she thought special counsel was necessary as “someone who can see larger context of where the building is.” She also said she planned to make the Request for Proposal (RFP) “less restrictive…as inviting as possible…to position it to be very broad so people could own it in various ways. I think it’s a challenging building.”
But, Tabakin added, “this building is an important one for Housatonic,” and she plans to make recommendations in the development agreement “so we can have some say in what is in the center of town.”
The town would consider a range of reuses like schools, housing, businesses, hotels or other ventures, Tabakin said. “We have to be open…to weigh the pros and cons of various uses.”
When asked why hire special counsel rather than use town counsel based in Boston, Selectboard member Sean Stanton said, “they could do it, but we want to do it a different way.”
“Having somebody local would make a huge difference,” said Selectboard Chair Deborah Phillips.
Tabakin said her timeline includes having the RFP written by January or February, and a legal review of it by March. She plans to market the building — hopefully with the help of volunteers–throughout spring, she said, and hold an open house around that time. One idea was to list the property on Opportunity Space to advertise it beyond the state. “Great Barrington would benefit from getting the word out that the building is for sale.”
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Solar energy for town, school district closer to reality
Housatonic — The Selectboard voted unanimously to be a host community for a solar power purchase agreement with Sunlight General Capital, a solar energy developer. Housatonic Solar’s Kirt Mayland was on hand to ask the Board to authorize Great Barrington as a “host” for net metering credits from the Housatonic Solar Project, the solar array planned at the old Rising Paper mill site. Mayland, an environmental lawyer who has shepherded the project, said the Conservation Commission “seems OK with the plans,” and that he is “done with local and state [environmental] permitting.”
By becoming a host, the town makes itself eligible for the credits, which will result in electricity provided to the town and the Berkshire Regional School District at discount rates; there is no liability to the town nor ownership involved. The power purchase agreement, Mayland said, is in “final form,” and he needed the town to become a host community as part of the Department of Public Utilities registration process.
