Great Barrington — As controversy and discontent swelled last week over a local developer’s proposal to raze the former Searles Middle and High School and put a 95-room hotel and conference center in its place, someone who wants to save and redevelop the Searles building into housing offered owners Jane Iredale and Bob Montgomery of Riverschool, LLC, $500,000 for the building, Iredale told The Edge.
Retired filmmaker and small-scale redeveloper Bobby Houston told the Edge last week that he had made a “full cash offer with no contingencies” to Riverschool. Jane Iredale said she did not want to call it an “offer,” but rather “an expression of possible interest,” since it isn’t “binding.” She is under contract with hotel developers Vijay and Crystal Mahida of 79 Bridge Street, LLC.
Houston confirmed that indeed he is not in negotiations with Iredale.
Vijay Mahida said his standing offer to Riverschool is $850,000. “We have the property under contract, and we are 100 percent committed to our contract and to the Searles campus,” Mahida said.
For the Mahidas to proceed, however, the Selectboard must issue them a special permit at its November 9 public hearing that will be continued until December 16 for public comment. Houston said he has informed Selectboard members of his plans to buy the building and renovate it.
Bobby Houston at the Searles School. Photo: David Scribner
Houston also started a web-based campaign, “Save Searles School,” which attempts to steamroll myths about the 102-year-old building’s state of disrepair and the difficulty of renovating it. It also challenges the “myth” that the proposed hotel will generate the $450,000 in tax dollars, saying the Mahidas have not shown their numbers. The site also links to “cool examples” of old schools and other buildings rehabilitated to maintain their historic integrity.
Houston, who has saved buildings in the Berkshires since he moved here 10 years ago, and has also rehabbed old houses in Colorado and California, grew alarmed at the scale and design of the Mahidas’ proposed “boutique” hotel, “The Berkshire,” only partly because, he said, it will be, almost literally, in his back yard.
Houston and his partner Eric Shamie run Hauswork Home Design, and are in the process of redeveloping the former Dolby Florist compound directly across the Housatonic River from the Searles site. The school compound is also home to Iredale Mineral Cosmetics’ new corporate headquarters in the former Bryant Elementary School building, which Iredale renovated, going $10 million over budget.
Houston doesn’t think the hotel plan does the river justice. “Vijay is putting a kind of highway along the river,” he said. “We have a habit, as a culture, of designing as if the river wasn’t there.” He said that at the Dolby site, portions of the riverbank were a dumping ground for tires and scrap metal, among other things. “That was the way we used to treat the river.”
The Mahidas’ engineer told the Planning Board last week that floodplain issues prevented changes to the building’s footprint after two board members said they wished the hotel were situated in such a way that faced the river and East Mountain and took better advantage of those natural charms. The Mahidas’ architect said Iredale had stipulated her building’s river views not be obstructed.
The Berkshire Hills Regional School District left the compound 10 years ago after facing the challenge of bringing the century-old buildings up to code, and Searles has sat vacant, edging towards decrepitude, ever since. Developer Paul Rabinovitch left Iredale’s Riverschool in the lurch after pulling out of their deal, resulting in Riverschool paying off the $640,000 note to the town.
“Jane and Bob have development fatigue,” Houston said. “They’ve been through the mill. They’re done. They were left holding the bag.”
Houston’s $500,000 “will have all kinds of contingencies, including an inspection,” Iredale said. “It is well below what we paid to the town and what we’ve put in just to keep the building standing. We have no idea what Mr. Houston has in mind except residential. I don’t think he’s ever seen the inside of Searles.”
The Berkshire Hotel, as envisioned by 79 Bridge Street LLC.
The Historic Commission last summer deemed Searles a historic structure, a move that triggered — perversely, many say — a loophole that allowed the developer to scoot around a 2014-enacted 45-room limit hotel bylaw. In a split vote, the Planning Board voted to recommend the Selectboard issue the project a special permit. In a site plan review last Thursday, the Planning Board tried to get through its mission of signing off on project details despite a room full of angry citizens, galvanized not only by their opposition to the hotel but also, perhaps, by a contagious disillusionment over the results of the Main Street reconstruction project.
“I’m hopeful that the original building can become residential,” Houston said, noting that he would knock down the gymnasium and annex. “That frees up the river side to be truly park-like.”
Depending on the market and financing, he said he would like to create a dozen “green” affordable and market-rate housing units. He’s been contacted by a “large-scale” local developer and an investor, he added. “These are people who don’t want the hotel.”
Houston says he has an experienced eye for such work. “I look at old buildings two to three times per week,” he said. He also walks past Searles several times a day. “As built, it was a majestic building and it still is. Arched chimneys, 14-foot ceilings — that’s never coming back.”
Yet it is those old details, and all the environmental and code headaches within that got everyone excited when someone came forward with a plan that would generate tax revenue, send pedestrians and their wallets up and down Main Street, and get rid of a building that is presently embraced by drug users and vandals. But Houston says regulatory hassles won’t tangle up his plans, since it isn’t going to be for public use. “If it’s residential, it’s a different game,” he said.
Vijay and Chrystal Mahida, during a tour of the derelict Searles School. Photo: David Scribner
He also said the notion that The Berkshire will flood the town with pedestrians is “debatable.”
“Vijay’s business is to keep his guests on campus to eat and drink and shop,” he said. The proposed hotel will have a gift shop, bar, and a 65-seat restaurant that the Mahidas say will be farm-to-table-style, something that has made the town and its environs a foodie mecca.
Houston said local realtors have told him there is a demand for live/work spaces like lofts, and that since the town’s real estate values — and thus property taxes — are high, a residential complex would be “a significant block of real estate” that generates tax revenue and “assists people.” He added that it might act as a “template for Housatonic” and the redevelopment of the mills there. Residential space “is a better way to get our [tax] money.”
It is, after all, what Houston is doing at the old Dolby Florist site, where he and Shamie are proposing “a pocket community” of around 7 or 8 “efficient net zero cottages with a [restored] common house, greenhouse, gardens, orchard — an edible landscape.” They remediated the site, which now has a clean bill of health from MassDEP. He still needs a demolition permit from the Conservation Commission, and by next spring the site will likely be cleared. The pollution there was a deterrent to other buyers, he noted, but not to him.
“I just don’t get nervous,” he said.
Houston, who made an Oscar-winning HBO documentary about civil rights, The Children’s March, said Selectboard member Ed Abrahams, with his “get involved or don’t complain” mantra, motivated him to act. “I’m amazed how much communication there is with all the boards, and an openness to this process that hopefully creates health.”
Iredale says she still supports the hotel. “It’s a huge asset to the town. The Mahidas have been extremely solicitous of what we would like to see here…and I feel really good about it. It’s a luxury hotel that we don’t have close by.
“I sit in my office and look at Searles all day every day,” she added. “I don’t find it particularly attractive, and it’s been changed so many times over the years…it’s no longer an architectural gem.”
Yet the town hasn’t seen this much hand wringing and debate since the Monument Mountain High renovation vote last year.
“I’m amused,” Iredale said, “in the sense that [Searles] has been there for 10 years and there’s been no interest whatsoever up until this point.” She said she would like to see “concrete proof” of some assertions floating around about the hotel. “It doesn’t help [Mahida] to project something and not have it work. Why put all this money into a project if you weren’t sure?”
She did say she wished better renderings of The Berkshire had been offered to the public. “They were soulless,” she said of the computer-generated images.
Mahida told The Edge that better, colorized renderings are in progress, and should be ready soon.
Iredale said a lot of thought and care went into the Mahidas’ project. Still, some residents say they feel the hotel isn’t “quirky” enough for the town; that it is too corporate, that 95 rooms will create a summer traffic problem that the Mahidas’ traffic study has not adequately addressed. Some local architects even offered the Mahidas alternative plans to consider. Both the Mahidas and Iredale said the existing plans have been carefully thought through.
The back of the Searles School, viewed from Church Street. At right is the glassed-in elevator of the renovated Bryant School, now the world headquarters of Iredale Mineral Cosmetics.
“I love Great Barrington, but I don’t love corporate America,” Houston said. “And The Berkshire sure smacks of corporate America.” He added that his is a cash offer, with no contingencies on his end. “I don’t need to gut bylaws before I close a deal.”
“I didn’t expect to find myself in this,” Houston said. “My putting myself forward is sincere and out of a respect for old buildings and the fabric of a town that’s irreplaceable. Once it’s gone, you’re never getting it back.”
Iredale, who recently completed a historically sensitive renovation of the Bryant building, appeared surprised by all the sudden public concern over a deteriorating building that she alone has had to care for over the years. “I’ve wondered where all this passion has been hiding itself,” she said.
The Selectboard will hear the Mahidas’ request for a special permit on November 9, 7 p.m. The process has been extended to December 16 for public comment at a location to be announced.
The Planning Board continues its site review on November 12, 7 p.m. at Town Hall
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