Stockbridge — It is a delicate tightrope walk in a struggling Berkshires economy: developments that might expand the tax base but that might also encroach on nature, the area’s precious treasure.
Case in point was illustrated at Monday’s Board of Selectmen meeting when local businessman Patrick Sheehan, who owns the old 320-acre Gilded Age estate on Route 183 that, in 1977, had become DeSisto School, wants to not only rehabilitate the former mansion and turn it into a 40- to 50-room upscale hotel, but also plans to add on 96 condo units in five different buildings and, eventually, single-family homes.
DeSisto School owner Patrick Sheehan of Sheehan Acquisitions plans a 40- to 50-room luxury hotel in the former “therapeutic school” that closed in 2004. What concerns abutters to the property off Route 183 are the plans to develop the area behind it into 92 condos and 64 single-family homes.
Sheehan wants to do this 37 Interlaken Road project sensitively, mind you, since he is trying to appeal to people who will plunk down serious dough for — along with five-star comforts — fresh air, local food, forests and mountains. The property sits just below a pristine ridgeline.
But this tipping point is fragile and, if you live in what one abutter opposed to the project called a “serene heaven,” your idea of serenity may diverge from that of someone who breathes bus fumes when they step out onto Madison Avenue every morning.
Thrown into this equation is that corks may start popping in the town assessor’s office when they see the plans for this potential revenue colossus that could once again hit the tax rolls. Since the school closed in 2004 after a number of controversies and the owner’s death, the property has suffered from neglect.
A preliminary rendering of a redevelopment of the Gilded Age mansion, built in 1892 as Bonnie Briar.
“The intention is to restore the mansion, save it, bring it back…with modern conveniences,” said landscape architect Rob Akroyd of Greylock Design Associates, who is managing the project and presented it to a board astonished by preliminary plans that, when they eventually unfurl in their entirety, will bring 209 units to Stockbridge, a town with population of around 1,950.
The estate was built in 1892 and later became home to the Berkshire Symphonic Orchestra, before an educator turned it into the Stockbridge School in 1948.
Sheehan plans to leave about 156 acres “untouched,” including about 18 acres of wetlands that will require the developer to jump through the usual permitting hoops, Akroyd said. He also plans to “minimize the impact on the streetscape” with “no proposed activity in front of the mansion.”
The Stockbridge Board of Selectmen listen to the proposal to redevelop the DeSisto School campus. From left: Donald Chabon, Ernest ‘Chuck’ Cardillo and Stephen Shatz. Photo: Heather Bellow
The hotel would have the classic five-star amenities and, in this case, restaurants that use as much produce as possible from what is grown on the property and otherwise mostly local food. It would also be family-friendly, Akroyd said. “We want to find ways to bring younger crowds into the Stockbridge area.”
Akroyd has clearly gotten the memo about the town’s — and the Berkshires’ — aging population and declining school enrollment rates.
But eyes bulged and feathers ruffled when Akroyd said the project includes 96 “cottages,” or condo units behind the hotel, and eventually 62 single-family homes behind that, with another eight lots to boot and glass walkways connecting everything for winter ease.
“That’s going to be bigger than the town of Stockbridge,” said board member Donald Chabon. Everyone laughed.
Rob Akroyd, president of Greylock Design Associates, presents plans for a massive development on the old DeSisto School property off Route 183. Photo: Heather Bellow
While Sheehan now lives in Boston, he lived in Dalton for 15 years and is hoping to move back to the Berkshires where he is the director of Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc., Akroyd told The Edge. According to the project website, Sheehan is managing partner of Sheehan Health Group LLC, which the state rated as the number one nursing home. And he has 20 years of business management under his belt. He’s owned the DeSisto property since 2009 and has cleaned it and shored it up significantly during that time.
His partner in this endeavor is Anthony Guthrie, who has 30 years of hospitality experience and was key in developing several luxury resorts on Cape Cod. Sheehan has hired local architect Robert Harrison.
The idea is to bring the property “back to a sense of grandeur,” Akroyd said.
Akroyd noted that the team was “here to work with the town,” and has been consulting with abutters and neighbors, and that this was an informal presentation meant for getting feedback from town officials and anyone else with two cents.
Stockbridge resident and Conservation Commission member Sally Underwood Miller said what’s needed in town is affordable housing rather than expensive homes. Photo: Heather Bellow
That could be a lot of change. Board member Stephen Shatz was concerned about the time and resources this might take from the town, and likened it to the long and sticky Elm Court development process of the last few years.
And judging from the tenor in the meeting room last night, there could be a battle on the horizon.
Abutter Victoria Sujata is a Tibetologist living in what she calls “serene heaven.”
She’s worried about the condos and homes not only for her own “investment” and “a lot of work to her house,” but noise pollution and a potential insult to the several hundred untouched acres and beyond.
Abutter Charles Kinney told the tale of how bobcats and other “top-of-the-food-chain predators” were displaced after a logging project there and, when it was done, they all “went home.” He fears such an extensive encroachment will “devastate this wildlife habitat.” He said this was a “great project…that belongs somewhere else.”
Abutter Victoria Sujata speaks against the project. Photo: Heather Bellow
“We have to disregard the old idea that progress means development,” he added.
And local historian Carole Owens, who was appointed as a Stockbridge representative to the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission last night, brought forth the words of Gilded Age ghost Mary Hill, who, with her husband, Samuel, purchased the estate in 1904. Hill said she regretted that she “never got a permanent conservation restriction on the ridgeline.”
If that wasn’t enough to send a chill, Sally Underwood Miller got up and implored the developer to consider affordable housing. “We are so desperately in need of that in this town….we need children, people to run our various infrastructures…..we need people to go to our schools.”
And then she hit that Berkshires’ bull’s eye of a sore spot: “We don’t need more people from New York and Boston to come spend millions of dollars on houses….the town needs to be rejuvenated…..to function as a community. We need families.”
Akroyd said more fleshed-out plans should be ready for consideration by the board in January.
To learn more about the project, go to the 37 Interlaken Road website.