As you can see below I’m no Tris Metcalfe, but I’ve spliced together the two schematics that are being proposed for Pulaski Park and the Hilton Garden Inn respectively, in order to give you a better idea of what is being planned by a volunteer board and a hotel developer through concurrent planning processes. The hotel developers, the Parmar family, have a seat on the Pulaski Park re-design committee and have committed more than $100,000 to its expansion and refurbishment. Their hotel proposal is currently being challenged in two concurrent civil lawsuits filed with the Land Court Department of Hampshire Superior Court. Plaintiffs are the New South Street Limited Partnership and Robert G. Curran, Jr., owner of the Round House office building. Listed as defendants are the Pioneer Valley Hotel Group, Inc., the City of Northampton, and the Northampton Planning Board.
The white rectangle to the left in the top design represents the Academy of Music, the white rectangles in the right of the top design represent Memorial and City Halls respectively. The rectangle joined with a circle outline in the middle-right represents the current Round House office building. It looks as though the spruce tree has been preserved located at the top of the green oval, but the future of the other existing mature trees is less certain according to local media reports. The PVTA bus stop on the south side of Main Street seems to have been shifted eastward so it’s now in line with the park and is less of an obstruction to the reincarnated Academy of Music. Behind the Academy is planned a chess/movie area. Between the park and hotel is planned a playground and a performance space in an area that is now an embankment. New South Street runs along the left side of both schematics. The truncated brown narrow building in the lower schematic that runs parallel to New South Street represents the apartment house. The large figure at the extreme bottom is the garage, and the bi-colored image spliced together above it is the hotel footprint.
Considering how the Academy, hotel, and park are designed, it’s almost as if there was a previous master plan in place for this area of downtown. It remains to be seen whether the community buys into the new park and whether the city can afford to construct and maintain it.
Visit: http://groups.google.com/group/pulaski-park/files to view the public documents of the Pulaski Park planning process including the last presentation which is broken into three parts. (I very much support the idea of adding a winter skating rink within the oval.)
In a concurrent process the Central Business Architecture Committee has scheduled a continuation of a public hearing to be held Tuesday, November 27, 2007 beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the City Hall Hearing Room 18, 210 Main Street, Northampton MA. to deliberate the following:
Pioneer Valley Hotel Group application to construct a new hotel with restaurant and parking garage for the Round House parking lot. Map number 31D Parcel 167. Plans are available for review in the Office of Planning and Development. Contact: Peg Keller, Office of Planning and Development at pkeller@northamptonma.gov or 587-1288.
Cropped picture of proposed parking garage and hotel from the bus station on Old South Street.
Cropped picture of movie screen. Peter Frothingham presented a three dimensional slide show of the area at the October 23 CBAC meeting, which included various options for consideration. The Academy of Music is located in the lower left corner.
Cropped picture of mansard roof with dormers and an 8-inch cornice.
Notes from the CBAC meeting of October 23:
The formal charge of the CBAC concerns the view of the portions of the hotel/parking garage that will be visible from public ways, including the bicycle path corridor that will run adjacent to the south side of the parking garage. The Pioneer Valley Hotel Group has been issued a permit from their previous plan, but has offered some adjustments in order to work with the community on a better design. Among their compromises include reducing the hotel’s height from fifty-nine feet to fifty-five feet, a centered entrance off of Pulaski Park, increased size of central windows, a change in the color of air conditioning grills, green awnings above the first floor windows, the elimination of five rooms from the south-west corner, the elimination of a sign facing Pulaski Park, an added elevator in the north-east corner of the hotel, four downspout lights and flower-boxes on the first level of the garage, a parapet to conceal the upper floor of the garage and three trees between the garage and the apartment building.
Members of the CBAC seemed to concede that the building could be stronger architecturally and that they, as a board, could have done better, earlier in the process. One opined that what they are doing now to the developer seems unfair and he added that it is not their job to defend the project’s buildings. Another said that they would appreciate drawings that reveal more of the proposal’s details and one of their concerns includes the dorms located on the mansard. They were described by one member as looking "like doghouses" as opposed to a more Victorian look (see above). Among the other comments: the garage was described as "too monolithic" and blocky for downtown, members discussed the roofing material of the hotel and whether asphalt shingles, metal, or slate would work best. Asphalt is currently planned in order to mimic Sylvester’s Restaurant, but Shardool Parmar stated that they were not opposed to a metal roof. They discussed other aspects of the project too, like the details of the cornice and windows, the garage wall openings, the exterior finish of the brick work, the withdrawn proposal for a patio/cafe, and the addition of a central column to the park side of the hotel.
Representatives from the environmental cleanup of the Round House parking lot said informally after the meeting that the cleanup was progressing well and that they’d already paved over a portion of the disturbed lot. They do not foresee the cleanup as causing an impediment to the construction of the garage and hotel.
Hilton Garden Inn site plan application
