CHICOPEE — After meeting with the Zoning Committee and receiving approval by the City Council, a 14-unit condominium has been approved to be built at 105 East St.
The area was once the location of the Masonic Temple and was later used as an antiques business before the building burned down in 2018. It has been vacant since.
Rob Levesque from R Levesque Associates was present at the Zoning Committee meeting to discuss the project on behalf of the applicant, PREM LLC.
Dennis Patel, owner of PREM, LLC and his family were also present at the meeting.
The property at 105 East St. was zoned commercial, which is a spot zone since it is surrounded by land zoned Residential B, which allows single and two-family homes, and several other uses.
The applicants applied for a Mill Conversion and Commercial Overlay District to the property, which would allow the apartment building to be constructed. The zone is designed to help reuse or preserve underused or abandoned industrial properties and allows a variety of uses.
Since the initial zoning amendment took place to apply the mill conversion overlay district to the subject property, the original plan of a 24-unit apartment building changed.
The original proposal was to construct a 24-unit, two-story apartment building on the 33,130-square-foot property that is bordered by East, Linden and Fuller streets.
After some significant work on the architectural side, Levesque said based on the market and a lot of feedback from the initial proposed plan, there was concern about the original number of units.
“People were also concerned, at least paraphrasing, but generally concerned with apartments. People seem to be a little bit more scared of apartments versus condos,” Levesque added.
The new proposal is a town-house style condominium project. Levesque explained the switch to a more townhouse style project.
He said, “Not to say that zoning necessarily can dictate ownership but certainly the intent is to have this to be condoed off. This would be townhouse units, they’ll be two-story, first story is really living space, living room, kitchen, bathroom, etc. Second story would be two bedrooms and a bathroom. About 1,800 square feet each, 900 per floor.”
The Zoning Committee reviewed an illustration of the project and site plan explain the layout of the project.
The proposal also calls for a two-way access for vehicles coming off East Street with a one-way exit to Fuller Street along with pedestrian access to the sidewalks, have parking behind their unit.
Levesque also said a reason for the condos would be so it is more likely that they are owner occupied. This means someone who lives far away is not managing the unit. There will be a homeowners association tied into the project that will maintain things as well.
He added, “That’s one of the other reason we’re looking at the condos, we feel like there’s more value to them, not to say again somebody couldn’t potentially rent them, but generally speaking we think that owner occupied units are generally better kept.”
There were 50 comments from various departments about the project in the report, but they are requirements that the developers must work on for the project.
According to Planning Director Lee Pouliot, the reason for all the comments was due to the process and the Overlay District Review committee hosting a roundtable with each department for comments. There is only one shot at the review for the applicant and design package which is the reason for all the comments.
“Because the applicant only has one shot at the review with the committee, you’re seeing a review of everything that the department would like to see addressed in the project. I have reviewed this and there’s nothing in here that are beyond design and engineering details that either need to be edited or refined to allow this project to be constructed,” he added.
Pouliot also discussed an overview of the process of approving a project through the Mill Conversion and Commercial Center Overlay district “because it’s not a commonly used permitting pass way and deviates from our traditional site plan review.”
Some past project examples that have been permitted through the same overlay district include the Assisted Living Facility next to the Senior Center, redevelopment of the Baskin parcel, the Uniroyal property and former Belcher School.
The Zoning Committee approved the waiver of a historical narrative prepared by a preservation consultant and a traffic impact study.
The applicant also must submit a special permit application to the City Council for the Mill Conversion and Commercial Center Overlay District, which the council approved during its July 2 meeting.
This project takes place in Ward 5 and City Councilor Fred Krampits talked about the approval of this project in his ward.
He said, “I want to thank R Levesque Associates for working with the neighbors. There were neighbors that had concerns when it was first proposed as 24 apartments. They worked with the neighbors that reached out to them and turned it into condos, so it’ll be owner occupied and came up with some designs. I think it was a good collaboration and there were no objections at the Zoning Committee meeting and I have not received any calls either way on it so I’m glad folks seem to be satisfied.”
The Overlay District Review Committee comments will be adopted as conditions of approval. Those conditions include the applicant submitting revised plans addressing the comments from the report to the Planning Department. The City Council will release the special permit once the plans are confirmed by Pouliot that they were revised.
