New Social Dormitory Proposed for University Lodge

Report on the Meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals, August 8, 2024

This meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded. It can be viewed here.

Present
Steve Judge (Chair), Craig Meadows, Everald Henry, David Sloviter, and John Varner (Associate member)

Staff: Chris Brestrup (Planning Director), Jacinta Williams (Planner), and Rob Morra (Building Commissioner)

Attorney Tom Reidy of Bacon, Wilson Associates represented the appellant Curt Shumway.

Shumway proposes to turn the University Lodge at 345 North Pleasant Street into a social dormitory with 16 studios and one-bedroom apartments and one two-bedroom unit.

The structure was built in 1965 on a one-acre parcel with frontage on both North and East Pleasant Streets and has been operating under a Special Permit issued in 1970. Its most recent use has been housing for clients of Craig’s Doors.

The designation of Social Dormitory is a new use. The category was coined to accommodate the apartment-style dormitories on Olympia Drive, which is zoned Fraternity Park where apartments are not allowed. Conditions on the permits require that residents be matriculated at a college or university. A social dormitory is considered akin to a fraternity or sorority. Enforcement of this status was an issue raised by the Board. The owner will restrict the number of tenants to no more than two unrelated persons per unit.

While the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) basically agreed that the change in use of the twenty-unit motel from transient to rental housing lessened the impact on the neighborhood, its decision was continued to August 22, because the board did not have sufficient information to make the required findings for a Special Permit.

Because both the lodging use and the desired Social Dormitory use are non-conforming under the zoning bylaw, the Board must find under Section 9.22 of the bylaw that the 16 studio and one-bedroom units (plus the one two-bedroom unit) of student housing is not more detrimental to the neighborhood than the more than 9000 transient hotel guests who stay at the property each year. The parcel abuts a church in a residential neighborhood just north of the Triangle Street roundabout.

Shumway is rehabbing the interiors to add kitchens and will combine 10 adjacent units on the East Pleasant Street side to provide a separate sleeping room in each and 10 studios on North Pleasant Street. The former office will become a two-bedroom apartment. The exterior and the grounds will be spruced up. Monitored parking for 26 cars will continue as is. The commercial signage will be smaller and more residential at some time in the future.

Questions raised by the Board were:

• What will UMass do to provide oversight of the property?
  
• What happens if a tenant becomes a non-student during the lease term?
  
• The existing lighting is not dark sky compliant. Will it be left on or motion-controlled at night?
  
• Where will waste containers go? They could be at the northeast corner but it is hard to find a place on site that is not visible from a unit.
  
• Does the lease trump the matriculation requirement? Is this a zoning enforcement issue? The zoning enforcement officer expects the manager to monitor compliance, but he would not expect evictions in the middle of a lease term.

• The East Pleasant Street driveway is steep and often icy in winter. Does closing it off impact emergency services? The fire department has expressed no issues.

• What is the HVAC? Air conditioning is in the exterior walls, and there is baseboard heating.

• Is an EV charging station required in a conversion? (It is not.)
  
• Will all lighting will be LED?

Sloviter noted that the lease allows renters to have five guests per unit, which he said is “a lot of people” in what look like small units. How big are the units and how many can live there under the State Sanitary Code, or visit under the fire codes?

He also asked where five guests/unit would park, saying “It sounds like a built-in block party if they all know each other.”

Attorney Reidy assured the Board that the lease is “evolving” and can accommodate the concerns he is hearing tonight.

In public comment, Tova Kamlarz of 138 East Pleasant Street was most concerned about the traffic and guests parking on the street or in neighbors’ driveways after the bars close,

Shumway is concerned about drivers using his property as a cut-through to avoid the rotary and noted that there were fewer complaints during the time Craig’s Doors used the building than when it was a motel.

The appellant will come back to the August 22 ZBA meeting with a revised lease, a new site plan with unit measurements, and answers to all the questions raised, using the 25 conditions proposed by the staff as a guide.