Letter: New Amherst College Dorm Violates Town’s Zoning Bylaw

The following letter was sent to the Town Council, Town Manager and Planning Board on November 6, 2024.

No rules or regulations can ever be written to account for all circumstances.  Interpreting them to achieve their objectives is the the responsibility of the departments and boards that are created to manage their application.

This means that the first responsibility of Amherst’s Planning Board and our town’s planning department is to implement our Zoning Bylaw as it was intended, rather than to help a developer find loopholes and ways around its intended meaning.

I write about Barry Roberts’s project at 55 South Pleasant Street. The Town says, by way of its Zoning Bylaw, that it wants dormitories for the students of our two colleges and university to be located in just two zoning districts, the R-F and the ED districts, and in no other place. This makes sense, because faculty and staffs of those institutions need to be able to live in town, close to where they work, and if dormitories could be any place in addition to R-F and ED districts, over time they’d crowd out those folks who would be long term, year-round residents.  

The Zoning Bylaw says that the R-F Fraternity Residence district (in Section 2.01 Residential Districts) is for residential areas dedicated to “fraternities, sororities and similar residential facilities associated with educational institutions.”  The ED Educational district (in Section 2.04 Special Districts) allows “any use of land and buildings which may legally be carried on by, or under the auspices of, the college or university which owns or manages the property”. The Zoning Bylaw does not provide any other place in Amherst where a dormitory might be established.  

This begs the question: Is the building Barry Roberts will build for Amherst College a dormitory and should it be disallowed at this location?  Yes, and here’s why: This new 5-story building will be managed by Amherst College, not by Mr. Roberts. Those living there will be “occupants” not “tenants”, and be living in “dwelling units” not “apartments”. They will be selected and identified solely by Amherst College and subject to the rules applying to Amherst College campus residents. Mr. Roberts will not know who they are unless he asks the college. The electricity meters that were originally planned to be connected to each unit will not be built; only two meters will exist and Amherst College will pay those electric bills. The college will provide for landscape management and all snow and trash removal at the site, and the occupants will park their cars in Amherst College-owned parking lots.The college’s CFO has told the Amherst campus newspaper that this will alleviate overcrowding in its Cohan Dormitory and be a “long-term alternative” to Valentine Hall after 2030. 

If it looks like a dormitory, functions like a dormitory, and is managed as a dormitory by Amherst College, then it is nothing but a dormitory. What else could it be? Could it be a “mixed use” building?  No, because the use of the first floor will be up to Amherst College, not the owner or the town.  The entrance is down an alley and visits to the building will be under the sole control of the college which will have the sole right to admit or exclude anyone.  It was argued that this new structure is really “45-55 South Pleasant Street” and that the existence of the Amherst College Store where the Hastings storefront used to be is a commercial use that will qualify the new building as “Mixed Use.”

The reality is, 45 South Pleasant Street is an old 3-story mixed use building.  What Mr. Roberts is building here at 55 South Pleasant is a new, separate 5-story dormitory without any public access that he is connecting to that old building. The planning for this dormitory is not new, just new to the public.  I assume it was being planned for some months before it appeared for consideration at the Planning Board meeting on October 16.  I learned about it just hours before that meeting, and was the only member of the public to speak about it.  I was told that a Planning Board member had no better advance knowledge than I; apparently the town’s planning officer had not kept all Planning Board members informed of his negotiations with Mr. Roberts.

I request that this matter be reconsidered and that the Zoning Bylaw be applied as I have described it above.

Ken Rosenthal

Ken Rosenthal lives on Sunset Avenue in Amherst.  He was Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals and of the former Development and Industrial Commission, and was a member of the Select Committee on Goals for Amherst. He was a founder of Hampshire College and its first Chief Financial Officer.