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Date: 8/8/2022
AMHERST – The Planning Board hosted an introductory site plan review to submit questions and gather information on the proposed building of a private apartment-style dormitory limited to students and located at 47 Olympia Dr. by Archipelago Investments LLC.
Archipelago already owns multiple apartment complexes around the town including Olympia Place, Kendrick Place and Boltwood Place. The current plan for the new property was presented to the board by Kyle Wilson, with plans to install 68 units for a projected 230 tenants across five floors that will include breakout rooms and some fitness equipment. The location was previously occupied by an old sorority house that has been demolished.
The request included approval of a waiver of on-site parking requirements. Wilson said that because the tenants are expected to all be “matriculating students,” he plans on having tenants purchase parking tickets from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) and use the adjacent UMass parking lots that are already used for on campus students and tenants of other complexes in the area.
“Our sense is we have had no problems with the parking here whatsoever,” Wilson said. “UMass has retreated somewhat from Mather [Drive], relative to what we’ve noticed in terms of parking loads up on the upper lot here. We think there’s plenty of parking as it stands and that relationship that we’ve set up with a unique history here between our buildings and the property that we have deed of rights to, but that UMass is maintaining and the tenants purchasing UMass parking permits seems to work very well.”
Should the parking waiver not be approved in the future, sections 7 and 7.1 of the Zoning Bylaw would require Archipelago to add between 132 and 230 parking spaces.
The request also asked for a waiver of a traffic impact study due to a report for that area that is already public. Planning Board member Janet McGowan said she still wanted a new report in addition to the report that was done before opening Olympia Place.
“I wanted to see a traffic report because when I read the old one, which we just got a few pages, it wasn’t clear when it was done and it was sort of speculative,” McGowan said. “The engineer was assuming only 30 percent of the people would have cars. Obviously, there’s bus service and people would use that to get to UMass since everybody in the building is a student. What we’ve been learning in the Planning Board is that off campus students have a lot of cars despite our bus service.”
Planning Director Christine Brestrup later reminded the board about previous instances of student-only housing being met with resistance from the public. She remembered it happening as recently as the opening of Aspen Heights last year, saying that the Zoning Board of Appeals requested the units to not be reserved for students.
“Part of it is that when you have an open building like that, you’re required to have affordable units as part of the building,” Brestrup said. “In this case, we wouldn’t be requiring affordable units because we would know that the tenants here actually wouldn’t be eligible to have an affordable unit because students are not considered an eligible class of people who’s allowed to have affordable units.”
Brestrup recommended that the board delays the hearing until gathering input from Town Engineer Jason Skeels, the Fire Department and Conservation Commission. The board unanimously agreed to continue the discussion and public hearing until Sept. 21. The full proposal materials including photos and renderings are available online at https://www.amherstma.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/14959.