The Sophian

Issue date: 9/21/06 Section: News

Media Credit: www.smith.edu Smith plans to build a 140,000-square-foot science and engineering building on the corner of Green Street and Belmont Avenue, scheduled to be completed in 2009.

Earlier this month, the Northampton City Council passed a land-zoning measure which benefits Smith College by creating an educational overlay district for the campus. With this obstacle removed, the college can move forward with its plans for a new science and engineering complex on Green Street.

The educational overlay will exempt Smith from certain local zoning ordinances. Efforts by a local group to invoke an obscure state law in order to inhibit the passage of the measure failed when the city council determined that signatures on the group's petition did not meet the requirements for invoking the law.

This effort by the Citizens Opposed to the Educational Use Overlay was the most recent in a longer-term effort by Northampton citizens and Smith affiliates to influence Smith plans for the construction of a new 140,000-square-foot science and engineering building at the corner of Green Street and Belmont Avenue.

Construction of the new building has been controversial in large part because the plans require the demolition of 26 affordable housing units for Northampton community members. Smith College plans to compensate the community for the loss by financially supporting the development of replacement affordable housing, along with providing other forms of financial support for the city and displaced residents.

"The educational overlay is supposed to provide a coherent zone for the college so that future development within the college boundaries can take place in a [well-planned] and organized way," said Charles Staelin, Dean for Academic Development. "We are not subject to much of the city's zoning anyway…so in many respects the college can do as it pleases. That is, of course, not the way we would like the system to work. We would like to work with the city to make sure that the development is beneficial to both the city and the college."

Last February, Smith College contracted the O'Connell Development Group of Holyoke to develop 26 affordable housing units in the Belmont and Arnold avenues area to replace the units lost by the construction of the new science building. Construction on the housing was scheduled to begin this past summer 2006 and be ready for occupancy in the spring of 2007. Ground-breaking for the science center is planned for the spring of 2007; the facility is scheduled to be completed Summer 2009.

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