The Colonial Theatre has been deemed eligible to apply for CPA funding for exterior repairs.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Community Preservation Committee on Monday approved eight fiscal 2023 eligibility applications but two did not make the cut.

The total ask of around $709,000 includes historic preservation, open space and recreation, and community housing projects.

The last reported CPA budget for FY23 was a little over $809,000 and was expected to increase by $20,000 to $30,000 based on actuals from the tax collector and from the state surplus.  

Berkshire Theatre Group's $125,150 for exterior repairs to the historic Colonial Theatre was taken out of cycle and deemed eligible. The theater is a regular CPA applicant and the panel members observed that theater may have missed the eligibility date because of a change in the schedule.

The project focuses on the north and south walls of the stage house and auditorium, and additional work on the roof of the theater to prevent damage to the interior of the facility.

An ask for $300,000 to support a nearly $10 million upgrade to the Oak Hill Apartments on Crane Avenue was deemed ineligible. Committee members said it seemed to have more to do with making the complex Americans With Disabilities Act compatible than applying to community housing standards for CPA.

"I think that this, like some of the other affordable housing/mixed-use applications that we've had in the past, really require a lot of technical assistance on the part of staff before they come to us for funding," member Danielle Steinmann said.

"Because it is not perhaps something that is on their radar as a for-profit entity, to sort of go through all of these eligibility fees and make sure, again, that they are compliant and if they were eligible overall and came to us for a larger application, we can certainly put those kinds of qualifications into their funding, which we had also done in the past, but in this case, it is not eligible."

The funding was sought to construct a new accessible office, repair its network of walkways to be ADA compliant, and upgrade four units to make them fully ADA-accessible.

It was proposing to preserve 25 percent of the units as three-bedroom and four-bedroom units — which the applicant says is a critical need in Pittsfield — and affordability would be preserved and enhanced with eight units at 30 percent, 11 at 60 percent, and 18 at 80 percent of the area median income.

Member Kamaar Taliaferro pointed out that the applicant's narrative of preserving the units was "ominous" and wondered if that meant that they would not be preserved without the funding.

The panel also decided that the Historical Commission's application for $25,000 on behalf of the Friends of Osceola (Park) group to "rediscover the Lost Mill Villages of West Pittsfield" with a number of interpretive signs was ineligible.

The friends group would like to highlight the 19th-century industrial landscape of that area, which it says has been "largely lost." The group proposed signs at 730 West Housatonic St., Osceola Park, Hungerford Street Lower Barkerville and the Osceola River Flouring Mill, Stearns School, Berkshire Environmental Action Team's Environmental Research and Education Center on Chapel Street, and the Barkerville Conservation area.

CPA guidelines say funding can be used for tangible historic resources but not for historic interpretation, education, or heightening awareness of history.

"It seems really clear," member Libby Herland said. "You can't use it for historic materials."

Taliaferro initially wondered if the application was eligible. He pointed to a past city master plan that identified inventorying of historic, things, places people, and events as important and the fact that the Historical Commission endorsed it.

Director of Community Development Justine Dodds said a community's installation of new signage was used as an example in a recent training of a project that is not CPA eligible.

Other applications were approved with additional information requested. The deadline for eligible applications is in February and will be followed by presentations in March and a final decision in April.

Last month, the committee supported a $50,000 out-of-cycle application for the so-called "Saw Mill property" acquisition that will preserve more than 50 acres of conservation land along the southwest branch of the Housatonic River.

Pittsfield CPA FY23 eligibility applications:

• Berkshire Regional Planning Commission: $32,450 for the Wilson Park rehabilitation
• Pittsfield Department of Community Development: $8,000 for Park Square tree plantings; $150,000 for the Affordable Housing Trust; $45,000 for Egremont Elementary School playground; $74,500 for an Onota Lake boat wash station, and $24,000 for the restoration of two piers at Springside Park
• Roots & Dream and Mustard Seeds: $200,000 for a building rehabilitation
• Berkshire Theatre Group: $125,150 for exterior repairs to the historic Colonial Theatre

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