Sheela Clary

The lead item on the agenda for the June 21 Great Barrington Selectboard meeting was meant to be a public hearing on whether to issue a special permit to Kenneth Alpart of 250 Long Pond Road for the operation of up to 15 large events per year on his ridge-top property. In fact, as fed-up neighbors have recently pointed out to the town, Alpart has already been operating the property as a de facto party house. Indeed, by his own admission, 250 Long Pond has been a publicly advertised commercial event space for the past nine years.

In the latest twist of what turns out to be a 20-year saga, this past Saturday, through his attorney Susan Smith, Alpart unexpectedly withdrew his special permit application “without prejudice,” which means he retains the right to reapply. For his unhappy neighbors, whose complaint letters and calls to police brought the problem to the attention of the town, it is not clear whether this withdrawal means the events will stop, or if Alpart will simply continue to rent the property as he has. (Alpart has not yet responded to emailed questions about his intentions for the property.)

Renting the property as he had would seem to be in direct conflict with restrictions placed on the land back in 2001 in an agreement between the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC) and the then-owner, which specified no “commercial recreational use of the property.” It is also out of compliance with a letter sent to Alpart in June 2020 by the assistant building inspector for the town, which required him to “cease the use of the property as a wedding/event venue.” (See page 37 of this document)

Today, 250 Long Pond Road — or, according to its website’s homepage, 250 Long Pond Celebrations: Weddings, Family Gatherings, Special Events — consists of 14,700 square feet of living space within a sprawling main house, guest house, and outbuilding added on in 2016 and originally slated for raising llamas. The barn now — according to longpond250.com — “consists of a large open space that is perfect for social events, weddings, band performances and dance parties, corporate meetings, yoga and fitness classes, artist showings, and large dinner parties. (Comfortably seats up to 110 people).” The special permit application specifies that the property has 46 parking spaces.

Before there was an event venue located at 250 Long Pond, there were 120 acres of expansive forest along a rocky ridgeline about a mile north of the Division Street intersection, owned by Mr. Kelton Burbank, a nature lover and benefactor of Berkshire Natural Resources Council. As explained by Narain Schroeder, director of land conservation for BNRC, the agency received the property as a gift from Burbank’s estate, with the acreage coming into their possession with a conservation restriction that allowed for a single-family house on a “Building Envelope” of no more than six acres which, according to the restriction, may also include “customarily associated outbuildings.” BNRC’s job was to uphold the restrictions placed on the entire parcel.

One of those unaware of the deal’s six-acre envelope stipulation was then-neighbor Andrew Humes, whose Long Pond Road property was below and just north of the 250 Long Pond site. He’d been buying up acreage around his house to protect it and was under the impression that the entire tract above him was similarly protected, by BNRC. When excavators showed up to clear cut a huge swath across the top of the ridgeline, he was, according to Schroeder, “furious with us.” His fury was documented at the time in a Berkshire Eagle story.

Humes’ fury did not abate during the development of the property. In fact, during construction in 2006 and 2007, Humes kept a homemade sign along the road indicating the massive building project above and pointing out that it was what BNRC considered conservation. “Everyone assumed BNRC owned it,” explained Schroeder. “But they did not realize this envelope.” (Humes recently sold his property and moved south.)

The envelope option was much more common 20 years ago than now, said Schroeder, and has fallen out of favor because the conditions under which they are managed are murky, complicated, prone to interpretation, and do not align with BNRC’s core mission of protecting important land, views, and habitat. Today, BNRC prefers to use an “exclusion” option in land transfers so that the agency does not have to “get into other people’s personal business” and micro-manage developments.

The house at 250 Long Pond Road was never lived in. Once it was nearing completion, Alpart and his then-wife Jennifer Bonjean divorced, and in 2009 the house went on the market, where it has remained on and off ever since. The original asking price of $8,500,000 has been gradually reduced over the years to just under 7 million dollars. Apparently, the red hot real estate market is cooler toward 15,000-square-foot dwellings.

It was to offset the enormous costs of maintaining such a large property footprint that Alpert began hosting large groups and parties nine years ago. According to Alpart’s calculations, in a letter he recently wrote to a few of his closest neighbors, those costs are “exorbitant (the various taxes and insurance alone are insurmountable).” In the same letter he stated that “some years it has been so tough we’ve been on the brink of foreclosure.”

As listed in Alpart’s special permit application, he pays $80,000 per year in property taxes and more than $20,000 in insurance, along with maintenance, upkeep, and utilities. (The cost of heating a 15,000-square-foot commercial lodging would be about $27,000 annually.) Alpart is CEO of BT Trading, which, according to his LinkedIn profile, is “a proprietary trading company predominantly focused on algorithmic strategies on major commodities and futures exchanges.”

The 250 Long Pond Road website is password protected, but the property rents on Airbnb for $3,900 per night for a prospective week for 16 people in early June, 2022. This was the most expensive nightly option listed anywhere in New England, the Hudson Valley, and even Manhattan, the only exceptions being a handful of properties on Cape Cod and the Islands.

Alpart’s bio on his Great Barrington Airbnb listing is, apparently, intended for properties in New York. It ends with, “We love this city and will share all our secret gems in this magical city.”

One nearby neighbor says of 250 Long Pond’s summer parties over the last five years, which take place, they say, about two weekends per month, “It’s been a nightmare scenario, so loud I can’t hear the TV in my own house. I couldn’t have a conversation. The house shakes. Even during COVID he was violating all the rules and had a wedding for 160 people when we couldn’t have more than 25 people in our yards.” This neighbor has called the police multiple times in previous years to register noise complaints, and says that after one such complaint, the music went down and fireworks started going off.

Another neighbor, a lawyer named Kevin Bolan, who owns property at 265 Long Pond where he intends to build a house, submitted a nine-page, single-spaced letter to the selectboard enumerating each of 250 Long Pond’s legal and ethical violations, saving special opprobrium for Alpart’s “self-serving statement” about his “irrelevant individual financial interest” in needing to recoup his huge financial outlays by renting out his property.

Neighbor Denise Forbes, who lives below the property, on North Plain Road, agreed. “It’s not the town’s job to bail out bad investments,” she said.

Forbes ran a traditional B and B in town for seven years, and is also angry about the double standards for traditional hotels and places like 250 Long Pond. (Actually, if you Google “250 Long Pond” the first result is a listing for Long Pond Hotel.) “I’ve rounded on them [the town] on the basis that this shows a very bad precedent that if you flout the bylaws, you can get away with it. I had to get permits and all that. They should be made to comply with the same rules as small boutique establishments.”

Great Barrington Selectboard member Ed Abrahams, who wasn’t aware of the problems at the property until the recent spate of complaint letters from neighbors, said, “We don’t have an Airbnb bylaw. We had started working on a registration, to find out how much of an issue it is. The town rejected the proposal. About a month ago I brought it up, saying it is time to take this up again.”

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