Pagan Ashram Expand On Site Of Former Jesuit Seminary

Kripalu's red-letter day
By Ellen G. Lahr, Berkshire Eagle

03/07/2008
Friday, March 07

STOCKBRIDGE — The Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health held a ceremonial shovel-in-the-sand event yesterday to mark Monday's real groundbreaking for a new 80-room guest annex, which is the centerpiece of a $20 million expansion and improvement project at the Route 183 campus. The nonprofit organization will finance the project — believed to be this year's largest Berkshire County construction endeavor - with a tax-exempt bond authorized by MassDevelopment. Berkshire Bank is the lead lender for the project. Worcester-based Barr & Barr Construction, which is completing work on a project at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown and the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, is managing the project. The company also did the restoration of the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. The New York-based Rose+Guggenheim Studio architecture firm has designed a state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly building, which will link to the main facility with a walkway. In addition to the $12 million building construction cost, Kripalu is updating its wastewater treatment plant, a $3 million project, and interior roads and a new parking lot have been reconfigured.

"a red-letter day for Kripalu," said Kripalu CEO Garrett Sarley (Dinabandhu), before planting a shovel in a pile of sand at the construction site as community members, Kripalu staff and board members looked on in the sun. "This is the first major addition to this property in 25 years."

Inside, Sarley stressed that by improving guest facilities - guests are now sharing twin-bed quarters and bathroom facilities in the main building — Kripalu will be able to further its mission of "mind, body, spirit" education. Sarley emphasized an educational theme in his remarks, at a time when Kripalu's tax-exempt status is being questioned by the town assessors. Kripalu has recently been sharing extensive information about its educational approach to wellness and shared financial data about its $618,000 allocation in 2008 for grants and scholarships that support yoga teaching both locally and worldwide. State Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli also spoke, commending Kripalu for being on the leading edge of the Berkshires' transformation in the early 1980s into a magnet for healthful living, wellness and culture. "Kripalu was the renaissance group of cultural organizations," he said. "And now, each year we spend billions in Massachusetts on health care and not nearly enough on wellness. ... Now, you are going to bring more people here."

The new building will add a total of 34,000 square feet in a six-story building, which will be connected with a walkway to the main building, a 160,000 square-foot former Jesuit seminary with a guest capacity of 350 to 400 people at its peak. The Jesuits built the big brick edifice above Stockbridge Bowl to replace the former summer "cottage" built by the Stokes family; the Shadowbrook mansion burned in a fire that killed several priests. With the departure of the priests in the 1970s, Pignatelli recalled, the state took steps to establish a state prison on the property.

As a middle schooler at the time, he said, his father, then a Lenox selectman, brought him along to Boston in a police cruiser, to deliver thousands of opposition signatures to then-Gov. Michael Dukakis.