The existing building at 330 Chestnut St. will be demolished to make room for a group of four controversial warehouses.
Reminder Publishing photo by Sarah Heinonen
EAST LONGMEADOW — After several hours of public hearings, points and counterpoints made by lawyers and discussions about the turning radius of large vehicles, the East Longmeadow Planning Board voted 4-0 on Nov. 4 to approve the site plan for a group of warehouses at 330 Chestnut St.
The site, purchased by East Longmeadow Redevelopers LLC in 2019, will be home to four warehouses, ranging in size from 92,514 square feet to 140,400 square feet.
The plan offers a 17% reduction in total square footage compared to a 2022 proposal by the developers for a single large warehouse. The size is not the only reduction from the previous plan. The current project will handle fewer than 200 tractor-trailer trips per day, instead of the 368 trips per day that had previously been envisioned. Due to the 2022 project’s size and traffic volume, it was voted down, appealed to Massachusetts’s Land Court, sent back to the Planning Board and denied again.
Despite the smaller footprint and reduced traffic load, neighbors at the Fields at Chestnut condominium complex remained unconvinced. Residents voiced their suspicions that the site would house an Amazon facility, despite Amazon fulfillment centers averaging 800,000 square feet, and the developers repeatedly explaining that no future tenants have been identified. Residents asserted that if the tenants are not known there is no way to know the impact they will have, but Denver noted that the board has approved projects under those conditions before. Expected traffic is calculated using standard figures for certain types of uses. In this case, the figures were determined with the assumption that the buildings will be warehouses or light manufacturing, which previously existed at the site.
Residents also had concerns about noise and air quality, but the number one issue was traffic. Attorney Michael Pill of Green, Miles, Lipton LLP, represented residents at the Fields at Chestnut and he brought in traffic engineer Robert Michoud of MDM Transportation Consultants to refute the petitioner’s traffic study, conducted by Bowman Consulting Group. Michoud made the case that large tractor trailers would not be able to turn right at the nearby intersection with Shaker Road or turn left from Shaker Road onto Chestnut without “hopping the curb,” even though the petitioner’s team showed video of tractor trailers making the turn at the intersection.
In conversation with the town, the developer’s team, including Rob Levesque from the landscape architect and civil engineering firm R Levesque Associates, offered a $500,000 fund for the town to use to mitigate traffic issues at the intersection. The petitioners proposed widening the road and creating a dedicated turn lane. While Michoud said the plan was moving “absolutely in the right direction,” he remained skeptical that the solution would work. He also questioned if the work could be done for the amount offered by the petitioners.
The petitioners’ attorney, Rachel Fancy of Fitzgerald Law, assured Michoud and the board that the figure was not “pulled out of a random hat” and said the town would be within its rights to request more money should it be needed.
Pill made a last-minute appeal to the board, saying that projects posing an “intractable problem” can be grounds for denial, but Fancy responded that the intractable problem language had never been cited in case law and had only been a “contemplation” that such a problem may exist. Denver reminded the lawyers, “We are not in a courtroom, we are a planning board.”
Of the intersection proposal, Levesque said, “It may not be perfect. Can we improve it? Yes. Are there funds being provided? Absolutely. Is there an intractable problem? Absolutely not.”
Planning Board Chair Russell Denver reminded residents several times that warehouses are an as by right use in the industrial Garden Park zone, and are allowed, provided they meet state regulations and the town’s bylaws.
As is common, the board created a list of conditions for the project. They included no on-street parking, a transportation management plan to divert trucks from neighborhood streets and baseline air and ambient noise studies to measure future conditions against. The petitioners were also required to work with the town to upgrade the flashing rail trail pedestrian beacons from push button to motion activated and follow through on the Shaker Road and Chestnut Street intersection agreement.
Denver also asked that the Town Council review the intersection on the other end of Chestnut Street where it meets Benton Road. “All we can do is ask,” he said.
Planning Board member Pete Punderson, who had been opposed to the 2022 plan, said that he would vote for the current version because the conditions allow the town to maintain some control over the site. If the issue were to go back to Land Court, a judge could order the project approved without the conditions attached. “It would be detrimental to the town to not have some sort of control over what goes on over there,” he said.
Denver pointed to the smaller size and fewer trucks while explaining his decision to vote yes. The intersection mitigation fund was “a nice gesture,” but like Punderson, he did not believe it would be enough to tackle the project.
Planning Board member William Fonseca, who was not on the board when the last project was considered, said future tenants would need to appear before the Planning Board. He said, “It’s not like they can do whatever they want.”
Like Fonseca, Robert Tirrell was not yet on the Planning Board for the 2022 plan. He said, “I know progress is sometimes difficult” and while he was “not pleased” with the traffic increase, he pointed out that the developers had made concessions. As it stands, he said, “This site is a mess” with “a lot of hazards.” The project would provide the town with a clean site, jobs and tax revenue.
