Park Street to be closed off
Published on November 15th, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - The developers of a proposed Home Depot along Fallon Road recently floated a new traffic proposal to a neighborhood opposition group that would close-off Park Street near Mosley Park.
According to various messages posted last weekend on the webpage of the Citizens for the Ethical Development of Fallon Road (CEDFRA), several leaders from the organization entertained a pitch from the project proponents that would create a cul-de-sac on Park Street near Mosely Park.
Reached at his home on Monday evening, Joseph Teneriello, the 210 Park Street resident who created the CEDFRA group and webpage, declined to comment on the recent private meeting between himself, 225 Fallon Road property owners' The Richmond Company, and several other area neighbors.
Since news of the discussion was first posted on the www.fallonroad.org website last weekend - drawing a flurry of opinions both for and against such a traffic mitigation - CEDFRA's online message board has been removed.
"I have no comments regarding that at this point," said Teneriello on Monday, when asked for his thoughts on the Park Street cul-de-sac.
"It's in the best interests of all parties to remain silent. The facts will come out in due time," the CEDFRA founder added.
Last spring, Wilmington-based The Richmond Company purchased the former Fallon Road headquarters of the A.W. Chesterton property for $7.4 million. The commercial real-estate developer has since been eyeing the 16.2-acre parcel as the potential site for a 133,000 square foot Home Depot and a three-story, 15,000 square foot, office park. The Planning Board, which is being asked to grant a special permit allowing the applicants to exceed the zoning district's 75,000 square foot retail space zoning limitation, has been deliberating on the plans, dubbed Stoneham Crossings, since last summer.
Because the commercial redevelopment will draw an estimated 3,200 additional vehicle trips to and from the site each day, a large contingent of area residents, primarily from Park Street and Marble Street neighborhoods, have strenuously opposed The Richmond Company's plans. While CEDFRA's 110-person organization has been perhaps the staunchest opposition group, initial reactions from group members, posted on the since closed-down message board, portrayed some openness to the most recent Park Street traffic proposal. At least two CEDFRA members, who spoke with The Stoneham Independent on the condition that their stances be characterized as personal opinions and not as the feelings of the opposition group as a whole, admitted that there appears to be some Park and Marble Street area neighbors who looked favorably on the plan.
"Everybody has a different opinion, which will always be the case when you have an organization of 110 people," 17 Park Street resident Ellen McBride said. "But there's still a lot of questions about this idea."
"I think a lot of people got very excited about this initially, while other people said, 'whoa, let's calm down,'" added McBride, who stressed that she had a very big problem with private meetings being held about a proposal that hasn't even gotten an inkling of support from any of the town's public safety departments.
While another CEDFRA member - who again spoke on the condition that her comments be labeled as a personal opinions - refused to dismiss the cul-de-sac design outright until concrete traffic impact studies were presented on the Planning Board level, she shared McBride's general sense that the Home Depot proposal was bad for the Town of Stoneham.
According to 197 Park Street resident Ellen Sharpe, while some Park Street residents behind the proposed cul-de-sac were understandably excited about the prospect, as such a closure would drastically decrease the constant flow of traffic that already snakes down the roadway, she knew of few people who were heralding the idea without seeing a traffic-impact analysis.
"All along, we've wanted traffic studies for this project. So I don't think it would be fair for anybody to say this is plausible or feasible without seeing those," Sharpe commented in a phone-interview on Monday night.
"But I just want to make something clear, this isn't about roundabouts or cul-de-sacs. The point is that big box retailers don't belong in this area," the Park Street resident insisted.
Still in its Infancy
Reached on Tuesday afternoon for comment on the cul-de-sac proposal, Mark Vaughan, the Riemer & Braunstein attorney who represents The Richmond Company, stressed that the plan still needed to be fully fleshed-out and investigated.
However, according to the town resident, Stoneham Crossings proponents felt that before any such idea was formally presented to the Planning Board, the developer needed to gauge what the Park Street area neighborhood's consensus was on the proposal.
"I think the apparent first step would be to speak to the neighbors who would be most impacted by this and see if it warrants further study," Vaughan said in a phone interview.
The cul-de-sac plan, which would need to be designed in a manner which allows emergency vehicles to access the other side of Park Street past Mosley Park, requires not only local permissions from the Planning Board and town safety departments, but also various state agencies that have jurisdiction over the roadway itself.
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