Home Depot proponents impress Planning Board
Published on December 6th, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - Offering some major concessions, the proponents of a planned 133,000 square foot Home Depot along Fallon Road appeared to impress Planning Board members last Wednesday night with a formal proposal to create a cul-de-sac along Park Street.
According to Burlington attorney Mark Vaughan, of Riemer and Braunstein, his clients were willing to make a number of financial commitments to ensure that no doubt lingers about whether the traffic from the project, dubbed Stoneham Crossings, was properly mitigated.
As requested at a previous Planning Board meeting last month, the applicants, Wilmington-based The Richmond Company, consented to a request from local businessman Joseph Cunningham for funding to pay for police enforcement at the Sheepfold area of the Fells Reservation.
In addition to that three-year commitment, which Cunningham estimated would cost approximately $250,000, Vaughan also told Planning Board members that the Home Depot proponents would also pay for selective enforcement of trucking bans in south Stoneham for a three-year-period.
Thirdly, the Stoneham native promised that The Richmond Company would foot the entire bill for roadway improvements along Main Street, Marble Street, and other surrounding intersections.
"The initial traffic assessment indicated that we would be responsible for our pro-rata share of those improvements," Vaughan explained, referring to original plans to split the costs of the mitigations with other developers, such as Boston Regional Medical Center owner The Gutierrez Company.
'I think it was noted by [your traffic consultant] as perhaps being not sufficient, because if no one else comes along, these intersections aren't fully mitigated," the attorney recalled.
The Richmond Company, which purchased the former A.W. Chesterton headquarters at 225 Fallon Road last spring for $7.4 million, has proposed constructing a 133,000 square foot Home Depot and three-story, 15,000 square foot office park at the 16.2-acre parcel.
The Planning Board, which has been deliberating on the Stoneham Crossings proposal since last July, is being asked to grant a special permit allowing the applicants to exceed the 75,000 square foot retail space limitation that exists in the zoning area.
With The Richmond Company estimating that as many as 3,200 additional vehicle trips would be snaking through south Stoneham to get to the property once a Home Depot is erected, the proposal has met staunch opposition from Park and Marble Street area neighbors.
However, according to Richmond Company representative David Armanetti, a new traffic mitigation, closing-off Park Street with a cul-de-sac at Mosley Park, has been well received by at least some neighborhood opposition groups.
The proposal, which would eliminate the need for a planned roundabout near the Fallon Road and Park Street intersection with the I-93 north on-ramp, would include creating an access-point for residents attempting to access their homes from North Border Road. The through route, possibly controlled by remote access, would also be available for emergency vehicles, such as ambulances carrying patients to the nearby Winchester Hospital.
"It will return Park Street to what it was originally designed for, a residential street and not a mini-highway that carries 9,000 cars a day," Armanetti said of the cul-de-sac.
"The main concern was to separate that Park and Marble Street neighborhood from the cut-through, highway traffic. The thinking is that this [cul-de-sac] is a way for us to return the neighborhood, back to the neighborhood. I think the concept has a lot of merit," Vaughan chimed in.
According to figures presented by the petitioner, an estimated 70-to-80 percent of all vehicles, 29,000 of them along Park Street and North Border Road alone, utilize the south Stoneham neighborhood in an attempt to bypass rush-hour traffic along I-93 and other major roadways.
The proponents, further contending that the vast majority of those commuters were from out-of-town, also argued that while some of that traffic will predictably turn down Main Street to cut-through Stoneham, the lions-share of the vehicles are expected to find alternate routes through other areas.
However, Armanetti acknowledged that the new traffic mitigation warranted a detailed analysis before that prediction could be reasonably accepted by town officials and the neighborhood.
"We have to make sure that the ripple effect of redistributing this traffic around town will not overburden any intersections. But we believe this idea has merit," the Richmond Company representative said.
In recent months, a number of Stonehamites have been attending the Planning Board meetings to voice their support for the Home Depot proposal.
According to Melba Lane and former Stoneham Fire Chief Bill Abbott, who recently advocated for the Fallon Road redevelopment, the Stoneham Crossings project would bring some much needed budget relief to the town.
The applicants have suggested that as much as $220,000 in additional annual tax revenue would be generated by the project, as well as $500,000 in one-time building permit fees.
"You would think that after driving down Park Street and from reading the newspapers, that everyone in town is against Home Depot. But that's not the case," Abbott said. "I'm here to speak for that silent majority [in favor of this]."
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