Planning Board approves Gardner School

The Norwood Planning Board met on Monday for a session that ran nearly two-and-a-half hours. It featured the approval of a proposed site plan and a discussion of potential zoning amendments.

The evening’s main appointment concerned the site plan review for a new preschool that – when built – will be located at the northern corner of Route 1 and Sumner Street, across from Wendy’s.

The lot, 1408-1414 Boston Providence Turnpike, is currently occupied by the Norwood Engineering office building. That will be razed and replaced by a similar sized structure that will house the Gardner School: a preschool with regional footprints primarily in the Midwest and the South that also has six campuses in Greater Boston, and three more scheduled to open in the fall.

The closest of these is in Dedham (780 Washington St.) and, according to Norwood Engineering Principal and Project Engineer Matt Smith – who presented the site plan and then fielded questions from the Board and from meeting attendees – the new construction will look much like that one.

Regarding the Norwood site, vehicles will enter and exit via a new curb cut on Sumner Street that will be farther in from the Route 1 intersection than what is there now. According to Smith, this was designed to reduce the likelihood of backed up traffic exacerbated by preschoolers getting dropped off and picked up during morning and afternoon rush hours.

This was, in fact, the main Q&A topic, and Project Attorney Brian Almeida stepped in to note that drop-offs would be from 7 a.m.-9:45 a.m., and that pick-ups would be from 3:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m. He added that data from other Gardner sites shows an even spread of traffic at those times.

Nonetheless, Board member Joseph Sheehan requested that a ‘Do Not Block’ pavement box/grid be painted at the curb cut to alleviate traffic problems. Smith agreed to pursue that, and the condition to follow up on that with the Traffic Advisory Board was added to the plan’s approval.

More than an hour-and-a-half of the meeting was spent on the discussion of five potential zoning amendments – three of which had gone before last month’s Annual Town Meeting as citizens petitions and were then sent back to the Planning Board for further review.

The purpose of the agenda discussion – initiated by Town Planner Sarah Dixon – was to get a working idea of how the Board wished to proceed on each of the potential amendments, while using Fall Town Meeting in November, and other deadlines preceding it, as default target dates.

The three potential amendments generated by citizens petitions pertained to parking space definitions (particularly regarding mechanical lifts), the granting of parking waivers, and the reevaluation of bonuses that offer trade-offs allowing developers to expand their projects.

Dixon recommended a three-part process to start the parking definitions discussion: doing legal research, reviewing best practices by referring to other communities facing the same zoning issues, and forming a working group/subcommittee to put together an effective amendment.

Though the sequence varied depending on the amendment, those three steps formed a template.

The first discussion – regarding parking space definitions – became somewhat unwieldy, with recommendations that the Building Commissioner and representatives from the Fire Department and the Economic Development Committee join Dixon, Sheehan, and Robert Bamber in the working group. However, unnamed were any of the citizen petitioners.

As the amendment discussions wore on, an underlying tension seemed to quietly tighten around this. At its core was public involvement in the amendment process, and what that should entail.

Pulling at one end was Board member Debbie Holmwood, who repeatedly lobbied for members of the public to literally have a seat at the table by their participation in the working groups – especially since the three amendments in question had first taken shape outside of Town Hall.

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Pulling at the other end was Dixon, with some support from Chairman Brian Hachey. They recommended that lead petitioners be included in working groups, but also public engagement through surveys, information sessions, community open houses, and comment periods, in addition to the pre-warrant public hearing process that the draft amendments will require.

Nonetheless, about an hour later – at the end of the discussion regarding bonuses – the same thing happened again when Dixon did not name any petitioners to that working group. It was only after the Board had moved on to the next topic that Anne Mackiewicz – attending virtually – announced herself over the speaker and asked if Steve Konetchy would be in that working group. After some group dialogue, Dixon added Judith Howard to it as the lead petitioner.

Earlier, during the parking definitions discussion, Mackiewicz had also recommended that Konetchy be allowed to choose two other petitioners to join him in that working group.

At the conclusion of these three discussions, the plan moving forward was to have the parking definitions amendment ready for Fall Town Meeting. Regarding parking waivers, other towns will be researched, with the possibly of taking a Townwide approach to revising its parking requirements, which would rule out having an amendment by November. Regarding the third, the stormwater and white roof bonuses will likely be proposed for elimination at Fall Town Meeting, and the remaining bonus schedule will be analyzed in the working group format.

Regarding the other two potential amendments, Dixon recommended the establishment of urgent care walk-in clinic definitions and uses in the zoning bylaws, which will not require a working group. She also proposed the establishment of zoning guidelines regarding data centers, which greatly impact communities. The Board was in favor of moving forward with this,

The next Planning Board meeting will be on Monday, June 15 at 7 p.m. at the Senior Center (275 Prospect St.). For more information, visit the Town website – www.norwoodma.gov