Kia dealership plans to lease Sky lot

The Norwood Planning Board met on Monday night for its regular business meeting. The session ran nearly two hours, and its main appointment was a public hearing regarding a major project special permit for a proposed car dealership at 1369 Boston-Providence Highway (Route 1).

The nearly five-acre site currently holds the former Sky restaurant (which closed permanently in 2020), Furlong’s Candies (which relocated to 23 Cottage St. in 2023), and a residential property at 112 Sumner St. – all of which would be torn down to make way for a new car dealership.

During the hearing, Matt McGovern – owner of the McGovern Auto Group – introduced himself and spoke of his approximately 40 dealerships, and of his plan to move his Norwood Kia business – which he bought about three years ago – from 105 Boston-Providence Highway to this new location. “We’ve basically outgrown that dealership,” he said of the rationale behind the decision, adding that the current site is “a little bit dated. It’s too small for us at this point.”

His plan is to lease the 1325-1369 lot and to construct a 25,000-square-foot showroom on it.

Most of the hearing presentation was made by Matt Smith of Norwood Engineering, who spent a significant portion of it explaining a change to the proposed site design, which had originally proposed two-way traffic through its Sumner Street driveway.

However, after subsequent discussions with Town Engineer Mark Ryan and the Norwood Police Department, that configuration was redesigned to only allow for vehicle access. “We are not proposing to have any cars leave the site to go out to Sumner Street,” Smith made clear.

Asked by Planning Board member Ernie Paciorkowski why that change had been requested, Smith responded that he thought “it had to do with the traffic on Sumner Street and issues with the neighbors, and neighbors having concerns with Sumner.” He went on to cite issues with cars exiting the Stop & Shop onto Sumner as a possible reason for the request. “I think it had to do with a lot of people having bad behavior and not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

On that same topic, Planning Board member Debbie Holmwood asked if locking the Sumner Street gate and making the entrance accessible by remote only would be a consideration.

“I don’t think we would want to do that. We would still want to be able to have cars enter the site from Sumner Street,” Smith replied, while touching on why a locked gate would be a non-starter. “There is a lot of frontage on Sumner, and generally you want to be able to use your frontage.”

As Smith explained it, traffic circulation through the site would also be primarily one-way, and would include car carriers – which would enter the site from Sumner and exit onto Route 1.

Car delivery specifics were, in fact, the topic of several questions from the Board as well as from the public, with McGovern noting that deliveries would be between 8 a.m.-7 p.m. from Monday-Friday and estimating that there would be approximately 6-10 car deliveries per week.

During the hearing, the topic of heat dissipation – given the increased amount of blacktop – was raised more than once, and Holmwood brought up the possibility of using pervious pavement. That, however, was ruled out by Smith because of its impracticality in a high-volume commercial lot due to the fact that salt cannot be used on it and sand needs to be vacuumed up.

However, property owner David Spiegel offered a potentially constructive suggestion.

“Instead of having a typical black rubber roof, we could go for a white rubber roof, and that would take all of the space of where the dealership is and have it white – which is reflecting instead of gaining heat.”

The hearing was recommended for continuance until the Planning Board’s April 27 meeting to give Ryan and Town Planner Sarah Dixon the opportunity to review the application’s changes – which had only just been submitted – and because the April 13 agenda was already full.

The meeting’s other appointment concerned the site plan review for 21 Walpole St. – an 1895 single-family home that is being converted to two one-bedroom condo units and six two-bedroom condo units. It will also have 14 parking spaces – 10 of which will be in front of the property.

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The location of those 10 parking spots was closely tied to the appointment’s major question: whether or not to waive having a landscape architect sign off on the site’s required plantings.

“This is right next to the library, which is one of our jewels,” Holmwood put forward, and would reiterate. “I know you’ve got to get the parking, but I would really like to stay with the landscape architect so we mitigate a little of this hardtop that is going to be right on Walpole Street.”

Noting problems with prior developers not taking care of landscaping that had been part of their projects’ approvals, Holmwood’s argument drew an unexpected response. “Are you sitting down, Ms. Holmwood?” Paciorkowski asked, half-jokingly. “I’m going to agree with you.”

Project attorney James Murphy asked if it would be possible for the project engineer to sign off on the landscaping instead, going so far as to offer receipts of all plants purchased, but the Board was uniformly in favor of not granting a waiver, and so the request was withdrawn.

The plan was unanimously approved with standard conditions and the Town Engineer’s review.

The Norwood Planning Board’s next regular meeting will take place on Monday April 13 at 7 p.m. at the Senior Center (275 Prospect St.).

On Monday, March 30 at 7 p.m., there will be a joint meeting of the Planning Board and the Town Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee in Memorial Hall that will be devoted to the presentation of the Comprehensive Plan as it enters its final stages of completion.