By Kim Siebert MacPhail
The proposed Athletic Fields on the former St. Michael’s land drew one step closer as a wetlands variance was granted last night by Bedford’s Conservation Commission to the Department of Public Works and Oxbow Associates.
An initial public hearing about the issue began on September 5, but was continued until September 26, pending more details about a proposed wetland swap between the St. Michael’s site and a portion of Page Field not currently under wetland protection. In addition to this one-for-one wetland acreage exchange, 36.1 acres of the former Princeton Properties/Cerasuolo land at 350A Concord Road and 2.53 acres of the Pickman Meadow property at 244 Dudley Road are to be put under conservation restriction. These parcels were added to the proposal to increase its appeal to the Conservation Commission and to make it improbable that any future developer would be able to cite the agreement as a precedent for another project.
To read The Citizen’s article about the first meeting on September 5, visithttps://thebedfordcitizen.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/conservation-commission-ponders-st-michaels-land-wetland-proposal/
After much deliberation about a number of aspects of the proposal and about proper procedures in this unusual case, the Commission found that granting a variance was justified in order to “accommodate an overriding community interest.” The focus of the approved variance centered around two particular standards of the Wetland Bylaw that could not be met and therefore needed to be waived: 1) The size of the wetland parcel to be mitigated, which exceeds the usual 5,000 sq. ft. limitation and 2) The undesirability of replicating the wetland parcel on the same site, as stipulated in the bylaw. In this case, doing so would require that all buffering trees and vegetation be eliminated. Both the DPW and Oxbow believe that taking that action is unacceptable and they therefore recommended replication of the parcels off site, at Page Field.
Regarding the inability to meet these two standards, the Commission found that “the Department of Public Works has met its burden of demonstrating that there is no reasonable alternative design that would minimize alteration of protected resource areas…”
In addition, 48 orders of conditions—two coming from property abutter Michelle Saber—were attached to the agreement. Orders of conditions, in general, address site- and project-specific stipulations such as storm water runoff, erosion control, notification of environmental impacts and snow removal. They are commonplace in the permitting process, although the details of the conditions differ from project to project.
The variance approved by the Conservation Commission is now subject to the approval of Town Counsel before it can be considered official. While it is true that the variance, once finalized, will clear a major hurdle for the athletic fields, many more steps remain before the project can be realized.
Conservation Commission Chair Tim Gray itemized the stages of the process that remain: The DPW must first go to Town Meeting and request funds for the field designs and for the wetlands replication. They will then return to the Conservation Commission with a detailed wetlands replication plan as well as the design for the athletic fields.Gray also noted that it is important for the conservation restrictions at Pickman Meadow and the former Princeton properties to be in place to satisfy the terms of the agreement.
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