GREENFIELD — After roughly two months of discussing Noble Home LLC’s plans to build 22 condominiums divided into multi-family homes on Stone Farm Lane, members of the Conservation Commission unanimously gave the project their blessing on Tuesday.
This week’s hearing was continued from an Aug. 12 meeting in which commission members, after hearing concerns about the proposed project’s impacts on wildlife, requested that the applicant return with a third-party review of the development. On Tuesday, however, Conservation Agent Jessica Siegel explained that after further review of state and local regulations, she determined that a wildlife study was unnecessary.
“All habitat evaluations triggered would be conducted within those resource areas to determine that there would be no adverse impact. Furthermore, work in proper zones does not trigger a wildlife habitat evaluation, only work impacting resource areas,” Siegel told the commission. “In this particular project, Stone Farm Lane, that just leaves a small portion of disturbed riverfront area.”
Siegel explained that while the commission could, in theory, use a city ordinance to begin a wildlife evaluation for the small amount of riverfront area disturbed by the development, it would be “overreach” to evaluate the entire project.
“The commission could lean on the ordinance to request the habitat study for the small amount of disturbed riverfront area, but the applicant dropped a parking space from their plans in order to restore footage, square footage, of disturbed riverfront area,” Siegel continued. “Outside of that, what was requested last meeting was a habitat evaluation of the entire parcel, not just the riverfront area, so that was deemed overreach.”
Valley Community Land Trust, a regional nonprofit that purchases and leases land for conservation and affordable housing, bought the land on Stone Farm Lane for roughly $995,000 last summer before leasing portions to Noble Home LLC, an architectural design firm from Shelburne Falls, and the Valley Housing Co-op for development.
As a small portion of the proposed development’s parking area and utilities will fall into a wetlands buffer zone, under both state law and the local ordinance, the application required the Conservation Commission’s approval.
Commission members approved the applicant’s plans on multiple conditions, including requiring the planting of native plants that must be monitored for five years; installing a waste treatment system that can remove more than 90% of the total suspended solids (TSS); administrative approval of the final erosion control and planting plans; and off-site disposal of invasive plants or contaminated soil.
“We’re very much in favor of native pollinator-friendly wildlife plantings for the vast majority of this property. … The majority of the site, well beyond the buffer, is also going to be converted to a rich, biodiverse form of ecosystem,” Bucky Sparkle, a civil engineer hired by Noble Home LLC for the project, explained at Tuesday’s meeting. “I have no doubt that the applicant is perfectly happy with keeping it all Franklin County native plantings and not just grass. Grass is high maintenance — it offers very little ecological value.”
The Stone Farm Lane project will come before the Zoning Board of Appeals for a special permit on Thursday, Sept. 18.
