NORTHFIELD — With their hands already in the trucking and farming industries, Daniel and Michele Whitney plan to try their hand at gunsmithing.
The two currently run Whitney Trucking Inc., at 578 Pine Meadow Road, and The Whitney Farm next door, with plans to open a spot for gun repairs and customization in a 180-square-foot room inside the trucking building. Although the longtime Northfield residents are uncertain of when they might open, the couple is one step closer to setting up shop after the Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously approved their special permit with six conditions on Wednesday night.
When their two daughters became adults, the couple became “very active in the shooting sports world,” as Michele Whitney told the ZBA. “Dan has always been a firearms enthusiast, and now he has more time to spend on it.”
The pair stressed that the shop will be a “small project,” not a Sam’s Club, as Daniel Whitney described, with a limited inventory of guns, gun parts and ammunition for sale. Instead, the shop will focus on “tinkering” on guns that customers bring in, as Michele Whitney phrased.
“We would be overjoyed if we were to have five customers walk in in a week,” she said. “He (Daniel Whitney) really likes to tinker, and he likes to adjust, and he likes to put things together and make them pretty — just gunsmithing. I don’t want to have a gun shop. … I just want to be able to let him tinker and get paid for it.”
At the Wednesday night meeting, Daniel Whitney clarified to abutters that the shop would not include a shooting range, and customers would not test out guns and shoot them on site or on his property near the store.
“I have a [license to carry], and actually my husband is excited to maybe buy a few things,” said Stacy Bond, a neighbor of Daniel and Michele Whitney.
ZBA Chair Erin Jaworski read a letter from abutter Mark Alvin claiming the shop would store bulk ammunition and pose a risk of intense fires that are “fundamentally incompatible with a quiet, wooded, residential, agricultural neighborhood.”
“Introducing a commercial stash of hazardous, flammable materials to Pine Meadow Road poses an unfair risk to the immediate neighbors and places an undue burden on our local first responders,” Alvin wrote in the letter. “Because of these clear public safety risks, I urge the board to deny this special permit and preserve the safety and residential character of Pine Meadow Road.”
Daniel Whitney clarified that he and his wife do not intend to store bulk amounts of ammunition.
“The reality is, if we were in here for a gun shop, it probably wouldn’t be in Northfield and it probably wouldn’t be on Pine Meadow Road, and it wouldn’t be in 180 square feet,” Daniel Whitney said.
The pair stressed that gunsmithing is “an extremely controlled industry.” Per regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Michele and Daniel Whitney are required to store all firearms in fireproof, locked safes. Additionally, one of the special permit’s six conditions reiterates that the couple must store all explosive materials, including gunpowder and primers, in fireproof, locked cabinets and store firearms according to the state’s regulations.
To earn the proper certifications, the couple recently underwent a four-hour interview with an ATF official. Michele and Daniel Whitney gave the ZBA a printed email from the ATF official regarding his visit, along with a list of regulations he went over with them.
ZBA member Al Dietrich asked what these documents signified, adding that they did not include a signature from the ATF official confirming his visit.
“I don’t appreciate the tone that we fabricated this,” Daniel Whitney said.
“My frustration is more with him than you,” Dietrich continued.
“I don’t know why you have frustration,” Daniel Whitney replied. “Again, it’s the stigma of firearms, because if I was making a flower pot and we were discussing what kind of plastic I was using, I don’t think it would be the same discussion. [The ATF official] is an expert in his field, we’ll say. He spent hours at our facility and helped us understand the laws, but primarily it is where to find your resources and where to find your help, because the laws, as we were saying, are very numerous, and you need to know your resources.”
Dietrich said he plans to reach out to the ATF official with his “personal issue.”
Besides the storage stipulations for explosive materials and firearms, the ZBA agreed that WTF Customs LLC, the couple’s company, must maintain a federal firearms license and notify the town when the license is renewed; conduct all business, manufacturing and sales within the 180-square-foot space; follow Northfield’s bylaws for signage and lighting; and maintain Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. or by appointment as its open hours.
The ZBA members also agreed that the permit only applies to WTF Customs LLC, a condition that Daniel Whitney described as “a little discouraging” for business owners in the future looking to take over the shop.
“We want to make your business as viable as possible within our constraints but also think long-term,” Jaworski said, adding that potential issues could arise with future business owners if the members “give carte blanche and say, ‘OK, everyone can do this,’ and potentially down the line you sell your business and there are not as good stewards.”
ZBA member Shawn Foster initially proposed a limit on the number of serialized firearms stored in the shop, but after pushback from Daniel Whitney, who said the limit would be unfair and the state’s serialization requirements can shift, Foster agreed with Jaworski that confining the shop to the 180-square-foot space would limit the inventory to a small quantity.
“Manufacturing I think freaks everybody out,” Michele Whitney said. “It’s the term, but any little thing that you do is considered manufacturing on the ATF side — that’s their terminology … because you’re putting something together or you’re changing something.”
