SOUTH DEERFIELD — After it became evident that several of the mailings to abutters were sent with nothing inside of them, the nearly 90 residents, many of whom came to question the proposed Dollar General, left the public hearing at Monday’s Planning Board meeting with little to no resolution.
More than 30 minutes into the hearing, per the advice of Pat Smith, the town’s consulting planner from the Franklin Regional Council of Governments, the Planning Board called off its hearing because of a lack of proper notice to those living nearby the planned site.
Instead, the Planning Board will revisit this public hearing on Dollar General at its next scheduled meeting, Monday, July 2. Some residents objected to this date because of its proximity to the Fourth of July holiday, and therefore some might not be able to show up; one resident offhandedly joked, “How about next year?”
This decision followed a presentation from the developers, who hope to put the discount store along routes 5 and 10 — at the Mill Village Road site of a recent tree clearing, led by owner of the land Gregory Gardner, which was the first thorn in the side of many of the residents who showed up for Monday’s meeting.
Chairman John Waite said it was best to meet at its scheduled time next month, when its members could all show up, and for residents who can’t make it to submit their thoughts in writing.
“It’s summer, so we’ll always miss somebody,” Waite said, as the highly anticipated meeting wrapped up and people started to exit from a Town Hall packed in to the point it was standing room only.
There has long been talk that the site was planned to be sold to Dollar General, a discount store that some residents have expressed could harm the character of the town based on both its outward appearance and the type of people who might show up to shop at the store.
“The name is a bit unfortunate … The product is more what you would envision at a pharmacy, like a Walgreens,” said Austin Turner, a senior project manager for Bohler Engineering, a company based out of Southborough, while presenting to the Planning Board.
As Turner explained, the Dollar General planned for this site is not a typical dollar store, an audible “no, no, no,” elevated from the near hundred people in attendance, implying the engineer might have been stretching what they see as the truth.
Delaying the meeting means Turner and the developer and future owner of the land, Patrick Netreba, of Lisciotti Development’s South Deerfield DG, LLC, will have to come back next month and re-do the efforts leading into the meeting.
“If there’s any question about something not being noticed properly,” Turner said, “We can continue this discussion. We’re happy to do that.”
Missing from the meeting was Gardner, who has taken heat from residents on social media about this proposed site and the tree clearing, which the Massachusetts Department of Transportation confirmed was not legal despite the land owner’s claims otherwise.
Turner and Netreba repeatedly expressed to the town the lengths to which they have gone to get their renderings for the site. They said they have met with neighbors already and some of their plans, like an 8-foot and not 6-foot wooden fence, was influenced by their conversation with the abutters.
“Just a little context on how we got here: It’s not instant coffee by any means,” Turner said, noting the year-plus of time they have put into the project.
Waite said they will likely need, as they typically do with big projects, to bring in an engineer to assess the plans presented to them, evaluate the influence on traffic and conduct a storm water analysis at the very least.
Reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com