Following comment at March 5 and 19 public hearings, the Planning Board has decided to pass over the proposed bylaw amendment to create an agritourism overlay district in Harvard. The bylaw appears as Article 35 in this year’s warrant, but members decided that a provision that would allow construction of limited commercial uses on certain parcels of agricultural land in the agricultural/residential (AR) district requires more fine-tuning before being put to a town meeting vote.
Some residents were concerned about the proposed bylaw’s potential impact on the rural feel of the town. One controversial provision of the bylaw limited new construction to 5,000 square feet per building but failed to set an upper limit of total new construction. Don Green, whose family owns Westward Orchards, noted that Groton’s Gibbet Hill Grill, cited as the model for the bylaw, lies within the town’s commercial district, and said that allowing similar establishments within Harvard’s AR district would greatly affect the surrounding area. Others noted that while the proposed bylaw would require land to be preserved as open space as long as the agritourism activities operate, those areas would revert to unprotected land if the commercial activity ends. This means the bylaw would not guarantee the long-term preservation of open space.
Another set of comments came from farmers evaluating whether the proposed restrictions were well tailored to their situations. According to Town Planner Bill Scanlan, the process of drafting the bylaw was fraught with difficulty, as the Planning Board had a hard time getting feedback from many of the intended beneficiaries of the bylaw. Most of the feedback came from the Hazel family, as they expressed interest in using the bylaw to add a restaurant to their Ayer Road property. Kerri Green, of Oak Hill Road, offered to assist in efforts to coordinate Planning Board revisions of the bylaw with the needs of local farmers. One major concern was that some of the commercial uses permitted by the bylaw may already be permitted on agricultural properties. By creating an overlay district specifically to allow these uses, the bylaw might, by implication, disallow them elsewhere. Another concern was that the proposed bylaw requires that a parcel comprise at least 30 acres to be part of the overlay district, which excludes some of Harvard’s current farms.
Planning Board member Rich Maiore said that before the bylaw could proceed, the board would have to clear up the above issues. Scanlan said that he expected a revised bylaw to be ready for a likely Special Town Meeting in the fall of 2018, as the board would work on revising it over the summer. The proposed bylaw formally remains on the warrant for the upcoming Annual Town Meeting to generate additional public feedback at hearings.
