Talk of development in Harvard’s commercial district has burgeoned in recent months. In February the town’s Economic Development Committee (EDC) floated a bylaw amendment to ease size restrictions on grocery stores. In June an EDC-sponsored opinion forum attracted a North Harvard crowd that was receptive to the design guidelines prepared by Town Planner Bill Scanlan but wary of high-traffic businesses. This week, leading up to a Planning Board hearing to address a possible bylaw amendment, the notion of allowing a larger grocery store elicited nearly 120 responses in less than a week at the online site Nextdoor Harvard. And at some point in each discussion, someone mentioned “the jersey barriers.”
Symbol or eyesore?
To some, the barriers marking the entrance to Harvard Plaza on Ayer Road—site of Sorrentos, Rollstone Bank, the Grapevine, and other businesses—appear to be a symbol of commercial development gone wrong, singled out in the forums as a glaring example of unappealing commercial development, setting a low bar for future development and cited as an example of the relative superiority of special permit versus by-right development. To others, the concrete barriers are just an eyesore. But can the town compel their replacement? Based on interviews and a review of the records that remain at Town Hall, the answer is no. If the barriers are replaced with a flower-filled island, it will be by the owner’s choice alone.
Perhaps ironically, the original 1974 site plan—which specified not barriers but a traffic island—was approved by special permit. Still, the island was never built. Barriers appeared some years later than 1975, though the Press hasn’t yet determined exactly when. In recent times, the Planning Board has twice tried and failed to replace the barriers through the site plan process.
If at first …
A 2005 plan to renovate parking, landscaping, and lighting by Rollstone Bank (then Fitchburg Savings Bank) seemed to give the board a chance to remedy the unmet site conditions. However, former board members say that town counsel advised them that only conditions pertaining to the bank could be addressed, because it was a lessee on the site, not the owner. The board accepted the opinion that only the bank’s renovations were subject to site review, and the barriers stayed put.
… Try, try again
Five years later the window of opportunity opened again when owner Robert Hirsch applied to the Planning Board for permission to move the plaza sign and to the selectmen to renew the liquor license at his store, The Grapevine. In response, the Planning Board wrote a “Notice of Decision” in September 2010, requiring Hirsch to “comply with all conditions of prior site plan approvals to the extent that such conditions are in effect and are applicable to the site.” Two months later, as they debated whether the owner had met renewal conditions of the liquor license, selectmen asked zoning enforcement officer Gabe Vellante to either enforce or exempt conditions at the site.
Within days of the request, Vellante determined that the time to require a traffic island had ended. “I have been building commissioner since 1984 and to date have not received any complaints regarding the absence of an island at the entrance to the plaza,” therefore, I find that this entrance must be considered grandfathered and not subject to meeting the requirements of the original site plan,” he wrote in a November 2010 letter to the Board of Selectmen.
Meanwhile, according to its minutes, the Planning Board was still waiting for its own decision to be enforced, unaware that the building commissioner had decided the barriers could stay. A copy of Vellante’s letter shows that it was sent only to the selectmen.
Slow-moving showdown
By January 2011 the board was aware of Vellante’s decision, drafting a letter objecting to it and ultimately deciding to invite him in for a “productive conversation” about his role in enforcing Planning Board decisions.
At the meeting with Vellante, which took place in August, board member and attorney Peter Brooks took stock, noting that the board’s September decision might have been too vague and specific points should have been enumerated and that the condition requiring a traffic island may have expired with the six-year statute of limitation. He nevertheless stated, according to the minutes, that it was still not up to Vellante to “not enforce” the board’s decision; rather, it was up to the applicant, Hirsch, to appeal it. The other members, Michelle Catalina, Kara Minar, and Craig Bardenheuer, dismissed the possibility that the decision was too vague, arguing that Vellante’s specific mention of the barriers showed he understood that the board had wanted them replaced.
Homely, but sanctioned
In response, Vellante suggested that the board should have appealed his decision when it was made, back in November. Minar is recorded in the minutes as saying it was “hard to file an appeal when you are unaware a decision has been made,” referring to the commissioner’s failure to copy the Planning Board on his letter to the selectmen. Vellante “agreed to contact the property owner to see if the situation can be corrected,” the minutes noted. Asked this week whether that happened, Vellante said: “It was a long time ago. I don’t remember if I did or not.”
Economic Development Committee Chairman Rich Maiore said his committee had spoken “a few times” with Hirsch about “removing, fixing, or updating the barriers,” going so far as offering—with fellow member Jim Stevens—to build a frame around the barriers, fill it with soil, and “seek out the Garden Club to make it look attractive.”
Meanwhile, the concrete fortifications abide—homely, but sanctioned.
