The Rindge Zoning Board of Adjustment denied an abutter’s request on Tuesday for a rehearing on a May decision to uphold the Planning Board’s approval of a development on Dale Farm Road.
Barkley Enterprises was granted approval for a major subdivision to allow for a Planned Unit Residential Development, or PURD, to build 27 units on a 42-acres property on Dale Farm Road. The development relied on a variance granted by the Zoning Board to allow the development despite it having about 50 feet of road frontage, where 100 is required for PURDs.
Abutter Dawn Dunbar, through her lawyer Patricia Panciocco of Panciocco Law in Bedford, appealed the approval of the plan in May, but was denied. She then applied for a rehearing of the decision. During deliberations Tuesday. The ZBA didn’t find cause to rehear the case.
“I did not find any new evidence that would grant a re-hearing, from my perspective,” ZBA Chairwoman Janet Goodrich said.
Panciocco submitted a 38-point application requesting the rehearing, alleging that the approval of the subdivision needed frontage on a town-maintained road, which she said that portion of Dale Farm Road is not, that PURDs are not allowed in the residential agriculture district, that PURDs themselves are not in line with the town’s Master Plan, and that the town’s noticing of the hearing on the issue was unclear.
Goodrich said among the points raised by Panciocco, she found some to be “of questionable accuracy” and none to be new or compelling information that hadn’t been raised during the first appeal. Some, she said, addressed the ZBA’s granting of a variance, for which the appeal period had passed long ago.
“I also don’t see any reason to grant a rehearing,” agreed ZBA member Joe Hill.
The board agreed to unanimously deny the motion for a rehearing.
In an unrelated matter, also at Tuesday’s meeting, the ZBA granted a special exception to the Hampshire Country School to re-build a current structure on its land on 45 Deer Run Lane into three faculty apartments. School officials explained last year, when they re-built one of the school’s dorms, it reduced capacity and faculty apartments were eliminated. The new building would not create room for more students or faculty than the school already supports, and would not generate additional traffic or density, and is on a large piece of property not visible from any abutters, and would be replacing an older building with a more aesthetic one.
The board unanimously agreed there wouldn’t be negative impact on the neighborhood, and unanimously granted the special exception.