The Cheshire Superior Court has denied a neighbor’s appeal of the approval of a development on Dale Farm Road in Rindge.
Neighbor Dawn Dunbar appealed decisions made by both the Rindge Zoning Board of Adjustment and the Planning Board that allowed the 27-unit multi-family development.
The development, proposed by Jamison B. Van Dyke and Barkley Enterprises, proposed the development on 42.6 acres of land along Dale Farm Road, which is a class VI road. Dunbar’s property abuts the property to the east.
The suit alleged the Zoning Board had incorrectly granted a variance to the development, allowing more than one home on a parcel with less than the required road frontage, and that the Planning Board had then relied on that variance in making its decision to approve the development, and had erred in its interpretation of the variance. Dunbar alleged that the development, because of the lack of road frontage and the road it is on, threatens public safety and exposes the town to future liability.
One of the issues is the status of Dale Farm Road, which the town was not maintaining at the time Van Dyke submitted the proposed development. Van Dyke sought a variance to the requirement that his development was required to have at least 250 feet of frontage on a town or state maintained road. The Dale Farm development only has 50 feet of frontage and by definition, Class VI roads are not maintained by the town or state.
Dunbar’s suit also argues that the town adopted its Planned Unit Residential Development Ordinance before the state allowed that type of regulation, and called into question its validity. The court ruled that if there had been an irregularity in the adoption of PURD zoning, it was past the statute of limitations to address that issue.
Dunbar appealed both the approval of the variance and the Planning Board’s approval of the plan, but was denied both times. Dunbar pursued the matter through the Superior Court. The town argued it followed all procedures and that Dunbar’s filing did not meet the burden of proof that the town had erred in its approvals.
The court sided with the town of Rindge, denying Dunbar’s suits against both the Planning and Zoning Boards.
“On the sum of the evidence presented, the court finds that the Planning Board properly and lawfully, pursuant to the statutory authority herein, applied the PURD regulations to the intervenor’s PURD application in its acceptance of the application within the Residential Agricultural Zoning District with conditions, and that decision was neither unreasonable nor erroneous as a matter of law,” the court decision reads.