The Conservation Commission met on March 11 with announcements being made that included their portion of the sale of 35 Gilcreast Road and the fact that they had narrowed down the general design for the boat launch to be built at Scobie Pond.
Commissioners discussed the formal closure of the property at 35 Gilcreast Road. Following a lengthy sale process regarding development rights.
The properties development rights were originally bought by taxpayers in the mid-2000s and the recent transaction had the current developer pay $2,650,000 to the town.
“The property on Gilcrest, below where you go into McDonalds and Home Depot, there was an old, abandoned orchard and the person who owned it at one time had sold the development rights and now he’s buying them back at a negotiated price,” explained Badois. “$750,000 of the sale went to the Conservation Commission to replace conservation land. To find other land we could preserve to make up for the loss.”
The sale comes after years of negotiations between town officials and the passage of a Warrant Article allowing for the release of an outstanding conservation easement on the property passed by voters in 2022, along with Town Council okay in 2023.
It was unclear what the next step would be.
“To me, there is a technical difficulty in that the town voted to replace the land of equal conservation value, but we don’t know where that is,” said alternate Mike Speltz. “The $750,000 may or may not be adequate for what the town wanted to do.”
According to the Chair, the $750,000 number was now “set in stone” despite some ambiguity in the original language of the agreement implying the amount could be higher.
“I don’t know if we can make any judgment until we find out when and where until we locate another piece of conservation land,” said Speltz.
Commissioner Deb Lievens wanted to know how the town might determine whether another piece of land was of “equal value” to 35 Gilcrest Road.
“How do we equate it?” she asked.
Speltz stated their open space plan assigned “a natural resource value to every single parcel in town.”
He promised to email a copy of the plan to other members so the Commission could revisit the issue at a later meeting.
“We put a deposit down on the original design of the boat launch, but we’ve since had to make it smaller,” said Commission Chair Marge Badois. “Since at least one resident in that area is in a wheelchair and is interested in fishing, we decided to add what’s called curving on the edge of the launch so a wheelchair won’t roll off the edge and into the water.”
The new boat launch will be six feet, seven inches wide, and will not extend into the pond nearly as much as first intended. Without much debate, the Conservation Commission unanimously voted to approve up to an additional $2,500 from their Open Space fund to cover the remaining cost of the ramp, including the new curving.
No completion date for the boat launch was announced.