In recent months, Cross Farm Development, LLC has been working with the Town of Londonderry to obtain a 2.8-acre patch of land off of Route 102 that is outside of a retirement community that Cross Farm is currently developing on 57 Adams Road. Town officials, including Town Manager Kevin Smith, are hoping to have the town purchase the land from the Department of Transportation for $361,100 before than selling it to Cross Farm for the same price, thus allowing Cross Farm to convert the land into an additional exit from the community onto 102.
The Planning Board is set to vote on whether or not to go through with the purchase on August 2, but in the meantime, Cross Farm representatives were still tasked with meeting with the Conservation Commission on July 25 to discuss how Cross Farm’s project will affect local wetlands.
At the start of the commission’s meeting, Jack Szemplinski of Benchmark Engineering, Inc. came before the commission to give an overview of the project’s impact on the wetlands, as the commission has asked Szemplinski at multiple past meetings to think of ways in which the blueprints could be altered to minimize wetland damage.
Szemplinski’s focus for the meeting was the addition of a drainage pond to the south west of the property that would be used to prevent potential flooding in the community. He backed up his designs by noting that he based his calculations on a recent study by Cornell University that established how big to build these drainage areas in preparation for larger rain storms.
Some commission members, however, were not convinced that the drainage area needed to be as big as it is in the blue print. In particular, Commission Chair Marge Badois vocally opposed the project in its current state and location, saying that Cross Farm has shown “no willingness to try to stick to the intent of the ordinance.” Szemplinski, nevertheless, defended the size and location of the drainage area, noting that Cross Farm must meet certain state regulations when it comes to storm runoff; there is really no other way for them to put the area together.
Members also made several suggestions to Szemplinski about moving the drainage area to other locations in order to avoid going against wetland ordinances. However, Szemplinski was unwilling to go along with any of them. This has been a recurring theme at his previous meetings with the commission, as he has told commission members that he would look into potential alterations to the blueprints in the past, but not show any changes during the following meeting.
In the end, the commission wrote out two motions to be shown to the Planning Board when they vote on the project on August 2: one supporting previous portions of the project and another opposing the current state of the drainage area.