Redesign curbs planners' enthusiasm

BURLINGTON -- The granite curbs around the two parking islands at Border Cafe are hardly the most noticeable exterior feature at this Tex-Mex restaurant, where Christmas lights dangle over the patio, outdoor speakers play old country tunes, and the front benches are painted with colorful ads for Mexican beers. But it's the curbs that will be on the agenda tonight for the third Planning Board meeting in a row.

The two parking islands are curbed in sloped granite, but the site plan called for vertical granite -- a 6-inch, right-angled edge instead of a border at a 45-degree incline. Now the Planning Board has to decide whether to let the slopes slide or force Border Cafe to carve out the curbs and replace them. With one member absent last month, the board split, 3 to 3, leaving the issue unresolved.

Planning Board chairwoman Ann M. Cummings is on the change-the-curbs side, seeing it as a matter of process and principle. "A developer should follow what was agreed to," she said.

Board member Albert L. Fay Jr. sees it as a minor discrepancy. It would be one thing if the wrong curbing had been installed all along the edge of the parking lot, he said, but this involves less than 200 feet of granite -- along the edges of two islands that are 36 feet long and a few feet across, on opposite sides of the 2.3-acre lot.

"This here is a very small portion" of curbing, said Fay, who is also chairman of the Board of Selectmen. "Very, very small."

Board members on both sides agree about that part. And they agree it's nothing to lose sleep over. "It's not that serious an issue," said the town's planning director, D. Anthony Fields. "It's an amusing disagreement."

Still, the two camps are firm in their beliefs. And those who want the curbing replaced say it's more than a matter of linear footage or aesthetics. The site plan called for vertical granite -- the industry term for the kind that rises perpendicular to the ground -- because it lasts longer than its sloped counterpart, which is more likely to be damaged by snowplows. Vertical curbing also does a better job of directing traffic, because it discourages motorists who might try to go over instead of around an island sided with sloped curbing.

"Vertical granite is a much safer product to put there," Cummings said.

Border Cafe sits where the Victoria Station restaurant once parked its boxcars and caboose, where Second Avenue meets Middlesex Turnpike. The Planning Board approved the site plan in late 2005, and the newly constructed restaurant opened a few months ago, Fields said. A town inspector and the project's design engineer each noticed that the curbs were wrong during construction reviews, but the discrepancy wasn't big enough to keep the town from granting a temporary occupancy permit to Border Cafe.

With the restaurant already serving up Southwest, Creole, and Cajun fare, the Border Cafe brass went before the Planning Board in June to request what is known as a minor engineering change to the site plan. The board discussed the issue at that month's meeting and brought it to a vote last month, when members split, 3 to 3, on two motions -- one to let Border Cafe keep one island and recurb the other, and another motion to leave both islands as is and grant the engineering change.

Board vice chairman Ernest E. Covino Jr., who wants to see the island curbing replaced, said it's a small but not insignificant issue.

"This isn't the most important thing in life, obviously," he said. "But the idea is, that was how the site plan was approved, and it was approved for a reason."

Board members don't know whether the curbing switch was a simple oversight or a calculated move. Vertical curbing costs about $7 or $8 more than sloped curbing per linear foot, so the swap probably saved the contractor roughly $1,500. Removing it and replacing it probably would cost several thousand dollars more.

If there were a good reason to make the change, the contractor or restaurant company should have notified the town immediately, rather than wait until it was discovered, board member Paul R. Raymond said.

"That's what I object to," Raymond said. "Nowadays, everyone's got a cellphone, and all they have to do is call the Planning Board office" and ask for permission for the change.

The panel has a reputation among developers for being tough but fair. "We dot all the I's and cross all the T's," Covino said. About five years ago, the board made Shaw's Supermarkets rip out and replace curbing after it installed sloped granite where vertical was required, in a larger stretch of parking lot on Cambridge Street.

"We hold a very high standard," Cummings said. "We have a great town, and we have great residents, and we want the best for everybody, including the companies that are here. And what I ask of one company, it's unfair for me not to ask of another."

Board member Joseph A. Impemba -- who missed the 3-to-3 meeting -- has not tipped his hand as to which way he will vote. Cummings will be rooting for a 4-to-3 vote for new islands -- and success for Border Cafe, once this matter is resolved.

"I've heard it's a great restaurant," Cummings said. "People are really pleased with it. I hope they make it. And it's a shame we're at this point. But it's what was approved, and it should've been dealt with earlier."

Bob Murphy, president of the seven-restaurant chain, declined to comment on the curbing, citing the pending nature of the matter.

Stephen Logan, senior vice president for Nordblom Co., which owns the property, said Burlington-based Nordblom had nothing to do with the development and construction, which was overseen by the Catawba Corp., parent company of Border Cafe.

Logan said Nordblom does not have an opinion on the curbs, beyond preferring both kinds of granite to the inferior asphalt variety.

"Sloped or vertical, it doesn't make any difference to us."

Eric Moskowitz can be reached at emoskowitz@globe.com.

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