Fine-tuning continues on development
The Wayland Planning Board is once again raising questions about the design of the proposed $140 million Town Center project.
The board has criticized the placement of a site for a future municipal building in the developers' latest plans. Some members also have suggested that the project could have a single entrance, rather than the two proposed.
Developers are again presenting their project to the town after walking away in frustration in January. Two years after they first floated the idea, they were back before the Planning Board for a public hearing last Monday on their request for a master special permit for the mixed-use development.
Despite the questions, relations were cordial between the developers and the board at the meeting.
"It's a good first start," said Planning Board member Daniel Mesnick.
The municipal building would sit alone off the Route 20 entrance to a large shopping center, separate from a proposed 2-acre town green. The building would back up against the Sudbury River.
One of the developers, Dean Stratouly, president of the Congress Group Inc. of Boston, defended moving the municipal building site away from the town green, explaining that the city's requirement that the pad for the building be 20,000 square feet and that 100 parking spaces be provided next to it, along with the requirement that the town green be one continuous parcel, made it difficult for all of them to be placed together.
Stratouly also said some components of the project had to be moved around as the result of shifting boundaries on the western edge of the site for endangered species.
He said after the meeting that if the town wants its municipal building -- some residents have suggested a library -- to front onto the town green, it should make some adjustments to its guidelines, perhaps by agreeing to a reduction in the size of the building's footprint.
Stratouly was less accommodating on criticisms of the two entrances now proposed, one from Route 20 and the other from Route 27. "I don't believe the project works with a single entry," he said.
Stratouly and his partner, Charles Irving of KGI Properties of Boston, attended the meeting with an attorney and several designers.
The developers returned to talks after an election that changed the makeup of the Planning Board and the Board of Road Commissioners, and after both boards elected new leaders.
The proposed project, which has been hotly debated by residents, would have 155,000 square feet of retail space and 10,000 square feet of offices, plus 80 to 100 residential units. Stratouly said tenants would include a supermarket, sporting goods store, drugstore, and a restaurant.
Before the meeting, Stratouly already had bowed to public pressure to make all housing units in the project condos, rather than apartments, as he had proposed.
His attorney noted at the meeting that the town's zoning cannot regulate the form of ownership, but Stratouly acknowledged he had been flooded with e-mail complaints from residents about his plan to build apartments.
He said he had agreed in writing to build condos instead, but because of the market he would construct them in stages, likely 20 to 25 a year.
The hearing will continue at 7 p.m. July 11 in Town Building. 