A public hearing on proposed parking, drainage and a 2,000‑square‑foot building addition at 42 Linus Lane Avenue, part of a project for the Mount Wachusett Community College Foundation, was continued to Oct. 14 after engineers and a nearby resident raised technical and property‑line concerns.

Project engineers, represented by Dominic Elaine of Hanigan Engineering, described plans for an expanded parking lot north of the site, a smaller parking area to the south and a building addition adjacent to an existing technical education center. Elaine said runoff from the new parking areas would be captured by two catch basins and routed to an underground storage system for peak‑rate mitigation before entering the municipal drainage network on Linus Lane Avenue.

City engineering staff questioned whether the proposed underground unit was a closed detention system and whether soils on the site would allow infiltration. “So it’s a detention system,” Elaine said, adding that the site has what he described as CD soils and that “not much infiltration” was expected. Staff noted no test pits had yet been completed to confirm infiltration capacity and asked engineers to perform soil testing as a next step.

The city engineer also sent a memorandum recommending rerouting a portion of the drainage piping around — rather than under — the proposed addition and asked that ductile‑iron pipe be used when replaced. Hanigan Engineering said the firm had received the comments recently and would review them; Elaine said the team would evaluate how rerouting could affect system capacity and would respond in subsequent plan revisions.

Engineers and the city also flagged additional technical items: the plans show floor drains within the existing building, including in areas used for automotive work, which may require oil/water separators or other controls; an old concrete tank on the south side of the property (described in earlier documents as a grease tank) needs confirmation whether it remains active or will be disconnected; and the depiction of the flood zone on the submitted plans did not align with the municipality’s most recent effective maps, so the plans must be updated.

A nearby resident, identified in the record as Jim of 547 Betty Spring, told the meeting that a college parking loop appeared likely to come within inches of his backyard and that a fence near the shared property line appears to encroach on college property. Staff reviewed the submitted existing‑conditions plan and said the fence appears to cross the property line by “approximately” 20 to 30 feet in places; staff said they would review the matter with Mount Wachusett as a “good neighbor” practice and report back. Jim said the fence had been in place for 25 years and that previous surveys had not raised the issue.

No decisions on the site plan, drainage routing or fence relocation were made at the meeting. The board voted to continue the public hearing to Oct. 14 to allow the applicant to respond to the city engineer’s memorandum, provide soil testing results, update flood‑zone mapping on the plans and follow up on the fence encroachment question.

The project’s next steps, as discussed at the hearing, are: (1) conduct test pits to confirm subsurface soils and infiltration potential; (2) revise drainage designs in response to the city engineer’s memorandum and confirm whether the concrete tank and associated piping are active or disconnected; (3) update site plans to reflect current flood maps; and (4) investigate and attempt to resolve the fence/property‑line encroachment with the property owner. The applicant and city staff agreed to file written responses to the city engineer’s comments before the continued hearing.