Worcester zoning board denies special permit to landscaping business at 640 Franklin St.

The Worcester Zoning Board of Appeals denied a request by a landscaping business to retroactively authorize operations at 640 Franklin Street, voting down a special permit after staff and neighbors said the use is more intensive than historic, privileged uses and may have been abandoned.

The board’s decision follows a staff memo from the city’s Division of Planning and Regulatory Services and a pair of inspectional-services letters that concluded there is insufficient evidence of a continuous privileged preexisting nonconforming use at the site and that the applicant’s outdoor storage and open-lot activities are not a “use of a similar nature” to the historic manufacturing/storage uses cited by the applicant.

Board members debated whether the property retained a legal privilege dating to prior uses, whether those uses were continuous or abandoned, and whether the current landscaping operation is materially different in intensity because much of it occurs outdoors rather than inside a building.

Clay Williams, attorney for the applicant, described the parcel as about an acre and a…