Bay School presents building addition, seeks lighting waiver; Planning Board schedules new hearing date

Representatives for the Bay (Faith) School presented a revised set of plans for a proposed building addition to the campus at 25 Middle Road and asked the Planning Board for relief on campus lighting and timing. The submission included architectural drawings, updated landscape and grading plans, and a request for a waiver from the town’s hardscape lumen calculation for the campus lighting plan.Lucas Sturm, the school’s lighting consultant, and the architect described the change as limited, and said the proposed addition’s direct impact on overall campus lumens is small (about 0.14 foot-candles on the lower campus) because the campus already carries a higher baseline. The school requested a waiver to treat the campus as a single entity for lighting given 24/7 campus use, boarding programs and summer programming, and argued that the project-specific increase is minimal in context.The Planning Board and peer reviewers asked for additional documentation: Fuss & O’Neil asked that several missing water‑quality calculations be reinserted into the stormwater analysis and asked for an additional test pit for the infiltration system; the design team completed the requested test pit and agreed to add the water‑quality calcs back into the stormwater report. The building department asked for walkway grading details to show ADA compliance and recommended adopting a standardized exterior door-numbering scheme for first responders; the project team said they will coordinate with public safety on door numbering and confirm walkway slopes meet accessibility codes.The Planning Board discussed landscaping substitutions, invasive species mitigation, and the need to document plant lists and planting quantities in a clear planting table rather than only symbolically on the plan. Conservation‑related hydro‑ and test‑pit comments will be finalized through the separate stormwater/conservation review.The board continued the public hearing to May 19 and extended the decision deadline to May 23 to allow Fuss & O’Neil and the conservation peer reviewers time to finalize their reviews and for the applicant to provide the requested supplemental documentation.