Southborough ZBA continues 250 Turnpike Road 40B hearing after traffic, wetlands and fire-access concerns

The Southborough Zoning Board of Appeals on Jan. 26 continued the public hearing on a M.G.L. c.40B comprehensive-permit application for 250 Turnpike Road after discussions about traffic safety, emergency access, septic setbacks and vernal-pool habitat left outstanding items for further review. The board scheduled the next hearing for March 19 at 7:45 p.m.

The applicant, FD 250 Turnpike, LLC, represented by George Bonon, assistant general counsel for Ferris Development Group, and civil engineer James Tatrol, presented a recent revision to the site plan that consolidates several building blocks, pulls units farther from abutters and adds a stone-lined drainage swale to direct runoff to an on‑site wetland. "We took 2 different blocks of units here and push them together...and that allowed us to pull units a little further away from Abutters to the east," Tatrol said, and described the stone-lined swale behind units 3–11 to carry runoff to the wetland.

Why it matters: The changes respond to abutter concerns and to peer-review comments but do not yet resolve questions about emergency-vehicle access from Route 9, compliance with Massachusetts Title 5 septic setbacks, or potential impacts to vernal-pool species in adjacent wetlands — issues the board and peer reviewers said must be resolved before the hearing can close.

Traffic and emergency access

Jeffrey Dirk, managing partner at Vanessa and Associates and the town's traffic peer reviewer, said the applicant's traffic analysis shows a net reduction in traffic compared with the site's prior office use and that crash history at the nearby intersections does not indicate a disproportionate safety…