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Select Board reviews community visioning for 12.5-acre donated parcel on Tamworth Road
Summary
Tamworth officials and consultants reviewed public input on a donated 12.5-acre parcel at 374 Tamworth Road, reporting clean brownfields testing and four conceptual uses — trails, a public safety building, housing and solar — and emphasizing no immediate development decision.
The Tamworth Select Board on Sept. 30 reviewed results from a community visioning session about a 12.5-acre parcel donated to the town at 374 Tamworth Road.
The land was donated with no conditions, officials said, and state and federal brownfields testing overseen by Novus Engineering “came back clean,” allowing the town to own the property without cleanup costs to local taxpayers. Leanne, the Select Board representative to the Planning Board, told the meeting the brownfields work and the visioning session were supported by federal grant funds through Lakes Region Planning and came “at no expense to grama taxpayers.”
Why it matters: The parcel lies in the village and has been discussed for a decade as possible backup sewer land or a public safety site. The Select Board stressed that it has no preconceived plan and that the town’s role in the visioning phase is to collect community input that the Planning Board will use as it decides whether and how to revise the town master plan.
Mark Westa, a landscape architect with EDR, and Glenn Trebethon of Lakes Region Planning presented conceptual drawings the consulting team prepared to show scale and siting. Westa said the team created four simple concepts — a trail network, a public safety building, housing (illustrated as a 24–30‑unit building in the drawings), and a solar array — and a combined option that mixes uses, such as shared parking, playground space and trails reaching the river corridor.
Public responses collected at the on‑site event and an earlier public hearing showed mixed reactions to single-use concepts and stronger support for a mixed-use approach. Westa summarized sticky-note comments: the trail idea drew some opposition (some said Tamworth already has many trails) but attracted more support when shown as part of a combined plan; the public safety building drew four strong endorsements, one strong opposition and several notes of concern about tax impacts; housing drew roughly 21 positive notes and one negative; and solar generally sampled as favorable, particularly if integrated with buildings or parking canopies.
Leanne emphasized that last night’s session was “not a jump off point for us to float a bond for anything, for us to break ground on anything.” She said the town could hold the land “just as it is for the next 50 years” while master plan work continues. The consultants said they will post the verbatim comments, schematic drawings and a summary of counts and themes to the town website and will offer a more complete written summary for people who could not attend.
Next steps: Planning Board members present said the comments will be used as an early input layer while the Planning Board decides how to approach a potentially larger master plan update. No formal direction, funding decision, or ordinance change was made during the meeting.
Ending: Town staff and the consultants said they will post the visioning materials and the verbatim public comments online and accept emailed input to include in the summary.
