The Town of Lakeville Planning Board voted to conditionally approve a site plan for 10 Harding Street on April 10, 2025, after extended discussion over construction inspections, peer review scope and financial sureties needed to guarantee completion of stormwater and site work.

The vote, taken at the Lakeville Police Station meeting room, followed about two hours of discussion with the applicant team and peer-review consultants about which construction inspections the planning board should require for a private commercial site. The approval was made with the “edits as noted” during the hearing and an explicit hold on one recording requirement pending town-counsel guidance.

The board’s decision matters because it determines what technical confirmations and financial guarantees the applicant must provide before the town will accept as-built documentation or allow final occupancy. Board members and applicants clashed over whether the planning board should require periodic, third-party construction inspections during build-out or rely solely on a final, peer-reviewed as-built submission.

Timothy National, president of West Development, and Bob Rigo of Riverhawk Environmental represented the applicant team. National argued that because the project is private property the applicant already hires an engineer and that requiring the town’s peer reviewer to perform multiple intermediate inspections would amount to paying two engineers for overlapping work. "It's private. I'm already paying an engineer — why would I pay two engineers for the same checks?" National said during the hearing.

Rigo and planning staff described a recent local project where discrepancies between approved plans and field conditions were not caught until the as-built was submitted. Planning Department staff and the board’s counsel said periodic inspections can reduce the risk that major corrections are needed at the end of construction. The board’s draft standard conditions circulated before the meeting included a $10,000 fixed surety figure and a $5,000 check to fund peer-review inspection and as-built review. Applicants had asked that the $10,000 not be expressed “per acre” and that the peer-review inspections be limited to final as-built review.

After back-and-forth, the board agreed to several practical changes: the advertised check-in amount for peer review (the $5,000) will be retained for final as-built review; the board will expect notification by email two business days before key construction milestones (initial erosion-control installation, stormwater facility installation, final paving and substantial completion), and planning staff will work with the applicant to specify which intermediate inspections are required so they do not unduly delay construction. The board also removed ambiguous language around “substantial completion” in favor of clearer trigger points and accepted a six-month window to complete landscaping following occupancy when seasonally necessary.

A separate point of contention was whether the planning board could condition issuance of a building permit on completion of all site work — including loaming, seeding and paving. The board judged a prior draft condition that would have required full site completion before a building permit as impractical for private commercial construction, and instead retained language requiring stormwater systems and soil stabilization to be functional before issuance of an occupancy permit (the board restored its original Condition 13 wording). The board removed an earlier Condition 11 that appeared aimed at subdivision-style road acceptance because it is not feasible to require full road-type completion before issuing a building permit for this private site.

The board also accepted that final as-built review by the board’s peer-review engineer is required and will be funded from the posted check, but it signaled willingness to limit the number and scope of intermediate inspections so the developer is not held up unnecessarily. The applicant agreed to provide written notifications to the planning office at the milestones spelled out in the decision.

On a related procedural point, the board left one edit (whether the approved site plan itself must be recorded at the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds) for town-counsel review; the conditional approval includes an explicit note that approval is contingent on resolving that question with counsel.

The planning board’s conditional approval allows the applicant to proceed with permits subject to the listed edits, posting of required surety and the peer-review/as-built process specified in the decision. The board recorded the motion and second at the meeting and announced the motion carried.

Speakers in the hearing included Timothy National, president of West Development; Bob Rigo, Riverhawk Environmental; Cathy Murray, planning department staff; and Attorney Amy Quassell (applicant counsel). Planning board members and town staff also participated throughout the deliberations.

The board asked staff to finalize the written decision reflecting the edits discussed in the hearing, to settle the registry-recording question with town counsel, and to circulate the final decision and inspection list to the applicant and peer-review firm.