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Board presses for more public notice after 526 Post Road plan adds multiple potential uses
Summary
Engineers revised the 526 Post Road plan to remove a steep front pond and provided a traffic assessment that lists many potential uses; the board directed staff to expand abutter notice and consider limiting or excluding uses that would exceed trip-generation or parking limits.
The Wells Planning Board reviewed revised site plans for 526 Post Road and asked town staff to expand the public notice to include all proposed uses listed in the application. Mike, a planning staff member, said applicants replaced a steep pond and retaining wall with a revised stormwater design and submitted a traffic study that modeled trip generation for a range of uses beyond the originally noticed K–12 school.
Engineers with Walsh Engineering said they prepared a use table to show how the building might function under several allowed uses. Board members and staff expressed concern that some uses could generate far more daily trips or require substantially different parking, and that the ordinance’s caps (including an average-daily trip cap discussed in the meeting) could be difficult to enforce for certain uses such as a function hall or retail split across floor area.
Board members asked that the planning office send regular-mail notices to abutters listing every proposed use (the town’s Article 5 notice) and asked whether another public hearing is required. The board moved to schedule a combined public hearing for the subdivision and site plan at the first meeting in July if applicants can meet notice deadlines and provide any additional parking and trip calculations.
Members raised specific enforcement questions: a daycare use was modeled with a cap of about 32 students to stay under a 200-trip cap; a function hall was limited to 55 seats under ordinance limits but the board questioned how the limit could be enforced without further permitting controls. Staff recommended listing potential uses for public review and removing or tightening approval for uses that would exceed trip or parking limits.
