Planning board continues Tyrell Development hearing after selectmen, engineers press parking and easement concerns

The Waterville Valley Planning Board on Thursday continued the public hearing for Tyrell Development Company’s proposed Outdoor Adventure Zone after selectmen and the town’s peer reviewers raised concerns about easement mapping and parking capacity.

David LaFeaver, an attorney speaking for the selectmen, told the board the project is “probably the largest development in town in the last 40 years” and urged the planning board not to be rushed in its review. He asked the applicant to show four easements on the site plan — a parking easement, an emergency-access/maintenance easement, a drainage easement and an ice/snow-disposal easement — and warned that snow-plowing and Zamboni operations currently push berms into existing walkways. “That’s something that needs to be addressed,” LaFeaver said, asking the board to require delineation of those easement areas as a condition of approval.

LaFeaver also questioned the availability of nearby lots the applicant proposed to count toward the project’s parking requirement. He said the East Side lot — about 70–72 spaces — is often at capacity and should not be included in conservative parking calculations. To address recurring peak-demand problems he suggested the board either require on-site spaces be built now or add a clear plan and enforceable condition for overflow parking.

Sunita, the applicant representative for Tyrell Development Company, replied that existing easements are intentionally nonspecific and that the applicant will continue to honor them, but argued the planning board is not the proper venue to adjudicate or unilaterally change easement deeds. She said shared parking arrangements have worked for years and that the proposal stays within the zoning provision allowing off-site parking within 1,000 feet for a nonresidential use.

Christine Triarkas of BHB, who prepared the parking assessment, told the board the conservative within-1,000-foot count is 228 spaces and that the study excluded the East Side 72 spaces because they were observed to be at or near capacity during fall counts. “When we looked at the entire shared parking analysis… there are actually 228 spaces,” Triarkas said.

After discussion of these and other operational and procedural issues, a member moved and the board voted to continue the public hearing to December 16 at 6:00 p.m. in the same meeting room to allow additional review and public comment. The board noted that if it closes the hearing on Dec. 16 it will automatically begin deliberations and must render a final decision no later than Jan. 17, 2026.

The continuation leaves several outstanding items for the applicant to address in writing or on plan revisions, including clearer plan dimensions for parking areas, explicit depiction of easement edges (or a proposed mechanism to resolve locations with the easement holders), and a proposal for how overflow parking will be handled during peak events.