Planning Board re-visits Stop & Shop site plan
By Ken Powers Contributing Writer

Northborough - While coming to grips with the realization that a Super Stop & Shop grocery store is going to be built at 77 Main St., the Northborough Planning Board has begun the task of sifting through the proposed site plan and creating a list of conditions it will require to accompany site plan approval.

"It's crucial for the Planning Board to realize that they're not in the same position they were in before with regards to this project," Northborough Town Planner Kathy Joubert said. "If the judge believes the board is not moving expeditiously, he can decide to let Stop & Shop proceed with its plans to build this store without conditions. This is serious. That [an approval without conditions] is a very real possibility."

The Planning Board rejected Stop & Shop's site plan in June 2006, but the supermarket chain appealed the decision in Land Court saying that denying the site plan was not an option under town bylaws for the site. The only options the town had, Stop & Shop contended, was to approve the site plan as submitted or to approve the site plan with conditions.

Stop & Shop filed its site plan in June 2005 for the store, which would be about 65,000 square feet on the 10-acre parcel that used to serve as a regional hub for Northeast Great Dane trucking, and have entrances on both Hudson Street and Main Street (Route 20).

The Planning Board, in denying Stop & Shop the site plan approval, said they did so because the company did not include a study addressing how traffic would be impacted if the signal the grocery store was proposing for the intersection of the site driveway and Route 20 was determined to be not necessary by MassHighway, which has jurisdiction over the roadway.

Last month Judge Alexander Sands III agreed with Stop & Shop, writing in his decision that denying Stop & Shop's site plan was not one of the options before the Planning Board. He remanded the site plan back to the Planning Board and instructed it to approve the site plan or approve it with conditions.

On Oct. 29, Northborough's Board of Selectmen voted not to appeal Sands's ruling.

At its Nov. 20 meeting, Planning Board members reviewed a draft decision prepared by Joubert and began to think about conditions they would want to include when approving the site plan.

While the board spent the majority of its time the first time it reviewed the site plan on traffic, Chair Rick Leif acknowledged that it will now have to also think about including conditions involving landscaping, hours of operation, signage and lighting, as well as traffic.

Leif asked each board member to review the site plan and prepare to discuss and propose changes to the draft decision at the board's Monday Dec. 3 meeting .

Barbara Saint Andre, the attorney serving as town counsel regarding this matter, encouraged the board to decide quickly what it wants to include as a condition of approval.

"It's not like Stop & Shop just submitted the site plan and the board is starting from scratch," Saint Andre said. "The board doesn't have months and months to review this and beat every item to death. If Stop & Shop believes the town is dragging its feet, they'll go back before the judge and ask what the delay is, because the site plan hasn't changed in two years."