Pittsfield Board OKs Gale Ave Extension to Accommodate Two Houses
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — After a well-attended virtual public hearing on Tuesday, the Community Development Board granted a special permit to extend Gale Avenue for two new residential lots.
The permit was granted with seven conditions. These include the applicant being required to submit a Massachusetts Endangered Species Act project review checklist form to the Massachusettes Nation Heritage and Endangered Species Program prior to receiving any additional permits, being subject to all provisions of the Wetlands Protection Act, and a conservation easement or comparable instrument being approved prior to the issuance of building permits.
The applicants are also required to maintain or restore the condition of Gale Avenue to pre-construction conditions and limit the extended road to 18 feet per approval of the Fire Department and the services department.
Two single-family homes are planned to be built at the dead-end of the street.
The two properties will take up 27 acres of a 58-acre parcel that has frontage on West Street and the construction will only take up a small percentage of the properties. Project engineer Jim Scalise of SK Design Group Inc. said the northern portion of the lot will remain in agricultural use — which it has been for a couple of generations — and that the houses will be built on the southern end of the lot to avoid wooded or wetland areas.
To accommodate the new lots, a 22-foot wide road extension of 12-inch thick gravel would be constructed. A turnaround for emergency vehicles is also required.
Many nearby residents — mostly living on Gale Avenue — expressed environmental and road use concerns. On the other hand, they were pleased to see most of the property remain agricultural.
Though there is no work proposed in buffer zones of wetlands, some were concerned about the proximity to the buffer zone.
"Pleased to hear Mr. Scalise, that you've known that that's been agricultural for at least a couple of generations and you hope to see it continue that way, so thank you for commenting positively about that," Mountain View Drive resident Richard Noble said.
"Our other concern is this is this whole large lot is an area that many of the neighbors love to walk and hike, cross country ski if possible, and just enjoy the wildlife that buds in there so we would be concerned about the closeness of the two building lots to the wetland area that has beaver dams and a pretty good stream that runs from north to south there and the terminus for the turnaround of the fire trucks and whatever would be pretty close to that stream."
Scalise assured the residents that there is a suitable distance between the proposed construction and wetlands.
"I know there's a lot of comments that were made about the environment but the end of the road is about 280 feet from the edge of the wetland and the buffer zones is 100 feet so 180 feet beyond the buffer zone," he explained.
To ensure that Gale Avenue is left in the same condition as it was before the road extension and housing build, Scalise suggested taking photos and videos of the road before construction to use as a reference.
Scalise had to first prove that the property has a way in existence for the application.
"The first criteria to fit under this section of the zoning is to establish that the that you have a way in existence and that the road exists before the zoning," he said.
"So that the general rule is that if the road existed before 1973 then it would be considered a way in existence in Pittsfield."
He provided the board with research from the 1940s and 1950s that shows Gale Avenue as a paper street, or a street that appears on maps but has not been built.
Scalise also looked at a land court plan from the Registry of Deeds that shows the subject lot in 1940. In addition, the city also has set criteria for having zoning approved for frontage.
The approval of a special permit is just the beginning, as the project still has the environmental steps to go through and will come back to the board to OK the plan. It also has to be reviewed by the city’s engineering department.
Scalise said they are in the middle of a pre-permitting process with the Natural Heritage Endangered Species Program.
"In closing, I think the project meets or exceeds the zoning requirements," he said.
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