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Lake committee challenges Planning Board on marina vote

Date: 4/13/2022

SOUTHWICK – The Lake Management Committee has made a request to the Select Board to allow it to appeal the Planning Board decision approving the Crabby Joe’s marina site plan.

The Select Board did not take up the Lake Management Committee’s request April 4, and board member Doug Moglin said that he did not think that the Planning Board made any sort of legal error when it approved the plan last month.

“I think it is bad form for one board to bring a legal protest against another board,” said Moglin.

Lake Management Committee Chair Dick Grannells said that he and the other members of the committee did not receive proper notice of an updated site plan before the plan was approved. The Crabby Joe’s plan had been approved by the Planning Board with 150-foot docks on the marina, which Grannells said are too long and would interfere with boat traffic through the culvert under Congamond Road.

“We are saying they should be 75 feet to keep them off the entrance to the culvert and the navigation lanes,” said Grannells.

Plans call for 40 total berths at the marina attached to the Congamond Road restaurant and bar. Half of them would be long-term moorings available as paid rentals. The other half would be available as temporary parking for business patrons.

Planning Board Chair Michael Doherty reasserted that he thinks any potential issues with the length of the docks and the culvert will be cleared up when applicant Ken Egleston goes before state environmental officials for his Chapter 91 license, which is required for any structures extending into a state-regulated pond.

“We fully expect and understand in the process of getting Chapter 91 license that those docks may change and be reconfigured, and that would just have to come back to us on a final site plan,” said Doherty.

The Select Board chose not to take up a vote on Lake Management’s request.

At the Lake Management Committee meeting the previous week, committee member Eric Mueller said that Crabby Joe’s should abandon the rental marina for now and apply for the Chapter 91 license for just the transient docks.

“If he abandons the 20-spot marina then he doesn’t need the easement for those parking spaces. Then he could apply for Chapter 91 license for transient docks for the restaurant and move forward with restaurant restoration,” said Mueller.

Egleston has already modified his marina plans twice, in response to Planning Board worries over conflicts with traffic through the nearby culvert, which connects Middle and South ponds, as well as town officials’ concerns about whether the restaurant has enough automobile parking to serve a rental marina and whether Congamond Lake has too many boats on it already. Egleston’s original application called for an 80-berth marina, later reduced to 60 spaces and then 40.