Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.

Southwick rethinks development bylaws after Carvana

Date: 2/18/2022

SOUTHWICK – It isn’t uncommon for residents of a community to air their grievances about a potential development being proposed for their town, especially if that development is near a residential area or could have a tangible impact on the rest of the community.

What took place last summer in Southwick was different from the typical squabbles over land boundaries and construction noise that often come before Planning Boards. Over the first few months of 2021, “Project Bailey” was going through the initial proposal process for a vehicle processing facility that a then-anonymous company wanted to develop on College Highway.

By late-spring, that company was revealed to be Carvana, an online vehicle retailer that surged in value over the course of the pandemic, and was looking to expand while they were still a dominant force in the emerging online vehicle market.

As the name of the company and the scope of their proposed development was revealed to Southwick residents, the backlash began, and once-sparsely attended Planning Board meetings began to see attendance in the dozens. Dozens turned to hundreds, and protests began to take place outside of Town Hall.

The backlash grew in intensity to the point that Carvana pulled their application for the development without prejudice on July 20. The “without prejudice” designation means that the company could return with a new application in the future, but Carvana representatives told Southwick residents at the July 20 meeting that their return was highly unlikely.

Select Board Chair Joseph Deedy reflected on the whole saga, and how it became what it did. The same property had once been considered for a trucking terminal a few years ago, which was rejected in part because of the relatively poor impact-to-jobs ratio. Carvana was estimated to bring more than 400 jobs, compared to the trucking terminal’s 40. When the project, while still unnamed, was brought to the Select Board by the state, Select Board member Douglas Moglin was picked to be the board’s liaison for the project because of his previous planning experience.

Looking back, Deedy said that he thinks some of Carvana’s problems in Southwick were self-inflicted, and that they may not have been able to live up to their promises of success in the town.

“I think Carvana shot themselves in the foot from day one. Their numbers didn’t add up,” said Deedy, “They didn’t sell enough cars in the country to figure out how many would come through Southwick.”

In the aftermath of the Carvana saga, Southwick is still trying to decide how to handle future development in the town of under 10,000. For many opposed to Carvana, one of the major issues was that the scale of the development itself, and the type of industry it is, clashed with the type of community they wanted Southwick to continue being.

For some, however, there was concern that there is a sentiment against development in general now, and that proposed changes to Southwick’s bylaws would discourage even positive development in the future. Now, in early 2022, it is still unclear how, if at all, Southwick’s bylaws or general attitudes toward development will change. However, the two camps appear closer to coming to some sort of agreement.

One group that formed during the Carvana protests was known as “Save Southwick.” Diane Gale, a member of that group and resident of Southwick, has been working to draft a citizen petition on her own to change some of Southwick’s planning bylaws to prevent a Carvana situation in the future.

Her initial submission was an outright moratorium on all developments above a certain size, which would include developments the size of Carvana’s proposal. The moratorium would have lasted until the potential passage of a new Master Plan, which Southwick has not updated since 1967.

After hearing feedback from individuals on the Planning Board, Gale’s petition has slowly changed, and is no longer a proposal for a large development moratorium, but instead to add requirements for major developments to put forward a more comprehensive impact statement to be submitted with the initial application, rather than as sections over time after the application is submitted.

“There are no additional fees in the proposal. There is a requirement for impact statements, but for any special permit, these are already required in the bylaws. This proposal simply calls for a comprehensive, inclusive impact statement, defining the areas to be evaluated for a major project,” said Gale.

She also included requirements like an abandoned building surety bond, and developed a sort of “development standard” based on the state of development in Southwick today.

“The proposal allows for larger than what we have today, but nothing that would overwhelm the town in size or resources. The revisions being worked on right now provide for growth for existing business/industry, as well as future growth for any new major developments,” said Gale, “Nothing is included to prevent business and industry from happening in town, nor any particular type of industry.”

There have been major development proposals in Southwick since Carvana, but with nowhere near the same fanfare. The Planning Board and Conservation Commission approved a 100-unit residential development on Depot Street late last year, and are in the process of considering a large-scale solar panel development, neither of which come close to the physical scale of the Carvana proposal, which would have seen a 200,000 square foot building constructed on 65.7 acres of asphalt.

Planning Board Chair Michael Doherty, with whom Gale has been working to develop her proposal, said that he doesn’t think Carvana changed the development landscape in Southwick, if only because there are very few properties capable of a development like Carvana. Besides 686 College Hwy., he said most developments they deal with are relatively small. The main impact, he said, would be on the Carvana property itself.

“My suspicion is that this particular property is not going to be developed in a large-scale manner anytime soon,” said Doherty.

Though there are few large parcels of land ready to be developed, Doherty did point out that there are some properties that are currently occupied but may soon be vacant, which Gale’s proposals could apply to in some way. For that to happen, her citizen petition will need to be ironed out between herself and the Planning Board, which she and members of the board have said is coming closer to fruition.

“I have been communicating directly with the Planning Board Chair, Mike Doherty, and Town Planner, Jon Goddard, as well as one-on-one conversations with individual members of the Planning Board. Although some Planning Board meetings have been “intensely debated”, we are seeing progress,” said Gale, “This proposal is still at a flexible working document phase, and was presented as a starting point to address the future.”

If an agreement is reached on the exact wording of Gale’s proposal, it would then have to be approved by the Select Board to go through the public hearing process. If it successfully is passed by the Planning Board after a public hearing, Gale’s petition will be put on the warrant for the Annual Town Meeting in May, where residents will vote on it themselves.

“Twenty years ago, no one anticipated the enormous changes that the internet and e-commerce would make in every aspect of our lives and businesses. The bylaws certainly don’t address these world changes. We are behind the ball. Someone has to try to define it in present terms, and anticipate it for some part of the future. That’s what this is about, and hopefully, with the Planning Board, this proposal will move us closer to that,” said Gale.

Though the changes to the development landscape of Southwick are still debated and largely unclear, some tangible positive change has been observed, even after the ugliness that accompanied the Carvana saga.

“I have been impressed with the number of people who have been civically engaged since Carvana,” said Doherty, “I think that is a good thing, and dovetails nicely with the Master Plan Process. We didn’t have any problems getting people to join the committee.”

Planning Board member David Sutton, who vocally opposed Gale’s proposal at first but has since been working with her to refine it, said that the Carvana situation became overburdened with a flow of misinformation and divisiveness. The result was the death of the project altogether, even when Sutton said that Carvana was in the process of making concessions to its opposition.

“A lot of people got hurt on both sides of the spectrum,” said Sutton, “Lines of communication got shut down, and people got bitter.”

He was no fan of Gale’s proposal in the beginning, and considered it over-controlling.

“When it first came out it was pretty controlling to the point I was offended by it,” said Sutton.

After a few meetings of back and forth over her proposal, Sutton invited Gale directly to the table, and eventually the two would meet one-on-one to go over the plan in detail and figure out what parts will work and what won’t.

At this point, Sutton said he is much happier about where the proposal is, though work still needs to be done. He said he thinks it is likely that a version of this proposal makes it onto the Town Meeting warrant, and from there, it is in the voters’ hands.