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Date: 1/10/2023
EASTHAMPTON – While nearly 100 residents showed up to the Easthampton Planning Board’s Jan. 3 meeting with another 30 online to participate in the public hearing over the proposed Tasty Top Development, the hearing was ultimately continued to the board’s Feb. 7 meeting after a receiving a late request from the applicant the day of the hearing.
The project, as presented at the Dec. 21 meeting, spans 93 to 97 Northampton St. and will include a gymnastics and daycare facility, 10 three-story apartment buildings with 176 apartment units, two restaurant pad sites, two mixed use retail and office buildings with 26 apartment units above, one retail building and two commercial storage buildings.
Luke Showalter, an engineer with Furrow Engineering who represented the project’s proponents at the meeting, detailed why they requested more time.
“Currently we are still working to address comments from the last Planning Board meeting. We also received a good amount of comments from the Conservation Commission we’re working to address, including some stormwater revisions,” he said. “Also, our traffic consultant has scheduled an additional day of traffic counts at both intersections on Northampton Street.”
Showalter explained that the applicant wanted to wait for a traffic count after the holidays and added that the applicants’ legal counsel could not make the meeting, resulting in the request for continuance.
While he said he understood the request for a continuance, board Chair Jesse Belcher-Timme said he did not want to see similar requests in the future because of how public the process is for the project.
“Sometimes there are strategic reasons why – I mean I think there is close to 100 people in the room and another 30 people online – so we always want to make sure it isn’t being done for a nefarious purpose, but I think we also gave you a lot of marching orders at the last meeting and I do want you guys to be gathering that information, but we do want to be careful going forward that this isn’t something that happens regularly,” he said.
Showalter added that while Tasty Top Development was prepared to discuss the project at the meeting, they could not put together everything requested for the meeting.
Board member Christopher Cockshaw suggested additional days for the traffic study.
“I think if you’re out there it really makes sense to get a couple of days instead of just the one day so you can get more data points so you’re not just out there for a particular few hours where there may not be a lot of traffic,” he said. “The more data you get, the more we can rely on it.”
Belcher-Timme echoed similar sentiments to Cockshaw.
“I think the more credibility you can put into this one where people feel like they can rely on the data, the less likely we need to do more comprehensive second opinions,” he said.
Board member Daniel Hartman also suggested extending the area of the traffic study to the rotary on the street and the previous study was “constricted.”
“I thought that the extents were cut short, and I think anybody who drives through the town understands that it doesn’t just stop at West Street there just past the bridge, but the impacts are chased all the way through to the intersection with Antonio’s Pizza and then you are impacting that third leg as well toward the mill,” he said. “It’s a lot more complex than what was presented last time.”
Hartman added that queueing along Northampton Street can be a significant issue at times, specifically with the Burger King located on the road. By conducting the study over multiple days, he said it can account for anomalies in the amount of traffic on the street.
The board agreed to continue the hearing to its Feb. 7 meeting, the project was also set to be discussed at the Conservation Commission's Jan. 9 meeting but requested a continuance to the Jan. 23 meeting.
As a part of the board’s regular business, the board voted to have Belcher-Timme continue as chair and to have James Zarvis continue as the vice chair.