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Date: 10/24/2023
EASTHAMPTON – During its Oct. 17 meeting, the Easthampton Planning Board once again conducted a public hearing over the proposed Tasty Top Development, which will be located from 93 to 97 Northampton St.
The development is expected to include 188 housing units across 10 apartment buildings, three mixed-use commercial units, a restaurant site, a bank site, a retail space, a Roots Learning facility and a Roots Gymnastics facility.
To begin the discussion, Luke Showalter, an engineer with Furrow Engineering explained that among the additions to the latest set of plans was a roundabout, replacing what was previously an intersection in earlier plans, and introduced traffic engineer Keri Pyke to discuss the layout.
“We came jointly to the conclusion that the roundabout being the preference. Roundabouts have benefits, particularly for safety, they provide a safety improvement with a reduction in fatal and injury crashes versus a traffic signal,” she said. “That typically is because you have lower speeds at the size of the roundabout we are talking about.”
Pyke added that as an additional boon to safety, at roundabouts pedestrians typically have to look only one way as the traffic all flows in the same direction.
For the development, the roundabout would have an inscribed diameter of 134 feet, with a potential for two lanes on the west side of the street.
Richard Bryant, a representative from Stantec, the company conducting the peer review of the traffic study, said a lot of work had been done to get to the roundabout plan.
“The state will have final say on the design details, and we knew that from the beginning. Working with you and staff, it’s always been our objective to at least reach an agreement on the configuration of the intersection, and the location of intersection,” he said. “I do think we have agreement on location and configuration, such that the decision is in the board’s hands.”
Regarding the roundabout, City Planner Jeff Bagg explained that he had received an informal indication from representatives from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation that “the concept of the roundabout seems viable.”
“There was a note that there could be a requirement for a shared use path on both sides of the roundabout, but in theory it is a plan that we had been searching for something that’s viable to provide to MassDOT, and they did not do an in-depth review – they have a lengthy access permit process – but it was an indication they see merit in it,” Bagg said.
Along with the roundabout, representatives for the development also included a request for four waivers for the project, including for permission to make one restaurant pad site into a bank site, coming in below the required housing density by 12 units, additional parking and a ground floor waiver for the residential buildings.
One sticking point among members of the board was the waiver for additional parking. Per the zoning, the development would include 108 parking spaces, while they were requesting 212 parking spaces.
Showalter said the decision for increased parking came from research using the Institute of Traffic Engineers parking generation manual.
“We did look at the different uses for this project in the ITE manual and some real-life data for the gymnastics center. We determined that there were some uses that would not have adequate parking if we went by the smart-growth zoning standards,” he said.
Showalter explained that the minimum parking for the multi-family dwellings were too low at 58 spaces, the gymnastics center was too low at 7 spaces and the restaurant was too low at 43 spaces. Citing the ITE manual, he said they were looking for 82 spaces for the multi-family dwellings, 34 spaces for the gymnastics center and 96 spaces for the restaurant.
Planning Board Chair Jesse Belcher-Timme said that his biggest concern was for parking.
“That’s the one that makes me more uncomfortable than the other ones personally, because I think we’re trying to reduce paved surfaces and reduce parking when you have a lot of potential for shared parking,” he said.
Board member Daniel Hartman said using the ITE manual for the housing parking was a “logical approach.”
“One space for a three-bedroom, or even a two-bedroom apartment, doesn’t seem like reality to me,” he said. “Those units, even if it’s a teenage child, you’re gonna have more than one car per household, I think it’s pretty common through all households in this town.”
Belcher-Timme explained that the whole point of the smart-growth district was to reduce parking.
“It’s like aspirational for the smart-growth concept, that it’s supposed to reduce demands for cars, especially if it’s like a densely populated area and there’s public transportation, but I agree that’s currently not what a typical resident would use,” he said.
Hartman did agree that there was some room for debate over the parking for the restaurant.
“It’s the restaurant to me that there could be some discussion on 100 or so spots for a sit-down restaurant. Especially with the adjacent parking nearby, you know, the bank, there could be some overlap here, I think that’s personally where I would push back a little,” he said.
Hartman added that the shared spots in the area could lead to a reduction in parking for the restaurant.
Tasty Top Development owner Frank DeMarinis explained that he requested less spots than what were required for the restaurant.
“The restaurant prototype for that facility is actually 130 parking spots, I don’t like building parking spots that aren’t getting used, it’s not fun, but I definitely don’t like being in a situation where people are parking in the street causing traffic problems, and it’s happened to other businesses that we’ve built. I’m very cautious with it, I think we did a really good job earmarking spaces in case we need it, but we didn’t go overzealous with it,” DeMarinis said.
After some further discussion, the board and DeMarinis came to an agreement that if the parking was not sufficient, he could come back before the board to request an additional 24 spaces in a green space in front of the site.
The Tasty Top Development will come before the Planning Board again at its Nov. 14 meeting.