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Date: 6/29/2022
WESTFIELD – Hundreds more cars on the road at each shift change, a couple hundred more trucks every day, diesel emissions and light pollution and beeping noises from early in the morning to late at night: North Road residents say a Target Corp. distribution center isn’t the neighbor they want.
“It’s going to be torture every day for us,” Tommy Neidig said at a June 21 meeting of the Westfield Planning Board. “This is our home here. It’s going to be miserable now. Nobody’s going to want to buy my property in a couple years.”
Target’s engineering company, VHB, presented stormwater and traffic plans to the Planning Board, which voted to continue a public hearing on the project to its July 19 meeting. Michael Petrin of VHB said the plans include filtration systems and basins to keep stormwater on the property and prevent fuels and oils from entering the groundwater.
The 525,800-square-foot warehouse will receive shipments of goods from manufacturers, and send trucks to Target retail stores throughout the northeastern United States. No retail sales or home deliveries will be based at the site.
Rob Nagi, traffic engineer for VHB, said the facility is projected to generate 200 truck trips per day, and about 950 employee car trips per day, mostly in a day shift that starts before the morning rush hour and an evening shift that starts in mid-afternoon. Employees would use parking lots off North Road. All truck traffic would enter and exit the site from Falcon Drive, and Nagi said 90 percent of trucks would head straight to or from the Massachusetts Turnpike (Interstate 90) via Southampton Road (Routes 10 and 202).
Opponents, however, said they were worried truckers will use their street as a shortcut to northbound Interstate 91.
“We can’t control the trucks,” said former City Councilor Mary Ann Babinski. “They don’t want to get stuck on Southampton Road. [But] time is money for people who live up there, too. They’ll get stuck.”
The traffic impact on North Road is “much more muted” in this proposal than a 2005 plan at this site, said Nagi, who stood by the projection that the vast majority of trucks won’t use North Road. He called the difference “night and day.”
Nagi said in recognition of the increase in traffic, Target is willing to pay “a fair share contribution” to widen and re-engineer the intersections of Southampton Road with North Road and with Falcon Drive.
North Road resident Guy D’Angelo said this part of Westfield already has enough truck-based businesses.
“You’ve got seven distribution facilities that have been put on the North Side already,” he said. “This [would be] the biggest disaster that’s ever been put on the North Side.”
Maria Lankowski echoed D’Angelo’s concerns about trucking businesses, and added that the project is near the Barnes Aquifer, which serves as one of Westfield’s drinking water sources.
North Road neighbors also worried about having to live across the street from an active freight yard, and whether enough trees will remain to screen the lights and sounds.
“I hear the trucks now, in the wintertime. I can imagine what I’ll hear if this building gets up,” said Kenneth Lafreniere.
“We are horrified that we are no longer going to see the beautiful trees in front of us, we’re going to see a distribution center,” said Patti Guay.
Petrin said the plan is for at least 100 feet of forested buffer between the road and any building or parking lot. The buffer will be wider in most places, he said.