admin @ Tue, 2005-10-25 12:46
ARNER - Ray Wentzell, the developer whose plan for two 10,000-square-foot strip malls off Exit 9 of Interstate 89 was rejected in 2003, has come back with a new application for his property.
The new plan calls for two 10,000-square-foot strip malls.
Whether this application is different from the one the planning board turned down two years ago -in a decision upheld by the Superior Court - is truly the $64,000 question.
Wentzell's attorney, Peter McGrath of Concord, says the application is, in fact, different. Not only does it include cupolas, a façade and landscaping, McGrath says, but it also meets the requirements set out in the Superior Court ruling.
McGrath believes the court turned his client down because he hadn't proved that his plan for the site was the best possible design despite the town's aesthetic concerns.
"The only reason the Superior Court found for the town was because the applicant failed to explain why the alternative shapes for the buildings were not appropriate," McGrath said. "This time, the engineer has submitted plans and letters. (The planning board has also had) two different meetings with testimony from the engineer explaining why this design is appropriate."
But to planning board chairwoman Barbara Annis, this plan looks mighty familiar.
"He's come back in with the exact same plan again," Annis said. "What he's presented to us is not any different at all. . . . The buildings, the parking lot, everything is the same."
Landscape architect George Pellettierisays that the buildings do look a little different.
"They appear to me to me to be substantially the same," said Pellettieri, who chairs a Warner group called Citizens for Smart Growth. "It looks like they've made a few minor changes."
But the cupolas and other architectural flourishes don't impress him much.
"They simply added those to the existing buildings as kind of a band-aid approach rather than looking at complete redesign," Pellettierisaid. "They appeared to do the least that they could do to make a minor change."
The new application also includes a list of possible tenants, including a Chinese restaurant, a pizza parlor, a video store, a nail and pedicure shop, a liquor store and a pharmacy.
Over the past few months, the planning board has twice heard testimony about the proposed buildings. The application will continue to sit on the board's agenda, Annis said, until it is accepted as complete. The board has sent Wentzell a letter outlining what must be done, but Annis declined to disclose the contents of the letter.
In 2003, the planning board's biggest concern was aesthetic. Planning board regulations specify that commercial buildings with parking in front are "not desirable"and that the best place for parking is in the back.
"We are looking for something that would be attractive, that would be appealing, that would fit in with the community," Annis said in an interview last week. "We are not a modernistic community - we are an old community."
This time, McGrath says, Wentzell's firm has done even more homework to show why it makes the most sense for the site to have parking in front. Reasons presented at planning board meeting range from emergency access to tenant visibility.
They've spent thousands of dollars hiring engineers to analyze the different possible orientations of the buildings and come up with lists of pluses and minuses for various scenarios.
For her part, Annis said she hasn't seen enough - just a few minutes of a posterboard presentation.
"I have had maybe 5 minutes of observing different sitings of the building from about 20 feet away,"Annis said. "That's not enough to really consume and analyze and think."
Over the past few years, the Exit 9 area - currently home to a McDonald's and a Market Basket -has been an area of intense interest in Warner.
Last year, Citizens for Smart Growth and the planning board jointly sponsored a weekend-long session, called a charrette, to brainstorm ideas for the future of the area near the exit.
The charrette brought together local residents with design professionals from a nonprofit called Plan NH. The overarching idea was to help find ways to incorporate that area into the town and make it feel more like the rest of Warner.
"We did a whole series of designs and the overriding principle is, if you call the area 'Exit 9,'you've already conceded it," said Jeff Taylor, a Concord planner and a member of Plan NH. "Exit 9 sounds like the New Jersey turnpike, not Warner."
The most memorable thing about Warner's charrette may have been the turnout.
"It was amazing," Taylor said, describing the number of people who came to each of the public sessions. "We typically get two, maybe three dozen, people. In Warner, we had over a hundred people at each session."
In addition, the Central New Hampshire Regional Planning Commission, another nonprofit, is currently wrapping up a corridor study on the area including Exit 9.
Jim Mitchell, who owns MainStreet Bookends, said that a lot of people in town care a lot about the future of the exit area.
"A lot of us have come from other areas of the country, and we've seen the sprawl," said Mitchell, who moved to the area from outside Washington, D.C., nine years ago. "We've seen what happens to really wonderful communities when uncontrolled growth occurs. This community is quite special in that it knows what looks good, what works."
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