The Middlebury Conservation Commission (CC) at its May 26 meeting continued a public hearing on a proposed building at the corner of Southford and Benson Roads. It also approved repairs to a beach wall on Lake Quassapaug and discussed extension of drainage pipe repairs at Juniper’s restaurant.
Plans by Drubner Commercial Real Estate for a new 9,600-square-foot commercial office building on a mostly wetlands five-acre property at the Northeast corner of Benson and Southford Roads were continued until June 30 to allow final plan changes to be reviewed. The project was initially accepted Feb. 24 after environmental scientist George Logan of Rema Ecological Services LLC in Manchester explained the infrastructure improvements, parking and storm-water management system designed by Waldo and Associates LLC of Guilford. The proposed building would sit between two wetlands areas and require permanent fill of approximately 2,700 square feet and temporary fill of 580 square feet to bring utilities, including sewer, to the building.
Logan said the wetland nearest Benson Road is an open meadow that has watercourses draining to the second, larger wetland via a ditch that has an existing man-made driveway and a bridge that once allowed access to a since-removed farmhouse. The plans propose filling the ditch watercourse along with a small run of wetlands approximately 1,340 square feet in size. The building will be sited so all the parking and disturbances would be facing away from the larger wetland with at least 50 feet of buffer from the back of the disturbance to that wetland.
Logan described the mitigation plan as aggressive, with a wetland enhancement and restoration in one area of the plans and a wetland creation on the upper area for a total of almost 6,000 square feet. Dense vegetation of the slope and enhancement of the existing buffer are proposed for the back of the building and significant trees have been marked. An engineering report given to commissioners indicated no increased peak discharges, and a letter from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said species such as hare’s tail, white-fringed orchid, black spruce and dwarf mistletoe were within or near the parcel. Logan stated neither their habitats nor the species are in or in close proximity to the acreage. He said wildlife usage would be impacted because the property is within a few hundred feet of a major transportation corridor.
Because of the complexity of the application, commissioners required a $2,000 fee for an outside technical review by Ed Pawlak, Soil Scientist with Connecticut Ecosystems in Manchester. Logan agreed to have the site staked once the snow cleared and to submit all plans signed and sealed by an engineer.
At the May 26 meeting Pawlak disclosed for the record that he and Logan were colleagues who had worked together in Cheshire in the 1990s. He said he had visited the site three times and found the wetland delineation to be substantially accurate, complimenting the mitigation plans for thoroughness. He said his written report would be made after he had reviewed final constructions plans and his recommendations for changes to sediment and erosion control techniques. Logan said he had met with Pawlak, wetlands enforcement officer (WEO) Deborah Seavey and town engineer John Calabrese to discuss issues and concerns. He supplied a more detailed construction narrative, standalone erosion and sedimentation control plan, and a construction sequence for the detention basins. The revised plans reduce wetlands impact to 1,538-square-feet from 3,300, partially by moving four parking spaces from the front to the rear of the building. A two-foot high retaining wall was proposed to help provide as much infiltration as possible for storm water, and runoff from the roof will go into an infiltration trench. Overflow from larger storms will go into a single retention basin instead of the one initially proposed, and be calculated to handle 1-½ inches of rainfall per hour.
In questions from commissioners, Calabrese told Chairman Vincent LoRusso the roof and parking area cover .728 acres of the property and David Theroux, speaking for Drubner, said the proposed building was not a “spec” building but instead a footprint for the type of building his customers are seeking.
Reconstruction of two 85-foot sections of an omega-shaped beach wall on property owned by Jack Starr of 2 Sandy Beach Road was unanimously approved. Starr told Commissioner James Crocicchia the property line would be extended by about 3 or 4 feet once the project was complete to protect existing trees, saying his goal was to reconstruct it so it was safe and durable.
In new business, Town Engineer John Calabrese told commissioners a large sinkhole in Juniper’s parking lot had been repaired. The sinkhole, caused by a rotted and collapsed 15-inch corrugated metal drain, appeared after a May rainstorm and was fixed with verbal emergency permission by Seavey and approved April 26 with a recommendation by Calabrese that 18-inch reinforced concrete pipe be used for the replacement.
Dr. Dean Yimoyines, owner of the adjoining Whittemore Crossing property, reminded commissioners he had been given approval in July 2013 to run concrete pipe from the collapsed area all the way back to the property he had acquired from Tara Perrotti. He said Junipers had not agreed to the piping at that time but suggested the problem would likely recur due to vegetation and curve of the trench feeding the new pipe. He asked for guidance on whether to utilize rip-rap, pipe, or other mitigation and was instructed to submit a new application.
In other matters, Calabrese said the Town of Middlebury was discussing a slight relocation of the greenway near Lake Elise with the Middlebury Land Trust, owner of the property.
The next regular CC meeting will be Tuesday, June 30, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 26 at Shepardson Community Center.
