WESTFIELD – The Planning Board voted 6-0 to approve a preliminary subdivision plan for a 10-lot development on 28 acres of land off Montgomery Road Tuesday night.
The developer of the subdivision, Mark Bergeron of Bent Tree Development, LLC, will now prepare a definitive subdivision plan for submission to the board. The subdivision will be serviced by a 1,000-foot-long cul-de-sac road.
The details of the project were presented to the board members by Rob Levesque of R Lévesque Associates, Inc. The subdivision will occupy about half of the 28 acres of property owned by the William F. Reed Family Nominee Trust.
The site is bordered by Montgomery Road on the West, the Massachusetts Turnpike on the north, Powdermill Brook on the east and Simmons Brook to the south. Much of the land near the brooks and associated wetlands will be left undisturbed and will be controlled by the subdivision homeowners’ association.
Levesque said that the subdivision will be served by city water. An eight-inch main will be connected to the 16-inch water line under Montgomery Road. The 10 proposed lots will have septic systems. The lots will range in size from an acre to an acre and a half.
Principal Planner Jay Vinskey said this is the first subdivision plan submitted in recent years and the first of his two-year tenure.
“The preliminary plan is conceptual, so they will have to come back with the definitive plan which will be fully engineered and have much greater detail,” Vinskey said.
Levesque requested four waivers from the subdivision regulations for the project, including installing sidewalks on only one side of the road. Other waivers pertained to the scale of the plan, and intersection angle (with Montgomery Road) other than 90 degrees. Levesque said that the intersection angle will be 94 degrees. The final waiver is the center line offset from the right of way centerline because of the shape of the property.
The board voted to allow the sidewalk waiver, but will require a “substantially equivalent (sidewalk) construction along Montgomery Road or monetary contribution for sidewalk construction along Montgomery Road toward the high school or St. Pierre’s Lane. The plan should comply with all other rules and regulations.”
