YARMOUTH – Plans for a 38-lot residential development off Hillside Street are riling neighbors who worry about future cut-through traffic, and testing a major tenet of the town’s six-month-old comprehensive plan.

McKearney Village, proposed by Mike Albert of Pownal, would be the town’s largest single-family development in 20 years. As initially proposed, it would connect Hillside Street to Sycamore Drive, a dead-end lane in the established Applewood Farm neighborhood off West Main Street.

The proposal got preliminary approval from the Planning Board in March, despite strong opposition from residents of several nearby neighborhoods, including those near Harrison Middle School and Yarmouth High School.

Now, the developer is reworking the 53-acre proposal to allow only pedestrian and bicycle access to Sycamore Drive. He’s making the change despite strong opposition from several town officials who believe the streets should be fully connected to allow vehicle traffic and satisfy the new comprehensive plan.

For Fire Chief Pat Fairbanks, it’s a simple matter of public safety.

“If it was one or two houses up in there, it would be one thing, but there are a lot of houses up in there,” Fairbanks said. “The road needs to be paved and maintained year-round.”

Applewood Farm residents worry that connecting to the new development will invite cut-through traffic to West Main Street and worsen a speeding problem in their neighborhood.

“Applewood has been developed for over 20 years and not one person can come up with an example when their life or property was in jeopardy because rescue vehicles” didn’t have access from Hillside Street, wrote Tim Wheaton, a Hickory Lane resident, in a letter to the Planning Board.

In addition, residents of Ledgewood, Oakwood and other streets are concerned that McKearney Village will increase drivers’ tendency to cut through Harrison Middle School, Yarmouth Elementary School and Yarmouth High School to get to or avoid heavily traveled West Elm Street, Main Street and Portland Road.

At a public hearing last week, the Planning Board directed the developer to return July 27 with an alternative proposal showing only pedestrian and bicycle access to Applewood Farm.

A new proposal, submitted this week by Will Conway, project manager for Sebago Technics, shows recreational access between the two neighborhoods and a gate that could be opened for emergency and public works vehicles. “My client has no opposition to this change,” Conway said.

Fairbanks, the fire chief, said that in his experience, emergency gates are usually poorly maintained and impossible to access in spring mud and winter snow.

The developer’s alternative proposal veers from the comprehensive plan, which requires “the interconnection of streets in residential developments where feasible to create a network of streets and minimize the number of dead-end streets.”

The plan also calls for town officials to “explore improvements to create additional or improved interconnections within the existing street system to enhance its ability to function as a network that provides motorists, as well as pedestrians and bicyclists, with alternative routes to various destinations.”

Such interconnection avoids “forcing all traffic onto a small number of arterial and collector streets,” according to the plan.

Whether or not the Planning Board decides to connect the streets in McKearney Village and Applewood Farm, residents will continue to face traffic challenges, said Planning Director Vanessa Farr.

“Everyone is impacted by having few arterials,” Farr said. “Having a network of streets means traffic can disperse. We have some work to do, regardless of this project.”

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com

 

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