TOPSHAM

Topsham residents voiced concerns Tuesday night to the Planning Board with a developer’s plan to build a 15-lot subdivision at the end of Homeplace, especially a town ordinance requirement that would result in the road connection of Route 24 and Foreside Road through the subdivision.

Tom Bethea submitted an application for the 15–lot subdivision called “ The Glades Above Homeplace,” which was open to comments from the public during a hearing held by the Planning Board. Board member Scott Libby announced at the start of the meeting that the hearing will be tabled and continued when a revised plan comes back to the board.

No decisions were made but many questions and concerns were voiced by the public, who left few seats empty during the meeting. Bethea, who lives in Chicago, said from 1977 into the mid-1980s, he assembled six separate contiguous parcels on the east side of Topsham — 55 acres total. This land was assembled “ for high quality, long-view, sustainable residential development.”

After the first 18 home sites on Homeplace were laid out, Bethea said, “other responsibilities took me out of state, but I always held on to the goal of coming back and finishing this.”

Last spring he started a subdivision application process, he said, “with a plan to route a single entry onto my land from Somerset Place,” in the Arbor Avenue development. He planned to come in east of the dead end Somerset Place, put a cluster of homes in on the east side of the stream and continue to a terminus on the east side of the stream. The road he said, would have served a largely car-free cluster of smaller homes. His intent was to leave the majority of the remaining 36 acres predominately undisturbed.

However regulation and marketing factors sent his engineer back to the drawing board, including the fact that the town’s subdivision regulations don’t allow new roads with available connections, to remain unconnected.

Curt Neufeld of Sitelines said Bethea is proposing to separate 15 lots to be subdivided from the overall parcel, in two phases. The site is currently wooded and has trails running through it. Public water runs through the site and because it is on the aquifer protection zone, the layout will have come common septic areas. The first phase would come off Somerset Place, with no stream crossing and there would be no connection until phase 2.

Neufeld said timing of the two phases will be market driven but realistically he said it would probably be three year period for phase 1 and may be a six or seven year process to fill all the lots.

During the hearing, Tom Tuttle of 7 Homeplace said his biggest issue is the proposed connection of Middlesex Road (Route 24) and Foreside Road over Brookside Drive and Homeplace. The roads, as constructed, should not have an increase in traffic, he argued. The sharpness in and out of the traffic circle at the end of Brookside Drive can interfere with the attention of drivers, accentuated by snow plowing practices. There are no sidewalks and a portion of road over a culvert traps snow due to guardrails making this section effectively one-lane in winter.

Tuttle also questioned what impact the development would have on the basement water problem some homes on Homeplace experience as do many in the adjacent Bay Park development. Other residents expressed concern about the water table as well — an issue the town has tried to address in recent years such as by lowering the ponds at the transfer station.

The development Neufeld said is too small to have a discernible impact on the water table.

Regarding the aquifer, “It is a huge issue,” said Carol Purinton of 17 Homeplace, “that if there is any type of change in the landscape, it makes a huge difference in the water in the basements.”

“ I don’t mean to minimize anybody’s water issues at all,” Neufeld said. He said homes in Bay Park were built on a high water table and he doesn’t believe they caused the water table. “The idea is that we build these homes so that they have either positive gravity foundation drainage or perhaps no basements so the impact is as minimal as possible.”

Other residents questioned the impact on wildlife traversing the property the subdivision would be constructed on, the impact on quality of life of residents there and the safety of the many people who walk along and children who play on the dead end road. One Homeplace resident expressed concern that the proposed plan keeps changing.

Michael Whitney of 9 Homeplace asked the board if residents too could seek a waiver to the road connectivity requirement, or are they “passive victims,” to the ordinance.

Town Planner Rod Melanson said residents can request a workshop with the board to look at the matter but the issue of road connectivity always comes up when a subdivision is proposed, and is then amended. When there is an active application before the Planning Board however, amending an ordinance is not advisable for the town or the applicant, he said.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

The Times Record Sustaining Sponsor
We believe a community must be informed to thrive. bowdoin.edu