BATH

The Planning Board Tuesday night tabled its review of three applications submitted by TMC New England LLC proposing a new CVS Pharmacy at the corner of Court and Floral streets.

Through the course of the meeting, the Planning Board and two neighbors of the project raised several concerns and questions during discussion of the three applications.

City Planner Andrew Deci said the board was looking at a three-part application approval for the redevelopment of 1.8 acres at the corner of Court and Floral streets, properties where there is now Gilmore’s Seafood and Dawgtopia and a third building.

The project requires a land use code map amendment to change the land use designate from R1 and C2 to C4, the city’s highway intensive commercial district. The applicant also seeks contract rezoning to develop the property with infractions to the setbacks and yard areas; and will be looking for the Planning Board to recommend passage to the City Council.

The applicant also needs site plan approval. They propose to demolish existing structures and replace it with a 13,225-square-foot CVS Pharmacy with a drivethrough window.

The applicant must offer public benefits in order to get contract rezoning. Land use attorney Sandra Guay with Woodman Edmands Danylik & Austin, P.A., said CVS is offering enhanced site lighting, an enhanced retaining wall and fencing, enhancement of the building facade and screening along the roof line, and an expanded traffic study. That study includes speed data collection of existing traffic on Court and Floral streets, an evaluation of the impacts of closing Quimby Street, as well as analysis of a deceleration lane for the Route 1 access to the shopping center.

Guay added that CVS is offering the city $35,000 toward the cost of that deceleration lane identified as a possible benefit project, or for another project that would enhance this part of Route 1 and the shopping center access.

Board member Clarence Stilphen said the board had previously told the applicant it would be nice to see a more traditional roof line to transition from the shopping center to the residential district, something CVS tries to stay away from because it makes their buildings very tall.

Chair Robert Oxton said the shopping center tried to make its upgrade compatible with the city, which had a lot of Federal and Greek Revival architecture styles.

“To me this just doesn’t fit into Bath for what we’re looking for,” Oxton said of CVS’s proposed building.

Two abutters spoke on the project. One suggested closing off the proposed third entrance on Floral Street to minimize the impact of vehicles driving straight from the drive-through onto the street. They expressed concern about landscape buffering, noise buffering and the impacts of a speaker the store would use as well as from the roof top vents, the lighting encroachment, and the potential of their property becoming more wet as a result of the retaining wall CVS proposes.

The project engineer, David Fenstermacher of Vanessa Hangen Brustlin, Inc., can go back and talk to CVS about changing the prototype building, noting the deviation will cost money and it will depend on what CVS can afford.

All three applications were found complete by the five board members present, but were continued. The project will likely be before the board again next month.

The Planning Board also approved a site plan application for filling activities at 140 Richardson St. at the corner of Richardson Street and State Road, across from the hotel under construction.

Michael Gotto of Stoneybrook Consultants, representing the applicant Bathres, LLC was with one of the owners, developer George Schott. Bathres bought three homes for sale across the street from the hotel, totaling 34,369 square feet and razed them. Gotto said they are looking to stabilize the property with riprap using stone product from the hotel site on a temporary base to have a development pad ready.

Oxton expressed concern at such a large mass of riprap wall and board members spent a lot of time discussing having the applicant buffer use some green screening such as loaming and seeding over the riprap. Gotto said they have some trees existing on the site which should help buffer it, and could plant more.

The board approved the applications subject to the condition that the applicant submit to the planning director for approval by planning staff, a loam and seed plan along the northerly boundary to the northwest corner of the property, and submit a planting program along the westerly side line to the south end of the riprap. Approval also requires any future development on this site to be reviewed again for a landscape plan.

Schott said the hotel development is on a tight deadline and the plan was for trees to be cut Wednesday morning and stumped in the next week.

Gotto and Schott also talked to the board in a preapplication workshop about the amendment to the site plan approval they got for the hotel to be constructed at 139 Richardson St. They apologized for having to come back to the board but said the hotel franchise brand, Marriott, wouldn’t sign off on the final design because Marriott has a newer prototype. The Planning Board didn’t like that architecture as much, but weren’t opposed to a modified version.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

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