The meeting of the Perkins/Mills Corp. Study Committee was
called to order by Chairman
Attorney Matt Donahue with Mr. McElroy
General Q&A
The following members of the Committee were in attendance:
Peter Guglietta,
Jim Carter, Resident
David Silva, Resident
Steve Deackoff, Resident
Steve Sadwick, Director of Comm. Devel. & Ex-Officio Committee Member
Thomas Ryan, Chief of the Fire Dept. and Fire Dept. Representative
Mike Sitar, Resident
Al Donovan, Deputy Chief of Police representing Police Chief Mackey
Absent:
Recording secretary Charlene Dennehey was also present and the meeting was televised live and tape recorded.
Guests:
Don McElroy, EPA
Attorney Matthew Donahue for EPA
Attorney Richard O’Neill, Representing the Perkins Family Trust
Elizabeth Link and David Wahr, Representing Mills Corp. Corporation
Clerk David Silva announced the September 2, 2003 Minutes were not available this evening and requested their formal approval after review for the October 9, 2003 meeting. An additional option to paper copies, is to post them on the web site for residents.
Mr. Sears stated that if Mills Corp. is the 800 pound gorilla at the end of South Street, the 80,000 pound gorilla is the Sutton Brook Disposal area and otherwise known as Rocco’s Dump. As it is a Tier 1 hazardous waste site and as the town has been designated as a potentially-responsible party, we will be told some time in the future what we will be paying in some way for the cleanup. Without speculation on costs, responsibilities, and finite items, the town of Tewksbury some day soon will have to pay a healthy amount to get that fixed.
Why does this impact this Perkins/Mills Corp. Study Committee? There is a major traffic matter that needs to be decided, and how and what goes down South Street for vehicle traffic, is a matter of concern to all here. The matter of a ramp providing direct access to Route 93 is also a major concern for many folks. We need to understand, with Mr. McElroy’s and Attorney Donahue’s help, some of the variables we have to think and plan about in this project.
Sutton Brook Disposal Area Info. -- Don McElroy, from the
EPA
Mr. Don McElroy of the Environmental Protection Agency, introduced himself as the project manager for this site from a technical standpoint. Sutton Brook is a superfund site and he briefly went through what it meant and what the EPA would need to do with a site like this. Initially, they need to characterize the site, i.e. (a) where’s the waste? (b) a landfill; what’s the extent of it? (c) where’s the contamination and to what extent, i.e. ground water contamination. Get a handle on where it is, at what levels, where it’s going. Risks from ground water contamination, address those risks, i.e. drinking water source, and control those risks. Clean up the water or prevent people from drinking it.
Mr. Sears: what is the hammer over the head of the town in taking remedial action?
Attorney Donahue: The town has been identified by the EPA as a potentially responsible party among some 42 other parties. The way the statute works, the EPA stands where it stands with all its regulatory authority under the statue to force the parties to participate in some collective action to clean up the site. In that process, the allocation of those costs will be determined. The current status of the process, is some subset of the PRP group, is participating in a mediated process attempting to determine an allocation and investigation of the site, i.e. the study of the site previously referred to, and determine from there how you clean it up. The extent of the contamination.
Mr. Sears: It would have to be brought back to some sort of standard of cleanliness I would gather.
Attorney Donahue: That would be determined by the study to what degree and the extent.
Mr. Sears: You would either dig it out the brown field alternative, take the stuff off site, or cap it. In both instances, it involves trucking. Please explain what is involved in trucking in either of those scenarios.
Mr. McElroy:
The first scenario of the excavation landfill, is highly unlikely. There are instances of landfills being mined
for reclaimable resources but typically that happens when there’s a lot more
known of what’s in there as opposed to going on a fishing expedition where you
hope you’ll find stuff. There’s still
not a desire to open up landfills because potentially you’re making
contaminants more mobile than they already are.
Never say never but it’s more likely for particularly sizeable landfills
to be capped. We’d be looking at all
options that make sense but if betting, that’s a reasonable bet and people in
the industry whether at EPA or elsewhere, would probably make a similar bet. Trucking scenarios are right; significant
amount of material brought in for capping purposes. No guesstimate of daily traffic but roughly,
a similar size landfill in
Mr. Sears: Compared to this dump here, an equivalent or how would you gauge it?
Mr. McElroy: There are no two superfund sites identical. The special case here is the landfill has two lobes with Sutton Brook right in between them and the landfill appears to potentially toe or butt right into the Brook so how to address that is a question in need of study. If the Brook were out of the equation and sheer line of material, they’re in a similar ballpark.
Questions from the Board:
Mr. Deackoff: What is Attorney Donahue’s role in this?
Attorney Matthew Donahue introduced himself as with
Eno, Boulet, Martin & Donahue in
Mr. Silva: 150 trucks; is that 150 trucks or truck trips?
Mr. McElroy: A significant difference, trucks 120 and truck trips, 240, estimated. In any case, at peak times, a lot of trucks.
Mr. Sears: South Street and 18-wheelers full of dirt; do you see any difficulty of 2 trucks passing each other, going and coming on that street?
Mr. McElroy: Sure, not the most ideal situation, no questions about that. They can make it, have over the years, but far from ideal.
Mr. Sears: How much does a loaded truck weigh? On Bridge Street, culverts by the Shawsheen River have recently been renewed but is questionable if it can take repeated traffic such as that; many structures in and around town as well, weight concerns on a continual basis. Maybe Public Safety can address it.
Al Donovan:
Mr. Sears: Where do you see the truck getting off 93 driving up to the site?
Mr. Donovan: East Street to Main Street down through South Street; not allowed to go through Salem Road and concerns about the Sutton Brook culverts just repaired; usually floods in the timeframe anyway.
Mr. Sears: Timeframe of getting the matter accomplished, capped and to the level the EPA would say okay.
Mr. McElroy: The beginning of the process, the study of the site, what contamination is where, etc.; Construction time: Initially, we do a remedial investigation -- feasibility is the term -- of feasibility study for what contamination is where, what causes a risk, and how it could potentially be controlled would the be feasibility study that we’d look at different alternatives, i.e. capping, dealing with the Brook, wetland issues that may exist. Various times during the process, we’d come to the public with our findings and recommendations and ultimately EPA would make a remedy decision that would say, a cap, dealing with the Brook in this way, and these wetlands need to be remediated. At that point, the chosen remedy would need to be designed and get an agreement with parties to do the design work and the remediation work and when the design is finished, the construction can start. The construction start is the 2-2/12 period that the Sheaffer landfill took. We’re not next door to that construction start time period. We are looking at trying to start the study work in the spring of 2004 and realistically, the Brook and its proximity to the landfill and the 2 different roads, is a greatly complicating issue in my mind. Realistically, if things go well, a 2-year timeframe to get from starting the study to picking a remedy is not unreasonable to look for.
Mr. Sears entertained other questions from the Board members. Hearing none, the meeting continued according to the agenda, however, he requested that Mr. McElroy and Attorney Donohue remain at the session for upcoming information by Mills Corp. Corporation in case they were needed to answer questions or clarify issues.
Steve Deackoff: To Mr. McElroy, it’s more likely to be capped than naturally attenuate; reason for capping versus leaving it alone?
Mr. McElroy: The landfill may toe into the brook, meaning there’s waste and direct contact with the surface water of Sutton Brook. The general theory of capping is to try to remove the waste from having water percolate through it. As of now, it appears to be just daily cover on the landfill which doesn’t prevent water from going right through it. If there is waste there, water will continue to go through it and leak out contaminants into either surface water or ground water to try to remove the percolation and dry the landfill out and remove it from being a prime source of continuing contamination.
Mr. Sears thanks the EPA representatives for their information and questions will be welcomed at the end of the discussion.
Mr. Sears stated that this Committee has been charged with
a task: to come up with a study report if it is to be germane at all to the
Mills Corp. project and if they keep with the February Special Town Meeting
date, that’s pretty concentrated to get stuff done. We then have the Land Study Committee of the
Mr. Sadwick stated that the Town has a request before it to make a significant decision and there are many unknowns from a cost benefit perspective. We put together a draft scope of study which looked at a number of different impacts from fiscal, public safety, traffic, environmental, land use, health and others. If the proposal continues to move forward, the proponent would have to file with the MEPA office [Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act office] which looks at a number of different impacts and what we’re asking for in our study are things they will be preparing for the MEPA study. Also, if the town adopts the zoning change that will be requested, any special permit granting authority would be looking at impact. All of this is being developed now over the course of time by the proponent and we’ve come to realize that this volunteer Committee and the town itself does not have the breadth and depth to perform any type of review on short notice.
What a Peer Review does is it allows for a professional review of technical data. You’d find with the MEPA filing, all of the initial field tests and studies are all done by the proponent delivered to the executive office of Environmental Affairs and then they review the study being given to them. Here, with special permit granting authority, it’s the same thing. The proponent actually puts together drainage studies, traffic studies, etc. that the special permit granting authority would be interested in. The proponent puts the report together, then we hire professionals to take a look at that. It’s not outside of being reasonable for us to expect the same things with the proposal that’s coming in before this committee right now. We want to address the process. The Selectmen have statutory authority to collect funds for this purpose. It would be given to the Selectmen for a special account for this specific purpose of reviewing the project. As this progresses, the whole process would be no different than the recently-completed Master Plan process whereby we have a number of evenings that are dedicated to discuss different topics. If we’re asking for the proponents to do the initial studies, we mirror our meeting schedule and topics of the evening around what they believe would be available for that night. There’s a proposed meeting schedule distributed to the committee this evening and it goes through the dates we have already identified and talks about starting with this evening’s submission of the Draft Site Plans and then starting to get into next meeting, Zoning Bylaw Review draft proposed; Civil Engineering Review of both water and sewer-related issues, and October 23 look at financial implications, economic development, and other public safety-related issues. This schedule lays this all out so everyone will be aware of what’s going to be discussed that evening and hopefully, we’ll have some information that will be brought forth by Mills Corporation so that we’ll be prepared to entertain questions and develop our own questions from the committee.
I recommend that we use the town’s existing consultants for Civil Engineering, Traffic, and Wetlands. We have an established track record with 3 different firms that represent Planning Board, Conservation Commission, and sometimes the ZBA. That’s the beginning really; anything else we would probably have to look at how we would want to price those things out and go out to bid for the Peer Review piece. I will bring in some information at a later meeting, probably the next meeting, to talk about those items but this is just to set the record straight as to how I think we should proceed in the future and don’t believe it’s out of the ordinary for this type of request before the town.
Mr. Sears: How would this be funded?
Mr. Sadwick: The proponent would pay for that; they have no say technically as to who it is that we would use as a consultant to review the information that is brought in only if there is an issue about conflicts of interest or if they question the level of expertise of the consultant. Then there’s a whole appeal process but I don’t believe we’ll get to that point. The way I’ve handled it in the past with Planning Board and Conservation Commission, is to have the consultants understand what the scope is so that we get a price tag and then I would go to the proponents, the money would be deposited, and as the services are being utilized, then the consultants are paid. It’s standard with comprehensive permits that the ZBA has that authority for different aspects of impact that they would want to look at. The town, both my department and finance dept., have a process in place to do this right now.
Mr. Sears opened the discussion to Board Members.
Mr. Silva: Has the proponent agreed to this concept, this idea?
Mr. Sadwick: The concept, yes.
Mr. Deackoff: How do you see the schedule of the review -- they prepare something, that gets sent for analysis, and then on this meeting scheduled, we discuss the Peer review?
Mr. Sadwick: I have a feeling that the schedule you have before you are the dates that they, the proponent, would have this information available. Water and sewer could take longer; will have available later and make available. There will be a slight lag in some of these items and we may have to adjust the schedule a little bit.
Mr. Deackoff:
Then any comments or questions that the committee might have concerning
the review that may not be addressed by the peer review; how might that be
handled?
Mr. Sadwick: Those would be
open-ended questions here during that evening and those would get forwarded
also.
Mr. Sears invited the Mills Corporation representatives to come forward with their draft proposals.
Elizabeth Link with the Mills Corporation, handed out the Land Use Master Plan with a frame of reference. She also handed out 3 separate plans, and stated they are 3 different ideas but at the end, they are different in the center, but the outsides are pretty much the same.
Mr. Link stated in summary that she took the plan within the proposed road system and shows one potential layout of the shopping center. The “thing in the middle”, is the Mall, a 2-level shopping center with potential housing, apartments, and parking decks. Within that bubble, shown on the drawing is 750,000 sq. ft. of stores; 100,000 sq. ft. of office, 450 apartments drawn and in Wilmington, 300 hotel rooms. As this was a public meeting, there were requests for copies from the audience. Ms. Link passed out extra copies of the plans that were available tonight. Additional copies will be made available through the Community Development office on Whipple Road. Ms. Link explained that she thought this was a work session for the committee and didn’t understand the need for additional copies beyond the 25 she brought this evening. Continuing her presentation,
basically, what’s on the plan are apartments, the Mall itself and parking deck. They are using every square inch of what’s in the “ring road” as it is referred to, the circular road that goes around the property. There is a tabulation report to accompany the plans. It’s 450 apartments; from the street level you see a structure, whether it is apartments, a garage, or retail, there will be a multi-level structure when you’re at grade, a minimum of two stories. The hotel is in all of them and is in Wilmington. We won’t be discussing Wilmington tonight but it’s on the drawings. The idea here is that when we first came to town, people suggested that apartments be considered, from the springtime.
Option E – Conceptual Site Plan: The second plan is the same concept called a different configuration, no apartments shown but they are anticipated to be included. The idea is that is be just a configuration of the shopping center; instead of a rectangular box with a racetrack configuration which is traditional for us to build, we were doing a regional Mall layout. It’s the same sq. footage, same concept but different way to put the puzzle together. I suggest there are another 100 ways to do this. As we get smarter and know specific tenant needs, how big their stores want to be, these plans will change but as you drive around the Mall, what you will see is parking deck and building and within there will be sq. footage of retail and so many parking spaces.
Option F – All Retail: Recently, they were asked to consider a third option which is which is no apartments. We’re not in the apartment building business, I’m content to eliminate apartments from this project. Even though the plan has 1,250,000 sq. ft., I don’t think it works very well and will explain why. The configuration of the Mall is pretty consistent; a rectangular shape, traditional Mills Corp. trademark layout with the exception of the fact that it’s multi-story, in this case 3-story. The reason why I think 1,250,000 is unlikely here is that 3-story shopping centers tend to not be very successful. Some tenants may work well on the 3rd floor, others would not. I suggest this plan, which shows the maximum of what could physically fit here -- I don’t think it’s marketable. The next version of this will be smaller than 1,250,000 – the one without apartments. When you drive around the site, you’ll see building, a multi-level building all around the project and parking deck and shopping center. From my standpoint as to what you’re going to get, what’s behind the door no matter which door you open, is a shopping center that’s at least 2-story and parking decks.
Mr. Sears: Asked about Rocco’s and a road proposed to go near the Rocco property; is Mills Corp. willing to put into the agreement, access to this property if necessary to the cleanup of Rocco’s?
Ms. Link: My assumption is that our goal would be to get the interchange built and available so that’s where the trucks would come from if they come directly off the freeway on the ring road and directly into the Rocco facility.
Attorney O’Neill: Mr. Sears had asked about entering into a contract agreement with the town whereby we would commit to allowing trucks to come into the property in the event that EPA brought the matter to final conclusion.
Ms. Link: Sure, absolutely. That would be the intent that we actually got the roads there in a schedule to allow that to happen.
Mr. Sears: So granting the town an easement as opposed to our asking for it?
Mr. Link: That’s a given that you’ll have that.
Mr. O’Neill: It would be more a license to pass over the roads than an easement but there would be a right of access over the whole system.
Mr. Sears: All these proposals have no link to South Street; is that correct?
Ms. Link: That’s correct. The only link that we’re proposing is the public safety access point so that the police, fire, ambulance, vehicles would be allowed to control a gate and be able to go back and forth and assuming that in the instance of flood, they’d control that gate and open it for residents.
Mr. Sears: How much would the interchange cost and who gets to pay for it?
Ms. Link: It’s going to be a bunch of people, assuming a public-private partnership that we have certainly have great hopes of federal contributions and will be looking for any possibilities from the state and then private monies, private land. Mills Corp. would be contributing the land and a piece of that we pay for. A combination of a lot of sources to pay for this interchange.
Mr. Sears: Talking about the largesse of the federal government and the state, it’s my understanding that they’re not going to do anything unless the town indicates that it was behind this particular project. I spoke with a fellow at Mass. Highway and he said these are the fifth people who have come before me saying the same thing and they got all ready to go and the town doesn’t support it and I’m not going to play that game any more. Also, the federal government wants to make sure that this would come off into the local area, on to local roads; Mass Highway is saying that seems to be good enough for us. So we have to have the town of Tewksbury, Mass Highway and Federal Transportation all in sync before anything could even possibly happen.
Ms. Link: Absolutely and that’ what we’re working on is to get all that in synch.
Mr. Sears: How do you address the local road issue?
Ms. Link: Ring Road around the Mall and transitions down into Wilmington, is a local road as well as the local roads on the other sides of the street that are in Wilmington and Andover.
Mr. Sears: To make it accurate, the local road you would use to meet the definition of what is needed by the Federal and the State is a road which would be created at the same time as the interchange.
Ms. Link: A new local road that doesn’t connect to existing local roads.
Mr. Sears: Any precedent in the federal system for something like that?
Ms. Link: When we showed the design to senior officials at FHWA in June, they thought it had merit.
Mr. Sears: And if any housing is involved in this component, and the housing does not have access through South Street and the Trahan School which is the neighborhood elementary school. Is that something the federal government would go along with, isolating a community?
Ms. Link: I haven’t discussed that with them and can’t answer it. If housing is a piece of the puzzle that the town wants, then we’ll investigate it.
Mr. Sears: It
was simplistically miss put early on that you were either going to get the Mall
or 600 houses at the end of South Street.
Folks looked at those 2 options and then have been trying to move to
some middle direction. The town does
fall about 625 affordable houses short of its 10% goal; Steve knows the
acreage. To look at the affordable housing
and our need to remediate our own position in that, that’s also where the
housing component got put in but I’m not sure that it is a component that takes
an area of town off from the rest of the town.
Any proposal that shows anything going down South Street is dead on
arrival. Why February, Attorney O’Neill,
would you want this decision?
Ms. Link: From the standpoint of
making progress with FHWA and Mass. Highway and the expenditures involved, it’s
important to us that we keep things moving on a regular vigorous schedule. Waiting until May makes sense from a certain
standpoint but you’re going to have a lot of issues voted on and this one is
important enough to make it special.
We’ll know enough information for the folks to make an educated vote in
February and I’d like to keep to that schedule if possible.
Mr. Sears: How
do you plan to educate the folks who would be voting or not voting at that
time?
Ms. Link: Through working with
the committee and other community meetings that we’re focusing answering
questions that have come up regarding financial impact, traffic impacts, any of
the pieces that we can deal with.
Connections to South Street.
Mr. Sears: The Master Plan last evening was voted in as a concept by the Planning Board and there’s a land use study, apologize for getting all these committee names wrong, of the master plan component, will support some time later in spring about its study of this same property and that wouldn’t be incorporated into the master plan until October of 2004 or thereabouts. There is some concern that we are committed to a master plan and it has a certain progress like that, people have said if that’s the town’s beat, why are you jumping to the Mills Corp. beat of a February special meeting?
Ms. Link: I’m listening to a need to get a road built so that you’re not taking 120 trucks a day down South Street.
Mr. Sears:
What if folks say this is worthy of merit but February is much too
premature for people to make an educated guess?
Ms. Link: I’m going to have as
much information on the table in February that we will in May as far as answering
questions for the town.
Mr. Sears: Attorney O’Neill, any comments?
Attorney O’Neill: Not a word
Questions from the committee:
Mr. Silva: Your last comment about residents concerned about truck traffic going down South Street. I think what you’ll have to say, speaking for some people who live in this town, they’ve been dealing wit trucks going up and down South Street since 1957 when Rocco’s dump was open. I take exception that you said we don’t’ want to have trucks going down South Street.
Ms. Link: That’s an issue that would concern me if I lived on South Street. The other piece of the puzzle is the FHWA approval, Mass Highway approval, MEPA process is all very complicated, cumbersome, and expensive. It would make sense from a financial standpoint of the spending of money to get certain hurdles met. I believe that all the questions that can be answered by May 1 or 15th , with the material that we are providing, will be on the table well before February. Our goal is to get all that information to you all this fall so that you will have as a Town, the time to hire your Peer Reviews and have your meetings and discussions prior to February.
Mr. Silva: Of
the 3 proposals here, which is the preferred one from Mills Corp.? There are apartments and 1.2 Million; is it
E?
Ms. Link: For Mills Corp., there
are 2 with the same amount of buildings, Option E and
Option F--Mixed Use; and Option F-All Retail is more retail and less apartments. I’m not in the business of building apartments but we have partnered with people in the past that have built apartments adjacent to our centers and I’m willing to go down that path if the town chooses; if the town chooses not to have apartments, I am very content with the concept of just adding some more retail. I suggest to you though that Plan F, which is all retail, is too big and I don’t think that that is feasible.
Mr. Silva: I have a concern about the emergency access to South Street; do you have any figures on how many police, fire, ambulance visits would go to a typical mall like this in a year? I know in this town, when the fire dept. goes out, the ambulance and police go; usually at any given time [I’m on Shawsheen Street which is a busy street], I could have 2 to 4 emergency vehicles going down my street on one call. I have a feeling that South Street may end up being used much more than we’re anticipating every time the police, fire, and ambulance has to go to the mall, going down South Street. An issue I’d like addressed and it will probably come out of some study.
Ms. Link suggested asking the Fire Chief and Police Chief but there is a study being worked on right now.
Deputy Police Chief Donovan responded that they’ve called all the malls from Rockingham to Danvers and they average about 1,300 to 1,700 calls for service for Police a year, which is about 4 to 5 calls a day. The calls of the mall like shoplifters, which is the prevalent call, the fire dept. doesn’t respond. A lot of these calls we would go up to the highway so if we’re closer that way than not; what the access road will be used for. About 4-7 calls a day on average to a mall this size they’re proposing. Including statistics from Burlington, Pheasant Lane, Rockingham and Danvers.
Chief Ryan of the Fire Dept. also contacted local malls for fire apparatus and ambulance service to these malls and estimate 300-400 calls per year.
Mr. Silva: what’s the estimate of distance between the ramp and Jennie’s Way that’s here; is there a figure on how close that ramp is?
Ms. Link: We measured it when we met with Jennie’s Way and I don’t remember what we came up with. We answered it with the homeowners.
A resident responded 120 feet, approximately.
Ms. Link: And today the number is, we’re just talking about the ramp being built right adjacent to the freeway.
Mr. Silva: Correct. What’s the estimate of the distance between the outer perimeter of the mall and Jennie’s Way? All these concepts has a road so there’s just a road and immediately beside the road is the mall. No parking.
Ms. Link: Parking decks.
Mr. Silva: So do you have a rough estimate of how far it is?
Ms. Link: To the road itself, we’re looking at about 2 football fields, 600 feet at the tightest point. They actually did a rough measurement from the back of the closest house to the parking structure and it’s 1,100 feet which is 3 ½ football fields, from building to building. From property line to the edge of the road, we’re looking at around 600 feet at the tightest point; it gets a lot bigger than that under most of the distances.
Mr. Silva: You talked about this Plan F, just retail, 1,250,000; you say you really don’t think 1,250,000 will work. Do you have an idea what would work?
Ms. Link: I think probably if we do all retail, it’s going to be at max 1,100,000 but closer to 1,000,000; I don’t think we’ll be able to fit it with the layout that is lease-able. That was a question asked: could we fit 1,250,000 based on other projects and I don’t think we can do it all.
Mr. Deackoff: The retail component. Do you have a ratio of restaurants to actual retail to high end retails you go for? A food court, upscale restaurants?
Ms. Link: I don’t on this project yet but I can work on an answer for it in the next 30 days or so. I imagine with this market we’d have a traditional food court but we would also have some restaurants that are nice and then some high end ones too.
Mr. Deackoff: The interchange we’re talking about. Do you know the estimated costs for doing
this?
Ms. Link: This is a hugely rough
estimate; TEC said something between $20-$25 Million and includes the local
road system as well as ramps and bridges.
Mr. Deackoff: And what would be Mills Corp. contribution?
Ms. Link: I don’t know yet; it’s going to be parts and pieces of everything.
Mr. O’Neill: It depends on what the partnership is willing to put up.
Mr. Deackoff: I’m asking will it cost $25 Million of taxpayer money to build this interchange for the mall, correct? Or how much is Mills Corp. proposing? When you say federal and state funding, that’s taxpayer money too.
Ms. Link: It’s my taxes as well as Mills Corp. taxes as well as yours. It’s an interchange for a mall and for about 5 other property owners and existing businesses.
Mr. Deackoff: Would they be contributing to this?
Ms. Link: I would hope so. That agreement hasn’t been negotiated; same question my boss asked – I don’t know the answer to that yet.
Mr. Sadwick: I think there is going to be some type of an interchange in the vicinity there so it’s more of what the difference is going to be, the delta, because with Wyeth and Gillette and what’s been going on over on the East side, I think we are going to see something in some fashion at some point in time.
Ms. Link: And just so you know, their estimates are comparable in price so whether Mills Corp. is here or not, the interchange of some form is coming and it’s going to be funded by someone; we’re just one more party that would be interested in seeing it happen.
Mr. Donovan asked what the current zoning is?
Mr. O’Neill responded that the land is currently Zoned residential, R40.
Mr. Donovan: So you could put affordable housing in there if this option didn’t work out?
Mr. O’Neill responded we can put affordable housing in any Zone but clearly you could utilize a comprehensive permit under chapter 40B or you could put in a residential or conventional subdivision.
Mr. Donovan: At the present time, is there access to that through Jennies Way?
Mr. O’Neill: There is access through Jennies Way.
Mr. Donovan: Say 600-700 houses or more, 1000 affordable units: how many children per household is the average? Are we talking another school if you put a 1000; are you talking 900? We’re told it’s about 2.45 per household; is that correct?
Mr. O’Neill: Depending upon the type of dwelling, when the Ryan Middle School was in preconstruction/development, there was a preliminary study committee I served on that engaged a consultant for that purpose. It depends on the type of dwelling = total to anticipate 2.5 school-aged children. If you had 600 apartments, which is why we have with Mills Corp. when we talked about give or take, a 500 unit affordable housing complex. We have talked about it as being apartments so if you took the 500 times the .25 for round numbers, that would be significantly less than if you had 500 stand alone single family units at 2.5. The site as it sits at Perkins, would support 300 single family units under chapter 40B.
Mr. Donovan: We have to look at the options right. Other uses are also important and to me, that’s why we used to drain the town as far as….
Mr. O’Neill: That’s not an option that Mills Corp. has presented and not an option that Perkins has ever presented either. A maximum build out of the Perkins site under 40B would be approximately 300 single family, 3-bedroom residences.
Mr. Donovan: And the access through Jennies Way?
Mr. Sears: And how many apartments?
Mr. O’Neill: They’d have access through Jennies Way. Apartments I think were about
600-800.
Mr. Sears: So there’s a possibility if the Zoning remains the way it is and Mills Corp. wouldn’t be able to do anything because they would need to have it put in industrial; what are you changing it to?
Mr. O’Neill: We’re talking about an overlay district but again what Perkins did was to not get to the point where we ever surfaced a plan or any intended communication relative to what was going to happen with that property. Because we did not want people to get into an apples or oranges comparison. There are maximum build outs that anyone familiar with 40B --- if I sat down with Mr. Deackoff in 5 minutes, he’s figure it out and tell me exactly what was going to happen. And he’d be right if they were maximum build out scenarios. We tried from Perkins perspective to stay away from that, to focus on what Mills Corp. has presented. The housing component that is part of 2 of the submissions that have come in this evening, and the third which is as a result of the conversations that we had with the committee at the last meeting when you were suggesting an alternative plan and I said I was confident that there would be one. It is indicative to say to the committee that if the committee is opposed to a housing component such that they would want us to deal with that in the zoning bylaw recommendation to go to Town Meeting, then we would like to know that so that when that bylaw is drafted, we deal with the kinds of uses the committee recommends.
Ms. Link: One important thing that has come up in many conversations is with the Zoning bylaw that we do draft here. It is imperative that everyone understands that with no interchange, there’s no Mall and that the zoning should be drafted accordingly so that the fear of having a mall built without an interchange can be erased. That’s not an option.
Mr. Sears: We’ve been dealing with Perkins Land Trust and Mills Corp. and if they say no change in the residential zoning, and I know you’re not saying you’re committing to those numbers of apartments or those numbers of single family houses, but you don’t have to. Everyone who is looking at this says, you’ve got the heirs of a Trust who are beneficiaries, want to get out so if all you can do is be residential and those numbers work under 40B and everybody’s got to come down South Street or across an updated trestle, those are the realities. We say come in with an alternate plan; I’ve also meant that Perkins should come in with an alternate plan as well, as there’s tremendous concern in the community if we’re going to face something such as we’ve described. Whether you say it’s your intention or not; it’s imputed to be the result.
Mr. O’Neill: I think it could be imputed that Perkins will not wait for the Master Plan Committee to make a final recommendation. If the Town were not to rezone the property in February, and I think it would be fair to say that Perkins would not wait for the town to make a final recommendation with regard to the Master Plan before it went forward with its application to utilize that property.
Mr. Sears: But you haven’t presented a plan as to what that would be and this committee is asking to know what that is so without your presenting it, one assumes it would be a 40B comprehensive permit for…
Mr. Deackoff: There would be a one-year cooling off period after the zoning article so they couldn’t present a 40B until February of 2005.
Mr. Sears stated that before we move on to the meeting dates and then people who visited Arundel Mills Corp. Mill to speak, are there any further questions for these folks?
Mr. Sears requested Ms. Link, Mr. O’Neill, and the EPA representatives to stay a bit longer to address the public’s possible direct questions to them.
Ms. Link wanted to ask Mr. McElroy about the
timeframe of 2 years to come up with the recommended concept so how long is the
design period after that before construction started? I thought it was a three year total process.
Mr. McElroy: It’s generically not
knowing what any specifics are, what’s being chosen, I’d throw a year out.
Mr. Sears introduced the next agenda item of Draft Meeting Schedule and read the dates for those attending or viewing from home, so they can plan ahead:
A. September 16, 2003 is tonight’s scheduled meeting
B. October 9, 2003
C. October 23, 2003
D. November 13, 2003
E. December 16, 2003
Those are the dates. After hearing no further discussion, Mr. Sears continued to the next agenda item.
There was a site visit in Baltimore on September 8 at the invitation of Mills Corporation. Mr. Sears requested the members of the committee and the public safety folks who visited the site to wait with their comments and impressions and invited participants from the audience to come forward with their thoughts and recommendations for the property under discussion tonight.
Bill and Priscilla Hurton of 1830 Main Street attended the site visit to the Arundel Mills in Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Hurton stated that he and his wife have been residents of Tewksbury for 49 years, the last 8 years on a condo on Main Street. We were invited and feel honored after going, to view the Arundel Mills property. I’m impressed, no matter where they put it – Tewksbury, Chelsea, whatever, it would be an asset to that city or town. It was overwhelming; we walked; all kinds of stores; some of your members probably have brochures they put out listing all the stores, types of stores, layout of the Mall. We met with the police chief and the fire dept. official and John Mackey and Tom Ryan got most of the information from them. The Hurtons feel it would be an asset to the town not only from a shopping standpoint but from tax revenue, which no one has mentioned -- Mr. Sears stated we don’t know what it is yet – I guess it’s probably a couple million dollars a year. First hand, I’d only be in favor if all these requirements are met as to the closing of South Street so there’s no general traffic in there and to get the ramps, get the land rezoned properly. It gives you a nice feeling, a combination of stores in there, up, mid and fast food. Very clean; professional people with their own security force in there. We saw the alarm room; Tewksbury’s would be at 60% of the size we visited. Very impressed; thank you for inviting us.
Mr. Sears asked for any other comments or other folks to come forward. Seeing none, the Residents Public portion of the meeting began and Mr. Sears requested Attorney Donahue, Mr. McElroy, Ms. Link and Attorney O’Neill to come to the front for responses to public comments through the board.
Residents Q&A:
Mrs. Fishlin Damian Fishlin, 120 Jennies Way: I was disheartened that it appeared the public was going to be ignored in this process. When the Mills Corporation came up to make their presentation, there was no bulletin board or anything we could visually look at so we had to ask to have something we could visually see. The residents are the ones that are most impacted; I’ve been to each of these meetings. The last time the Jennies Way residents had a meeting with the Mills Corporation, we were told that 750,000 was the absolute maximum for the Mall and now we’re talking 1,250,000 or 1,100,000 and I’d like to know when that changed and does that compare to the size of the Burlington Mall?
Ms. Link: The Burlington Mall is 1,250,000 and we were asked to consider it by a number of residents of the town as well as the Town Manager.
Mrs. Fishlin: Asked to increase the size of the Mall?
Ms. Link: Asked us to look at it as an alternative to housing. A very recent development.
Mrs. Fishlin: The last thing you told us was the 750,000 as the absolute max. It’s the credibility at this point. The other thing, is it true that at the present time in the interstate justification report for the ramp, that the Mills Corp. presentation is not even part in consideration? Has your plan gone forward any further with federal highway, when they do come back and talk about the ramp and the configuration, are you being included in the initial pass or not? It was our understanding that you were not part of it.
Ms. Link: It’s our understanding that in the last week or so, they’ve agreed to include the alternative as one of the 13 that they’ve look at.
Mrs. Fishlin: Do you have any idea when that will be coming out?
Ms. Link: I don’t; every time I talk with them it’s next Monday.
Mrs. Fishlin: Right, we talk with them too and get the same impression. No one here who is against the mall is disputing that Mills Corp. produces a quality product; the mall is great, wonderful but the important thing is that it affects the residents in the area; highway ramp 120 feet from a neighbor on one side, a mall 600 feet from the back of another at the end of the development with Jennies Way sandwiched in the middle. Not something anybody planned for when they bought their properties. We were told it was conservation land originally around us and had no idea anything like this could happen. To throw out the figure of the potential income like $2 Million, is inappropriate; there are people in the town who will hang on to that and say, the mall can bring in $2 Million when we don’t know that at all; nothing has come forward that tells us exactly what the mall will bring forward.
Ms. Link: The financial analysis is scheduled to be finished next month.
Judy Fittery, 19 Bemis Circle: Mills Corporation was saying that EPA can use the ramp for transport of capping material; how does EPA’s timeline fit with Mills Corp. timeline to do this? Will your capping material in the capping process be in the same timeframe that this ramp will be open to you without getting messed up in their building?
Mr. McElroy: Any timeframes I’ve come up with are based on getting settlement, study work going well; the 2 years I pulled out of the air could be longer, doubtfully shorter. Realistically, if we have a remedy the latter part of 2006 and I pulled a year out for design, end of 2007, so construction realistically in 2008 so to pull a number out of the air, that’s what I’d say.
Ms. Link: And I think the road would be completed by then based on our schedule.
We would have the roads permitted in a couple of years and constructed in a couple of years so by 2008, the roads on our schedule would be completed and useable for the actual construction phase for as long as it takes for them to do the cleanup. These are permanent roads and will not affect the building process. They would drive on the ramps under the ring road and there would be an access way from the ring road directly into the Rocco land fill, accounted for on the outside ring road you see on the plans.
Ms. Fittery: Previously in other meetings, Mills Corp. mentioned live entertainment in a facility that you have of relatively the same size, a 35-cinema complex there. Will we be experiencing this kind of thing here?
Ms. Link: Are we going to have a movie theater? A movie theater is likely, size depends on the market and the theater operator’s determination. For live theater, that isn’t something I have thought about here. We do have a very small theater component for live theater that a local theater group produces plays at a California project. No concerts -- live plays, seats about 100 people, very small community theater that operates.
Ms. Fittery: BMX, skate boarding, etc.?
Ms. Link: There’s a skate park located in 3 or 4 centers, indoors.
Ms. Fittery: Why a hotel next to a Mall?
Ms. Link: We don’t need a hotel, it’s a use that comes frequently as hotel operators enjoy having their hotel customers spend the night and have breakfast, lunch, or dinner at the Malls. It keeps them from having to expense that and having a restaurant within their own structure. A use that Wilmington suggested might be good for them which is why it’s located in the Wilmington area.
Ms. Fittery: When you first proposed this, you mentioned some of your malls are a travel destination and use buses for transportation in. Do you still plan on busing people in for this site?
Ms. Link: A 750,000 sq. ft. site certainly doesn’t steer itself toward that type of project. If it gets larger, there is a possibility that tour buses might want to come. I don’t know enough to answer it honestly but I don’t see this as one of ours; this isn’t South Florida where it’s a 2.2 million sq. ft. retail center with another million sq. ft. surrounding it and not a “mega mall” where you have the tour buses coming. This is a much smaller project in a different area and not that.
Ms. Fittery: From day one, we haven’t added any additional land available and that’s what they were promoting from day one.
Ms. Link: Nobody proposed anything from day one; there were some questions about what Mills Corp. was about and what Mills Corp. did and that was answered but we were never part of a project here. I think it was a lot of Gator who did a lot of discussion on what Mills Corp. did.
Ms. Fittery: Living off of South Street at Bemis Circle for 30+ years, we lived with hundreds of truck traffic daily, Saturdays and 1AM and 2AM in the morning; they did bypass each other on that road; passed over the old Bridge Street culvert which wasn’t as in as good a shape as the new one. They passed down Shawsheen Street on the old culvert for 30 years which I hope is in better shape now. I would rather see truck traffic on South Street controlled like the EPA has done it in the past, doing an excellent job; we’ve seen it in the MacDonald Road area. To know that at the end of x-amount of time, it’s done. We put up with 30 years of trucking this stuff in here, trucking it in so we can certainly put up with 2 years of cleaning it up and at the end, have a cleaned up site. I’m resentful of tonight; I could’ve stayed home and watched Big Brother and been more mentally stimulated than tonight. I’m insulted; can see setups here where the carrots are dangled, we’ll give them this humongous proposal here and then we’ll drop it down and look good. EPA moves on the EPA schedule. There’s no guarantee of what their schedule is going to be. Don’t dangle that carrot in front of the Tewksbury people. I’m sure their malls are wonderful, confirmed on line. Have you ever heard, location, location, location? What are we doing to that neighborhood when we do this? This is not the right place for this development and when Mills Corp. first came out here, they said if we’re not wanted, we will leave right away. From the people I’m talking to, you’re not wanted.
Susan Duffy, 67 Catamount Road: The 3 options questions. Option F: you spoke about the hotel and said didn’t want to talk too much about it but I thought you put out a number for the number of rooms for the hotel in Wilmington?
Ms. Link: It’s on the chart – 2 separate hotels for a total of 300 rooms.
Ms. Duffy: Option E: You said the same plan but different configuration but the apartments were not shown. Where will they be or where could they be?
Ms. Link: They would be in that plan, in similar locations and one of the decks would be moved. The idea of having a housing component facing the existing at Jennies Way, makes sense and that’s where the primary location of the apartments was. The secondary location was towards the back of the property so one of the decks would move to accommodate that. I apologize for downloading the wrong drawing.
Ms. Duffy: Could you point to it on the map, it’s so small to read.
Ms. Link: Pointed out the areas on Option E.
Ms. Duffy: And the third option you said would have no apartments which now means that the mall would get larger and I also concur with the last 2 speakers that I’m a bit distressed that this proposal has gotten larger. Last year when Mills Corp. came to town and said they were going to have a mall of upwards of 1 million sq. ft.. When you came to town this year, the proposal was that you’re going to have a much smaller mall of 750,000 sq. ft. So now we have a mall that could potentially be upwards of 1 million sq. ft.
Ms. Link: I was asked to consider that by members of the town and that’s why I’m doing it. It’s not something that I suggested to them; they suggested it to me so I am working on it and will continue to investigate it at their request.
Ms. Duffy: At the Board of Selectmen’s meeting on July 14 of this year, I asked you two questions and you said you’d get back to me on them. You did get back to me the next day on the question of how close the ramp would be to Jennies Way residences. Your estimate of average car trips in and out of the mall, the size you proposed at the time of 750,000 sq. ft., you didn’t have the answer as your trip generator person was on vacation but you’d get back to me. I’ve left further messages and still haven’t heard back as to that estimate.
Ms. Link: The basic thing is that we’ve been doing a lot of different traffic projections and I didn’t feel it appropriate to issue numbers when we are looking at a bunch of different plans. I can come up with numbers for these 3 plans at this point in time if that’s something the committee is interested in.
Mr. Sears: Certainly.
Ms. Link: We’ve been focusing on traffic for the IJR, looking at that particular piece. I apologize if the timing of the response isn’t appropriate for your needs but we are working diligently on answering all the questions. I’ll talk to our traffic guys and at our next meeting, I can at least give you a schedule on traffic.
Ms. Duffy: This question would be for the fire and police dept. reps: You said you did a study on emergency calls and trips to three malls, Rockingham, Pheasant Lane, and Burlington Mall. Is there any data you have I could get a copy of regarding that study or preliminary information that you’ve collected.
Mr. Donovan (Police): I did a study on 4 malls, including Danvers which I was told would be close to this size and I’ll give you a copy of my findings that I gave to the Chief, after the meeting.
Ms. Duffy: I find the total calls per year to the Burlington Mall very low because I know of somebody who’s done some studying of that Mall’s police calls and ambulance calls in the recent past and it was more like 300-500 per month.
Mr. Donovan: I spoke to the Chief of Police and his statistical assistant, so from January 2001 to December 30, 2001, there were 1,749 calls for service in the Burlington Mall. Those are just Police calls not police and Fire.
Mr. Ryan: From the Fire Dept., I have information on their fire dept. calls to the Burlington Mall; 520-575 calls per year. The Square One Mall in Saugus, which is about 600,000 sq. ft., there were 47 medical calls and 124 Fire calls in this calendar year to date. In 2002, there were 212 medical calls, 63 fire calls, and 1 two-alarm fire. The [Danvers] Liberty Tree Mall, for January 1, 2001 to August 19, 2003, a total of 510 calls, or about an average of 204 per year.
Ms. Duffy: Another question for you both, if you can give me the answer later if you don’t have it tonight, on the average when we do an emergency call to somebody’s home or business in Tewksbury, could we get an average cost, Police and Fire combined that would cost the town? What is the cost, does the resident pay if they come to their home? What is the cost in terms of the town?
Mr. Ryan: We don’t charge residents for any of our calls except ambulance transports that we try to collect insurance coverage that would cover that type of a call but other than that, we don’t charge for any calls that we do.
Ms. Duffy: Then maybe a question for the Town Manager. I’m looking for costs in services for Police and Fire on a per-call basis so I’ll call him. In regards to the timetable, I am also concerned about having a special town meeting vote on this in February. Mr. Sears, you had said the Master Plan Subcommittee would be wrapping up their study of the Perkins property and bringing it forward to the October special town meeting in 2004. I’ve heard that twice.
Mr. Sears: Not the Mills Corp.; I thought that was your committee, your sub committee.
Ms. Duffy: That’s why I’m confused; I thought you said twice that…
Mr. Sears: There shouldn’t be any confusion, that’s your committee. We’re happy to do it in a shorter timeframe.
Ms. Duffy: My understanding is that we hoping to synch up for the Annual Town Meeting in May and not October special town meeting.
Mr. Sears: Thank you for the clarification.
Ms. Duffy: The point being that Ms. Link had said that from their perspective, the questions that would be answered and on the table for all of us in May would be the same that they would have for us February but from my perspective and the residents perspective, I don’t feel that all the information will be on the table from our end. I agree we should hold off on having a special town meeting and voting on this so quickly.
Robert Kelley, 75 Mill Street: A few comments after doing some researching on the Mills Corporation and many of their different malls throughout the country, hooked somewhat on the Arundel Mills situation. One of the first articles on the internet was written by a ‘Jefferson Moorely’ in the American Prospector Magazine on their web site and it talks about Vice President Gore back in February of 2000 the article writes, and how he was close to the Mills Corp. along with Clinton in helping out in the Meadowlands situation in getting the wetlands situation squared away their for Mills Corp. They are connected politically to a lot of powerful people. According to Jefferson Moorely, he said about Mills Corp., “….the failure to think strategically about transportation and urban sprawl has been a hallmark of many recent Mills Corp. projects. At the opening of Ontario Mills in southern California in 1996 for example, cars were backed up on Interstate 10 for miles and traffic jams and air pollution have persisted in the area ever since. The entrance to Guerney Mills which is north of Chicago, was the single most accident-prone intersection in the entire state of Illinois in 1997 and the fourth most accident-prone in 1998…” According to the state’s transportation dept. -- I don’t have those reports, don’t have the evidence here but this is what Mr. Moorely says: “…Arizona Mills in Tempe opened in 1998 with fisticuffs in the overcrowded parking lots and promptly became a legendary traffic bottleneck.”
So transportation is one of my issues and when you look at transportation when Arundel Mills opened back in November of 2000, right around the holiday, the traffic was backed up so badly, they had to shut off the interchanges. There were 6,500 parking spaces, wasn’t enough to accommodate the traffic going into the mall for the opening. They had to spread gravel on adjoining property to bring in another 2,500-4,000 cars. Significant traffic issues which can’t go unnoticed here. In the Arundel Mills situation, there was 1,000 acres of virgin land there, ready for development on the Baltimore/Washington corridor. It’s not Rte. 93 next to a superfund site; not next to farms or houses. It was open land; they tore it apart -- 1,000 acres. They took 400 acres, that’s been developed by Mills Corp. The rest of the land, the periphery is now being developed and the traffic is huge there now. When you look at the state of Maryland traffic website, you’ll find that in the year 2000, at the interchange of Baltimore/Washington Parkway and Rte. 100 where Arundel Mills is, back in 2000, there were 111,250 car trips a day in that intersection. In 2001 when Mills Corp. was open, it went to 159,350, an increase of 48,000 a day on average – not Christmas season, not Mother’s Day, not Easter – that was on average. Now that whole area is developed since that time, so there’s more traffic there.
I don’t have any statistics, haven’t talked with the highway dept. people but I’ve got calls into them to find out what’s going on there. That’s the role of this committee – find out what’s going on behind Mills Corp. in the Malls that they’re proposing that we should use as examples for Tewksbury. Arundel Mills is much bigger, it’s 2 million sq. ft. so we can do the math here but the math is huge. 14-18 million car trips a year at Arundel Mills so maybe we get 10 million coming into this one. It’s huge; 100,000 cars coming into this mall on a weekly basis or more; enormous for the traffic issues we have to face here. In talking with the Mass. Highway Dept., their indication to me was that the Federal Highway Administration doesn’t want to put any more interchanges along Rte. 93 that’s going to slow down traffic any more than it already is so if you can imagine on a snowy day in Christmas season when everybody’s trying to get in and out of that Mall, what the traffic patterns are going to look like not only on Rte. 93 but every access road on Salem Street and River Road and Shawsheen Street and East Street. They’re all going to be coming over there from all over the county; a big problem.
Air quality stuff: when Mills Corp. did Arundel Mills Mall, there were air quality studies done. One of the air quality studies came back with the reference being the 1990 air quality ozone study of the Baltimore/Washington corridor which is a known problem in that area even back in 1990. This was proposed back in 1997-1998. There was a 1996 study that nobody even paid attention to other than the opponents of the Mall. If the 1996 study was used, this Mall would have been delayed. The EPA opposed it on the basis they were using old data so I suggest that if we’re going to get involved in this, we need to have current data in order to understand what air quality will look like when 14 million cars come into this Mall on a yearly basis. Mills Corp. has been kind of cute about this historically and I’ve looked around at different mall situations and between the corporate munificence and political philanthropy, they’ve been supporting politicians, providing at least in the Meadowlands situation, offers to give $6 million to the town of Carlstad, which is near the Meadowlands, for affordable housing issues. Also in Arundel Mills, they provided $250,000 to take care of some intersections, not even connected to the mall at Arundel Mills but another part of the area out there. They do things in order to smooth over the opposition; this is the way they operate.
Mr. Kelley: What other sites will you be looking at right now if the Tewksbury site doesn’t work; are their other sites you’re looking at in Massachusetts?
Ms. Link: Me, personally at this moment, no.
Mr. Kelley: Are there any residents of Tewksbury on the Mills Corp. payroll?
Ms. Link: There’s a resident of Andover who works for me. Mr. O’Neill lives here and I’d have to search; there’s an engineering firm that works for me and I don’t know where they live.
Mr. Kelley: They’re not on your payroll; they’re consultants or experts?
Ms. Link: So is David Wahr in Andover and he’s a lawyer. Do I have any employees from Tewksbury; I don’t think so, really.
Mr. Kelley: On the tax issue, a couple of situation in the Guerney Mills in Chicago. The expectation there was the sales taxes were going to take care of some of the problems. The sales taxes never worked out to what Mills Corp. expectations were up there, either through bad economy or just bad traffic going into the mall. At least some of the stuff I read said that a sales tax never met the expectations to take care of the town’s needs for the infrastructure and all the things they need for this.
Ms. Link: I beg to differ on that. You need to talk to the Mayor of Guerney and you need to talk with the City Manager; hogwash.
Mr. Kelley: Okay, we’ll do that. And then on the Arundel Mills situation, Mills Corp. had to support a bond of $28 million over 30 years to pay for the interchange. Now that money is being taken from the real estate taxes that would’ve typically gone to the county or to the cities and towns in that area for development so Mills Corp. had to step up, but it’s really being supported by the taxpayers not by Mills Corp.
Ms. Link: It’s actually being supported by Mills Corp. the taxpayer, because the taxes that are being used or a percentage of the real estate taxes that we are paying at that property and the infrastructure is being funded by bonds that were floated and a piece of the property taxes are being diverted. It’s a TIF -- Tax Increments Financing. We’ve done that in many locations.
Mr. Kelley: Are those types of bond issuances available in Massachusetts?
Ms. Link: You do have a TIF statute that is available within the state.
Mr. Kelley: Lastly, on the commercial overlay district. It wasn’t for one particular area of town, it was for 2 areas of town. How are we going to get past the issue of a ghetto spot zoning trying to do one piece of land with a commercial overlay district without providing that access to other parts of the town?
Mr. Sadwick: There is a draft that will be coming forward at the next meeting but that’s one of the items we’re looking at right now is how to address the spot zoning issue in that the overlay may only apply to this one area. I think what you’ll see is it may apply to another but wouldn’t be utilized there.
Mr. Kelley: Lastly, there was an article in July of 1999 in the Washington Sun or the Baltimore Sun that talked about Prince William County officials talked about Potomac Mills Corp. which was the first Mills property back in 1986 which was 1.4 million sq. ft. The comment by the Prince William Natural Resources Council and the Chamber of Commerce in Prince William County was, “….we have paid an environmental price. We’ve gained a marginal economic advantage, we’ve paid a tremendous price in terms of traffic congestion and the quality of life in the surrounding area.” I don’t want to have to make that comment here after the fact. We have to do our homework, make sure we’ve vetted all of the issues here before we even move forward with this now that it’s 1 Million plus sq. ft. versus the 750,000 we started out at when we started this conversation. I’m a little shocked that we’re coming here tonight with a million sq. ft. proposal that we were thinking 750,000 which I think is too much; anyway, to think about a million sq. ft. in that area is ridiculous.
Mr. Sears stated that part of the concerns that Mr. Kelley has, I hope will be answered when we do the due diligence of the Peer Review which we are proposing. That may not be a panacea but will get us further along the road.
Mr. O’Neill: To clarify on the “all retail” proposal that’s before the committee. The ‘all retail’ proposal extracts out the 2 components of office space and housing that have been part of each plan that the representatives of Mills Corp. have discussed with the committee almost from the very first meeting. When you look at the Mixed Use Plan, it had 750,000 sq. ft. of retail space, 100,000 sq. ft. of office space, and some 200,000 multi-decked sq. ft. of apartments. When you look at the All Retail proposal, it takes out roughly the 400,000+ sq. ft. give or take of the other uses and has simply said to you that if you take that all retail plan and look at essentially the footprint that existed with those uses, as Liz has indicated to you, that will probably get to somewhere between 1 to 1.1 million sq. ft. that is consistent with the essential foot plan you’ve seen previously. The additional sq. footage comes in terms of a third deck so that the proposal you have in front of you, for the 1.25 is to say to you in response to inquiries that have come to Mills Corp. and to me, to consider an Option that does not include mixed use. What we have said to you is that you would find a maximum build out on that site of about 1.25 million and that we think that a maximum build out is not feasible so that would be less than. That’s the issue here: taking that footprint that had 3 particular uses, reducing 2 of the uses using the essential primary footprint that was begun with and using that for All Retail. That’s where that comes from so this isn’t that we’re blowing them all up. We’re saying to you that if you take the footprint and take out 2 of those uses and you put into those uses retail, that on the ground it’s going to come to about 1.1 million.
Mr. Silva: If you build a bigger Mall, then you have more people coming, correct? And if you build a bigger Mall, that could end up being a destination-type Mall. If you’re taking out the housing part of it, you’re saying you are taking out the housing part, you’re increasing the Mall.
Ms. Link: I’m not suggesting that that’s more traffic though because you’re taking out the traffic from the residential piece and believe it or not, that’s a lot of trips.
Mr. Silva: I don’t know but you add on 300-400,000 sq. ft. to a Mall, you’re going to be adding on some decent traffic.
Ms. Link: So we can do trips on all 3 of these; I just can’t do it in my head.
Mr. Silva: I have to really make a decision here and after hearing that you said that you had our town government, Town Manager ask you to propose a – Ms. Link: “ ‘to consider’…. because he’d been asked to consider it – I don’t know who asked them.” I’m going to tell you right now that I am so against this mall, that I’m resigning from this committee right now and I’m going to do all I can to stop you people from coming in. I cannot sit here and try to make out like I’m trying…and I have been trying to be reasonable and trying to understand and looking for good…and I can’t see it and I agree with the residents of this town. I’m a resident of that area and I have tried and tried and I submit my resignation. Thank you.
Mr. Sears: Accepted with regret. Please put it in writing.
Mr. Silva: I sure will. Thank you.
Geraldine Murphy,
219 Main Street: The reason I
came here tonight, I’ve been staying away from these sort of purposely but
Sunday afternoon I got a call which sounded like a telemarketer. Some man named Jim tells me he’s from
Seattle, Washington and is taking a poll for the Mall. I couldn’t take the poll because I told him I
didn’t know hardly anything about it, that’s why I’m here tonight and I’m
finding some interesting things. You’re
giving up to 1,700 ambulance calls in a year or how many?
Mr. Ryan: I think that was said
by the Deputy Police Chief for police calls.
How many ambulance calls could we expect? I would think 300-400 per year.
Ms. Murphy: That’s all? Ambulance from the Town Report last year, you had a total of 2,197 and then I came down to something and it said “assisted ambulance”, 1,365. Does this mean we go to another town? This is the Fire Dept. Activity Report I’m reading.
Mr. Ryan: I’m familiar with it. Those are calls that engine companies make in addition to the ambulance, for example, there’s no ambulance station in South Tewksbury but if there was a medical emergency in South Tewksbury, Engine 2 from the corner of South and Main would also respond – that’s called a medical assist.
Ms. Murphy: We don’t have an ambulance in South Tewksbury with the new station?
Mr. Ryan: No we don’t.
Ms. Murphy: Where are the ambulances based now and how many does the town have?
Mr. Ryan: One in the Central Station that’s manned full time; one in the North Station that’s manned by taking men off of the engine if we need a second ambulance in the town.
Ms. Murphy: So
if we were to put something in down there, we don’t have an ambulance in the
South Station so we’d need another ambulance full time?
Mr. Ryan: That’s been said by me
before. I’ve requested another ambulance
in South Tewksbury 2 or 3 budgets ago.
The men to man it would require 8 additional men stationed at the South
Station to man it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The cost for an ambulance is estimated at
$135,000 and to properly equip and we’d get between 5-7 years out of it.
Ms. Murphy: What about fire trucks themselves?
Mr. Ryan: Our apparatus is in very good shape. We just got a new engine a couple of years ago and our 3 fire stations each have top of the line fire apparatus in them. For the number of calls to various malls, I have the information and will give it to you after the meeting along with Ms. Duffy’s request.
Mr. Donovan: The Police calls were between 1,700-1,399 for the various malls for a year’s time at the 4 different malls that we referenced.
Ms. Murphy: Calls in a year are not in the book; how many calls do you go out on? You go out every time the ambulance goes?
Mr. Donovan: I couldn’t tell you off hand. We don’t necessarily go out with the ambulances.
Ms. Murphy: The comment made earlier about not seeing a cigarette butt on the floor of the mall; there’s been no smoking in any of the malls that I know of for years now – at least 15 or 20 – so that’s not an odd thing. I don’t think he goes out too often.
Ms. Fittery: Correct me if I’m wrong, Messrs. Ryan and Donovan. When the paint factory was coming in a few years ago and another Liquid Carbonic was in there, the issue came up about an emergency happening down there with the railroad getting stopped and the possibility of emergency vehicles not being able to get through. What kind of a remedy do we have for that with this proposal?
Mr. Ryan: With this mall proposal? I don’t see how that is going to affect the response to the mall. If there is a mall, there would be an emergency access off of South Street to the mall and engine company at South Station would be able to get there very quickly. It is possible that an engine from the Center trying to get to Rte. 93 could get stopped by a train at the tracks but there would be an engine already there. It’s not like they wouldn’t be able to get something there right away.
Ms. Fittery: East Street, Rte. 93 and Shawsheen Street or Dascomb Road would be blocked?
Mr. Ryan: A train could be blocking East Street which would prevent the engine from the center getting there quickly, that’s true.
Ms. Fittery: I would like a hand written list of who went on the junket? How many people went on the junket total? How many people from the town of Tewksbury, regardless of officials, or residential went, roughly.
Mr. O’Neill: I
don’t think anybody went on a junket.
Mr. Sears: I do not know. I don’t recall that it was officially termed
“a junket” so that seems a bit of a, “when did you stop beating your wife” type
of question. Are you asking about the
trip to Baltimore? I’ve asked for this
from the Town Manager and it has not been forthcoming because he tells me he
doesn’t know. I did not go. If Mr. O’Neill or Ms. Link choose to respond,
that’s up to them.
Ms. Link: I don’t know. I can think about it.
Mr. O’Neill: I can tell you that 4 members of the committee; there were 3 Mills Corp. people who were from out of town and myself, 4 = David, Bob, Paul, and myself. And I think 4 other Tewksbury residents. We had suggested that for people to go, because of the issues that were coming up on the whole issues on public safety, we suggested that if the public safety representatives could go and also someone who was familiar with regional-economic development, that we would have those counterparts available. The public safety people went and one other person who is a controller in real life on the business side of the equation so that’s how those members went. The at-large folks, I’m not familiar how all of them went. Two of them went at my invitation so I’d have someone to talk to.
Ms. Fittery: It was my understanding just from talking people who were at the meeting that the town was going to cut the checks for these trips?
Mr. O’Neill: What I know, followed by Doug if he chooses, is that at one of the earlier meetings, Mills Corp. representatives had indicated to the committee that if there were members of the committee that wished to do on-site visits, that Mills Corp. would make arrangements for those to happen. If the issue of financing was an issue with the town, then Mills Corp. was much the same as the peer review process using the same statutory process, willing to reimburse the town for the travel expenses of those committee members and essentially that’s done through a trust fund that’s authorized by the Selectmen; expenditures are made by the town’s financial people. It was thought that suggestion went to Town Counsel; town counsel suggested it would, in his opinion, be better if the town financed those expenses from the town side and I believe that’s what happened. We didn’t have anything to do with the expenses of committee members.
Ms. Fittery:
So there’s no back door reimbursement of any kind coming through from
Mills Corp. or Perkins?
Mr. O’Neill: No none. We are billing the town directly for, rather
than have individual coaches go to the airport, we indicated to the town we’d
have a larger van that would transport and then bill the town for the
Flight-Line fare from Manchester Airport from here. That’s being invoiced to the town.
Ms. Fittery: What would I have to do to get a written list and a dollar amount, Doug. Do I go to Mr. Cressman and ask for the information.
Mr. Sears: At the last Selectmen’s meeting, I asked for the very same thing and it was indicated that the Town Manager wasn’t able to provide that or feels it was his place to do so. I’ve made that request previously but you may be much more persuasive than I am and in the intervening time, the Town Manager may have found out some of the answers to the question. I always suggest taking it to the top and see where it goes.
Ms. Fittery:
Did he at that time, recommend someone else to check with where he said
he wasn’t capable?
Mr. Sears: No.
Are there any other folks who would like to address this group at this time? Seeing none, Mr. Sears asked one last question. I noticed in the Globe this past Sunday, they’re talking about possibly within a couple of weeks, the Senate will put in legalized gambling in Massachusetts and I was wondering that if indeed that were a possibility, if that’s something that might fit into Mills Corp. plans.
Ms. Link: I can’t respond to that question. We don’t have gambling in any of our centers.
Mr. Donovan: I’d like to comment since there were some conflict of issues brought up and one of the reasons that the town paid for the delegates from this committee to go was so there wouldn’t be any conflict of interest issues. I’m opposed to it being called a “junket” as the people who went, went on their own time, they left at 5-6:00AM and they didn’t get back until 10:00PM on the same day. This wasn’t a trip where people went to Las Vegas and spent a week looking at fountains; this was a day where they went at 6 in the morning, got back at 10:00PM and basically looked at the mall. I didn’t go because there was a conflict of interest issue that I personally held but the town resolved it by saying that they would pay for the committee members that wanted to go. Those people went basically on a 16-hour day on their own time and I’m certainly opposed to it being called a “junket”.
Ms. Fittery: I still want the Ethics Commission’s view on this issue.
Mr. Sears: I was worried about any member of my committee getting into any problems so I called the Ethics Department, talked with the lawyer of the day, Steve Foto who is the head of the enforcement arm and what he basically said is that Chapter 44, Section 53A, and you can all look that up on the State website under the Massachusetts General Laws, allows for an earmarked donation to be made to a municipality which can be used by that municipality for a specific purpose. He basically said, this is not illegal whether it looks as if it is somehow suspect, is a political question and that is something he’s not in the business of answering. It was something that was not unethical and not illegal and common practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for circumstances such as this.
Mr. Ryan: I think your explanation of the ethics ruling is correct, however the town didn’t even do that. We didn’t take any donation from anybody. The town is paying for it out of its town money so we even went a step beyond what was allowed. In addition, the members of the committee who were there and had 2 meals there, paid for their own meals out of their own pockets. We didn’t let anybody buy any meals for us down there.
Mr. Sears: Thank you for that clarification.
Ms. Fittery: Regarding these trips, the townspeople need to know where their money goes.
Mr. Sears suggested she ask her questions of the Town Manager for clarification and it is up to the Board of Selectmen if you need to put that as an agenda item.
Hearing no further questions, the Chairman entertained a Motion to adjourn.
Motion to adjourn at 9:20P.M by Mr. Donovan, seconded by Mr. Sitar. Unanimous vote in favor.
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