As a member of the Whately Planning Board, I write to clarify some of the points mentioned in your April 26 article ”Whately OKs pot, brewery change and Town Hall funding.”
On April 24, Whately Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved several zoning bylaw amendments to allow farmer breweries and their tasting rooms in many of our zoning districts only with a special permit from the zoning board. The special permit can place conditions on location, size, lighting, noise and hours of operation among other things. The permit may be denied altogether.
Tasting rooms with pouring permits for on-site beer purchases are allowed under the new bylaws. However, as the discussion at Town Meeting explicitly noted, these are not really bars since they may only serve their own brews.
Hitchcock Brewery was not mentioned during the discussion and, to my knowledge, has not expressed any interest in applying for a pouring permit.
Judy Markland
Whately
The writer is a member of the Whately Planning Board.