HADLEY — It will take at least one more Planning Board meeting to determine whether construction of a new senior center will begin this fall.
At a third hearing on the $7.1 million, 12,050-square-foot project Thursday, board members postponed a vote on site plans until the board’s Aug. 21 meeting. The center is slated to be built in a field behind the senior center’s current home inside the former Hooker School Building.
Planning Board Chairman James Maksimoski told those in attendance that his sense was that the project would only get three affirmative votes from the five members. A super majority of four votes is needed to approve the plans.
Board members Michael Sarsynski and John Mieczkowski both indicated they could not support the plans out of concerns about whether there is sufficient parking for both the senior center and a new library on the 2.6-acre parcel. The library would be built on the site of the Hooker building after the new senior center opens.
While the senior center will meet the town’s bylaws that require twice as much parking area as the size of the buildings, the library will not. Sarsynski and Mieczkowski requested an opinion from an independent lawyer as to whether a municipal library can use the Dover Amendment, a state law that allows buildings with educational, religious and agricultural use to be exempt from certain zoning rules.
Sarsynski said he sees a “legal sleight of hand” for the library to use the Dover Amendment when its site plans come forward at a later date.
Planning Board Clerk William Dwyer said Dover is only being used for parking rules and that both projects will meet all other zoning requirements.
Lawyer Thomas Reidy of Bacon, Wilson, PC of Amherst, who represents the Senior Center Building Committee, argued that it is “self-evident” that a library is educational because one of its primary purposes is for the active use and engagement with books. “It’s intrinsically educational,” Reidy said.
Joel Bard of KP Law, the town’s attorney, also issued a letter stating that the Dover Amendment is appropriate for use in the library plans.
Jane Nevinsmith, chairwoman of the Senior Center Building Committee, said even though getting approval is taking several weeks, groundbreaking could still happen this fall if the Planning Board approves the project this month,
The continued discussion about parking comes in the midst of a letter the board received from Michael Pill, a lawyer with Green, Miles, Lipton LP of Northampton.
Pill, who represents the American Legion Post 271 in a state Land Court lawsuit aimed at stopping the senior center, sent a memo to the Planning Board stating that if the library project is allowed to use the Dover Amendment, it would mean insufficient parking on site for the municipal projects, as well as for those who use the nearby Legion building.
“Use of the proposed new parking lot by the American Legion will affect the adequacy of parking for the new senior center and the new library, just as the needs of those two organizations will directly affect the availability of overflow parking when the Legion needs it,” Pill wrote. “For that reason, the combined present and future parking needs of all three organizations must be considered by the Planning Board before the senior center project can be approved.”
Pill also noted that approving the project with parking not in compliance with town bylaws would infringe on an agreement he is trying to reach with the town to resolve the lawsuit.
The basis of the lawsuit is that the Legion may lose the town-owned land it has used for several decades for overflow parking.
Pill is requesting both a professional traffic study and an analysis of whether the Dover Amendment can be used.
Mieczkowski said he remains critical of the plans, calling the limited parking a “disaster” and noting that the Department of Public Works will be spending significant money to remove snow because there is no place to store it on site.
“I’ve plowed snow for many years, and I’ve never seen such a cluster mess as this,” Mieczkowski said.
Although the project has won support from voters at two Town Meetings and two elections, and annual Town Meeting rejected attempts to put off the project, Sarsynski said he believes many remain concerned about the senior center project, and the library, because the site is too small to accommodate both.
“There’s a great silent majority in Hadley that is appalled by what is happening,” Sarsynski said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
