Planning Board to post office developer:
stick to original parking plan
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
The new post office will not be allowed to open until it complies with a shared parking plan that was mandated to help ease traffic flow.

When new post office developer Al DeMarco and Bank of America sit down and work out their differences, patrons of either or both services will enter a shared parking area through the bank's driveway on Sparks Avenue and exit through the post office's access on Pleasant Street.

"The building is not going to open until that easement is in place because the entire traffic system around that was based on that easement," acting board chairman Frank Spriggs told developer Al DeMarco March 12.

At its March 26 meeting, the Planning Board expects to hear from DeMarco's attorney, Arthur Reade, and Bank of America's lawyer, Melissa Philbrick, about a possible face-to-face meeting between DeMarco and a representative from Bank of America to resolve the issue.

"We are very much committed to trying to work this situation out," Reade told the board.

A condition of the Planning Board's June 27, 2005 approval of DeMarco's special permit to construct a building to lease to the U. S. Postal Service at 140 and 144 Pleasant St. was that DeMarco secure an easement between his and Bank of America's property at 15 Sparks Ave. so the two businesses could share parking. The easement would allow one entrance into this new, combined parking lot through the bank's existing driveway on Sparks Avenue, and one exit through the post office's current access on Pleasant Street.

The board designed this condition to work in concert with the island's first roundabout at the intersection of Pleasant Street, Hooper Farm Road and Sparks Avenue. Without the easement, the board fears, traffic congestion could be even worse.

"I am very, very disappointed that this thing has been going on for two years with this easement and if one of our town offices had been doing its job, there would not have been a building there," said Spriggs.

At the board's Feb. 12 meeting, Reade presented a plan from DeMarco showing a post office parking lot that did not connect to the bank and pushed the post office entrance east, and deeper into the roundabout, a change the board did not like.

DeMarco's reasoning for not agreeing to the easement is that Bank of America wants the easement to expire if and when the post office vacates the building. Specifically, Bank of America attorney Melissa Philbrick said after the Feb. 12 Planning Board meeting that if the bank is to combine its 18 parking spaces with the post office's 28, it wants assurances that multiple uses would not be allowed in DeMarco's building should the post office move out at the end of its 20-year lease.

With four duplex halves that DeMarco built that will share the parking area, and his proposal to put a two-bedroom apartment above the post office, the bank is concerned about overloading the shared parking area now and in the future.

As the busy spring and summer season approaches, the board is anxious to get this issue resolved. Finishing touches on the roundabout, including a top coat of asphalt, landscaping, signs and pavement markings are due to be completed by the

end of May, with the work beginning by mid-April. I