Bank of America, Postal Service agree to property easement terms
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
"Return to sender" are no longer the words from Bank of America as the bank and new post office developer Al DeMarco have to come terms over an easement between their abutting properties on Sparks Avenue.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent The U.S. Postal Service expects customers to be walking through these doors within about a month.

"I think that it's a fair to say that we have a meeting of the minds and the only thing we needto get it executed is a site plan from Leo [Asadoorian]," said DeMarco's attorney Arthur Reade.

Reade told the Planning Board at its meeting on Monday night that his client and Bank of America had reached an agreement on the easement running between their two properties that facilitates an entrance through the bank driveway and an exit out of the post office parking lot.

Reade told the board he expects the new post office to be open in time for the summer, but he could not commit to a specific date.

"We are strongly committed and desirous of doing this at the earliest possible moment," said Reade. "We very much want to get the CO [certificate of occupancy] and get the post office in there."

Reade did clarify for the board that the purpose of the easement is to create flow from the bank's parking lot to the post office's and out onto Pleasant Street, not as a shared parking area, although he conceded patrons of both services would likely park in either lot and walk between the two to do their banking and collect their mail.

Because the easement deal is more or less sealed, Reade also told the board that DeMarco is formally withdrawing his new application that would have made the post office access two-way and pushed it east, deeper into the new roundabout causing more traffic congestion rather than alleviating it as the shared access plan is designed to do.

Hearing of this positive development, the board seemed pleased, but ever vigilant and aware of the summer's fast approach.

"I'm very concerned that this is done in place with the roundabout before the summer gets going," said Planning Board Chairman Frank Spriggs.

A condition of the Planning Board's June 27, 2005 approval of DeMarco's major commercial development special permit for constructing a building to lease to the U.S. Postal Service for its new post office 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 and driveways.

The easement would allow one entrance into this new, combined parking lot through the bank's existing driveway on Sparks Avenue and one exit out 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.

DeMarco's hesitancy stemmed from his unwillingness to having Bank of America dictate the future uses of his building should the post office move out. Bank of America wanted 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 DeMarco.

With four duplex halves that DeMarco built that will share this parking area and the two, two-bedroom apartments above the post office, the bank was concerned about overloading the shared parking area now and in the future.

But the two entities worked out their differences by not sharing their parking lots, just the easement for vehicles exiting the bank's parking lot of 18 spots through the post office's 26 parking

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