The ball is back in the court of a Groton developer who is seeking to build a restaurant at 66 Boston Road.
Ebrahim “Ebi” Masaledhan and his attorney, Paul Alphen, appeared before selectmen Feb. 14 attempting to win the board’s recommendation for a citizen’s petition for annual Town Meeting. Under Westford Gateway, LLC, Masalehdan is seeking to amend an Agricultural Preservation Restriction on a 9-acre parcel. The request has already been denied by Town Meeting once before and has gone through a number of blueprint redesigns to scale down the size of the building.
Masalehdan purchased the former Drew Gardens in February 2016 for $650,000. The parcel is divided into three Agricultural Preservation Restrictions, approved by Town Meeting in 1996 and purchased by the town in the late 1990s from then owner Keith Bohne, for $175,000 each. Though the restrictions say the land would be preserved “in perpetuity,” Masalehdan is seeking Town Meeting approval to amend APR #3 – approximately 3 acres — to build the 15,000 square foot restaurant. A warrant article at annual Town Meeting in April to amend the restriction was denied 106 to 101.
After much deliberation over what would happen if the restaurant failed and whether the APR can be legally amended, selectmen put the matter on pause when Chairman Andrea Peraner-Sweet continued the hearing to Feb. 28.
“…the very first issue that needs to be decided is what does the town want to do with this property,” she said. “And when we hear from the town what they want to do with this property then we can sort of move from there as to how we get there.”
Peraner-Sweet left the matter in Alphen’s hands.
“I think it’s back in your court, Guys,” she said.
Alphen said he would address selectmen’s concerns.
“…we’re going to meet,” he said. “We’re going to amend the draft agreement with the Board of Selectmen and propose changes that would be in an amendment to the motion, to the degree necessary in order to address the concerns raised here today, and hopefully get closer to a certain amount of support from the board.”
But Maureen George had a different plan.
“I would like the Board of Selectmen to say to the people at Town Meeting ‘we don’t support this for a number of reasons which we cannot discuss now because we are limited by the language that the citizen has proposed,’” she said.
The matter has resurfaced for the March 25 annual Town Meeting in the form of a citizen’s petition, filed by Alphen on Jan. 17. A certified citizen’s petition must be placed on the Town Meeting warrant.
Juliette Mount viewed the strategy as slippery.
“In this attempt to subrogate processes and not follow the zoning laws they’re intending to put a commercial property into a residential zone and violate all of the requirements stated in the APRs,” she said. “It’s an interesting tactic to try to get around what we have already voted twice to protect.”
Alphen defended his reasons for filing the petition. He has also filed a second petition that seeks to authorize selectmen to pursue a state alcohol license for the restaurant.
“We didn’t submit the petitions so they’d be unamendable,” Alphen said. “We submitted them for the reasons I stated which was we were running out of time and we knew the board wouldn’t put them on the warrant of their own volition…”
Follow Joyce Pellino Crane on Twitter @joypellinocrane.
