Developer, board settle over funding for open space

East Marlborough supervisors have settled a legal dispute between the township and a developer over the amount of money a new project would pay into the township’s open space and recreation fund.

Township Solicitor Frone Crawford said the board members had been discussing Regis Investment Properties’ appeal of a conditional use order for the second phase of a project on the west side of Walnut Road in an executive session before their Monday night regular meeting.

The project, currently known

as Walnut Walk, has been taken up by several developers over the years and has gone through a series of name changes. It was until recently known as Walnut Ridge. When completed it will include 73 townhouses and one currently existing house.

The issue settled by the board at its Monday night meeting concerned the amount of money the developers would pay per unit in the second phase of construction to the township open space and recreation fund. The township had set an amount of $1,000 per unit in its conditional use order for that phase. But the developers appealed the order, saying they were putting in trails, exercise stations, volleyball courts and other outdoor recreational features that justified their paying only $500 per unit.

Crawford said this solution was acceptable to the supervisors, and would still result in substantial contributions to the fund.

The supervisors also promised to support the representatives of the Belrose development in their efforts to have the builder

revisit some stormwatercontrol features there.

Members of the development’s homeowners’ association (HOA) told the supervisors a particular unit there had been experiencing flooding since the homeowner moved in last year. At first they had thought the flooding was due to malfunctioning water-drainage mechanisms inside the house.

But after those features were repaired, the owner continued to have problems, the representatives said. After investigation, they found that a stormwater-control swale had been improperly graded and did not meet the specifications on the building plans.

The HOA’s representatives said when they told the builder, he said he believed the flooding had been due to problems inside the house and that Township Engineer Jim Hatfield would have to settle the argument.

Hatfield, who was at the meeting, said he believed the representatives’ statements were accurate. The area near the unit in question had not been properly graded, he said. Hatfield added that regrading the ground there might improve the situation for the homeowner, but he could not guarantee it would end

the flooding, which might be due in part to additional factors in the home.

Cuyler Walker, chairman of the board of supervisors, said they would bring any pressure they could to get the problem solved, including meeting with the builder at the site to review the situation.

The supervisors also discussed ongoing truck damage on East Doe Run Road. Crawford said the law on limiting trucks required an engineering study to certify that heavy loads were, in fact, damaging the roadway. The engineering study would set a weight limit for vehicles on the road.

The township would also need to create an ordinance limiting the weight, post signs about the limit, and accommodate various exceptions, Crawford said.

The supervisors voted to seek a proposal from Traffic Planning and Design Inc. to do a study on the section of road, from the Unionville traffic circle to Route 926, where they hoped to limit truck traffic.

With the holiday season approaching, the supervisors voted to allow Longwood Gardens to temporarily modify traffic patterns if necessary during peak visitation hours. They also discussed minor changes to the zoning ordinance.