Five lots sought on Barry Avenue

Plans for a five-lot subdivision of 10 acres off Barry Avenue have been scheduled for a June 25 public hearing.

Local construction firm Sturges Brothers Inc. plans to keep the existing house on the property at 99 Barry Ave., which is owned by Nancy N. Montanari Revocable Trust, and create four additional lots for new houses.

The existing house would be served by a driveway off Barry Avenue, while the new lots would be served off an accessway.

An accessway is more like a shared driveway than a town road, and the construction company is also proposing amendments to the town regulations that would raise the current limit of three houses allowed on an accessway, permitting up to five houses.

Currently, if a developer proposes building a road to serve more than three houses, it would be required to meet construction standards for size and quality that would allow it to eventually be accepted as a town road.

The proposed amendments to the accessway regulation were scheduled for a separate public hearing on June 4.

The subdivision plan is proposed under the town’s “planned residential development” or “PRD” regulation, which allows clustering of houses on relatively small lots so long as the total acreage is enough to accommodate a traditional subdivision. In this zone, that would mean a two-acre lot for each of the five houses.

While clustering houses under the regulations was once quite popular among developers, the Planning and Zoning Commission’s discussion during formal acceptance of the plans at the May 14 meeting suggested that clustering is no longer so widely used.

Some commissioners thought the last one created was Palmer Court, others suggested a development off Golf Lane.

The public hearing will be held before the Planning and Zoning Commission and Inland Wetlands Board.