An old debate could heat up again when the developer of a neighborhood being built in the Mitchell Farm area comes to the Westbrook City Council Monday.
After being turned down last spring by the Planning Board, Andre Bellucci is coming to the City Council to seek a waiver on the requirement to install granite curbing on an extension of Kennard Street, where Bellucci has built about a dozen houses in the past two to three years.
Chestnut Street resident Jim Martel said he will be attending the meeting to speak out against the waiver.
“If there’s going to be a neighborhood, it might as well be a good-looking neighborhood,” said Martel.
The debate between Chestnut Street residents like Martel and Bellucci, a Yarmouth-based developer, centers on more than curbing.
Residents first became upset in July 2005 when Bellucci began clearing land that he owned behind houses on Chestnut Street to build roads leading to a planned housing development. Though Bellucci had the right to build on the so-called “paper streets” – streets that have been previously approved, but exist only on paper – neighbors were unaware that they existed anywhere.
The city placed a moratorium on building on paper streets and after almost a year of talks, the city and Bellucci came to an agreement in May 2006 about how Bellucci could develop the land in a way that would maximize open space.
Originally, Bellucci had intended for his extension of Kennard Street to be a private road, but part of the agreement with the city was that the roads would be public.
According to City Engineer Eric Dudley, Bellucci’s presentation to the Planning Board last April stated that he had already installed bituminous curbing, and didn’t want to have to incur the extra expense of removing that and replacing it with granite curbing. City staff was in favor of the waiver because of Bellucci’s willingness to compromise his development plans. The Planning Board denied the waiver, 5-2, with Ed Reidman and Greg Blake in favor of waiving the requirement and Rene Daniel, Dennis Isherwood, Evan Carroll, Anna Worbel and Cory Fleming opposed.
Dudley said granite curbing, which costs between $22 and $28 per foot, is about three to four times as expensive as bituminous curbing. The extension of Kennard Street is 800 feet long, and Bellucci would have to install curbing on both sides.
Dudley said the residents of Kennard Street signed a petition to urge the City Council to waive the requirement. Once the street is made public, the city will incur the costs of garbage collection and snow plowing.
According to Martel, making the exception for Bellucci could cause more problems for the City Council than it would fix.
“If they do it for him, they’ll have to do it for everybody else, too,” Martel said about waiving the requirement. “I just want to get it done and get it done right.”
The City Council meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday in Room 114 at Westbrook High School.
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