Willey Road appeal to be decided at a later date

SACO — The planning board will make the final decision at a later date regarding an appeal of a site plan change made by the city planner which allows public and private schools at 5 Willey Road.

The Saco School Department has leased the former Toddle Inn building at 5 Willey Road, where it is preparing to hold Pre-K classes this year.

The school department had anticipated holding classes at this location last year, and had signed a lease with the building’s owner, but was denied use by the city. The city ordered the school department to vacate the building, stating that the use of 5 Willey Road as a public school was prohibited by covenants in the Spring Hill Business Park, where Willey Road is located.

The School Department, Toddle Inn Officials and City Council met in multiple closed door executive session meetings, and in May the parties announced that a tentative agreement had been made that included a 5-year lease of 5 Willey Road for the city’s Pre-K program, pending review by the city’s code and planning departments, according to the statement.

Former City Planner Emily Cole-Prescott on June 12 issued what she stated was a minor site plan change for 5 Willey Road that changed the building’s previous conditional use of a daycare center to a permitted use of public and private schools, according to a July 17 memo she sent to the planning board.

Louis Waterhouse, who operates LAW Calibration on property abutting 5 Willey Road, is appealing the planner’s site plan change.

Waterhouse’s attorney, Seth Brewer, said in an Aug. 18  letter to the planning board that “the approval was improper, and should be reversed.”

Brewer said Cole-Prescott was not authorized to make the decision.

Saco city code provides that certain minor changes to site plans can be reviewed and made by the city planner without presentation to the planning board, said Brewer.

“Examples of minor changes include, but are not limited to: changes in the record owner, altering phases of development, the addition or alteration of minor site features, such as lighting, signs or other similar amenities, and the timing or scheduling of building or site work if necessitated by cold weather. The decision as to what constitutes a minor change shall be made by the City Planner, and the decision is presumed to be reasonable until established otherwise. Construction not performed according to the approved plan or in violation of any approved conditions placed on a plan shall be a violation of this chapter,” states the city code.

Brewer said that the site changes made by Cole-Prescott were not minor, and included the installation of public school bus loading and unloading zones, removal of security cameras from classrooms, and the addition of accessible parking and ramps that are requirements of public schools.

“Such findings are clearly outside the city code’s definition of a minor site plan change,” said Brewer.

Adrianne Fouts, attorney for the School Department, argues in a written response said that the city planner properly considered the site review plan changes as minor, citing the following section in city code:

“In order to process site plans more efficiently, site plans for the following items shall be reviewed by the City Planner rather than the Planning Board: Buildings, structures or additions of less than 6,000 square feet; Private roads; Nonresidential buildings or structures in an approved industrial park, including accessory buildings and structures, having a total floor area of not more than 30,000 square feet.”

Fouts states that 5 Willey Road is a non-residential building less than 10,000 feet in an approved industrial park.

“It was therefore required under the Zoning Ordinance that the City Planner consider the application as a minor site plan review,” said Fouts.

Fouts said that the changes made involved no exterior structural changes and the new use of the building was significantly less impactful than the prior use by the Toddle Inn.

The planning board, using attorney Natalie Burns, began to hear the appeal at its Tuesday night meeting.

The planning board decided unanimously that the school department had sufficient right, title and interest to the 5 Willey Road property to pursue a site plan review.

This vote was made after 10 p.m. and it was decided to wait until a later date to consider whether the former city planner’s decision that the site plan review changes were minor was accurate will take place at a later date. The board did not specify when this discussion would continue.,

Publisher Liz Gotthelf can be reached at [email protected].