Board sets deadline to resolve dispute

A South Walpole commercial parking lot will remain closed to business as selectmen gave its owner and a neighbor until Nov. 20, the day of their next meeting, to resolve a disagreement over the property.

The parking lot, located just off Rte. 1 behind Hercules Plaza and owned by local businessman Nick Panagopoulos, was built with the intention of serving attendees to Gillette Stadium events. The stadium is right down the road in Foxborough.

The Board of Selectmen must decide whether to grant a parking permit.

Attorney Phil Macchi, representing the lot’s owner, said that he doubted any resolution would take place, as the disputing parties barely communicate any more.

In that case, selectmen Chairman Al DeNapoli warned, the selectmen will simply make a decision at their next meeting and the two parties will have to live with it.

The disagreement centered on structural deviations from the original site plan. Macchi contended that the deviations were mostly small and actually beneficial to the property.

He pointed out that the type of stone was modified from gravel to trap rock. The original plan also called for a rock wall that was replaced with a concrete wall after the rock was determined to be unstable, according to Macchi.

The number of vehicle spaces was reduced from 33 to 28, he said.

‘‘All of these modifications were, in fact, a benefit,’’ Macchi said.

The abutter, Patricia Fish, claimed that the deviations were largely negative.

She highlighted the substitution of a chain-link fence for a stockade fence, the height of the fence that bordered her property, and the lack of vegetation shielding her property from that fence.

The parking lot passed scrutiny by the town Planning Board and Conservation Commission, with some debate.

Macchi pointed out that to come before selectmen for a commercial parking permit, all of the permits for the property had to be in order.

Any ordered adjustment to the parking lot would be ‘‘tantamount to overriding the Planning Board,’’ Macchi said.

‘‘Do you really want to second-guess your Conservation Commission and your Planning Board?’’ Macchi asked the selectmen.

‘‘If you do (this) ... it would signal a death knell to business in this town,’’ he said.

A legal representative for Fish, Leon Goodwin, said that the selectmen would, in fact, not have to override the Planning Board. The selectmen’s jurisdiction includes the need ‘‘to protect the well being of its residents,’’ Goodwin said.

Goodwin requested that the chain-link fence bordering Fish’s property be replaced with a stockade fence. The chain-link offered no privacy, he said. He also pointed out that the fence was, in reality, less than the six feet proscribed because of the grade of the earth.

The request that the chain-link fence be replaced by a stockade material was cost prohibitive, Macchi said.

The space between Fish’s property and the parking lot needs more ‘‘augmented’’ vegetation, Goodwin said. This would entail planting more trees, he said.

Selectman Chris Timson proposed that there might be a common-sense alternative to returning to the Planning Board to modify the original site plan.

Timson, in particular, sought for a ‘‘practical, Solomon-esque’’ solution to the dispute.

He asked Macchi if a resident would be able to add plantings at the edge of his property without going before the Planning Board.

Macchi said that Fish was not asking for just a couple.

Selectman Catherine Winston said that improving a situation like this one ‘‘is a two-way street.’’ When she wanted to shield her property from a neighbor, she planted her own trees, Winston said.

Jeb Bobseine can be reached at jeb@walpoletimes.com or 508-668-0243, ext. 13.