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NEIT wants a traffic light |
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Wednesday, 24 June 2009 |
BY ABBY FOX
New England Institute of Technology didn’t make any headway last Wednesday at the public hearing with the planning board, trying to secure the option to build a traffic signal instead of a roundabout, at Division and Hamilton (renamed “Rocky Hill”) Boulevard.
The school wants to open in the fall of next year, and to do that, officials need to get a building permit to move into the Brooks Building, attorney Joseph DeAngelis told the board. But if property owners north of the roundabout don’t let go of their land and the school can’t purchase it, “if we’re faced with the impossibility of building a roundabout, we need the flexibility for a signal,” he said.
Chairman Brad Bishop said if the school wanted to negotiate with property owners, such as Stephen Resnick, who was also at the meeting but didn’t speak, it could do that on its own time, but a public hearing wouldn’t be the right forum. He told the applicants it was their responsibility to prove they had a burden that needed relief, and if the “burden” is simply a desire to start operating next fall, that’s not a problem to board has to solve, but rather “self-inflicted.”
New England Tech representatives such as civil engineer Dennis DiPrete went back and forth with the board on what the board had required of Brooks Pharmacy, when it was planning to move corporate headquarters into the “Brooks Building,” now owned by New England Tech. DiPrete tried to make the case that there was some ambiguity in whether the town and the Department of Transportation had always insisted on a roundabout, while audience members, such as former town councilor Joe Cardello and resident Renu Englehart, argued that they were around for that discussion and remember the roundabout was mandatory. “That was the only choice,” Cardello said. “There never was any question of signalization,” Englehart said. “It was always a roundabout and I think they should be held to a roundabout.”
Board member Jennifer Cervenka said over an hour into the discussion, “I haven’t heard a compelling reason to overturn the planning board’s decision,” from 2004, regarding the roundabout.
The school also wanted to have some conditions lifted that Brooks had to follow, given that some work had already been done, but Planning Director Lee Whitaker said that several of them still had to remain, because work like decorative lighting, sidewalks, a bus stop, speed bumps, and a drainage basin haven’t been finished. “Any aspect that hasn’t been fulfilled, needs to be fulfilled,” he said, and added that to eliminate those conditions was an “unusual” request, the only time in his career in East Greenwich that an applicant has asked for a previous planning board decision to be modified. DeAngelis said he understood: “We’re not going to ask for any waivers of any condition that hasn’t been completed.”
Finally, New England Tech also wants the town to issue a decision in order to reflect the new ownership, from Brooks to NEIT, in order to get a building permit for interior work which it applied for on June 3, and Whitaker said that he didn’t have any objection to that. (At the meeting, the school estimated that the renovations would require a “significant amount of money” - about $20 million.) The board decided to continue the meeting until July 1.
Traffic impact
So what would New England Tech’s traffic impact be, if it were to open next fall, which could necessitate a roundabout? The planning staff report gives numbers from New England Tech: “a total of approximately 2,300 students, faculty, and staff potentially entering and exiting the East Greenwich site between 7:45 a.m. and 5:45 p.m.”
During morning “shift,” defined as 7:45 to 11:15 a.m., the busiest shift, 856 students and faculty would come, according to New England Tech’s data.
Then 811 would pass through from 11:25 a.m. to 2:55 p.m.; 294 in the afternoon, from 3:05 to 5:35 p.m.; and in the evening, 617 people from 5:45 to 10:40. Those numbers don’t include staff, though, which is estimated at 151 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 68 from noon until 8 p.m., according to planning staff.
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