CCB MEDIA PHOTO
Don Stainbrook addresses the Sandwich Planning Board as Ellen Spear, President and CEO of Heritage Museums and Gardens, at left, sits in the audience.
SANDWICH – Neighbors of Heritage Museums and Gardens told members of the Sandwich Planning Board last night, they love the museum but they do not like the new parking and roadwork plans for the facility.
Heritage was before the planning board to give the board a preliminary look at its plans. An official public hearing on the plans is scheduled for April 21 at 7 p.m. at the Sandwich Human Services Building on Quaker Meetinghouse Road.
Attorney Eliza Cox, representing Heritage, told the planning board, “Your jurisdiction is very limited.” She said the museum was only planning minor road work on Shawme and Grove streets.
Presenting Heritage’s plans, Joseph Longo, an engineer at Horsely Witten Group, said the existing exit to the parking lot will be closed and the lot will have two exits instead of the current three exits. He said Heritage would be installing significant landscaping. “The intent is to make it look great,” he said.
Heritage officials say the parking lot reconfiguration is designed to improve safety, particularly for buses that arrive at the facility. As it stands now, people exiting buses are let off in the road and have to walk over to the facility.
Heritage received a state grant of about $1 million for its parking lot plans.
The matters before the planning board in its capacity as overseer of the town’s scenic roads bylaw are Heritage’s plans to remove three trees in the scenic road layout, as well as a retaining wall and a fence.
Neighbors who turned out for the hearing said they are concerned about safety and traffic. But Planning Board Chairman Sarah Regan said traffic would not be part of the board’s purview. She advised the neighbors talk about that issue with the town’s building inspector.
One of the neighbors, Don Stainbrook said, the proposed exit to Heritage “will have a significant impact on Shawme Road, an unpaved winding road designated ‘scenic’ by the town of Sandwich. This unpaved road services the community but is unsuitable to be used as a major exit for a business with an annual visitor expectation exceeding 100,000.”
By LAURA M. RECKFORD, CapeCod.com News Editor
