For the article on the entire Gardner City Council meeting of 9-5-23 scroll down the page, or CLICK HERE.
Gardner MA City Councilor Dana Heath withdraws proposal to change zoning on the 2 Route 140 parcels
Dana Heath withdrew his proposal to change the zoning classification to commercial following an opinion by City Solicitor John Flick who stated the land was protected under Article 97. Listen to exactly what Councilor Heath said on any device. CLICK PLAY.
Note that the protection applies no matter what the zoning classification is, so as Flick put it, changing to commercial would be “an academic exercise”. Any sale of the land for purposes other than for use as open space would have considerable roadblocks as the classification would have to be challenged. Change in use of property in Massachusetts requires a 2/3 vote of the City Council and a 2/3 vote of each house of the legislature. The City may decide for clarity purposes to designate those parcels and others in that area as open space so the issue does not come up again and so that citizens are satisfied that the land is permanently protected. Gardner Magazine will keep you informed.
Getting the Facts Straight
While public outcry over the zoning change came about because of a Racetrack concept unveiled by Baystate Racing LLC, a headline in another local publication was factually wrong. They stated, “Thoroughbred horse racing proposal withdrawn by City Council, here’s why the plan is dead.” There was no racing plan before the council, simply a proposal to change zoning from residential to commercial. If that had gone through after review by the Planning Board, public hearing, and approval by the City Council, a request for proposal would be drawn up by the Mayor and approved by the City Council. Then, and only then, Bay State Racing and other interested parties could submit proposals to purchase the property. Only one City Councilor (who is not running for reelection) even attended the Bay State Racing info session where 15 people showed up. Fact: Mayor Nicholson publicly stated that he would not attend as he would be involved in reviewing any proposals and felt it might be a conflict. (We have reached out to the editor of the other publication just in case the error was an unintentional oversight. The publication has since corrected their error. We hope they will extend the same courtesy to us when we screw up.) And by the way, we are not perfect either. Report any errors to News@GardnerMagazine.com and we will respond with gratitude.
Future of Bay State Racing LLC in Gardner?
Gardner Magazine has reached out for comment. At this time, we don’t know if Bay State Racing LLC plans to check out the possibility of utilizing any other available parcels for their Racing concept. We’ll let you know when we have actual facts to report. Mary Kate Feeney of Bay State Racing LLC gave us this statement via email: “After discovering a document in the archives from a 1937 Gardner Town (sic) Meeting, the City Solicitor has determined the land we were considering for our project is likely protected by Article 97 owing to the use of water funds to purchase it. We have stated from the beginning that we want to be good neighbors and our proposal is in the very early stages. We respect the decision of the Solicitor. We look forward to continuing our discussion with community leaders on how we can partner with the City of Gardner in the future.”