Above: Despite recent escalating tensions between the Historical Society and Planning Board over Planning’s oversight of the site plan for 42 Central Street, the parties were able to agree on a plan to allow the Southborough History & Arts Center to open this weekend. (photo from SHS presentation at January 12th meeting)
The Southborough Historical Society’s President and the Planning Board had been in a contentious stand-off over SHS’ non-compliance with site plan conditions for the new Southborough History & Arts Center. That included his claims that the board’s decisions were illegal and overreaching, accusations of vindictive behavior, purported lawsuit threats, and filing of Open Meeting Law Complaints.
Not everything was smoothed over in Monday night’s meeting. But with help from another SHS board member, an agreement was reached on a path to potentially publicly open the building this week — just in time for programs publicized as taking place this weekend.
The Historical Society plans to apply for modifications to the original Site Plan. But for now, the board and Historical Society are in agreement on steps it will take to obtain, then keep, a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO) through May 1st.
The Agreement
SHS unanimously agreed to submit as-built plans to the Planning Department, along with a stamped letter clarifying changes that had been made to the plans since the Site Plan was approved. SHS would also report its progress to the board (through Quinn) at least every 30 days. The nonprofit will also open a dialogue in advance about the changes it plans to make for how the parking lot is lit. And they will submit by April 8th their completed application for modifying the Site Plan Approval conditions.
SHS committed to paying the fee for the Town’s Peer Reviewer to study the as-builts and report on any changes that appear to be needed. (That was estimated as about $3,200 after the Town applies funds that were still left in the Peer Review account for the project.) The board agreed to waive the $520 application fee for the future modification hearings. And they waived the need to set a bond.
Technically, the Planning Board only has say over the bonding level for the TCO, not conditions. But SHS Board Member (and former building owner) Jon Delli Priscoli recommended the terms as a way to avoid inflicting additional financial pain on the non-profit.
Delli Priscoli assured that he had contracted an engineer to produce the as-builts. And he pointed to the Occupancy Permit as enough of a financial incentive for SHS to cooperate. He suggested that the Building Commissioner, who does have the authority, would likely accept the board’s stipulations for setting the TCO time limit and terms under which it could be revoked. Commissioner Mark Robidoux agreed.
Before Robidoux grants the TCO, he had a few things he still needed SHS to do. Those overlapped Planning’s list, by including that a sign be put up for handicap parking. SHS has the sign, but hadn’t been able to install it in the frozen ground. SHS planned to lean the sign against the building wall. A suggestion was made of installing the post in a bucket with cement.
The Dispute heading into Monday’s Meeting
SHS was seeking an Occupancy permit, or at least a temporary version, in time to open for business this weekend.
(They had celebrated a one-day opening in December after they were unable to get a longer term greenlight for their Grand Opening. They more recently announced a talk and reception scheduled for this Saturday as marking their permanent opening, and promoted the launch of ongoing classes starting this Sunday.)
Based on Town Zoning bylaws, Robidoux wasn’t willing to grant a permit without Planning approval. For a CO, the bylaws require that the applicant first meet all of the conditions of an approved site plan. He may grant a TCO but only:
after satisfactory completion of all items essential to public health and safety and sufficient bonding acceptable to the Planning Board is provided to the Town to cover all outstanding items.
Town Planner Karina Quinn had been seeking “as-built” documents from SHS to certify work that was done under the Major Site Plan approval granted in the summer of 2023. Because SHS still hadn’t submitted documents (to certify items successfully completed, changes made, and work that was still left to do), she was unable to have their consultants determine what work was “outstanding” and estimate the bond amount needed to cover that.
SHS President Michael Weishan claimed that he didn’t need to comply with the Site Plan conditions because they were “illegal”. He cited updated guidance issued by the Mass Attorney General’s Office this summer about Dover Amendment protections that limit municipal oversight of building projects for educational and religious uses. (In an email to me, Weishan pointed to
Based on advice of Town Counsel, Planning asserted that the Site Plan approval that SHS had agreed to, and failed to appeal during the appeal window, was still binding and enforceable. If SHS wanted to revisit those conditions, the correct process would have been to file an application to modify the site plan conditions. That would reopen the process in public hearings.
Over the past month, Weishan filed Open Meeting Law complaints related to the board’s recent handling of the process. He also filed a public records request to learn more about the board’s behind the scenes communications and issued a statement for me to share in my coverage of the issue. That statement included accusations of vindictive behavior by Chair Meme Luttrell, and cited documents from the public records request. (Scroll down for more on that.)
Monday’s Discussion
In Planning’s meeting on January 12th, Planning Chair Meme Luttrell and Town Counsel Jay Talerman emphasized that the Site Plan Approval had been in keeping with the Dover Amendment. Talerman referred to the updated guidance as focusing on the types of projects that Dover protections apply to. He noted that the board had accepted in its decision that the History & Arts Center was an educational Dover protected use. But the Planning Board had greater jurisdiction and authority over the parking lot.
They reiterated that SHS had agreed to the negotiated conditions. SHS’ Attorney, Eric Reustle of Harrington Heap later countered:
I think we were very clear then, we did not agree that all of the conditions were within the scope of the Dover Amendment. . . and that the society tolerated them only because the board insisted on them and they did not want to spend the money to go to court.
In an email to me, Weishan stated that he believed that the following clauses in the Site Plan conditions were “clearly illegal”: 4, 5,6,7,8,10,11,12,13, 20. He said that they had stated that during the hearing process. He followed that they should have appealed, “but that would have cost 25-50K and a year to prove we were right”.
This Monday, Weishan made a presentation to the board detailing the expensive work SHS undertook to fix and restore the historic Fayville Hall. He summarized that they had spent close to $3M and were $1.5M over their original budget.
This has been an extraordinary work to salvage one of our most historic buildings that had every possible problem wrong with it. It was sold by the town in completely decrepit condition. All the sills were rotted, the roof was gone, the floors had termites, asbestos in the structure. I mean, you name it.
The building was donated to SHS by Delli Priscoli after he bought it from the Town through an RFP process that valued preservation of the building. Weishan acknowledged that when he was Chair of Southborough’s Historical Commission, he had “valued the salvage of this building”. But after going through the work, he stated:
if we had to do this again, we would demolish the whole building, save the staircase, and build it anew. . . It would have been a million dollars less. . . We would have saved the historical features of this and just recreated them using period materials.
Other than the photo at the top of this post, Weishan’s presentation only featured interior photos. He indicated that he accidentally had the wrong file and was missing the version with photos of the parking lot.
Planning Vice Chair Marnie Hoolahan noted that while the internal photos were “beautiful”, that work wasn’t within Planning’s domain:
From my perspective, I’ve just seen nothing that shows where you are from the site plan that we approved. . . . I would love to have you get your certificate of occupancy. I just need to know where you are.
There was some discussion about changes to the material used for the parking lot, whether the catch basin had been paved over and other details.
Delli Priscoli assured drainage on the site was much better than it had been under Town ownership. He stressed that the Town had been terrible stewards of the property. But he also stated that he didn’t like “animosity” and wanted the SHS and Planning Board to be “partners, not adversaries”. He sought to focus on how they could move forward with the project that is “really good for the town”.
Planning member Lisa Braccio was concerned about the lighting. She hadn’t been part of the hearings for the decision, but looked back at the decision, minutes, and the video. She highlighted that because SHS didn’t have a lighting plan for the parking the decision had included that the center’s hours would be dawn to dusk. The hours could be “modified upon approval” but that would require a site plan modification for a new exterior lighting plan.
Braccio said that when she attended the site visit, she was told there wouldn’t be lighting. But SHS was promoting activities scheduled for after dark. She believed it was a safety hazard and a reason to be concerned about allowing a TCO.
Weishan clarified that was a misunderstanding. Temporary lighting would be installed in time for the events.
Planning member Alan Belniak echoed a comment from Delli Priscoli acknowledging the “communication breakdown” and added that there also seemed to be “a bit of an execution breakdown”, as “some things were done without the knowledge of the board of them happening.”
Accusation that SHS’ emergency was of its own making
On December 4th, Planning held an Emergency Meeting to discuss the site plan situation. In the meeting, Luttrell stated that Quinn had just heard from Robidoux the day prior that the Town Administrator and Town Counsel were working on an agreement for a TCO to allow SHS to open for its December 6th event.
Luttrell was upset that they appeared to be ignoring the board’s role under the bylaws. During the meeting, Quinn recapped that Weishan had been reminded multiple times in the past of the need to submit as-builts. He purportedly told her that he would. But in November she said he told her that that he didn’t have to comply with the site plan based on Dover protections. She informed him of Town Counsel’s opinion.
She said he asked to be on the Planning Board’s December 1st meeting. But that meeting had been cancelled.
Planning member Debbie DeMuria was concerned by the Emergency Meeting being held, apparently without inviting Weishan. She was also dismayed that the board wasn’t informed in November that he wanted to meet about the issue.
Quinn noted that she believed he just wanted to be on the agenda to tell the board he didn’t need to comply with the Site Plan approval.
DeMuria said she still would have wanted to hear from him on that. She worried that Weishan was being singled out and not treated fairly. She pointed out that there are other properties in town that currently appear to be out of site plan compliance.
Quinn explained that she did put that on the December 8th agenda. And she said that Weishan told her he was going to provide the as-builts in time. If he had, the issue would have been resolved without having to go back to the Planning Board for the TCO. (Under that process, the consultants would have provided the estimate for the bond needed. If the bond was provided, that would have satisfied Planning’s requirements for a TCO.)
Braccio stressed that she believed the reason this was different than other site out of compliance was that the Occupancy permit hadn’t been granted yet and that the bylaws require the Planning Board to sign off on the TCO. She worried that an approval was going to be granted in violation of the bylaws, or that an advertised event might be held without a TCO.
Hoolahan expressed upset that after two years of not reporting their progress to the board or providing as-builts, that Weishan was apparently urgently pushing for the TCO:
The bottom line is he hasn’t even proposed a bond. if he could propose a bond and we can kind of get into an understanding of you. You unfortunately made these decisions and your decisions became our emergency, which is absolutely not okay.
The board approved authorizing Luttrell to represent them in conversations with SHS about the required bond.
In their meeting on December 8th, the Chair explained the reason for the December 4th meeting, but she didn’t clarify what had occurred in between meetings. She noted that Weishan declined to attend that night’s meeting. They discussed having Town Counsel attend this week’s meeting, which Weishan did plan to attend.
SHS’ Complaints and Accusations against Planning Board & Chair
In a closed Executive Session on December 19th, the board discussed an Open Meeting Law complaint filed by Weishan on behalf of SHS.
The complaint shared by Weishan includes:
Ms. Lutrell was reportedly dissatisfied that the Building Commissioner had granted us a temporary one-day permit for a Grand Opening-after we had repeatedly requested, and been denied on two occasions, the opportunity to meet with the Planning Board during its regularly scheduled meetings. Those meetings would have allowed us to address the Board’s unlawful and unreasonable interference in our Dover Amendment-protected project.
Neither the Southborough Historical Society, Inc, nor the Southborough Building Commissioner, were notified about the meeting until after it had occurred.
(Click on the image above right for the full complaint.)
On December 23rd, in a specially scheduled open meeting, the board discussed a second OML filed by Weishan. According to Luttrell, the complaint was based on them holding the prior OML discussion in Executive Session. Since that had been done on advice of Town Counsel, she asked to refer the response to that complaint to Town Counsel.
This week, the board dealt with a third OML complaint filed by Weishan. From its description, that appears to overlap the accusations in a statement Weishan asked me to include in my coverage of the site plan and permit issues.
That statement, in an email from Weishan on the night of January 6th, began:
The Southborough Historical Society Inc regrets having to have had the necessity to file an Open Meeting Law complaint against The Southborough Planning Board as a result of its “Emergency Meeting” of 4 December 2025 regarding our legitimate request for a final occupancy permit. As a Dover-Amendment-protected institution, we are legally exempt from most local review, something the Chair of Planning, Meme Luttrell, has seemingly failed to recognize.
As part of a public record request, we have found multiple examples of the Chair’s seemingly independently motivated initiatives against us, suggesting a very strong personal animus. At one point, she even secretly photographed our building from across the street! We would also note that these actions were in conjunction with selected members of the board, again without fully informing the full Planning Board as required by open meeting law.
You can read the full statement with selected emails here. (The results of the records request Weishan refers to as the source for Luttrell’s emails that he shares in the document hasn’t been posted to the Town’s public records request site yet.)
The statement conclusion included:
Luttrell’s actions are seemingly in violation of open meeting law, town codes, and a host of other statutes, and constitutes a fairly obvious example discrimination and harassment.
Needless to say, this will be top of agenda Monday 1/12, and these revelations will form the basis of another open meeting law complaint.
Neither Weishan nor anyone else from SHS raised those claims during Monday’s meeting. And they didn’t attempt to make any comments when Luttrell discussed the OML Complaint under an agenda item immediately following the site plan discussion.
Before asking for the board to refer the response to the complaint to Town Counsel, the Chair stated:
So, there was an open meeting law complaint based on the site walk that we had on the 7th, and I just want to clarify some of the allegations made. I was accused of quickly turning it into an interrogation, but actually I just asked where the ADA parking spaces were. I did not reference any site violations as is mentioned in the complaint.
The discussion on the deed is not within the jurisdiction of the Planning Board. So, that wouldn’t fall under an Open Meeting Law complaint. And my habit of spying on Southborough residents is also not within the jurisdiction of the Planning Board, so it’s not an open meeting law complaint. Neither is my supposed vendetta.
