Above: Planning opened its hearing on the large retail project applying to come to Southborough. (image from presentation)
On Monday night, representatives for Costco and Atlantic Management walked the Planning Board through their plans for a proposed facility in Southborough.
In the opening night of the public hearing, the applicants overviewed their plans for the wholesale store and gas station at 21 Coslin Drive. The board previewed some questions they will want answered. Real details will be dug into in future meetings.
Attorney Robert Buckley noted that he wanted to wait for the Town’s Peer Reviewer to report back on their plans before getting into technical details, especially on traffic analysis and stormwater.
Prior to the discussion, Chair Lisa Braccio informed the public that she had the Town add a “button” to the Town website’s front page that leads directly to info on the Costco Project.
As I previously posted, Planning has a dedicated page with materials related to the hearing. Since I posted, a few more documents were added. The applicants submitted waiver requests, and the presentation materials from the Monday meeting were uploaded.
The board posted its preliminary schedule for topics to be discussed in the hearing that is expected to continue over at least four months.
The schedule below was noted as subject to change. But for now the plan is:
- Traffic Analysis – Presentation by Costco — 10/19/26
- Traffic Analysis – Nitsch Engineering Peer Review — 11/16/26
- Landscaping/Lighting — 12/14/26
- Stormwater/Sanitary Sewer/Water/Utilities — TBD 2027
- Specifics/Fuel Facility/Parking & Loading/Accessibility/Walkways/Retaining Walls/Revisit of Prior Topics — TBD 2027
- Revisit of Prior Topics (Traffic/Landscaping/Stormwater) — TBD 2027
Buckley hopes some of those items can be consolidated. The Town’s Peer Reviewer will be reporting back on the traffic prior to the October 19th meeting. So that conversation could be mainly wrapped up in one meeting. But Planning Chair Lisa Braccio cautioned that going over the many details (from the very long report) will likely bleed into the next one.
She said they could update the schedule as needed.
Some of the high level details shared in this week’s presentation:
- The facility will have three entrances, two on Washington Street and one on Coslin Drive.
The gas station, northwest of the store, will feature 15 pumps with pumping available on each side (and room for cars to pass through between fueling cars.)- The store will feature a multi-bay tire center. (Replacing tires is the only auto work conducted.)
Upon questioning from member Debbie DeMuria, representatives specified that tractor trailers will back up against the loading bay doorways. Trucks won’t idle during loading, and refrigerator and freezer units will be shut down, not continuing to run while being loaded/unloaded. Buckley followed that it would be a legitimate condition to put on the special permit.
It’s worth noting that DeMuria is quite familiar with problems that refrigerated trucks can cause. She was one of the residents in a neighborhood near Ken’s Warehouse that publicly pushed for Town officials to require the company to mitigate the noise problems caused by refrigerated trucks that were parked for hours late at night. You can read more about that here.
Planning member Marnie Hoolahan told the applicants that she appreciated their very comprehensive application and “the partnership”. She said that in the 7 years she’s been on the board, “I’ve never had such a comprehensive plan handed to me.” She said that half of the things in it, she’d never seen before, but that’s why they hire engineers and consultants.
Resident Tom Gittins of Flagg Road flagged his concern that the traffic analysis didn’t study cars going up his road. He worried that they would “find” that no one will go up the road, but in reality:
at some point it’ll just be backed all the way up to my house, and then it’ll start to ripple to Deerfoot, and then to Parkerville, then Middle.
He asked for the peer reviewer to study that and “incorporate the northbound traffic through the middle of town”. And Freddie Gillespie spoke about the need to address potential traffic impacts on other parts of towns like Southville Road and Route 85 based on shoppers that will be coming from Ashland, Hopkinton, etc.
As I previously posted, alongside the Planning Board hearing, the applicant is in conversations with MassDOT to try to get a permit to change the light timing and layout for the intersection at Route 9 and Crystal Pond Road. The intent is to mitigate the traffic impacts from their project.
