BERLIN — O’Reilly Auto Parts’ plans to expand into a long-vacant storefront next to Shaw’s supermarket just slid into next year amid lingering questions about bike and pedestrian access to a 36-acre site that was developed more than 25 years ago.
This week, the development review board recessed its hearing into O’Reilly Auto Part’s application to renovate and occupy the storefront that has been empty since Staples moved to the Price Chopper plaza on the Barre-Montpelier Road more than a decade ago.
The hearing is set to resume on Jan. 2 and among the still-unresolved issues involve regulations that didn’t exist when the project first went through the state and local permitting processes in 1996.
It isn’t clear how much — if any — of a speed bump that will create for what O’Reilly’s application suggests is a $1.2 million renovation of existing retail space that needs some aesthetic attention and to be retooled to suit its operations. However, the new regulations, which were adopted in 2019 and have since been amended, will require some additional conversation and, likely, some attention to how people who aren’t driving access a property that changed hands last year.
Though Prep Grocery-Berlin LLC, a company based in Utah, now owns the property, Shaw’s Supermarkets Inc. has held the lease on the entire complex since before it was built and has proposed subleasing the space where Staples once sold office supplies to the company that already operates several auto parts stores in the region, including one on the Barre-Montpelier Road in Berlin.
The application now under review acknowledged, but did not directly address, provisions of the new zoning regulations that strive to make Berlin more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly. Though no specific improvements were proposed in that regard, the application indicates modifications to the proposed plan “will be taken under consideration as needed.”
Some adjustment will almost certainly be needed, given requirements for development and redevelopment in the Town Center District.
Berlin’s state-designated “new town center,” which essentially mirrors the boundaries of the tract owned by the Berlin Mall, is a small portion of the broader Town Center district, where sidewalks and multi-use paths are part of the town’s long-term vision.
They will take time to knit together and the town’s strategy involves offloading the cost of constructing — and at least initially — maintaining, sections of sidewalk as part of any development and major redevelopment projects.
The first successful example in the Town Center district involves the short stretch of sidewalk that was installed when the Vermont State Employees Credit Union on Paine Turnpike North. The state pushed back when it sought to convert the former mid-state regional library on Paine Turnpike North into a new state police barracks and, in what town officials viewed as a missed opportunity, the sidewalk requirement was waived.
The first small stretches of sidewalk along the Barre-Montpelier Road — one in front of Burger King and the other in front of Town Fair Tire — were conditions of permits for those recent redevelopment projects.
The language with respect to sidewalks seems pretty straightforward.
“Applicant with properties in the Town Center district, or that front on (the Barre-Montpelier Road) … must provide a sidewalk along the frontage,” it states.
However, there is a bit of wiggle room. The regulations allow the review board to “waive or modify” the sidewalk requirement “in response to site-specific physical conditions.” It isn’t clear whether any exist with respect to the Shaw’s plaza, there is room for a conversation and negotiation.
The regulations contemplate that possibility when it comes to “retrofitting previously developed sites.” In those cases, the regulations require applicants to “propose a ‘best fix’” that conforms with the regulations as much as possible given the physical characteristics of the site and the existing development.
That conversation is yet to come. Long the subject of occasional rumors that often seemed more like hopeful conjecture than anything else, O’Reilly Auto Parts’ application is the first verifiable interest in the large storefront that Shaw’s has used for storage since Staples moved to its Barre-Montpelier Road location.
One of the largest specialty retailers of automotive aftermarket parts, tools, supplies, equipment and accessories in the country, O’Reilly operates nearly 6,100 stores in 48 states. The company broke into the Vermont market with its 2016 purchase of Bond Auto Parts, which operated a network of stores in Vermont and New York, including locations in Barre, Barre Town, Montpelier and Berlin.
It is unclear whether any of those locations would be affected by the proposal to open a new store just off Exit 7 in Berlin.
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
