Restaurants Near Entrance to Outlets Get Slow Start

A proposal to build three restaurants and a bank along the road leading up to the Merrimack Premium Outlets got a slow start out of the gate Tuesday when members of the Planning Board asked the applicant to rework the proposed parking and to reconsider the entrance/exit to the site.

However, the board did grant four waivers, some with conditions, that the applicant proposed at the meeting.

Gordon Leedy, the director of land development with Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., met with the Planning Board on behalf of the Thurloe Kensington Corp. to go over the project and request at least four waivers dealing with road width, parking, sidewalks and irrigation requirements.

Leedy was granted the waivers for the irrigation and the driveway width as well as the sidewalks, on the condition that some care be taken in pedestrian accessibility on the site, and he was given a waiver on the parking numbers on the conditions that the lots be reworked to make parking safer and improve access.

“It's got this traffic pattern that would defy anybody's natural instincts to go anywhere,” Planning Board Chairman Robert Best said of the entrance and exit point from the property.

The property, which sits between the boulevard up to the mall and Industrial Drive, is about 2.7 acres and would house a 4,500 square-foot bank with an approximately 7,500 square-foot building that would contain three restaurants with a total of about 190 seats.

One, Leedy said, would house a coffee shop with a drive up window, one would be a sandwich shop and one is still in flux. The appearance of the restaurants would complement each other, Leedy said, and the exteriors of the the two buildings would complement each other.

Leedy said they were requesting a parking waiver because the town's zoning ordinance calls for 210 parking spaces, a number that Best agreed was much higher than necessary.

In fact, when it came down to making a decision at the end of the night's conversation, the Planning Board seemed in agreement that it would reduce the number of parking spaces to 90 if the applicant could come back with a design that would improve the safety of motorists and pedestrians maneuvering through the site.

Allistair Mills told Leedy he liked the idea of what the applicant has in mind for the parcel of land, but hated the execution.

“And I'm rip-roaring against your access completely,” Millns said.

He said multiple times that he thought the access would result in accidents between people attempting to make a left off of the property and people headed to and from the mall.

Leedy's waiver requested the number of parking spaces be reduced to around 122, but later suggested that if the number of spaces were even fewer, he could move the location of the restaurant to help alleviate some traffic pattern concerns.

The board voted 6-1 in favor of reducing the number of parking spaces to 90, with Town Council representative Tom Koenig in opposition.

The property in question while on the property leading up to the mall is not actually a part of the Premium Outlets. The applicant acquired the parcel from the Premium Outlets and is constructing the project separately.

The meeting was continued to May 1 and in that time, Leedy will rework not only the parking, but look at how to add sidewalks and pedestrian ways through the site as a condition of waiving the need for a sidewalk on the property's frontage on Industrial Drive.

“Think internal sidewalks would make me feel a lot better about overall plan,” Best told Leedy while discussing the sidewalk waiver.