ESSEX JUNCTION — The town’s Development Review Board has asked Amazon to provide traffic assessments of three comparable sites after residents took issue Thursday with the traffic study filed for a proposal to build a 107,000-square-foot distribution facility in Essex’s verdant Saxon Hill.
The site plan, dubbed Project Moose by developers, calls for building the facility and 482 parking spaces at 637 Kimo Drive in an area zoned Preservation District-Industrial (RPD-I), and seeks a waiver for the required 50-foot buffer between the property and the street. If the plan passes, it would be the first Amazon facility in Vermont.
The board on Thursday discussed a traffic impact study submitted by Langan Engineering and a peer review of it by Stantec commissioned by the town.
“Through our conversations, we find that one of the most important and vital pieces to us is really the greater detail about the traffic studies,” board chair Ian Carroll said at 10:07 p.m., after a two-hour private session in the middle of the 6:30 p.m. public hearing on the project proposed by Scannell Properties.
The commercial real estate development company headquartered in Indianapolis has spearheaded warehouse and distribution facilities for Amazon in several states.
“We’d like some post-monitoring assessments of three identified comparable sites, both comparable in size to the current proposal as well as to population,” Carroll said.
Jonathan Greeley, economic development lead for Amazon in New England, pushed back on the request. He said they have “more than accurately overestimated what our traffic impact is going to be” for the proposed project, and that it wasn’t just a study “taken off a shelf.”
“It’s in light of our own self interest that if we’re putting forth traffic counts and putting forth projections, and if we know we’re going to be monitored, that we’re accurately doing so, and so I just want to make sure the board understands we didn’t just make some stuff up,” he said.
Daniel Clarey, senior traffic engineer at Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, further clarified that the overall traffic study was approved by the town, the Vermont Agency of Transportation and the town-appointed consultant Stantec.
Slated as a distribution site, the project would bring “even traffic” with vehicles dropping off packages, loading and leaving quickly, he said.
Besides daytime van trips by workers, the proposal estimates one or two tractor trailers per hour between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., arriving possibly from Massachusetts and Connecticut. Workers at the proposed facility would sort and load packages into Amazon-branded vans to be delivered to homes and businesses within roughly 70 miles.
While Amazon responded Wednesday to the Stantec review of the traffic study, the town has not yet had a chance to examine the letter, said Carroll, who called for a continuance before a decision is made.
Earlier in the evening, resident Duane Millar Barlow said he had contacted several engineering firms to conduct a review he was willing to pay for but found they were reluctant to challenge a peer company’s work.
He submitted a letter disputing the town-commissioned Stantec assessment.
“Though written in a diplomatic tone, it is a thorough discrediting of the Langan statement’s central conclusion: that the project’s traffic impacts are acceptable and that no further study is warranted.”
Others took issue with a study looking at potential scenarios and said Amazon needs to come back with a study that looks at the actual traffic impacts at similar facilities.
Linda and Tom Merchant, truck drivers and neighbors near Sand Hill Road, said the plan isn’t realistic, especially when accounting for the weather, traffic, accidents and inspections.
Process “unfair”
The third continued hearing drew resident criticism of the plan to clear almost 23 acres of woodland and add construction and truck traffic in an area that is currently forested and near a residential neighborhood.
More than 70 attended the meeting Thursday night with an additional 58 joining remotely, according to town officials.
Emotions ran high from the start of the four-hour long meeting as the chair of the volunteer seven-member board administered an oath calling for civility and limited comments to two minutes.
Speakers cited health and environmental concerns and highlighted Amazon’s record of hazardous and low-paying working conditions in continued opposition to the proposed project.
Those who live by the proposed site “will be directly impacted by its noise and air pollutants, and will suffer traffic safety impacts and congestion impacts,” said Jim Dumont, a Bristol-based attorney representing 23 Essex residents and a newly formed nonprofit called ACRES, an acronym for Alliance of Concerned Residents Envisioning Solutions.
Residents also pointed to the fire department’s March recommendation that the project be required to complete the road connecting the end of Kimo Drive to Thomson Drive. Without it traffic will be forced to one choke point, causing “substantial risk for crashes in winter” and increased traffic on Sand Hill Road.
Residents were particularly upset when the board cut short public comment around 8 p.m. to go into a private deliberative session — but not an executive session — that ran two hours.
“It’s a kangaroo court,” Dumont called out as members left the room.
“I’ve seen enough stuff here that undermines my confidence in this town’s governance, in particular over Saxon Hill,” said Bruce Post, a former selectboard member.
As residents and the consultants waited late into the evening for the board to resume, the owners of Phoenix Books, which has stores in Essex and Burlington, provided pizza and seltzer.
Many said they were upset they haven’t been given the same courtesy of time and information as the developers.
The applicants had known about the meeting since June 10, but the town didn’t post the agenda until one hour after the window for submitting written testimony had passed last Friday, Barlow said.
“The process has been unfair,” he said. “So by the time we knew that this meeting was happening, we couldn’t even submit a letter.”
The public has until 9 a.m. the Friday before a scheduled meeting to provide any written comment, according to Katherine Sonnick, the town’s community development director. The agenda and packet are published around midday Friday, after which no new information can be provided to the board.
The continued public hearing — possibly July 17 — will be confirmed by Monday, Sonnick wrote in an email Friday.
The industrial park where the proposed project would be located is home to several manufacturers such as Autumn Harp and Blodgett.
Although the area was rezoned industrial 50 years ago, the 22.94-acre lot off Thompson Drive eyed for the project in Saxon Hill is largely undeveloped, consisting mostly of woodlands and meadows where Vermonters bike and hike, and has historically been mined for sand and used as a tree farm, Scanell’s memo, dated Jan. 30, states.
The lot was established in March after the Development Review Board approved a five-lot subdivision as Phase 2 of the Saxon Hill Industrial Park.
As public opposition to the Amazon facility gathers steam in Essex, Ken Signorello, the chair of the town’s conservation and trails committee, has written a protest song.
“With buffers cleared, paradise gets lost to make a parking lot for Amazon town,” he sings, strumming a guitar in the woods of Saxon Hills.
