WAL-MART A POSSIBILITY IN GREENFIELD, MA

Big box developer gets more time in Greenfield [The Republican (Mass.)]

The Conservation Commission last night agreed to give the developer of a French King Highway department store more time to come up with alternative plans for dealing with wetlands.

Ceruzzi Holdings of Fairfield, Conn., which formed Greenfield Investors Property Development for the store project, will return in September with plans that address the concerns of the commission about wetlands protection.

Commission chairman Alexander J. Haro said the options will be to modify the existing plan to protect the wetland, or come up with another plan, perhaps for a smaller store to avoid any substantial wetland impact.

David Pickart, Ceruzzi’s environmental consultant, asked for the delay. He said it is needed to come up with the environmental answers.

“We are continuing to prepare information,” he said in a written request for more time.

The store site contains 17 acres which are owned by Mackin Trucking.

While Ceruzzi must deal with the commission on wetland impact, Mackin is working on a cleanup of the property, ordered by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The firm is cleaning up oils and fuel that spilled on the site during decades of use of the property as a fuel depot.

Ceruzzi’s plan is for a store and garden center totaling about 160,000 square feet. No contract with a particular store has been announced, but the field, city officials said, is down to either a Wal-Mart or a Target.

The plan currently before the commission calls for a primary wetland on the property, known as Wetland No. 4, to be filled in and a substitute wetland created nearby.

The commission, armed with a report of its own environmental consultants, determined the elimination of the wetland was not viable, and asked for alternative plans.

Ceruzzi is tentatively scheduled to present its alternatives to the commission on Sept. 2.

The developer initially filed its plans to the commission in March 2007, then withdrew without a public explanation. It then resubmitted a plan last October that was similar to the first.

The withdrawal came at a time when there was a change in commission membership and a challenge from opponents of the development to having new members vote on old plans.

Also last night, since it was the first meeting of the new fiscal year, the commission reorganized but unanimously voted to keep Haro as its chairman, and Timothy D. Mosher as vice chairman.