Developer Seeks Permit For Edmond Road Industrial Project 

By Andrew Gorosko

A developer is seeking a Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) special permit to create garage space for commercial vehicles and construction equipment on an industrial site off Edmond Road, south of its intersection with Schoolhouse Hill Road.

Attorney Robert Hall, representing 5-K Enterprises, Inc, is seeking P&Z approval to allow an unspecified industrial firm to store such vehicles and equipment at a planned industrial complex on a wet 22.8-acre site, which has a street address of 3 Edmond Road, formerly known as 71 Church Hill Road.

Access to the site would be provided via a driveway located near a cellular telecommunications tower on Edmond Road. The site, which is now a wooded slope amid wetlands, is in an M-5 (Industrial) zone.

Following lengthy review, the P&Z last March approved 5-K’s longstanding proposal to construct a total of 93,750 square feet of warehouse space in four buildings on the site. 5-K Enterprises, Inc, is a Connecticut corporation whose shareholders are Warren Kimball and his five children.

The P&Z’s past approval allows ten percent of the space at the warehouse complex to be used as office space by the building’s tenants. Also, that approval prohibits any outdoor storage at the site.

In an August 2 letter to the P&Z, Mr Hall states that site plans submitted for the garage space depict a septic waste disposal system that would be about one-third larger than the system that gained a P&Z endorsement in March.

Also, the applicant is seeking clarification from the P&Z regarding its March approval of the overall number of tenants that would be allowed on the 22.8-acre site.

Mr Hall maintains that up to five tenants should be allowed in each of the four planned buildings on the site for a total of up to 20 tenants, rather than five tenants being allowed on the site overall.

Also, Mr Hall is seeking clarification from the P&Z regarding the permitted uses on the site. In its March approval for the overall industrial complex, P&Z members specified that the tenant spaces be used for “warehousing.”

The P&Z had limited the permitted uses of the site to warehousing, plus accessory office space, because the traffic report that accompanied the development application addressed warehousing as the only use of the site, not other uses.

Mr Hall states that the applicant would provide the P&Z with modified traffic information for the special permit being sought for industrial garage space.

The applicant wants to lease spaces on the site to multiple tenants for light manufacturing, warehousing, and the storage of commercial vehicles and construction equipment.

The 5-K special permit application will be reviewed by town staff members before it is scheduled for a P&Z public hearing.

Plans for the overall 5-K industrial project call for two 9,000-square-foot buildings, one 35,250-square-foot building, and one 40,500-square-foot building. The structures would have utilitarian designs and be set well back from the northern section of Edmond Road.

In an initial application to the town, 5-K had sought to create almost 180,000 square feet of industrial space at the site. The project went through many revisions before the Inland Wetlands Commission approved the 93,750-square-foot version of the complex.

The site has been the subject of several past development proposals, none of which have ever materialized.