Boxborough Planning Board Continues Fire Station Zoning and MBTA Hearings to August 11

BOXBOROUGH -- August 4, 2025, Boxborough Planning Board advances fire station zoning options and drops Stow Road from MBTA housing district. Meeting via Zoom on August 4, the four-member board, Chair Rebecca Werner, Cindy Markowitz, Rich Guzardi, and Chris Dowdy, voted 4-0 to continue both its public hearing on a municipal-uses zoning bylaw amendment and its MBTA Communities Act compliance hearing to a newly scheduled August 11 meeting, with close-to-final warrant language due August 12. More than two dozen residents weighed in on the fire station zoning question, dividing roughly two-to-one in favor of allowing public safety facilities somewhere beyond the town's agricultural-residential zone, which covers 80 to 90 percent of Boxborough's land; Mary Brolin, chair of the Fire Station Building Committee, told the board that excluding 72 Stow Road from any new zone could add two to six million dollars in project costs. The board directed staff to prepare two draft articles, a by-right use-table addition and a targeted overlay district, while all four members signaled readiness to abandon District 6 at 72 Stow Road for MBTA compliance and concentrate on a hybrid multifamily district centered on the Meenmore condominium complex on Hill Road, 0.9 miles from the Littleton commuter rail station. The board also approved 4-0 a minor modification for AstroCrane's industrial project at 340 Codman Hill Road after attaching conditions requiring decompaction of a previously undisclosed construction access road, hand-digging near a large pine tree's root zone, and restoration planting along Codman Hill Road upon project completion.