Boxborough Planning Board Opens Hearing on Contested Log-Chipping Yard at 984 Massachusetts Ave.

BOXBOROUGH -- October 20, 2025, Boxborough Planning Board opens contentious hearing on tree-processing yard, continues contractor storage decision, both to November 17. The board heard from attorney Paul Robertson and engineer Nick Fassendola of Level Design Group on a site plan application filed by 894 Massachusetts Avenue LLC, owner Luis Gutierrez of New England Tree Masters, for a log-chipping and landscape contractor yard at 984 and 996 Massachusetts Avenue and 38 Sarah's Way, with board member Mark White recused as an abutter. Consulting engineer Sue Carter of Places Engineering flagged fire code concerns about chip and log pile setbacks, a fuel-storage violation that the fire department ordered corrected during a pre-meeting site walk, and unresolved stormwater basin calculations. Rachel Dorfman, co-owner of the immediately abutting 71 Sarah's Way, told the board the chipper "is unbearably loud" and is "audible inside our house in every room with all the doors and windows closed," and requested chipping be limited to two pre-identified days per month and five hours per session. The board voted 4-0, White recused, to continue the hearing to November 17, with a non-deliberative site visit set for 10 a.m. on November 4. On a separate eight-unit contractor storage facility at 975 Massachusetts Avenue, the board pushed a contested draft decision to November 17 after members found it failed to address all seven site plan decision criteria under zoning bylaw section 2.5.7 and lacked a visual simulation of the building from Massachusetts Avenue; the board leaned toward requiring a $31,061 sidewalk fund contribution, the higher of two estimates prepared from RS Means 2023 data, reflecting granite curbing that MassDOT would likely require.