Mansfield Planning Board Mulls Option for South Main Street Building

Developer Marco Crugnale shared his plans with the Mansfield Planning Board last week to develop the property on 2 North Main St. into town house residential buildings, with a small space for retail businesses.

Crugnale said that he can't do much retail for the building, as there is no on street parking for the site, and would negate the usage for a large retail building.

"I would love to do what I have normally done as far as retail," he said. "There's no onstreet parking, the property line comes right up to the curbline and traffic. As far as retail, there's really not too much parking."

Crugnale said that the best places to park to get to a business in that location would be the onstreet parking on South Main Street by the town hall.

The proposed buildings would be three stories broken up into three buildings. The first floor of one of the buildings would be reserved for two small retail businesses, totaling 900 square feet.

Crugnale said that he is currently looking for a floor area ratio variance in the town's zoning laws. A floor area ratio is the ratio of the floor area of the proposed buildings against the area of the entire lot. In the Mansfield zoning laws, a .5 area ratio is allowed, but Crugnale said he is looking for a 1.1 area ratio.

Mansfield Planning Board member Donald Cleary said the North Main Street Business Overlay District bylaw could help to get the variance Crugnale needs to get the building in as far as zoning laws go.

"The reason we did that sort of thing was to give [businesses and developers] a bonuses in their area ratio," chair Thomas French said.

The bonuses are designed to improve public space for such additions as a bench or a bike rack to the area.

"It's tough on that site for public space, but when you start looking at some of the incentives we provide, or call for, ... you'd ahve to do three or four of them," director of planning and development Shaun Burke said. "[The bonuses] start down at .10 [added to the floor area ratio], and you could go up from there. If you're at .50, you're going to be able to increase that, so I think you're plan/design person should take Mr. Cleary's advice and go back and look at the downtown overlay district [bylaw]."

The bylaw was instituted in last year's annual town meeting, and this will be the first use of the overlay initiative.

"So you could be one of our experimental developers," Burke said.