It takes 107 days to get the City to make a decision
There’s a municipal stormwater line running from Route 10 to the ravine on the River Park property, that runs through the basement of 1 River Park. The pipe serves the City/State highway, and The Falls development across the street.
In November, 2022, following delays to previous infrastructure work and getting sign-off from the City to release funds to roll-forward into the next round of work, Lyme advanced excavation of the 1 River Park foundation to daylight the pipe (the City did not provide records showing the elevation of the pipe) where it crosses through the basement of 1 River Park.
We submitted notification of that action to the City as required…and then didn’t hear anything for two months. And when we did, they cast doubt on whether we had commenced construction and threatened to revoke our building permit. After multiple communications back and forth, we invited the Building and Planning staff to our office to show them everything we had in motion. They declined.
Instead, I was called over to City Hall to defend myself for 2 hours, only to end up exactly where we started. I then waited another week before being “approved” but with the same costly conditions. Also, we’re being held to the 180-day time-clock despite the approval process burning 107 out of 180 days.
This is no way for us to conduct business, and I can’t in good conscience execute contracts with consultants, contractors, and tenants when we’ve learned to expect delays and uncertainty like this over the past 15 years. I have a $20,000 proposal for Civil Engineering to design and propose changes to the City’s pipe. It have a $400,000 proposal for building’s architect— for the 4th time— to oversee construction and address changes to the building that was first designed in 2015. How am I to take on that financial, execution, and reputation risk when we’ve been burnt by delays so many times?
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In the 2011 approvals, it was determined that the stormwater created by the new River Park entrance and right-turn lane was sufficient additional flow to require updating the entire system and bringing it up to modern treatment standards. As originally designed and approved the stormwater line would be re-routed north (requiring the excavation and rebuilding of Route 10), and down River Park Drive into a new, underground system in the River Park “village green.”
The latest conceptual estimate of relocating the line into a single-use storm-tech system on the River Park property shows the cost has skyrocketed to $900,000+ dollars, which River Park is supposed to pay for in our Phase 1 Infrastructure. The question of who will be responsible for maintenance of the system once built remains unanswered.
There is no formal easement for this pipe, the City relies on the concept of prescriptive easement to allow their existing infrastructure on private property. I believe the question should be asked and answered whether the early 2000s change to the stormwater line, triggered by the construction of The Falls private development, was significant enough to re-start the clock on the City’s adverse possession/prescriptive easement.
Regardless, as proposed in the Framework we believe there is a more cost-effective way to solve this problem, and will rely upon these cost-saving efforts if we are to keep the project moving forwards.
