By Katie Farrell
NEWBURYPORT — As preliminary plans for a 20-home development on Toppans Lane begin to take shape, the leader of Anna Jaques Hospital said yesterday the facility is considering a land swap — a trade that would help increase parking, she said.
Attorney Mark Griffin, who is representing the developer Great Woods Post and Beam Co., said this week he intended to visit last night's Planning Board meeting to file a "preliminary subdivision application" for a proposed development of 11 acres of land on Toppans Lane, which once belonged to the Rindler family.
An applicant is allowed to file a preliminary set of plans in order to get reaction from the Planning Board. They then use that feedback to draft a final version of a plan. Griffin said another set of plans could be filed soon. Once a preliminary subdivision application is filed, zoning and rules for that property are frozen.
Griffin said this week that the preliminary plan he was to file yesterday is not the plan the developers intend to build, but will be filed for procedural reasons.
In a pre-application conference with the Planning Board recently, Great Woods Post and Beam Company said they are looking into building 20 single-family homes on the 11 acres of land. The initial price of the homes is set at $1.2 million.
The property extends back near where the new medical center is being built by Anna Jaques Hospital and abuts the hospital parking lot.
That factor could become a key part of any final plan.
Delia O'Connor, the president of Anna Jaques, said yesterday that the hospital is in initial talks about doing a "land swap" with the developer, if the project were to move forward.
The hospital owns a parcel of land that extends down to Toppans Lane, which Great Woods Post and Beam has expressed an interest in using as part of the road through the development, O'Connor said.
Under such an agreement, Anna Jaques would secure a strip of land at the top of the Rindler property parcel that runs along the current parking lot along the new access road off of Low Street.
The parking could be used for employees or as additional patient and visitor parking, O'Connor said, and estimates say it could hold about 125 spaces.
While the hospital has the amount of necessary parking and a free valet service, on some days visitors and patients do have to search for a free space. The hunt for parking has been affected by the construction of the new medical center, which has eaten up about 32 spaces due to materials storage or work, O'Connor said.
"It's not a terrible problem, I think; some days, people say they circle," she said.
If the proposal were to go through, the agreement would specify that the land could only be used for parking, O'Connor said.
The parcel that Great Woods would get under the deal had been studied in the past by hospital leaders as a possible site for an access way into the hospital — a proposal that drew controversy and has since been taken permanently off the table, O'Connor said. There is no need since the new road has been created, she added.
