Seabrook, developer inch closer to Target traffic plan

SEABROOK — Town planners will resume work Tuesday on traffic mitigation plans for a Target store on Route 1, the latest chapter in the 19-month saga of retail proposals for the area just north of the busy Route 107 intersection.

Developers Diversified Realty's original vision was for Target to be the anchor store of a 15-unit, 500,000 sqare foot shopping center, but that was thwarted by one landowner's refusal to sell a parcel needed for widening of an access road to Route 1 to handle the increased traffic.

With those plans on hold, the proposal became a 136,000-square-foot standalone Target as Phase 1 of the plan, and the Route 1 work was dropped.

Nonetheless, how much traffic the new development will produce and who should pay for road improvements to accommodate it on the busy shopping stretch of Route 1 remain major issues.

The reason to limit the development to Target alone is because the smaller development would not generate the same volume of traffic, said James Grafmeyer, senior development director of DDR.

Grafmeyer said the second phase and completion of the original project was temporarily on hold, with hopes of resolving the land acquisition problems along Provident Way and completing the 50-acre site in the future.

DDR's efforts to acquire needed land to widen Provident Way ran into a snag when property owners Scott Mitchell and Arleigh Greene refused to sell to DDR. Without the land, DDR can't widen Provident Way enough to accommodate the peak traffic of 1,700 to 2,300 cars per hour the 15-unit shopping center is projected to attract.

The latest plan to accommodate traffic for the Target alone would widen Provident Way by one full lane, less than originally intended, but all that could be managed without Mitchell's and Greene's land.

DDR is, however, willing to add a lane to the narrow Route 107 bridge, which is the overpass for southbound — Massachusetts — shoppers who want to access Interstate 95 to travel home. DDR offered to widen the Route 107 bridge, even though it isn't necessary for the smaller amount of traffic Phase I would generate to appease town residents.

The bridge will be widened immediately upon Seabrook's approval of its Phase I plan, Grafmeyer said, as long as the town agrees to certain conditions. Conditions include have future developers pay DDR back for the cost of the bridge widening, as well as Seabrook's guarantee it would allow Target to open even if the bridge's widening isn't finished.

At last week's meeting, both DDR and Planning Board members had a Feb. 28 memo from the N.H. Department of Transportation. The memo gave preliminary approval of DDR's scaled-down traffic mitigation proposal for its Target-only project.

According to Steven Ireland of DOT's District 6 office in Durham, the memo did not represent DOT's final approval of DDR's plan.

"The memo effectively agrees to the concept of (DDR's traffic) mitigation," Ireland said in a recent interview. "It tells them we accept their traffic impact study and that we'll go ahead with the review of the detailed plans for the mitigation. It was not the final word. They haven't got a (DOT access and excavation drive) permit. Until such time as someone has a permit in hand, nothing is final."

Ireland said DOT works with cites/towns when proposed developments have potential traffic impact on both state and local roads. With the DDR project in Seabrook, Ireland said, DOT's jurisdiction relates to the project's traffic impact on routes 1, 107 (including its bridge) and Interstate 95.

The only state concern about the project's traffic mitigation efforts on Provident Way — a town road — would be if and how it affects Route 1 or 107. An example could be if Target's traffic backed up Provident Way into the Route 1/107 intersection, Ireland said.

Planning Board Chairwoman Susan Foote said the complexity of the project means the town and DOT should work together to ensure all traffic problems are handled prior to approval on both the state and local levels. She agreed the Feb. 28 memo isn't the final word on the project's approval.

"Some of the roads involved are state and some are town roads," Foote said. "We (Seabrook) still have plenty of options as to what is (finally) accepted as it relates to local roads."

Planning Board members have repeatedly expressed their concerns about the increase in traffic Target could generate on local roads that intersect Route 1, such Provident Way or Rock's Road.

"For example, the state says a light isn't warranted at the intersection of Rock's Road (and Route 1)," Foote said, "but townspeople say one definitely is. There's usually two ways to determine if a light is needed at an intersection. One is if the traffic volume meets state standards. The second is if there's an accident that results in a fatality. If things keep going the way they are at that intersection, the second option is unfortunately a possibility."

Photos

DDR's new reduced one-store shopping center plan would bring a Target to the complex in its first phase. Courtesy photo