Planning Board Spends Summer Session on Somerset

It's not unusual to find Town Hall's Board of Selectmen's room filled with residents during Belmont Planning Board meetings, the hub of some of the most important decisions affect the community's future.

Then there's a Wednesday night in August.

"There's no one in town," said Planning Board acting Chairman Andres Rojas as he and the board were waiting to begin the night's only piece of business.

The board — Rojas, Sami Baghdady and Karl Haglund – discussed with the town's Tree Warden, Tom Walsh, the Red Sox sweep of the Angels in So Cal., talked to Planning Board Staffer Jay Szklut about a few interesting tidbits happening about the town and relaxed in air-conditioned comfort waiting for 7:15 p.m. to strike.

With the appointed hour at hand, the Planning Board undertook the need to approve a new curb cut in a new development that would require cutting down a number of trees.

For residents who make their way to the Massachusetts Audubon's Habitat have seen the activity by MacArthur Construction at the top of Somerset Street in the lot at the intersection of Juniper Street.

Two new homes, 240 and 250 Somerset, are being built where a modest home was located until it was demolished in 2008 by developer Ed Fay of Belmont Builders Trust.

Fay purchased the site in 2005 – the height of the real estate market – for $2,250,000 from Elizabeth Archer. Last year, he was advertising the site for $2,799,000. In the end, he barely made back his original investment.

In September 2009, Fay sold the newly divided lots for $1.3 million and $1.2 million for 240 and 250 Somerset to "two long-time friends who desired residencies in close proximity to each other, and who intend to reside in these new homes with their families," according to a letter from the buyers' Cambridge law firm Bicknell & Smith to the Planning Board.

The friends have a connection to Russia. Dr. Alexandra Vacroux, who purchased 250 Somerset, is currently a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and executive director of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies. She spent 10 years in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union with other Harvard graduates.

Her friend, Andrea Rutherford, who purchased 240, was the managing director of Brunswick UBS, a Moscow-based investment bank and is currently matriculating at Harvard Law. The actual building site is identified as the "McClintock" House, named for Rutherford's husband, the award-winning journalist and author David McClintick.

Besides the board and staff, lawyers, landscape architect, four residents, and a media representative, Ann Hanford of 220 Somerset, came to the meeting for a chance to say hello to her new neighbors.

The Planning Board was presented a straightforward proposition. The owners of 240 Somerset need access to their driveway. Standing in the way were four trees and a portion of a long stonewall.

The owners wanted to open the wall by 20 feet (actually 18 feet and a few inches) and chop down a cheery, an elm and two maples. The owners would also use the stones taken for the opening to restore missing stone sections of the wall further along Somerset.

Because Somerset is a designated "scenic" road and shade trees would need to be taken down, the Planning Board and Walsh – who were technically in a joint meeting – would need to decide whether the modifications were within town standards.

Walsh gave a rather sad overview of the trees on the hit list: most were in bad shape (the elm would certainly contract Dutch elm) or already dead.

"It's fine with me," said Walsh on condemning the four trees to the chipper. The owners will plant rhododendrons and evergreen trees and brush on the land.

Haglund suggested adding into any documentation approving the request that stones used to restore the missing sections be of a similar type and the repairs use the same techniques used to build the structure.

The Planning Board voted 3-0 to approve the request, as did Walsh.

In 15 minutes, the town's business was done and attendees and the boards were allowed the rare treat of leaving a Planning Board meeting in sunlight.