ENFIELD — A developer looking to build single-family homes in downtown Enfield will ask the zoning board of adjustment for permission to construct a road that crosses wetlands at a meeting Tuesday night.
It will be the second time in three months that Adam Grounds, who owns around 16.5 acres of land off Main Street, will appear before the Enfield Zoning Board of Adjustment. In July, the zoning board rejected his request for a variance that would have allowed him to build more than one structure per primary lot to create a cottage-style neighborhood called Woodbury Farm, which included nearly 40 single-family homes. Afterward, Grounds went back to the drawing board and came up with a proposal to subdivide the lot into 27 separate parcels.
“It’s now a more conventional subdivision,” Grounds said in a Friday phone interview. “Whereas before I was trying to take one large parcel and put multiple things on it, now what I am doing is taking a large parcel and breaking it into many smaller parcels.”
At Tuesday night’s meeting, he will ask the board for a special exception to build a privately owned and maintained road that would end in a cul-de-sac and connect the parcels.
“The only thing I’m locking in at this stage is the location of the wetland crossing and the order of magnitude of that impact,” Grounds said.
Grounds also needs to gain approval to cross the wetlands from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation to connect the access road to Main Street.
Per town rules, Grounds would still need to appear before the Enfield Planning Board to get approval to subdivide his property.
Under his initial proposal, Grounds — a Dartmouth College graduate who is co-founder of Copper Acres, a Boston-based real estate development company — planned to build 38 1,000- to 1,600-square-foot single-family homes on around 8 acres. The new proposed subdivision includes 27 lots, which range from a quarter-acre up to 2 acres.
“We initially wanted to move forward with our original proposal because we felt it balanced the need to build housing in those areas with conserving most of the site,” Grounds said. “Without that variance, however, we’re unable to conserve the quantity of land that we were hoping to.”
While the subdivision is still in its conceptual stage, current plans call for one single-family home per lot, though Grounds is also considering using some of the lots to build two-family homes or duplexes. While he said it is too soon to say how much each home would cost, they will be more expensive than the original cottage-style homes.
“The cost per home will have to go up now because we didn’t get our zoning variance. That results from a larger infrastructure cost,” Grounds said, adding that the company would have to build more sewer connections and electric lines, among other utilities.
Grounds does not anticipate he will have to ask the zoning board for any additional variances.
“We’re planning on doing everything by-right from this point forward: No more ZBA variances. That is our intent,” Grounds said. “The signal we received is to stay with by-right projects.”
The Enfield Zoning Board of Adjustment is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. at the Public Works Facility, located at 74 Lockehaven Road. The meeting can also be streamed via enfieldnh.gov/meetings.
