New Owner For Belmont Center’s Vintage Wine Store

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Photo: Interior of the store.

Vintages: Adventures in Wine, the Belmont Center store which holds the distinction of being one of the first granted a town’s retail alcohol license, has been sold to a MetroWest businessman.

The Belmont Board of Selectmen approved the transfer of the beer-and-wine-only license held by Albert Avenue’s Eric Broege and Carolyn Kemp to Swapnil Gandbhir of Framingham on Monday, Aug. 22.

The store is located at 32 Leonard St., adjacent to the restaurant Asai which is closing down to allow a retail operation to move in. The new owner has signed a ten-year lease with an option after the first five years to leave without a penalty.

Gandbhir said the past owners told him they wished to concentrate on their first business, a West Concord wine store with the same name.

As for the business, the only changes coming to the store will be the addition of American and other non-European vintages as well as prepackaged snacks.

“There will be no renovation of the interior so it will look the same as it has in the past,” Gandbhir told the Belmontonian after the meeting.

One of the final remaining “dry” towns in the Commonwealth in the 1990s, Belmont voted in 1998 to allow limited restaurant alcohol licenses. Seven years later, Town Meeting approved the issuance of a full-liquor and a wine and malt licence and voters approved the measure in April 2008.  The Spirited Gourmet in Cushing Village was awarded the full license.

Town Settles With Superior Officers, Only Dispatchers Without Contract

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Photo: Superiors officers settle, now it’s up to the dispatchers union to sign on the dotted line.

The Belmont Board of Selectmen voted Monday, Aug. 22 approving a three-year deal – from July 2014 to June 2017 – between the eight members of the Belmont Police Superior Officers Union and the town.

The agreement, negotiated by Belmont’s Human Resources Director Jessica Porter, means only the Dispatcher’s Union remain without a current contract among the town’s unions.

The contract’s highlights include:

  • An annual two percent cost-of-living-adjustment which is consistent with other town/union contracts.
  • While not random testing, the union agreed to drug and alcohol testing “based upon reasonable suspicion.” 
  • Newly hired/promoted superior officers as of July 1, will see their health insurance contribution rate go up from 20 percent to 25 percent in exchange for a 25 cents an hour increase n hourly pay. 
  • A “nominal” increase to established stipends will be paid to superior officers serving in special assignments which include as a prosecuting officer, community services officer in command and the department’s two detective positions. 

Mack Truck Takes A Pleasant Street Tumble, Halting AM Traffic Into Center

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Photo: Speed may have been a factor in the one-vehicle accident near Belmont Center on Thursday, Aug. 25.

Late morning traffic came to a halt at one of the busiest town intersection when a dump truck carrying gravel took a tumble sometime before 8:30 a.m. at the corner of Pleasant and Leonard streets, on Thursday, Aug. 25.

No injuries were reported in the one-vehicle accident that shut down the busy intersection for nearly three hours as it took two heavy duty tow trucks to right the rig.

According to an eyewitness, speed was possibly the culprit leading up to the mishap. The Mack truck operated by Ritacco Bros. of Millbury was traveling down the steep slope of Clifton Street attempting to make the right hand turn onto Pleasant Street. Apparently, the truck was going too fast to navigate the corner and tipped onto its driver’s side.

Belmont Fire quickly arrived at the scene – the accident location is one block from the Leonard Street firehouse – and police closed to traffic on Pleasant in both directions.

Waltham Auto Tow arrived and successfully righted the truck at 10:10 a.m. Belmont Public Works’ Highway Division removed the gravel and inspected the roadway. The streets were opened about an hour later.

Belmont Police said any citations for possible traffic violations leading up to the accident would be issued once a formal investigation is completed by the department’s Traffic Division.

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Champion Tomatoes, New Composting Business Highlights This Week’s Market Day

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Photo: Kimball Fruit Farm’s owner Carl Hills with the hardware. 

Champion tomatoes and a successful composting company with a fanatical following in its hometown of Portland, Maine highlight this week’s Belmont Farmers Market that takes place today, Thursday, Aug. 25 at the Belmont Center municipal parking lot at the corner of Cross Street and Channing Road.

The market’s hours are 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Long-time Belmont market day vendor Kimball Fruit Farm won multiple top five prizes at the 31st annual state Tomato Contest held this week at the Boston Public Market. A total of 92 entries from 28 different farms competed in four categories: cherry tomato, heirloom tomato, field and slicing tomato, and heaviest tomato.

The Pepperall-farm won first place in heaviest with a weight of 2.68 pounds, second and fifth in the heirloom category with the Mortgage Lifter and the Cherokee Purple.

Kimball Fruit Farm is a third generation family run farm owned and operated by Carl and Marie Hills. 

A new company will be introducing their unique composting service to Belmont residents.

Garbage to Garden will swap your bucket of food waste from the curb weekly for a fresh, clean bucket and, if requested, a bag of compost. This is a new service to Massachusetts with Belmont and Arlington being the first communities to be served by the Portland, Maine firm, which in its hometown has one-in-seven households participating in the service.

At the market today: tomatoes and corn, basil, the last of the blueberries and the first of grapes, great produce, wine and sundries. 

Community Table
  • 2 p.m.: Kids’ program: Passport for Produce. The market will be collecting passports and awarding prizes – plus a scavenger hunt. 

Schedule of Events

  • 2 p.m.: Branson Bofat will perform a mix of acoustic blues, finger-style guitar instrumentals, and other classic country favorites. 
  • 4 p.m.: Storytime by the Belmont Public Library
  • 4:30 p.m.: The String Beans: The young musicians are students of Deborah Boykan (Belmont) and Colleen McGrary (Powers Music School) including three of the younger string players who will form a trio.

Above It All: Night Road Paving In Belmont Center [VIDEO]

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Photo: A still from a video of the night paving in Belmont Center.

To see up close the paving of Leonard Street and its connecting roads over the past few nights has been to experience the cacophony and heat produced by massive machines as they grind and lay out a new top coat surface for Belmont Center.

But viewed from the air, the same action has an expansive grace, as the equipment appear more accessible and the entire operation has an elegance not before seen.

The video is by Belmont resident Lucas Tragos who last weekend received a national video award for a 22-minute sports documentary on the 2015 Belmont High School football team. His recent aerial video of Boston and Cambridge has been receiving great reviews.

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Toll Partners With Former Owner To Lease Cushing Village’s Retail Space

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Photo: Bill Lovett,  a senior development manager at Toll’s Apartment Living, before the Board of Selectmen.

It wasn’t the one-month extension the town gave Toll Brothers to close on the municipal parking lot adjacent Trapelo Road critical to the building of the long-delayed Cushing Village project that created the big buzz at the Belmont Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday, Aug. 22.

It was who the new developer is partnering with on a significant feature of the $80 million project that was a total surprise to the nearly dozen residents who sacrificed a beautiful summer evening to attend the meeting at Belmont’s Town Hall.

Chris Starr, the Bedford resident who spent almost a decade of his life attempting to construct the three building complex before giving up and relinquishing the site to the Pennsylvania -based firm, will either control “whole or in part” the leasing of 38,000 sq.-ft. of retail space in the new development.

Revealed by the Selectmen at the meeting, the news of Starr’s return to the project that he failed to complete was a startling announcement to those in attendance.

“This just didn’t make much sense at all,” said Doug Koplow of Oak Avenue.

Bill Lovett,  a senior development manager at Toll’s Apartment Living – a relatively new whole-owned subsidiary within the Horsham, Penn.-based firm – would only say the details for the company’s arrangement with Starr are in the new draft Land Development Agreement, the nuts and bolts legal document describing what will occur during the construction.

The LDA notes Starr’s involvement as taking “whole or part” of the commercial portion of the project once the space is built out and the town has provided a temporary certification of occupancy. The earliest that will take place is at least two years away.

Speculation of Starr’s return leans towards Toll’s expertise in the residential development yet having little knowledge of commercial leasing. Having spent the better part of a year attempting to land a big retail operation for his project, Starr’s contacts would be seen as valuable to Toll. 

Some residents expressed a worry that Starr’s background – during his tenure he could not put together the necessary financing to build the project nor find an anchor store for the site – could lead to further troubles for the project.

“[Starr] hasn’t shown much competence when he had Cushing Village and I don’t see much changing,” said Rita Butzer Carpenter of Precinct 6.

But for Selectmen Chair Mark Paolillo – who said the board was equally “surprised” by the arrangement between the present and past owners – a new near-luxury development on three town blocks at the intersection of Common and Trapelo would be a draw for most commercial retailers.

“We have the confidence that the commercial space will be very appealing to a wide range of retailers once [Cushing Village] is built,” said Paolillo. “It will be a very beautiful place to be located, and you’ll have 115 units of people who are customers inside the building.” 

Before the Starr bombshell landed, most residents were eager to hear why Toll was seeking to an extension on the deadline for the parking lot purchase and, as Lovett noted, seeking next month before the Planning Board to move the deadline for the Special Permit on Dec. 3 up by several months.

In March when Toll Brothers took tentative control of the project’s development rights from Starr, Lovitt sought and received a six-month extension, until Aug. 26, to sign the Purchase and Sale for the municipal parking lot.

Since then, the firm has been performing environmental tests and other audits as part of the company’s due diligence of the site and past agreements.

Lovett said the company’s reviews “just took a bit longer than anticipated.” The delay forced Toll to push back the start of its negotiations with “a retail component” (i.e., Starbucks), said Lovitt.

“We needed to dot the ‘Is’ and cross the ‘Ts’ before moving forward,” said Lovett.

While the added month may, as Selectman Jim Williams noted, be standard fare for a project of this size and past difficulties, one selectman was less than pleased.

“I feel let down by you,” Selectman Sami Baghdady told Lovett, who said that many residents saw Toll as the “white knight” when it rescued the project in March.

“There are many frustrated people as you can tell,” Baghdady said of those in the audience, wondering what assurances does the town have that Toll will not come back in the third week in September “asking for more time?”

Lovett said the company has spent “thousands of dollars” in preconstruction costs and is eager to add Cushing Village to its portfolio of projects including a completed apartment complex in Westborough and one soon to be under construction in Natick.

While saying Toll Brothers “will not find [another extension] here” should it come back in a month with the similar request, Paolillo said the added time “is our last best chance” at guiding the project towards construction.

“There is not option B,” he said as the extension was approved. 

Cushing Village’s New Owner Seeking Added Concessions From Town

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Photo: The current state of the location of Cushing Village.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

That 19th-century French saying has a ring of truth to it when the discussion turns to the long-stalled Cushing Village residential/retail/parking development as it appears the new owners are seeking their own set of concessions from the town.

Approved for construction in July 2013, the project suffered through two-and-a-half years of delays and missed opportunities under the former ownership of lead developer Smith Legacy Partners.

So there was hope in the community when national housing firm Toll Brothers purchased the development rights in March of this year that a change at the top would allow the $80 million project – 115 units of housing, 38,000 sq.-ft. of stores and approximately 200 parking spaces – to move quickly to the construction stage.

In fact, representative of the Pennsylvia company said then it would not seek changes to the project which would warrant restarting the process, expressing confidence it would make the Aug. 26 deadline for the firm to sign a purchase and sale agreement with the town to buy a key town-owned land parcel, the municipal parking lot adjacent to Trapelo Road and Starbucks for $1 million, that would allow building to commence. 

For the town, Toll Brothers’ commitment to the site would stop the “endless loop of uncertainty” hampering work from commencing, said Selectman Sami Baghdady in March.

But what was said in the Spring appears to have fallen to the wayside in mid Summer. According to documents from the Board of Selectmen, Toll Brothers representatives will come before the Board at its Monday, Aug. 22 meeting seeking a new extension to the P&S deadline taking place four days later. 

In addition, the firm will request amendments to the Land Development Agreement – which for commercial property is a development plan that typically includes the time frame for completing the project, the property description, design sketches, and other details. 

The details of the changes and why they are being sought by Toll Brothers have not been publically flushed out – both the town and Toll are not speaking on the matter – as both sides appear ready to present their arguments on Monday.

Earlier this month, the board and the town appeared ready to sign all necessary paperwork on the 22nd, with current board chair Mark Paolillo saying that “both sides want this to go through.” 

West Nile Virus Detected In Belmont; State Advise Residents Take Precautions

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Photo: Beware this guy.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced Thursday, Aug. 18 that West Nile virus has been detected in three mosquitos recently collected from sites in Belmont. 

WNV is most commonly transmitted to humans by the bite of a mosquito infected with the virus.  While WNV can infect people of all ages, people older than 50 are at higher risk for severe infection.

The majority of people, up to 80 percent, who are infected with WNV will have no symptoms.

A smaller number of people who become infected (less than 20 percent) will have symptoms such as fever, headache, body aches, nausea, vomiting, and sometimes swollen lymph glands. They may also develop a skin rash on the chest, stomach and back.

Less than one percent of people infected with WNV will develop severe illness, including encephalitis or meningitis. The symptoms of severe illness can include high fever, headache, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness and paralysis. Persons older than 50 years of age have a higher risk of developing severe illness.

As always, there are a few precautions people can do to help to protect themselves and their families:

Avoid Mosquito Bites

  • Be Aware of Peak Mosquito Hours: The hours from dusk to dawn are peak biting times for many mosquitoes. Consider rescheduling outdoor activities that occur during evening or early morning. Otherwise, take extra care to use repellent and protective clothing.
  • Clothing Can Help reduce mosquito bites. Although it may be difficult to do when it’s hot, wearing long-sleeves, long pants and socks when outdoors will help keep mosquitoes away from your skin.
  • Apply Insect Repellent when you go outdoors. Use a repellent with DEET (N, N-diethyl-m-toluamide), permethrin, picaridin (KBR 3023), IR3535 or oil of lemon eucalyptus [p-methane 3, 8-diol (PMD)] according to the instructions on the product label.  DEET products should not be used on infants under two months of age and should be used in concentrations of 30 percent or less on older children. Oil of lemon eucalyptus should not be used on children under three years of age. Permethrin products are intended for use on items such as clothing, shoes, bed nets and camping gear and should not be applied to skin. 

Mosquito-Proof Your Home

  • Drain Standing Water: Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. Limit the number of places around your home for mosquitoes to breed by either draining or getting rid of items that hold water. Check rain gutters and drains. Make sure rain barrels are covered or screened. Empty any unused flowerpots and wading pools, and change water in birdbaths frequently. 
  • Install or Repair Screens: Some mosquitoes like to come indoors. Keep them outside by having tightly-fitting screens on all of your windows and doors.

Information about WNV and reports of WNV activity in Massachusetts during 2016 can be found on the MDPH website.

Belmont Center Paving Starts: Friday Morning, Aug. 19

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Photo: Paving Belmont Center starts … now!

It’s been delayed for about a year but beginning this morning, Friday, Aug. 19; Belmont Center will undergo the paving of its main and secondary roadways, a major part of the $2.8 million reconstruction of the town’s major business hub.

Watertown’s Charles Contracting will begin the final paving on Friday, Aug. 19, in the morning, focusing on side streets away from Leonard Street. The morning commute through the center will experience “minor delays” only, according to town officials.

Starting Monday night, Aug. 22, the remainder of Belmont Center including Leonard Street will be paved. Weather permitting, work is expected to occur between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. on Aug. 22, 23, 24, and be completed by Thursday, Aug. 25.

Belmont Center businesses will be open and accessible during their regular hours.

Access to driveways in the work area may be restricted, so residents should park away from the project limits if you will need access to your vehicle overnight.

If residents have any questions, contact Belmont’s Resident Engineer Robert Bosselman at 617-993-2657.