Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
The Andover Planning Commission motioned 5-0 to approve Butler’s Andover project with new conditions. The City Council will have final say on the motion at their next meeting.
The Planning Commission met on Tuesday, Oct. 16 and held a two-hour discussion of Butler’s expansion of the 5000 building following a veto by the Andover Mayor Ben Lawrence and a call for further review from the City Council. Alex Zarchan, a member of the Planning Commission and assistant director of Financial Aid at Butler of Andover, recused himself from the discussions and final vote.
“On [Tuesday], Sept. 11, 2018, the City Council unanimously adopted the findings of and factors recommended by the Planning Commission and approved the ordinance allowing the special use with conditions attached,” Planning Commission Chairman Brian Lindebak said at the meeting. “However, the mayor, Ben Lawrence, exercised his power to veto the ordinance on [Tuesday], Sept. 25, 2018. The City Council considered the matter and ultimately voted to return this case to the Planning Commission.”
Once discussions were over, the Planning Commission held the vote of the present members following their responses to the mayor’s concerns that led him to veto the original ordinance. The Planning Commission ultimately agreed with Lawrence that road improvements needed to be made to 13th Street as well as the other roads surrounding the 5000 building, Yorktown and Commerce Street, and included those as conditions in their motion. They also agreed that the area would need to be platted, which Butler President Kim Krull said the college was already in the process of finalizing before the mayor’s veto.
But they disagreed with the mayor’s concerns that the college’s area does not fit with the surrounding industrial zoning. They said whether or not the college is in the proper zone is moot since they have already been there for over a decade and it would not be reasonable to have them move.
“I move that we require that, with the approval of the special use, that provisions be made for public infrastructure improvements, including but not limited to, Commerce Street, Yorktown, 13th Street [and] water and sewer improvements, that those be agreed upon by both the City Council and [Butler Community College] as owner of the present property,” Chairperson Lindebak said at the meeting, which all members agreed with.
Krull was present at the meeting and gave a summary of the college’s response to the mayor’s concerns and also answered a few questions from the commission. Krull is concerned about getting this matter solved quickly as to not interfere with Andover High School’s construction, which she says already started on Monday, Oct. 22.
“We didn’t expect this to happen,” Krull said. “We were pretty surprised by it, and so we’ve developed some backup plans if we have to, but it [would] sure be best if we could move forward with our original plan to build the separate building and free up that space in the 5000 building so we can get that stuff transferred over from the high school, you know, on the timeline we established.”
Krull also said that traffic studies have shown that improvements to 13th Street do not need to be made to cope with traffic caused by the college.
When asked how the members of the public at the meeting felt about the expansion of the 5000 building, a vast majority of those in attendance, many being employees of Butler, stood in support, with no audience members standing up in disapproval.
The City Council will discuss the Planning Commission’s new motion at their meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 30 at the Andover City Hall at 7 p.m.
