Pepperell Planning Board Continues First ADU Second-Unit Permit Case, Cites Missing Plan Details

PEPPERELL -- October 6, 2025, Pepperell Planning Board unanimously recommends Birch Drive Extension street acceptance and continues town's first ADU second-unit special permit case. The board voted to recommend Town Meeting adopt the laying out of Birch Drive Extension per a Hancock Associates plan dated October 4, 2023 and last revised September 10, 2025, clearing the way for public maintenance of the 40B-origin street. The board then opened its first-ever special permit case under new state ADU legislation, application PBSP-25-3 from Brian and Eleanor Mariano of 59 Lowell Road, who are seeking to construct two attached one-bedroom units totaling 1,250 square feet on their roughly 52,800-square-foot lot, which already carries a legal two-family home. A board member urged the Marianos to consider deed-restricting the units at 80 percent of area median income to chip away at Pepperell's 2.9 percent subsidized housing inventory, well below the state-mandated 10 percent threshold, though members agreed that restriction cannot be a permit condition under state law. The board continued the case pending a to-scale site plan showing parking, driveways, snow storage, and buffering. In a separate disclosure, the town planner announced that Pepperell did not receive an approximately $800,000 Underutilized Buildings Program grant and that a zoning definitions warrant article missed the newspaper advertisement deadline and will not appear on the November 3 Town Meeting warrant.