East Longmeadow Town Council hosts first mixed-used village district bylaw public hearing

Sept. 30, 2020 | Dennis Hackett
dennis@thereminder.com

EAST LONGMEADOW –  During its Sept. 22 meeting, the East Longmeadow Town Council hosted the first public hearing for a proposed Mixed-Use Village District bylaw and approved a name change for Bentley’s Bistro.

After reading through the entire proposed Mixed-Use Village District bylaw, the council opened the discussion about the proposal and Councilor Thomas O’Connor said he had some worries about the development.

“I personally have a lot of doubt that this will bring a long-term benefit to our town. There’s a lot of language within the document that I’m not comfortable with. Having worked with major corporations and developers in the past, we need to be stronger with our language dealing with them,” he said.

While he acknowledged the language concerns in the bylaw, Councilor Ralph Page said that this is one of the first steps in the project.

“This is the creation of a bylaw, and the bylaw allows a mixture of residential and commercial on the same parcel. This is not for a specific project. We’re at the beginning of this, of which there is a lot of public hearings and public input that we want. We want to make a document that is as good as we can to start,” he said.

Page added that process would include multiple public hearings through both the town council, the planning board, and the town manager before an applicant would be able to establish a Mixed-Use Village District.

Councilor Marilyn Richards said that the bylaw was important because it would help establish more affordable housing in East Longmeadow.

“There is a need in our community for some affordable housing. We are required to have 10 percent of housing stock be affordable. In 2010 we were at seven percent and I’m sure we’re much lower than that now because we haven’t added any affordable housing,” she said.

The council will host its next public hearing for the proposed bylaw on Oct. 13.

After the council raised concerns over a name change for Bentley’s Bistro to Craft 32 Bistro and Events because it would be adding “Events” to its name at its last meeting, one of the owners, Joe Garcia, clarified what the name change would mean.

“When the chefs came in, they wanted to use the word events because they wanted to get out that we would be catering, having birthday parties, fundraisers, holiday parties, things that we’ve always done. Events is what they came up with, at this point it would be on the license and not the signage,” he said.

He added that the day to day operations at the restaurant would remain the same.

“Nothing is going to change as far as the operations at Bentley’s. We brought in three top notch chefs from the area, a new menu, we’re going to continue to do catering, we’ve always had an entertainment license for a three-piece band in place,” Garcia said.

One of the biggest concerns from Councilor Don Anderson was the fact that there would be a discrepancy between the license and the signage.

"I’m okay with ‘and Events’ as long as it brands with that. But having it on the certificate and nowhere on the building prominently identifying it, then I have a concern,” he said.

At this time, co-owner Vincent Santaniello jumped into the call to express his frustrations over the hang up with the word “Events” in the new name.

“If we try to do something that’s not under our entertainment license you have the authority to monitor that, in nine years we haven’t done that. We have three executive chefs; we have 40 employees waiting to go back to work, they can’t make their car payments, we could’ve closed our doors,” he said.

Santaniello added that the restaurant’s track record speaks for itself.

“I’ve been a business owner in East Longmeadow for nine years, I just took the biggest eyesore in the center of town and put $2 million into that place. I think the council has to work with us here, we have a fantastic track record here,” he said.

The council then unanimously approved the name change, with Anderson abstaining for previously representing the business owners when they originally opened.

The East Longmeadow Town Council next meets on Oct. 13.

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