SOUTHWICK – Select Board member Douglas Moglin responded to concerns over the proposed Carvana facility on College Highway after some residents spoke against the project during the June 8 Planning Board hearing.

Moglin said on June 11 the project is large, but that the Griffin Land Trust property and the parcel adjacent to it that they acquired is already correctly zoned for a facility like Carvana. He said the town will be making changes to that area of Routes 10 and 202 to mitigate the potential traffic impact that such a facility may create.

“It complies with zoning, they are not in the wetland, they are not dumping stuff on the ground,” said Moglin.

He pointed to Carvana’s growth and dominance in a relatively new part of the car industry. Carvana is one of the biggest online car dealerships. Rather than go to a physical dealership, shoppers visit the Carvana website or app and order a vehicle online to be delivered to their location of choice.

“It is a Fortune 500 company. It is a growing company. It is a burgeoning industry, buying cars online,” said Moglin.

He said he had seen photos and walk-throughs of the insides of other Carvana facilities, which he described as “gorgeous.”

Carvana would need to utilize many large trucks, including trucks that can carry several passenger vehicles at once. As it stands right now, the Cowles Bridge down the street in Westfield would not be ready for such a heavy vehicle to cross. Moglin said that when the bridge is complete, it will be able to carry those kinds of trucks.

His expectation is that it would take about one year to complete the project after ground is broken. In that time, Southwick and MassDOT would work on traffic improvements, including the construction of a new traffic signal at the intersection of College Highway and Tannery Road. Access to the proposed facility would be on Tannery Road.

During the June 8 hearing, some residents expressed concerns over the potential water usage of the facility and potential water runoff from the pavement.

Moglin acknowledged that Carvana would be one of the top 10 water users in Southwick, but that they would be the ones paying for it. In their proposal, Carvana basically opted out of all incentives they could have received from the town in the interest of getting it approved and built more quickly.

He said it would also shift some of the burden off of the average taxpayer, as there are not enough significant sewer users yet in Southwick for the existing sewer infrastructure.

“We just don't have enough sewer users today. We bought capacity in anticipation of these kinds of projects, which had been shot down so far,” said Moglin.

At the June 8 meeting, resident Cynthia Marshall said that a large industrial project like Carvana would be “not good for Southwick at all.”

Moglin said that town’s can’t only be residential if they are to experience growth.

“You need to as a town have a mix of business and residential. Southwick has always had that,” said Moglin, “This is a great attraction to bring significant business to town, and a significant employer to town.”

It is projected that the Southwick Carvana facility would create more than 400 new jobs.

Moglin said that this facility will also have a smaller building footprint than other facilities that had been proposed for that piece of land.

"We had a previous project that we discussed with Griffin Land. They were going to put 750,000 square feet of building on the space,” said Moglin.

In comparison, he pointed to the Amazon warehouse in Windsor, CT, which is a 1 million square foot building with less than 50 jobs.

In the proposal, Carvana would not purchase the land directly next to College Highway, in part to act as a buffer so the facility isn’t obviously visible from the road. Moglin said that the strip of land could be purchased by several other businesses and developed separately from Carvana.

The Planning Board is scheduled to continue the Carvana hearing on June 29 at 8 p.m.