Planning Board continues five Town Meeting zoning articles, presses Turnpike Road property on compliance

SOUTHBOROUGH — March 23, 2026 — Southborough Planning Board unanimously continued five zoning amendments toward the April 11 Annual Town Meeting and pressed Capital Group Properties over persistent lighting, landscaping, and tree violations at 154 Turnpike Road. Chair Meme Luttrell and board member Marnie Hoolahan told applicant William DePietri that his submitted photometric plan is incomplete and that the site's calculated lumen load — roughly 334,000 — exceeds the allowed maximum of approximately 256,000 under the town's Dark Sky Initiative; DePietri said he would not replace existing fixtures and warned, "if that's the path we're going down, then we might as well stop the meeting and move on to court." The board also identified hundreds of missing required shrubs along Route 9 and Breakneck Hill Road and set an April 27 joint hearing with Tree Warden Chris Leroy over removal of a public shade tree, extending the decision due date for the site to May 1, 2026. On the Town Meeting front, Hoolahan presented a full slide deck on the proposed Industrial Park District rewrite, which would impose 1,000-foot setbacks for data centers and small clean energy infrastructure and add a new Planning Board special permit category for data centers no larger than 50,000 square feet. Town Planner Karina Quinn also briefed the board on a Costco pre-filing meeting held March 18, noting the company's attorney, Robert Buckley of Atlantic Management, proposed subcommittee working sessions that Luttrell cautioned must be public and posted.