By GLYNIS HART
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CLAREMONT – A local dermatology group plans to replace a derelict house on the corner of Chestnut Street and Cossitt Avenue with a parking lot for its staff. The plan will require a variance from the zoning board of adjustment, but neighbors expressed support for the parking lot and on Oct. 22 the planning board approved it.
Peraza Dermatology, founded by Jose Peraza 40 years ago, has numerous sites throughout New Hampshire and Vermont. In Claremont, the medical office is at 252 Broad Street, which is zoned a professional residential district. A short walk away, the lot and house at 25 Chestnut Street is zoned CR2 – city center residential.
“They have overflow issues and this would address their needs,” said Michael McCrory, the city planner, at the Oct. 22 meeting of the city planning board. The parking lot will provide 21 spaces and will exit onto Cossitt Avenue.
Wayne McCutcheon, the landscape architect in charge of the project, said the parking lot is for the people who work at the clinic, which has 12 spaces behind it. The clinic’s hours of operation are 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
McCutcheon said his firm had recommended adding lights because it gets dark before 5:30 p.m. much of the year. “It’ll stay dark until May, so lights would be helpful.”
The parking lot will include grading, landscape plantings, and may also include a rain garden. A split-rail fence will mark the edge of the parking area.
Norm Sanville maintains the Broad Street property. “Last year we kept the sidewalk clean,” he said. “If the city can’t, we’ll do it.”
The parking lot will have signs to let people know it belongs to the clinic.
“A lot of people park at Peraza’s and use the trail on the weekends,” said Sanville. “Dr. Peraza’s fine with that.”
However, the prospect of people using the parking lot off-hours worried Mayor Charlene Lovett. “My concern would be from a neighbor’s perspective,” she said. “Was there any impact to the neighborhood that goes against our master plan?”
The master plan, among other goals, seeks to preserve residential housing in the city.
Caren Duford lives across the street from 25 Chestnut, and she’s all in favor of the parking lot. “For two decades, no one has resided in the abandoned house. Animals have been everywhere around it. The smell is horrible. It’s an eyesore in the middle of our neighborhood.
“Now we have someone who is ready to clean up the mess, take the house down and build an attractive parking lot,” said Duford. “This would be such an improvement for everyone concerned.”
Duford said parking along Cossitt Avenue poses a traffic hazard, especially to those turning in from Broad Street, and a parking lot would solve that problem.
Abutter Rev. Arden C. Rourke submitted a letter to the planning board expressing concerns about the effect on traffic. Rourke asked that the lot continue to provide a residence, perhaps at the edge of the parking lot, but McCrory said Peraza was not planning a residence right now.
The board approved the site plan review, passing it to the zoning board of adjustment. However, they continued to discuss the issue of future use. Lovett was concerned that a laissez-faire policy for parking lot use when the clinic’s not open could lead to problems, affecting the character of the neighborhood.
Planning board chairman Richard Wahrlich said typically a site plan review would have gone through the ZBA first. (McCutcheon explained earlier in the meeting that they hadn’t had time to do it that way.)
“The neighborhood seems to like the idea of a parking lot,” said Wahrlich. “If it creates a situation in the future, I would think they would change some signage and then start calling tow trucks. I feel strongly that people should control their property to some degree.”
McCrory called the question of parking lot use a “gray area” between the master plan the ZBA. “It will be a question that will be raising at the zoning board.
“You do try to imagine what the highest and best use of the property could be, and you try to promote that. [But] the master plan is explicitly not a regulatory document,” McCrory continued. “In my experience, if you put too much regulation in, it will come back to bite you.”
At the Nov. 5 ZBA meeting, Abigail Kier brought up Lovett’s concerns about future use of the parking lot. “This is a residential neighborhood; it is not allowed to have a parking lot, we’re putting in a parking lot.”
Tracy Pope said she understood the owner was going to post signs designating it a private parking lot. “If someone parks in that, it’s within the owner’s rights to have them towed. I took it that he’s not going to be strict about it; if it’s a school function he might just let it happen, but it’s within his rights to have it towed.”
The variance was granted by the ZBA with language prohibiting the use of the lot for public parking.
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