NEWRY — Planning Board members unanimously approved all but one application before them Wednesday night.

Work on that application — George J. Kelly and Diane Whitten’s four-lot Mountainside Homes subdivision project — was tabled at the request of the applicant.

The board approved the site plan for the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School’s proposed building of four bunkroom cabins that will sleep 20 and use no water or electricity. That project was represented by Mike Cooper of Bethel.

Board Chairman Pat Roma said the board would have approved the application at its previous meeting on May 21, but a plumbing question surfaced about the septic capacity of the cabins. An already-existing building at the school will be used for that purpose.

Cooper told the board that the school isn’t changing anything. Additionally, Code Enforcement Officer Dave Bonney said there was no change in building use or occupancy, so the school doesn’t have to provide anything for the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The project is expected to cost just under $40,000 for materials.

The board went through its final criteria and deemed the school’s sewage disposal system adequate, approving the project by a vote of 7-0. 

The Planning Board then addressed Sunday River Ski Resort’s application for a proposed one-lot subdivision near the Grand Summit Hotel. At their May 21 meeting, planners found that the application was incomplete.

The resort wants to carve out a one-acre piece of land from a parcel they own near the Grand Summit Hotel. Sunday River also wants to use the existing roadway that passes by the hotel and extend it 300 feet through the hotel’s rear parking lot to reach the new lot, on which development has yet to be determined. The road will pass underneath a chairlift.

At the May 21 meeting, the Planning Board asked resort engineer Joe Aloisio, who presented the application, to create a pictorial view of a proposed road through the hotel’s back parking lot and under a chairlift to reach the lot, as well as planned stop signs for the road at intersections and pavement painting for walkways and a crosswalk.

They also requested that he make a future maintenance plan for the road, but unanimously granted him a waiver on road frontage.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, the board determined that Aloisio did what they asked of him.

The board worked out initial confusion with the placement of two stop signs and agreed to grant the project a waiver on the town’s road-frontage requirement. Roma said the waiver carries a condition that the road be used only to service the lot which has been graded.

The road would have a hammerhead turnaround at the lot instead of a cul-de-sac, Roma said.

Planning Board member Doug Webster asked about a speed limit for the road. Aloisio said it would be 15 mph.

Roma went through the criteria of approval with the condition that only one lot can be served by the access road.

“The whole point of this road is to get to the lot,” he said. “We don’t want it to be expanded in use to serve other lots.”

Otherwise, he said the applicant would have to return to the Planning Board to get approval to expand the road.

“We evaluated this road on having a very limited use,” Roma said.

The board went through the rest of its criteria, determined it was met and approved the project.

Planners then approved a shoreland zoning-issue change for a lot in the Peaks Subdivision, on which a house is being built.

Initially, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection restricted the project to a 100-foot, no-disturbance setback from Sunday River.

Since then, the river changed its course and is now encroaching into the project’s retaining wall, said Rick Dunton, a project manager for Main-Land Development Consultants of Livermore Falls. Dunton is representing the applicant.

“The foundation is already in and within the building envelope,” Dunton said. “This (change) is just reshaping the shoreland zone.”

Bonney said the area is zoned limited-residential, which would allow a house at the 75-foot, one-inch mark. He said the DEP relaxed its requirement to 75 feet. After more discussion, the board approved the change.

Roma then added another application to the agenda for the Peaks Subdivision for Lots 56 and 57 that sought a lot-line change to make room for a driveway for Lot No. 56. That was approved 7-0.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com