On Monday, the Jaffrey Planning Board spent an hour touring the property of the proposed Stony Brook development off of Route 124, near Shattuck Golf Course, viewing areas where the development has encroached beyond boundary lines and where trees had been cut and soil disturbed, along with discussing proposed amendments to the approved layout of the development.

The development, owned by Barkley Home Builders, run by Jamie and Jared Van Dyke, was previously approved by town boards but has submitted a request to amend the site plan to the Planning Board, which opened a hearing on the proposal last week.

Jamie Van Dyke said since the project broke ground, there have been multiple issues discovered with the initially proposed plan, such as ledge where houses were proposed to go. Van Dyke said they have been working with town officials to update the plans, such as moving potential housing plots to avoid ledge.

During the Planning Board meeting, the board heard the initial proposal for changes in housing configuration and adjustments to water management features, but ultimately continued the hearing on multiple grounds, including that the plans had not been submitted two weeks in advance, that the property requires notice of regional impact due to it being in the Mountain Zone and to hold a site walk, which took place Monday. The meeting was continued until Aug. 13.

As part of the site walk and the board’s meeting, board members also addressed a notice of violation that has been issued to the property for multiple instances of cutting trees and working outside of the property’s boundaries. 

“There are multiple points of encroachment,” explained Planning and Economic Development Director Jo Anne Carr at the start of the site walk, as she pointed out areas of identified disturbance outside of the property lines on a plan of the development.

Impacts are at multiple points on both the eastern and western sides of the property, at some points encroaching on wetlands buffers, and close to areas of concern such as the brook that runs beside the property.

Jamie Van Dyke apologized for “the mistakes I’ve made on this site.” He said everything that has been done, and changes he is proposing to the approved plan, are all in the goal of “clarifying” the existing plans.

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“I wasn’t trying to ignore the board,” Van Dyke said.

The site has been approved for 28 homes, with two currently under construction. The town has issued a stop-work order on the rest of the development while allowing the two houses under construction to continue. According to Town Manager Jon Frederick, there are no other permits yet issued for the development, though according to the phased construction plan, the developers would have been allowed to pull additional permits this year were it not for the stop-work order.

Carr pointed out several areas where there were visible tree stumps outside of the marked property line that had been cut during the development, marked with blue ribbon or paint.

During a Select Board meeting on July 8, the board officially approved a recommendation by the town’s Conservation Commission to hire NativeScapes to do the work of replanting trees, restoring disturbed soil and monitoring the trees for the next 36 months to ensure they take root and are healthy, at the developer’s expense. The town reviewed three bids submitted for the work, with cost estimates ranging from $85,000 to $114,000. The Select Board agreed with the Conservation Commission’s recommendation of NativeScapes, with a bid of $87,500.

However, during the site walk, Carr noted that during more-recent reviews of the property, there have been additional encroachments found on the property’s eastern edge, which have yet to be assessed by an ecologist.

In one area, developers had constructed a dirt access road from the development to a pump station on the Shattuck Golf Course, which had been made as part of an agreement between the Van Dykes and the course in order to better access the station and run an electric line to the station. Carr said the town never approved the construction of the access, it had cut through an area with a wetland buffer and at one point, clipped the top of an actual wetland area.

“This was not permitted, but it’s built,” Carr said. “That remains to be resolved.”

In addition to the encroachments, Carr noted there were some other issues the board would be turning their attention to, including the footprint of the homes that had been built so far and foundation elevation, the change from a raised to a flat sidewalk and the change in shape of retention areas and how those changes affect water flow.

Jamie Van Dyke has also discussed other changes with the town, such as moving houses closer to the roadway to give additional space between the homes and retention ponds on the property and the adjacent Shattuck Golf Course fairway, though those amendments will require an approval from the town’s Zoning Board and have not yet been submitted. While the board was not considering those issues as part of the site walk on Monday, Van Dyke did point out the potential homes he would like to move forward, and Carr mentioned the potential issue of snow removal and requiring space for snow storage as potential issues.

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleyS aariMLT.