Lunenburg Conservation Commission Opens Review of 20-Unit Townsend Road Development

Conservation · Meeting of March 4, 2026

Lunenburg Conservation Commission opens review of a proposed 20-unit townhouse development on New West Townsend Road. Engineer Greg Roy of Dillis and Roy presented a notice of intent for Daniel and Rachel Brackett's project, which would place four lots each hosting a five-unit townhouse — 20 units total — behind a common driveway on a steep, wetland-laced parcel near the Fitchburg town line in an Area of Critical Environmental Concern; the commission continued the hearing to April 1 pending a site walk and a Planning Board stormwater peer review by Graves Engineering. The board issued unanimous negative determinations for a deck replacement at 1010 Flat Hill Road and for a rooftop solar and battery-storage project at 475 Leominster-Shirley Road.

A revised plan for a cottage demolition and replacement house at 27 Fire Road 15A on Lake Shirley was approved unanimously, with conditions requiring excavated material to be trucked off site and a retaining wall redesigned to fall outside the 50-foot no-structure zone. The commission voted to decline its right of first refusal on a roughly 30-acre parcel at 1083 Northfield Road listed at $765,000, finding it did not meet the town's open-space acquisition criteria. Commissioner Andrea Burnett was appointed liaison to the Open Space Committee, and Conservation Agent Herlin announced an initiative to move the commission's fee schedule out of the town charter to allow updates without a town meeting vote.

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Source: the Conservation meeting of March 4, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.