Planner pitches lifting big box retail size cap in Hadley

GAZETTE FILE PHOTO 

GAZETTE FILE PHOTO  GAZETTE FILE PHOTO

By SCOTT MERZBACH

Staff Writer

Published: 01-15-2025 1:14 PM

HADLEY — While Hadley has several shopping centers and malls on its commercial corridor, for nearly 20 years the town has prohibited construction of any new retail store exceeding 75,000 square feet.

Adopted by annual Town Meeting in May 2006, the “compatible building size bylaw,” as it was called, passed by a more than three-to-one margin, effectively banning big box stores from coming to Hadley, unless locating in an existing plaza or already in the planning and development phase at that time.

With that bylaw still intact, Planning Board Chairman James Maksimoski is suggesting that the board begin considering drafting a bylaw to give residents the opportunity to alter or overturn the restrictive measure.

At the board’s Jan. 7 meeting, Maksimoski said a reason to adjust the bylaw would be to provide opportunities to enhance the town’s tax base. “The town is beginning to see a bit of a cash crunch,” Maksimoski said.

Such a change, though, might not cause a significant change to Route 9 as happened in the 1960s and 1970s, when growth was spurred by the expansion of the University of Massachusetts. That included Hadley’s first department store, Zayre, which opened in 1966 in a plaza with Stop & Shop near the Amherst town line, followed by construction of both Mountain Farms Mall, anchored by Almy’s and Woolco, in the early 1970s and then Hampshire Mall later that decade, with its major stores at the time being JC Penney, Steiger’s and K-Mart.

“If a big box store was possibly thinking of coming into town, that would be a potential nice small tax windfall addition,” Maksimoski said.

It also wouldn't be hard to draft a bylaw, though getting it passed could be a challenge. “Writing up the amendment is virtually nothing,” Maksimoski said.

The cap on the size of retail stores came at a time when the town was undertaking a long-term plan, and followed successful votes to rezone properties to accommodate Lowe's and Home Depot stores, while a proposed Walmart Supercenter for Hampshire Mall was proposed, but never got built.  Home Depot, which opened in late 2008, and Lowe’s, in early 2010, became the last big retail stores to open, both in buildings about 3 acres in size. The Lowe’s store is 139,648 square feet, or almost twice the size of the cap.

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At the same Town Meeting in 2006, a similar size cap was placed on hotels or office buildings, though they can continue to exceed 75,000 square feet with a special permit, with developers required to make a contribution to the transfer of development rights bylaw that protects farmland elsewhere in town.

Planners then had opposed the strict cap on retail, concerned that it didn’t have a way of saving agricultural land, while supporters said it was the first step in getting a long range plan in place, which had three years earlier prompted a temporary moratorium on large-scale projects. One resident supporting the retail store size cap at the time said, "the Wild West days of Route 9 are over."

Hadley also restricts the footprints of buildings in the historical overlay district on Route 9, running from where the rail trail crosses Route 9 west through town center to the Coolidge Bridge, to 12,500 square feet. That likely wouldn’t be affected.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.