Rice Road was previously known as Sawmill Road dating back to at least the 1800s. Over the decades, Rice Road has been updated and upgraded to meet the current requirements at the time. Today, the Millbury Subdivision Rules and Regulations govern these requirements and construction specifications. Rice Road is a minor road and for the most part has a forty (40) foot right-of-way.

Rice Road currently serves forty-five (45) dwelling units, fifteen (15) on Rice Road, ten (10) on Thomas Hill Road, four (4) Aldrich Avenue, and sixteen (16) on Captain Peter Simpson Road. Each of these properties have no other means of ingress or egress other than to use Rice Road to either South Main Street or Providence Street (Route 122A). Rice Road is used as a cut-through road between South Main Street and Providence Street and vice versa.

Rice Road does not even meet the minimum pavement width, as required by the Millbury Subdivision Rules and Regulations, of 22-feet pavement width. Even after the town of Millbury recently repaved and widened the road in some cases up from just 16-feet in width, it is not a consistent width of 22-feet the length of Rice Road and in some portions of the road is only 19± feet in width. For the existing 45 dwelling units, the current standards require a minimum of 26-feet of pavement width. Therefore, Rice Road is undersized for the current number of dwelling units and traffic volume according to the Millbury Subdivision Rules and Regulations.

With the proposed Chapter 40B LIP Rice Pond Village project, Rice Road’s pavement width is required by the Millbury Subdivision Rules and Regulations to be a minimum pavement width of 32-feet, with a 3-foot grass strip, and a minimum of at least one 5-foot wide sidewalk.

The developers, Steven F. Venincasa and James Venincasa, have adamantly refused to address identified public safety problems, and want the taxpayers to bear these burdens instead, even though the upgrades are mostly necessitated due to their proposed development of the now former McLaughlin family properties at 17 Rice Road with 192-apartment units, in three (3) four-story buildings (16-apartments per floor, 64-apartments per building) with 294-parking spaces (for 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom apartments), with a single point of access for ingress/egress onto Rice Road.

There are also significant public safety problems with the Providence & Worcester Railroad crossing that is only 19-feet wide with a sharp angle in the road, no railroad crossing gates, no visibility over the railroad crossing in either direction, a steep grade change that is treacherous is in the winter months, and two substandard intersections on both ends of Rice Road.

Public safety problems were taken off the table during the negotiations between the Millbury Board of Selectmen (Mary Krumsiek and David Delaney), the Town Manager (Sean Hendricks), and the developers (Steven F. Venincasa, and James Venincasa), and squarely placed any future burden on local, state, or federal taxpayers, granting a significant financial windfall to the developers. By doing so, the Millbury Board of Selectmen now own these documented public safety problems, the development of plans to mitigate the public safety problems, and the implementation of all solutions to protect public safety. Any failure to mitigate each of the public safety problems would be an abject failure of their fiduciary obligations to the residents of Millbury and they could be held liable.

If this proposed Chapter 40B LIP Rice Pond Village project is approved, traffic volumes will drastically increase by 400± vehicles per day, in addition to an increase in delivery and service vehicles. This will be as bad, if not worse, than the public safety problems created by the Town of Millbury’s approval of The Shoppes at Blackstone Valley with a single ingress/egress access point and the resulting adverse impacts on McCracken Road and its residents, that taxpayers are now paying for, including eminent domain takings of one or more private properties.

Below are a few excerpts from the Millbury Planning Board’s denial of the previously proposed 46-condominium unit Rice Pond Village project on the same properties at 17 Rice Road in Millbury, Massachusetts. The developers, Steven F. Venincasa and James Venincasa, are now proposing 192-apartments which will exacerbate all public safety problems.

1. Subdivision Rules and Regulations, Section 6.7(6): Denied a requested waiver from the requirement that roads serving 20 or more dwelling units shall have a 26-foot-wide traveled way to allow for a roadway serving the Project with a 22-foot width as proposed by the Applicant, finding that a 26-foot wide travelled way is necessary to provide access equivalent to that required for single or two-family structures on separate lots, per Section 32.6 of the Zoning Bylaws.

2. Section 32.6 of the Zoning Bylaws provides that no more than one residential structure shall be erected on any lot, except that more than one multifamily structure may be placed on a lot if the Planning Board, in its deliberations on an application for a special permit for multifamily dwellings under Section 14.1l(a), determines that each such multifamily structure will be served by access equivalent to that required for single or two-family structures on separate lots under the Planning Board's Subdivision Rules and Regulations. As set forth in #8(a) through #8(e) above, the Project is designed so that its roadway and means of access deviate from several requirements in the Subdivision Rules and Regulations. The Planning Board denied the Applicant's requests for waivers, finding that conformance to the Subdivision Rules and Regulations is necessary to provide access for the Project's multifamily structures equivalent to that required for single or two-family structures on separate lots, and therefore the Project is designed contrary to the requirements of Section 32.6 of the Zoning Bylaws.

3. The Project would have just a single means of access, where the Subdivision Rules and Regulations require at least two means of access for a development of 20 units or more. The single means of access would be a roadway that is undersized based upon the minimum width required by the Subdivision Rules and Regulations. The Project's inadequate access would present a public safety risk for the residents of the Project and existing residents in the neighborhood with respect to vehicular access and circulation, pedestrian activity in the neighborhood, and accessibility to police, fire, and ambulances services, contrary to the requirements of Section 32.6 of the Zoning Bylaws.

4. Section 22 of the Zoning Bylaws governs uses in the Residential I Zoning District, and states that the intent of the district is to provide for a range of dwelling types in areas "having existing development at relatively high densities." The residential neighborhood in the vicinity of the Project currently has relatively low density development consisting of single family homes on lots ranging from one-third of an acre to more than half an acre. The Project would add 46 new residential units in 23 multifamily dwelling structures on the Property, significantly increasing the density in the neighborhood and having a detrimental impact upon the character of the neighborhood, contrary to the purposes of Section 22 of the Zoning Bylaws.

It should be noted that after the aforementioned denial decision the zoning was changed by the majority of voters in Millbury from a Residential I Zoning District to a Suburban II Zoning District to match and be consistent with the south side of Rice Road, Thomas Hill Road, Aldrich Avenue, Captain Peter Simpson Road, and the rest of the Suburban II Zoning District in the area. Therefore, the Suburban II Zoning District does not permit multifamily dwelling units on a minor street, which Rice Road is classified as.

The Millbury Zoning Bylaws define “Major Street - All state-numbered highways (Routes 20, I-90, 122, 122A, and 146), Auburn Road, Carleton Road, Elm Street, Grafton Street, Greenwood Street, Howe Avenue, Martin Street, Millbury Avenue, McCracken Road east of Greenwood, North Main Street, Stone Road, Sutton Road, West Main Street, plus any street subsequently laid out with right-of-way width of sixty feet (60') or more.”

Vehicle Crash Data

With a little bit of online research, it was quite easy to uncover the MassDOT Vehicle Crash Data. Based upon the straight-line distance between the GPS coordinates of the now former McLaughlin family house to the vehicle crash GPS coordinates, within a radius of 0.2± miles, between 1/1/2018 through 12/31/2022, there were nine (9) vehicle crash incidents.

The developer’s traffic engineer documented in his Traffic Impact Study dated March 2021, “Accidents: The latest accident data compiled by the massDOT were obtained and reviewed for a three-year period of 2018-2020. This review revealed that no accidents were reported for any of these intersections during this three-year period. Therefore, it is concluded that no safety issues could be associated with these intersections. There was one accident recorded in front of #9 Rice Road that is approximately 400’ west of the proposed site driveway. This accident occurred on March 17, 2019 at 3:00 PM and it involved a single vehicle backing out and hitting a parked car. This accident involved no injuries.“

However, MassDOT recorded seven (7) vehicle crash data incidents between 2018-2020 and two (2) more between 2021-2022 within 0.2± miles of the now former McLaughlin family home. Why then are there discrepancies between what the developer’s traffic engineer reported in his Traffic Impact Study and the publicly available MassDOT vehicle crash data? The developer’s traffic engineer was peppered with questions during the public hearings as residents and Millbury Planning Board members recalled more accidents or incidents, then included in the developer’s traffic engineer’s report. This requires further explanation for a better understanding of these discrepencies.