After multiple meetings, the Milton Planning and Zoning Commission, by a 5-1 vote, is recommending town council deny the preliminary site plan for the Scarlet Oaks development.

At issue for the commission is the street design for the planned 163-unit development, to be built on a 50-acre parcel near the intersection of Shingle Point and Harbeson roads. The commission agreed to not require developer Ribera Development to have a traffic-impact study for the subdivision.

The commission first met for preliminary site-plan review Sept. 15, but did not reach any conclusions and left the record open for additional material submissions. The commission met again Sept. 28 to resolve the site-plan review ahead of town council’s Monday, Oct. 5 meeting. Because Scarlet Oaks has a large parcel development overlay – with an R-1 residential zoning designation – town code mandates a review and recommendation by planning and zoning with final approval and conditions coming from town council.

Planning and zoning’s code-mandated recommendations include street width, right-of-way, design and layout. The commission rejecting the Scarlet Oaks plan comes down to the street design, which both the town’s engineer, Carlton Savage, and the commissioners said did not have sufficient turnaround space for emergency vehicles and had poor sightlines, leading to safety concerns for bicyclists and pedestrians. These issues, the commission said, made the roadways not up to town code.

Attorney MacKenzie Sindelar, representing Ribera Development, argued the project master plan, approved by the planners in August 2024, depicted the street design and alignment, and she questioned why the commission was seeking to change it now. She asked why the commission did not attach conditions during the master plan process if they had problems with the design.

“If the town’s position is that approval of this preliminary plan now requires a comprehensive redesign of the approved roadway network, that concern should have been raised clearly and directly before the master plan was voted upon and recorded,” Sindelar said. “What’s being suggested now is not a minor technical refinement; it’s a position that has the potential to derail an entire project. The town engineer is advocating, from our perspective, a result that departs from, rather than implements, the development framework that the town previously reviewed, approved and recorded.”

That position put the applicant and the commission on opposite footing. For the commission, the master plan represents the dream, an idea of what the development could look like, while the preliminary site plan is where an applicant is supposed to show detailed engineering. 

Commissioner Michael O’Brien spoke for several of his colleagues by saying he was frustrated with how the process has played out.

"We have a process in this town," said Chair Richard Trask. "And it seems like, right from the beginning, the process has gone by the way because you want to design this thing the way you want to design it.”

Trask said at no point was Ribera ever told they did not have to comply with the zoning code and that the point of a preliminary site plan is for the plan to conform to the zoning code.

“We see a lot of applications for housing developments, and never once have we heard, ‘We don’t have to listen to the zoning code because we have an approved master plan,’” he said.

After back-and-forth between the commission and the applicant, Sindelar asked the commission for an up-or-down vote on whether or not to recommend the preliminary site plans with the roadways as designed. 

O’Brien made a recommendation that council not deviate from the zoning code on the roadway and was joined by Trask and commissioners Maurice McGrath, Don Mazzeo and Andy Gogates, with Commissioner Joel Leidy the only nay vote.