Several Westborough residents have appealed the town ruling that lets Amazon treat its Prime Air drone launch pad as an accessory use of its Otis Street warehouse, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Saturday, October 3. The appeal goes to Westborough’s Zoning Board of Appeals, which has not yet set a hearing date, and the paper says it has pushed Amazon’s launch back indefinitely.
Amazon told a hotel ballroom on September 23 it hoped to fly by the end of October. Its site-plan hearing before the Planning Board, set for Tuesday, October 6, already carries a request to continue to November 10.
The Planning Board can attach conditions to a use the zoning bylaw allows by right. It cannot refuse one. The ZBA appeal asks whether the pad is a by-right use at all.
A ZBA Reversal Would Move Amazon’s Pad From Site-Plan Review to a Special Permit
Westborough’s building commissioner and town counsel classified Amazon’s 6,800-square-foot (632-square-meter) launch pad as accessory to the warehouse, which put it in site-plan review, not a special permit. The residents’ appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals challenges that, the Telegram & Gazette reported. Its hearing date is to be determined.
The accessory-use call is not new. Select Board member Welch questioned it on August 18, pointing to the bylaw’s definition of “airport” and asking whether the pad belonged on the special-permit track, as DroneXL reported in Amazon Wants Drones Over 6 Massachusetts Towns. Not All Have Been Told. Westborough’s bylaw defines an airport as any area on a lot used for the landing and takeoff of aircraft on a regular or intermittent basis, and an accessory use as an incidental or insubstantial part of the activity on a lot. Which districts allow an airport, and on what permit, sits in the bylaw’s Use Regulation Schedule, which DroneXL has not been able to pull. Town staff told the board that Building Commissioner Bill Hezlitt and town counsel had reviewed and agreed with the accessory reading. No appeal was reported at the time.
If the schedule puts an airport on the special-permit track, the difference between the two is the whole fight. Under Prudential Insurance Co. v. Board of Appeals of Westwood (1986), a Massachusetts board reviewing a site plan for a by-right use can impose conditions but cannot deny the plan unless the problems are so intractable no condition fixes them. Planning Board vice chair John Gelcich said as much on September 15: “we are almost required to approve it.” A special permit under Chapter 40A, Section 9 is discretionary. The board that issues it weighs whether the use fits the district, and a no is a no the applicant has to take to court.
State law sets the clock. Chapter 40A, Section 8 lets any person aggrieved by a building inspector’s decision appeal it to the ZBA, and Section 15 gives them 30 days from the decision to file. Once filed, the board must open its hearing within 65 days and decide within 100 days, or the appeal is deemed granted. Section 17 then gives either side 20 days to take the ZBA’s decision to court. When the residents filed is not in the T&G account, and the paper says the hearing date is still to be determined, so the 65-day arithmetic cannot be run yet. The filing date on the town clerk’s stamp is the number that sets every other date in Westborough.
The appeal lands in a week that already slowed Amazon down. Three state lawmakers asked the company to pause in a letter dated September 28, which DroneXL covered in Amazon Drone Hub Faces Pause Call From Lawmakers as State Sues FAA, and Massachusetts joined 14 other states in the Second Circuit the same day against the FAA clearance Amazon’s site review would rest on. Amazon then asked the Planning Board for five more weeks, as DroneXL reported Friday in Amazon Asks Westborough to Delay Drone Pad Vote as Board Says No. None of those reports, and not the T&G’s, carried an Amazon statement on the appeal. The Drone Delivery Tracker keeps the Westborough hub at in review.
Mass Blue Skies Is 13 Residents With a 1,200-Response Survey Behind Them
Mass Blue Skies, the Westborough group organized against the drones, is a core group of 13 residents formed after Amazon’s September 23 session, the T&G reported. The separate resident-run Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey passed 1,200 responses on October 2: 92% opposed, 94% saying they would not use it.
Those percentages have not moved since DroneXL first reported the survey at 853 responses on September 28 in Amazon Faces 92% Opposition in Westborough Drone Survey, Calls Urged. The survey calls itself unscientific and is run by a resident with no tie to Amazon or the town.
Dan Kline, a Westborough resident and Mass Blue Skies member, told the T&G the program would add noise to a society that already has too much and leave no sense of freedom and peace. “This is not something we want in Westborough,” he said, and framed the fight as asking residents what they want their future to look like. He also said the group feels it has momentum and wants a conversation.
The T&G put Amazon’s reach at 11 communities nationwide and the Westborough radius across 15 cities and towns, Worcester, Hopkinton and Sutton among them. It also raised Richardson, Texas, where residents organized over noise and overflights and an MK30 struck an apartment building in February. DroneXL’s record of that strike, which Amazon attributed to a GPS fault, is in its February 9 report, and it is the incident I asked Amazon’s Tareq Wafaie about in the Westborough ballroom. He did not address it.
Residents in the 15 towns who want to put questions to the company directly can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and choose “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can and cannot do once a hub is proposed. Amazon Prime Air has not said whether it will send anyone to the ZBA hearing, and Amazon sent no one to Thursday’s Select Board meeting.
DroneXL’s Take
This is the appeal I expected in August, when Welch first raised the airport question. Everything Westborough has thrown at Amazon since, the letter, the unanimous Select Board, the North Reading bylaw idea, works on the flights, and no town can touch the flights. The ZBA appeal works on the ground, which is the only place a Massachusetts town has any power. My read is that a parking lot built to launch up to 1,000 aircraft a day is not accessory to anything. Westborough’s own definition says accessory means incidental or insubstantial, and a launch pad is the principal use of that corner of the lot. Whether a special permit is the alternative depends on the use schedule the ZBA will have in front of it, and I don’t.
Singer v. Newton cuts the other way, and the ZBA should know it. A special permit denied on noise or overflight grounds hands Amazon a preemption argument it has not needed so far. The denial that survives is the one written about the land: whether an aircraft operation is a principal use of the lot, and whether the warehouse district’s schedule allows one. Nothing about the 78-pound aircraft with no parachute belongs in that decision, and the ZBA that keeps it out is the one Amazon cannot preempt.
Watch for the ZBA to post a hearing date. Under Section 15 it has to come within 65 days of the filing, so the posting dates the appeal and starts the only clock in Westborough that Amazon does not control.
Sources: Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Citizen Portal summary of the August 18 Select Board meeting, Boston Globe, Westborough Area Drone Delivery Survey, Westborough Zoning Bylaw § 1.6 definitions, M.G.L. c. 40A §§ 8, 9, 15 and 17.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
