Amazon asked Westborough’s Planning Board on Friday, October 30, to let it withdraw the site-plan application for its Prime Air drone pad at 64 Otis Street, five weeks after the company told a packed room its drones were coming anyway. The letter asks to withdraw application 26-02275 “without prejudice,” a term that leaves Amazon free to file again, and says the company “looks forward to continuing to work with Town officials on next steps.”
On Saturday, Amazon gave the Worcester Telegram & Gazette a statement on what comes next. “We will be resubmitting a revised project soon, after further discussions with local stakeholders,” spokesperson Lindsay Hamilton said. The withdrawal came three days before the Zoning Board of Appeals was due to hear the residents’ challenge to the pad’s zoning status, and that hearing is still on the board’s agenda for tonight at 6:30 p.m.
Amazon Phoned Three Lawmakers the Night It Sent the Letter
State Sen. Michael Moore and Reps. Hannah Kane and Kate Donaghue said Amazon phoned them on October 30 to say it was withdrawing. Their statement that night thanked the company “for listening to the overwhelming concerns voiced in making this decision” and credited Mass Blue Skies and Governor Maura Healey.
The three had written to Amazon on September 28 asking it to pause the project. Neither the Boston Globe nor the Telegram & Gazette, which both quoted the letter, reported a reason for the withdrawal; the Globe said it went to the Town Clerk and the Planning Board. The town’s Prime Air page, which has logged the application’s steps since Amazon met the Select Board on August 18, carried no entry on the withdrawal when DroneXL checked it on the morning of November 2, and it still lists tonight’s ZBA hearing as the next meeting.
Hamilton’s statement to the Telegram & Gazette, which CBS Boston also carried on Sunday, reads to me as a reset rather than a retreat. Prime Air “is a welcome addition to communities” once residents see it for themselves, she said, because it delivers fast, takes traffic off the roads, brings skilled jobs and makes “minimal short-lived sound, comparable to a passing car.” Amazon will keep “continuing the local approval processes to bring drone delivery to customers in Massachusetts,” she said.
The Zoning Appeal Is Still on Tonight’s Agenda, With No Application Behind It
The ZBA meets at 6:30 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Forbes Municipal Building at 45 West Main Street, and the appeal, listed as “Rod Jane – Appeals Application – 64 Otis Street,” is set for 6:40 p.m. on the revised agenda the town posted on October 14.
The residents filed the appeal on September 25, as DroneXL reported when the date was set. It challenges the building commissioner’s August 26 ruling that a drone launch pad is an accessory use of the warehouse on the same lot, the ruling that sent the pad to the Planning Board for site-plan review, which can attach conditions but not refuse, instead of the discretionary review, possibly a special permit, that the town says a reversal could require.
The appeal targets the August 26 ruling, not the application Amazon asked to withdraw, so as I read Chapter 40A the withdrawal does not by itself end it. Whether the board decides the question tonight, or treats it as moot now that there is no pad to classify, is the first thing to watch. Amazon had asked on September 28 for its own Planning Board hearing to wait until the ZBA ruled, and the Planning Board continued it to November 10. With the withdrawal request pending, the business left for that hearing may be to accept it.
Mass Blue Skies, the resident group that worked with the Select Board on the town’s drone bylaw, told its members on November 1 that the withdrawal is “just a temporary PAUSE on their plans. It is not over.” The group asked residents to keep their yard signs up and attend the ZBA meeting, and it posted Hamilton’s statement under the heading “Amazon says it will try again.” An independent survey of area residents, self-selected and not a scientific poll, had counted 92% opposed in September.
Attorney General, MassDOT and FAA Reviews Continue Whether Amazon Files or Not
The bylaw Town Meeting passed 510 to 13 on October 19, which bans any commercial drone launch pad or delivery drop zone in town, went to the attorney general on October 22, the town says. If received that day, the 90-day review runs to January 20, 2027 at the earliest.
Under M.G.L. c. 40, § 32 the attorney general can approve the bylaw, reject it, or let it take effect by silence when those 90 days run out, and the statute lets the attorney general and town counsel extend the review by up to 90 more days in writing. The warrant says MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division must approve it too. A revised Amazon project would land in a town where that ban is in force, under review, or struck down.
MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division told Amazon on October 22 that it cannot open a pad anywhere in Massachusetts without a certificate of approval, that it had received no application, and that at least one public hearing comes before any certificate. State rules want a landing-area application on file at least 90 days before first use, so as of October 22, when the division said it had no application, that clock had not started.
On October 27 Westborough sent the FAA and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy a joint letter, dated October 23, backing the request from Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Jim McGovern and Lori Trahan for a site-specific environmental assessment before any flight. Select Board Chair Sean Keogh signed it for Westborough, with officials of 14 other communities, among them Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty and Marlborough Mayor Christian Dumais. The letter names 15 impacted communities; Berlin, the fifteenth, has no signature block on the posted copy. The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed no Massachusetts document when DroneXL checked it on November 2.
Westborough would have been the first drone delivery service in New England, the Globe reported. Its other New England attempt, in North Haven, Connecticut, is waiting on a state coastal ruling due in mid-November, and a town official there has said no decision comes before 2027. The Drone Delivery Tracker now lists the Westborough application as withdrawn with a resubmission promised, and its Westborough page carries tonight’s hearing. Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed.
DroneXL’s Take
Amazon withdrew the application, not the plan, and I read the timing as a move to keep the zoning ruling it already has. If the ZBA had reclassified the pad tonight, Amazon’s next filing would, as I read the bylaw, have gone to a board with the power to say no. Pull the application first and the company can argue there is nothing left to appeal, come back with a “revised project” whenever “soon” turns out to be, and start again from the accessory-use ruling the building commissioner gave it in August. That is my inference from the sequence, and Amazon has not said it. What Amazon has said is that its drones are a welcome addition once people see them, which is the same message Tareq Wafaie delivered to a room that did not want to hear it on September 23.
Hamilton’s statement says nothing about the aircraft. Unless that changes, a revised project launched from the same lot means an 83-pound MK30 with no parachute carrying five-pound consumer orders low over Westborough’s roofs, and the town voted 510 to 13 to ban the pad it would fly from. Medication lowered on a tether from a Zipline P2 would get a different hearing from me, and I suspect from Westborough. The ZBA should decide the appeal tonight on its merits, because the question of whether a launch field is accessory to a warehouse will be back on the table the day Amazon’s revised application arrives.
Sources: The Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, State House News Service, CBS Boston, Mass Blue Skies updates page, Town of Westborough, Prime Air Drone Delivery Service Application page, Zoning Board of Appeals revised agenda, November 2, 2026 (PDF), Joint municipal letter to the FAA and Amazon, October 23, 2026 (PDF), M.G.L. c. 40, § 32, FAA drone environmental review index.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
