Bull Spit Brewing Moving Forward with Summer Drive
Bull Yard Will Pop Up Again in September and October
In the past week, Bull Spit Brewing has appeared before two town boards to discuss their progress with the future Bull Spit Brewery and Tap Room at 4 and 11 Summer Drive.
On Thursday, August 11, Jim Hunt, Owner of Bull Spit Brewing, and Wesley Flis of engineering firm Haley Ward appeared before the Conservation Commission to present their formal Notice of Intent for the project.
Report for Notice of Intent (PDF)
Proposed Site Development Plan (PDF)
Mr. Flis gave an overview of the project, noting that they had come before the Commission "informally" a few months ago and did a site walk with some Commission members. Referring to the report diagrams provided to the Commission, Mr. Flis said, "So the property that we're looking at, there's actually multiple properties. Properties owned by the town of Winchendon, this property is also owned by Newport Trust, who is the applicant on this. There's five total parcels comprising about 4.4 acres. As you can see on the plan in front of you there are multiple buildings throughout the site."
Mr. Flis went on to describe the plans for 11 Summer Drive, saying that a connector section will be removed, a larger part of the building will be converted into cold storage, and a smaller remaining part will be rehabbed for a use still to be determined. "4 Summer Drive are the properties that are currently owned by the town...so that building is going to remain. That one's going to be fixed up, that's going to become the brewery and Taproom. The smaller building just right off the upper right hand corner of that, that structure is going to be taken down but the concrete slabs are going to remain, and an outdoor patio area will be replacing that structure, and so they will fix that structure up. The concrete slab and the impervious footprint of that will change."
Existing plan of Summer Drive area as it now is.
Image copyright © Whitman & Bingham Associates
Proposed plan of Summer Drive with Bull Spit site
Image copyright © Whitman & Bingham Associates
"On the right hand side of the site plan we show a larger area of outdoor entertainment and eating area," Mr. Flis went on. "And that's really where a lot of the improvements within the buffer zone to the resource area will happen. A lot of that area that's gravel now will become grass and lawn area" with tables placed on the lawn.
Altogether, the project will convert about 70,000 square feet of the 4.4 acres into new green space where gravel and pavement now exist. "Some of that green space will also be adjacent to the pond...between the proposed parking lot and the edge of the pond, where currently there's no green space buffer now, with the existing gravel or stone parking lot and loading area that was from the old users of the building basically going right up to the pond's edge." The new project will create a 15-foot buffer of grass. "Right on the other side of that 15 foot grass filter strip is going to be a two foot wide pea stone filter such that a runoff from the parking lot will go through that pea stone filter" and will also be treated. "The intent there is to improve the water quality that currently exists on property," Mr. Flis asserted. Mr. Flis stated that they are working within the 50-foot and 75-foot buffer zones to wetlands, but "we're looking at it as redevelopment and an overall improvement of the site and overall improvement to the resource area, which would be Tannery Pond."
Mr. Flis stated that a few existing catchbasins on the property will be improved and hooded. The property is on town water and sewer so there's no issue with septic runoff.
Conservation Commission Chair Kyle Bradley said, "I just want to start off by saying I'm really excited about this project for the town, because I think it'll be a big draw to the town, not just for townspeople but for surrounding towns to come to our town. My sticking point is the parking next to the lake...I've been on this Commission since 2005. And I don't think I've ever wavered on the 50 foot setback." Parking vehicles in the 50-foot "no touch" zone will be a "hard sell," he said, because you have no idea what so many different vehicles might leak out as contaminants. "Other than that, I think it's a great project. I've done an extensive tour of the property, we did. I think it's a great project. I really love the outdoor space and it's going to look good coming into town. It's going to look really nice seeing the grass and the tables and people." But parking in the 50-foot zone is "a real sticking point for me because we've never violated that."
Mr. Flis responded that he had been involved with a project in town that got a waiver on the 50-foot no-touch zone. "But with regards to parking, we're only improving an existing condition. They can park out there currently. It's a parking lot now, it was a parking lot before for the previous user."
After some debate about the parking issue, Town Manager Justin Sultzbach said he was sensitive to the concerns, but "I think what the gentleman is trying to highlight is that it's a pre-existing condition. And I think just asking if the Conservation Commission would be willing to provide some leniency there because it's a former industrial site. If you look at historic photos, while not currently, traditionally there were big rigs parked right up to the edge of that water stacked front to back the whole way through, dripping God knows what. I cringe thinking about it. And I do agree that while that may have been the case historically, presently it's not and nobody really parks there. But I think for the sake of seeing some development there and seeing some improvements knowing that ultimately what ends up there is going to be by and large from a conservation standpoint way better than what was there historically, personally I find a little bit of comfort in that and I hope the Commission can kind of dig deep and potentially find some leniency or propose maybe some type of middle ground or solution there."
Mr. Bradley said he was uncomfortable "setting a precedent" on the 50-foot rule. Mr. Flis waxed eloquent, arguing that the entire site was being improved and returned to green space from an existing paved over space, and that the parking would be "family vehicles" for a few hours. Acting Director of Planning and Development Nicole Roberts put in that the project has been issued a state DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] number "and DEP had no comments." Commission member Lionel Cloutier stated that he didn't see the waiver as a "precedent" but rather "a variance that is being well-used by the town of Winchendon. It's something that we're going to be proud of."
Mr. Flis added that some of the pavement in the proposed parking area has a remediation function--it will cover and seal contaminated soil that otherwise would have to be dug out and removed.
Commission member Melissa Blanchard said she was concerned about cars pulling forward from the parking area and closer to the water. Mr. Flis said they could put in a guard rail, concrete bumpers, whatever it took to keep vehicles where they belonged. Mr. Flis said that the timeline has become more urgent, since a previous slowdown due to supply chain issues has been resolved and Bull Spit wants to get moving on the building.
The Commission voted to approve the project with the standard order of conditions plus a guard rail along the edge of the parking area.
With yet another hurdle in a long, long track of them cleared, Mr. Hunt appeared before the Board of Selectmen on Monday, August 15 for an entertainment permit. "So last year, as you may remember, we did a series of one day events, right off Central Street, a little pop up Bull Yard," he began. "Very successful. And we wanted to return this year and set up the same thing. That piece of property we used last year was unavailable. So we thought we would try to utilize some of our land down on Summer Drive."
Board Chair Audrey LaBrie asked Mr. Sultzbach for the status of the site contamination remediation at the Summer Drive location. Mr. Sultzbach stated that the site has been completely surveyed for contamination. The main area of concern involved elevated levels of arsenic, typical for former industrial areas. It was found in a five-foot core sample, not in the first 12 inches of surface. That whole area can be blocked off for the time being. Mr. Hunt said they'll put the back of the stage in front of "the imaginary line" and fence it so no one can get near that part of the site. The stage would be temporary, on a flatbed trailer like they used last year.
The Summer Drive pop up events are planned for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in September and October. On Fridays the event would start at 3:00 p.m. and run until 9:00 p.m. Saturday's hours would be 12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and on Sunday, 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The music will be directed out over the pond and toward the bike path, Mr. Hunt said.
"The plan is to obviously utilize the restaurants downtown again," he said. "We had a great relationship with them last year, we did table numbers. So people would call and say I'm at table 10 up in the Bull Yard and the restaurants would bring the food right to the table just like a home delivery. So that's great. So we'll be back out knocking on the restaurants' doors.
"I do have a spot that says food truck and that's if we decide to bring one in on a Saturday or Sunday. And we're just going to pull it from the list that was here for the food truck fest because the Board of Health knows those trucks and they should be able to get certified easily and quickly. But it won't be an every weekend thing, we really want to utilize downtown businesses again for that."
The Board voted to approve the group entertainment permit and 27 special one-day malt and wine permits for Bull Spit Brewing to operate a pop-up Bull Yard at 4 Summer Drive "as long as the site is safe for human habitation."
K-9 Clyde Given Commendation by BOS
front, from left: Board Chair Audrey LaBrie, Officer James Wioronen, K-9 Clyde. in back, Town Manager's Executive Assistant Linda Daigle
Photo copyright © Town of Winchendon
Clyde shows his approval of his retirement gift--beats a gold watch any day!
Photo copyright © Town of Winchendon
At their meeting on Monday, August 15, the Board of Selectmen read a proclamation honoring K-9 Clyde for his service to the community. Clyde has worked with the Winchendon Police Department for seven years (or "49 dog years" as Board Chair Audrey LaBrie said), not only backing up the officers in dangerous situations, but interacting with the public in demonstrations at the schools and town events. He carried on even with challenges such as a cancer diagnosis and treatment, and an infection which cost him part of his tail.
Winchendon Chief of Police David Walsh began with a statement, as Clyde's "supervisor."
"I just wanted to give a couple of my observations of Clyde over the years," Chief Walsh began."I've been Chief nearly all Clyde's seven-year career and what I was amazed with was how well the town has received and supported him. I attribute that to, obviously [Clyde's handler] Officer Wironen, but also to Clyde himself. They as a team exemplify what K-9 programs should be. And as Officer Wironen often said, some dogs may excel in one aspect of the K-9 program, perhaps drug searches, or tracking, or they may interact well with the public during demonstrations, but Clyde was an exception. He excelled in all aspects of K-9 program."
Chief Walsh stated that when the K-9 program was introduced to then-Chief Livingston and himself, they were promised that one benefit would be strengthening relationships with other departments and the community. These promises were borne out. "In my opinion, he's established the standard by which Winchendon K-9s will be measured. And at this point, he is well deserving of relaxing retirement with his family," Chief Walsh concluded.
Clyde himself was brought into the meeting by Officer Wironen, eliciting expressions of delight from the humans in attendance, while Clyde was far more excited to be at a Board meeting than most humans ever are.
Ms. LaBrie rose--correctly checking with Officer Wironen that it was okay for her to approach Clyde, a working service animal--to read the Board's Proclamation.
"Whereas K9 Clyde has dutifully served the Winchendon Police Department for nearly seven years, and
"Whereas K-9 Clyde served proudly as the first K-9 officer in the Winchendon Police Departments since 2015, and
"Whereas K-9 Clyde was a fixture at town events, including the annual Summer Solstice and Fall Festivals, with frequent visits to Winchendon public schools, demonstrating his skills with his handler Officer James Wironen, and
"Whereas K-9 Clyde was embraced by the residents of Winchendon, who loved and supported him, and
"Whereas K-9 Clyde was named after our beloved Toy Town horse, and has now grown to become our much loved first Toy Town K-9,
"Now therefore, the Winchendon Board of Selectmen do hereby proclaim Wednesday, August 31 2022, as K-9 Clyde day in the town of Winchendon, Massachusetts in gratitude for his 49 dog years of service to the Winchendon Police Department and our wishes for his happy retirement with his handler, Officer James Wironen, and in witness whereof we have set our hand and cause the Seal of the Town of Winchendon to be affixed on this 15th day of August 2022."
Following a round of applause, to which Clyde barked his appreciation, Clyde was presented with a retirement gift of a dog bed, which he promptly tested out by lying down on it.
Happy retirement, Clyde! You will be missed.
Town IT Specialists Still Chasing Down Residual Effects of Foiled Ransomware Attack
Town IT specialist Don O'Neil appeared before the Board of Selectmen at their meeting on Monday, August 15, to report on the status of the ransomware attack recovery process, which forced an emergency shut-down of the entire town computer system on Thursday, August 4. The effects of the attack, shut-down and recovery have also impacted the town's broadcasting capabilities, so that town board meetings have been recorded but not broadcast live. Email glitches are still being solved, as well.
"It's been quite a couple of weeks," Mr. O'Neil began. "A couple of ten days actually, but we are in good shape. So I've said this throughout my career. It's only a matter of time before they hit you with these ransomware attacks. It's just part of the business. So you got to always be prepared and be as prepared as possible. And key thing is backups. And fortunately, we had a good set of backups. So although it took some time to download them, we had all the data so that's in my mind the key of all of this is we didn't lose any data."
Things were about 98 percent back, Mr. O'Neil said. He was still getting email mailboxes restored, especially those that were very large. He was helping staff get various things re-installed, while everyone continued to have their usual work to do. Desktops, laptops, iPads and cell phones were all impacted.
The email server has been completely replaced with a new one--thanks to COVID funding, the town has spares ready to use in case of catastrophic failures. Software has been updated and the town has switched to an anti-virus application called CrowdStrike®. CrowdStrike® learns from its customers' attacks--the malware that broke into Winchendon's system has been identified and added to the CrowdStrike® database so it will be stopped from hitting anyone else.
Most importantly, new 14-character passwords have been implemented. "Because once they're 14 characters then being able to figure that out, becomes very, very difficult," Mr. O'Neil explained. "In fact, we ran them through--there's a website, you can put your password in and it tells you exactly how long certain types of hackers take, which is kind of neat. You know, some of them were, you know, it's 29 seconds. Then if you change it and add a few numbers, a symbol, becomes like 2 trillion years."
Mr. O'Neil couldn't emphasize the importance of backups enough, saying it was best to back up to the network and not just have everything on individual hard drives. All the town computers have been "scrubbed" and have fresh installations of Windows. If possible, their user files were saved to the network first. Mr. O'Neil admitted that he lost all the contents of his own Dropbox, including pictures and Winchendon History and Cultural Center materials.
Restoring so much from backups was a slow process, Mr. O'Neil said. "I'm looking at a couple of other solutions that are more local that are bulletproof, that a hacker could not get into but still backs up locally here. And you can kind of restore on the fly."
Board Chair Audrey LaBrie asked, "how did we know that we were hacked? What should we be looking for?"
"That's a good question and you really kind of don't unless you see some really weird stuff happening with your PC," Mr. O'Neil said. "iPads not as much. It's mostly PCs and Android phones and things like that, that they they really go for. But you'll find if it becomes all of a sudden dog-slow...[With ransomware] you're gonna see some files get encrypted pretty quickly. You're not gonna be able to open up anything. It happens relatively fast once they get in. They can do your whole network within a day but basically, you know, things you look at, you have good up-to-date virus software, and that will tell you right off the bat. You know, there are very few things that it can't pick up."
The town has a service called EdgeWave that filters email for spam and sends a daily digest of what it's caught. Bob O'Keefe, IT specialist for Gardner, sends out test "phishing" messages at intervals to see if staff will be fooled and click on the bad link. If this happens, staff are retrained in how to recognize malicious email messages.
Later in the meeting, Town Manager Justin Sultzbach kidded that he had to reconstruct his report to the Board from paper calendars, "it was like I was working in the 1990s." Even the Courier has been affected, and owes Town Manager's Executive Assistant Linda Daigle a huge debt for providing town board meeting recordings on a flash drive; email between the Courier and the police department is still bouncing both ways. As lucky as the town is to have avoided a similar fate as Peterborough, New Hampshire (which lost $2.3 million to cyberscammers one year ago), the importance of Mr. O'Neil's advice has definitely been proven.