A plan to bring a medical marijuana cultivation and processing operation to this rural township is temporarily on hold after facing significant opposition from local residents.
Bailey Farms LLC and its principal, Christopher Baxter, requested the company’s application before the Springfield Planning Board be held for two months in order to give the business time to address concerns raised by both the board and public, said Patricia Clayton, the town’s clerk and planning board secretary, on Friday.
Baxter and the company have applied for the board’s approval to subdivide an 11-acre parcel of a 33-acre tract of vacant land off Juliustown Road and to build both a 30,000-square-foot greenhouse and an attached 8,000-square-foot processing building at the site.
The company’s request to delay comes just three days after the planning board held its first hearing on the proposal. The meeting drew more than a hundred residents and several spoke in opposition to the project.
Much of the residents’ concerns surrounded possible noise and odors from the operation and the traffic it might generate on Juliustown and other local roads. Other residents expressed concerns about the lighting on the property and whether the business would impact nearby property values and that the use was too intense for the rural property.