Town approves parking plans for Fiddlehead Brewing

LISA SCAGLIOTTI

Correspondent

Changes at the new tasting room at Fiddlehead Brewing are luring patrons in to sit with some pizza and a pint, and the new traffic patterns being created have gotten caught up with town zoning regulations.

The Development Review Board on June 5 approved a request from Fiddlehead connected to the tasting room addition in the Shelburne Green commercial park along U.S. Route 7 south of Shelburne village.

The new space opened without the needed zoning review or permit. The recent hearing covered those steps retroactively and required Fiddlehead to file the necessary zoning permit application to document the new activity on site, according to board documents.

As part of the review, the board scrutinized parking plans to consider how the site will accommodate what are essentially restaurant patrons.

The moves are catching up with how people are visiting Folino’s pizza and Fiddlehead Brewery – with some people gravitating to the Fiddlehead side to both eat and drink, explained Fiddlehead owner Matt Cohen.

He told the board that about 5 percent of visitors to the site are using the Fiddlehead side to eat food brought over from Folino’s.

The parking area between the two establishments is connected with stairs. After a series of calculations and discussions of how to allocate the spaces for each site, the board settled on an equation with 49 spaces total.

Cohen noted that there are more than 300 parking spaces in the business park that Fiddlehead patrons could use and the brewery plans to have staff helping direct traffic in the parking lot at busy times.

The board also required Fiddlehead to apply for a state highway work permit covering signage along Route 7. Lastly, the board stipulated that Fiddlehead notify the town of any future changes regarding leases or access related to parking spaces on the site.

Shelburne Green currently has a subdivision request in permitting review that will allow for a brewery expansion at Fiddlehead but that application is separate from the restaurant use in the existing facility and the recently approved parking arrangement.

The larger application cleared preliminary review with the Development Review Board in April, said review board coordinator Ravi Venkataraman. An application for final review is in but has not yet been scheduled for public hearing before the board, he said.