By Devon Cormier
Staff Writer

Manchester Sand, Gravel and Cement Company has won a lawsuit that put the plan for a 530-unit housing development, town common, town park and a golf course, better known as the Head’s Pond development, on hold for more than two years.

“We’re very happy about the decision,” said lawyer for Manchester Sand, David Campbell. “It’s been a two-and-a-half-year delay, but now we get to go on with planning something we think will be very special and unusual.”

A petitioned zoning amendment in May of 2001 changed the designation of prime wetlands on Manchester Sand’s land to wetlands of special interest, allowing substantial development that prime wetlands wouldn’t have been able to support. The land behind the site of Manchester Sand’s office and scale house on Route 3 encompasses 350 acres of land that includes one of New Hampshire’s largest areas of undeveloped wetlands.

Voters passed the zoning amendment with a 58 percent vote. However, abutters launched into a court battle to keep the wetlands from being developed after the town council rejected another petition from them that would have required a two-thirds majority vote.

Nancy Winneg, resident and past member of the Conservation Commission, represented Rene Smagula and other abutters in Superior Court after the town council rejected the petition. Town councilors said the protest petition was not signed by the required 20 percent of abutters to the wetlands.

The petition also included residents of Allenstown, who coun-cilors said were not allowed to sign. However, councilors said the petition did not meet the required 20 percent even with Allenstown abutters’signatures; the court found in favor of the town on the issue.

Winneg did not return messages left at her home by press time.

The lawsuit bounced back and forth from the state Supreme Court and the Merrimack County Superior Court for over two years before it was settled. The issue that remained to be argued was if the petition was, in fact, valid. A judge for the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled on Monday, Dec. 6, that the protest petition from May 2001 was invalid and the zoning amendments to the wetlands are to be upheld. Campbell said the abutters have exhausted all of their legal arguments at this point.

Now Manchester Sand will begin planning the development of more than 500 homes to be built within the next 10 years and 120 acres of recreation area with a pond and a golf course. Now that the case is out of court, Manchester Sand will donate a 5-mile stretch of land that will become the parkway that has been featured in the town’s master plan for decades.

The southern leg of the parkway will go from Exit 9 off Interstate 93 and travel northeastward to Manchester Sand and Gravel’s property on Route 3 across from Hooksett Kawasaki. If Manchester Sand goes through with plans to build a shopping center on the land of their scale house and offices, the company will build part of the parkway while making other road improvements. The land for the parkway will be donated to the town within the next six months, said Campbell.

Access to the Head’s Pond development would be off Route 3 between Mount Saint Mary’s Apartments and the Allenstown border. The development will connect into the proposed parkway.

Hooksett Town Planner Charles Watson said that with all the development proposed in the Head’s Pond area and the proposed 300,000 square feet of retail space at its scale house and office facility, the parkway will become necessary to manage traffic.