The Warren Development Review Board will hear a conditional use application from Sarina Gulisano and John Vitko to permit their coffee roasting business, Awake Coffee, in a hangar at the Warren-Sugarbush Airport. Coffee roasting is a change of use from the activities that have previously taken place at that hangar.
The hearing takes place September 16 at 7 p.m. at the town office and via Zoom. In their application, Gulisano and Vitko note that they roast 600 pounds of coffee per week in the hangar, using some 250 square feet of the space in the 11,000-square-foot hangar.
They note that they get a twice weekly delivery of a pallet of green coffee beans and that the only impact on nearby residents and/or abutters is the smell of roasting beans, depending on wind direction.
At next week’s hearing the board will work through the town’s conditional use review process which includes parking, access, character of the area and more. Town zoning administrator Ruth Robbins said that she expects the business owners will submit a parking plan before the hearing and said that parking details will be part of the review.
Historically the hangar they own has leased parking and access from Granite Intersection which owns the airport property. Robbins said that was from an agreement between the former hangar owner, Jim Parker, and Granite Intersection and said that they may need to pay a fee and work that out separate from the DRB hearing.
Robbins was asked about Yestermorrow’s use of a portion of the hangar for building and construction over the last year and said the DRB was aware of that use as well.
“The Yestermorrow issue turned up this spring. Historically, I don’t think this office, including when the former zoning administrator Miron Malbeouf was here, knew what was going on up there. Jim Parker ran several businesses out of there and rented space to Pring Plumbing,” Robbins said.
She said the DRB would address the permit request from Awake Coffee before taking up any of the other uses currently underway in the airport hangars.
Robbins said that Gulisano and Vitko had not yet provided an official survey of the property but had hired someone to help them determine the four corners of their property.
“They did have someone mark the corners of their parcel. Those four points are there. I have asked for a floor plan that shows the space for coffee roasting and space for Yestermorrow. We still need to know where the boundary lines are and the distances from the boundaries to those uses,” she explained.
She said she’d had a conversation with Vitko about those plans and he told her they planned to do a formal survey.
Finally, after airport administrator Tom Anderson expressed concerns this summer about activity at the Gulisano/Vitko hangar, the state fire marshal was asked to weigh in on safety issues with the coffee roasting/Yestermorrow activities in close proximity to active airport operations.
The fire marshal report was not available at press time on September 11, but will be available at the hearing next week.
Earlier this year the Warren DRB warned and then cancelled a hearing for Gulisano and Vitko who sought to host five special events at the hangar this summer. Because they do not have access to parking on airport land, they initially sought parking for at least one event at Warren Elementary School. Robbins said that going forward, if they do seek permits for special events (up to 250 people permitted at such events) they could park along one side of Airport Road as long as they don’t block access to emergency vehicles and other traffic.
