Council Eyes Scrap Metal Firm

The Springfield, Mass., Planning Department has recommended that the City Council table one special permit request and approve another but with multiple conditions, from an East Springfield scrap-metal company.

The special permit applications from Joseph Freedman Scrap Metals are the last two items on the council's 10-point agenda.

Freedman has been clashing with the city for more than two months. Code Enforcement Commissioner Steven T. Desilets issued a stop-work order to the company April 16. He said the company didn't have a special permit from the City Council, and had altered a building without getting a building permit.

The company has been in the city for decades but last fall moved to the site of the former Jahn Foundry.

Of even more concern to neighbors have been the window-penetrating noise and shelf-rattling vibrations from the metal-shredding and truck-loading operations at Freedman.

Neighbors at a City Hall meeting in May complained about having their early morning sleep disturbed repeatedly by the company's sounds and shaking. The Zoning Board of Appeals May 26 denied the company's request to lift the stop-work order.

After hearing residents' complaints in April, Councilor Timothy J. Rooke arranged meetings with city departments that led to the stop-work order. He will abide by what neighbors want in considering the special-permit applications, he said.

Freedman lawyer Frank E. Antonucci didn't return a call seeking comment.

City planners want the council to table a Freedman special permit request regarding a plan to build an 85,000-square-foot facility to store and process scrap metal at 603 Hendee St.

The main reasons for tabling the application are that Freedman has yet to get an easement to cross railroad tracks to the property and a plan to plant a row of white pine trees is an inadequate visual buffer, planners say in an analysis submitted to the council.

The second special permit application is related to 115 Stevens St. itself. The application is a change on the company's part. The company has argued a special permit is unnecessary because it is allowed to operate based on a January 2003 opinion from a former building commissioner, who said that the business was an allowed use in that industrial zone. Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican