Planning Board Endorses Plymouth Street Division, Eyes North Bedford Rezoning Study

EAST BRIDGEWATER — February 2, 2026 — East Bridgewater Planning Board advances North Bedford rezoning study and closes 10 dormant escrow accounts. The four-member board — Chair Kevin Reilly, Vice Chair Roy Gardner, Diane Phillips, and Rachel Tedesco — unanimously endorsed a Form A plan dividing 876 Plymouth Street into two street-fronting lots and a rear estate lot for owners Dean and Ashley Weill, then heard a pitch from property owner Eddie Jacobs to rezone a stretch of Route 18 from the high-intensity B-4 designation to the lower-intensity B-2 zone, arguing that B-4's 80,000-square-foot area and 50-foot side setbacks make roughly 12 or more parcels totaling an estimated 40 to 43 acres completely undevelopable. Gardner traced the B-4 rationale to a 1985 Old Colony Planning Council master plan that assumed large-scale parcel consolidation "that's just so hard" to achieve with a dozen separate owners. The board also voted unanimously to close 10 dormant special engineering escrow accounts and discussed sending a revised ADU bylaw and a third MBTA Communities overlay district article — potentially co-sponsored by the Select Board under a new local name — to Annual Town Meeting, with a public hearing to be scheduled for March or April.