1938-04-15 - Laserfiche WebLink

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1 1 Mr. Connors, Sheldon Robinson, Charles Cambridge and Robert L. Ryder were present at the hearing. Mr. Conners said that about twenty years ago a house was erected which had been used as a tea room. An artificial pool was made to go with this house and was used as a trout pond by the State for growing fish and Mr. Frost of Lexington was in charge of it. It has been closed for some time and Mr. Conners discovered that the water was adapted for the growth and storage of fish, and being interested in fly -casting, he hired the pro- perty and engaged Charles Cambridge to supervise and run the trout pool. The idea was to stock the pond with fish and open the house to any that came there.. He wanted to charge a nominal fee for the trout taken by fly casting and have a little outdoor life and still get enough out of it to give one young man in the town employment. Mr. Conners said that he had a son about the Cambridge boy's age who was working, but Cambridge was not, and the latter's lack of employment really brought about this petition. The locus is probably 1000 feet from Mass. Avenue and the only houses in sight are the ones on Percy Road. He said they were going ahead and open up and had even published a notice of the pool in the papers but had to hold up on account of this hearing. Mr. Corners said that he hoped the Board would grant permission to see if this sort of thing could be carried on. There would be no noise at all. He said that the men interested in fly casting were not the riff-raff. Mr. Conners said he realized that this was a business and he had been lax in not noticing that this was an infraction of the Zoning Laws. Nothing would be offered for sale. A man would have to catch a trout and then it would be weighed and he would be charged for it, that was all. The Chairman asked if that really was not a business, and Mr. Conners replied in the affirm- ative. Mr. Glynn asked how Conners intended to run the pool, as a club or as a commerical business. Conners said he would run it on a commercial basis as it would take too long to organize a club. He said a club would have to have a yearly membership fee and would have to be chartered by the State. Mr. Glynn asked if it would be impossible to do that. Mr. Conners said that it would not, but probably would be difficult to get enough interested parties in the neighborhood to charter the club. He said he was engaged in another line of business and was unable to give any attention to this. The Chairman asked if fishing was allowed on Sundays. Mr. Conners said that the State Law prohibited it, but the law was never enforced and people did fish on Sundays. The Chairman said that he did not quite see how the Board of Appeals could grant the petition, but that a permit could be granted to a club in a residential district. He said the Board of Appeals would have to satisfy itself that this would be a club. Mr. Conners said that he could not make any statement to the effect that it was a club. He said there would be quite a little expense connected with this as it would be necessary to ,zuard the trout pool at night. He said that recently 80 half - Pound trout were taken out in one night. Mr. Conners said that 123