Karl Clemmey submitted a proposal to develop a strip mall here where his auto repair business is currently located over two years ago. According to a representative in the town's planning department, the plan--which the town's planning board approved--includes a Staples, a Home Depot, a restaurant and a 64,000-sf Shaw's Supermarket.

The Royal Oak Trust, which is headed by Richard Baccari, head of Providence, Rhode Island-based Churchill and Banks Limited, owns 3.8 acres that backs up into the proposed site of the mall. Richard Lewis, the town's environmental planner and a consultant to the town's zoning board of appeals, tells GlobeSt.com that the Trust first filed an appeal against the town's conservation commission, which determined that Clemmey's site was an isolated wetland and not a bordering wetland. That decision was upheld by the state.

More recently, notes Lewis, the Trust filed an appeal against the town's building department for an issuance of a building permit for the development of Shaw's. The zoning board of appeals recently upheld the decision of the building inspector. But, Lewis points out, there are other "opportunities to appeal. All the building permits were not issued yet." According to local published reports, Bacari has been accused by local supporters of the strip mall plan of trying to block the Shaw's with the support of the Stop & Shop supermarket chain.