Dog daycare hearing: board backs personal-service reading — not a kennel

Update — August 19. The next step this story predicted is now on the calendar: the Planning Board will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, at 7:00 p.m. at Town Hall (290 Northline Drive, Melrose) on the application of Megan Foxvog for a Special Use Permit and Site Plan Review for 100 Eastover Road — the formal notice describes the use as “a dog grooming facility and doggie day care facility in the Hamlet Zoning District.” The notice, dated August 11 and mailed to nearby property owners, is signed by Planning Board Chair Frank Alessandrini; the town has since posted it to its News & Notices page, and the official notice (PDF) is mirrored on our CDN. The same meeting also hears two proposed two-lot subdivisions, on Madigan Road and River Road — see the notices board. Written comment is accepted by mail to the attention of the Town Clerk or by email to townclerk@townofschaghticoke.org, and the hearing is the place to be heard in person. This is the second and final board: the ZBA settled whether the use is allowed; the Planning Board hearing is about how it operates — the site plan, and the conditions attached to the permit. Details also on our Public Notices board.

The Town of Schaghticoke Zoning Board of Appeals returned to the proposed dog grooming and dog daycare at the old Scriven Press building (Route 40 and Eastover Road) at a special meeting on Monday, July 20 — the continued hearing flagged in our earlier coverage. The room was full, traffic safety dominated the night, and a handful of neighbors spoke in favor of putting a small business back into a long-empty building.

About this recap. This account is drawn from an audio recording of the meeting that was transcribed automatically, so some names and figures could not be confirmed and are left out here. The recording ended at about the 48-minute mark, during the board’s deliberation, so the vote itself isn’t on our recording — see the update just below for what followed. For the official outcome, conditions, and minutes, contact the Town of Schaghticoke.

Update — July 21. After the portion captured on our recording, attendees report that the board approved a code interpretation that the proposal qualifies as a “personal service” business, not a kennel — the kennel classification was rejected. A straw vote (an informal, non-binding poll) favored approving the special use with restrictions, discussed to include no overnight boarding or kenneling — a future kennel would require a new application — and a possible 2–3 year approval that would have to be revisited to continue. The town attorney is drafting the property stipulations and will post them when ready; the binding approval and its exact terms will be set in the official record. This update comes from people at the meeting and is unofficial until the town posts its decision and minutes.

The proposal, refined

As presented by the applicant and the site builder:

Grooming would run on the first floor — about two groomers handling roughly two dogs at a time, each on site about 1.5 to 3 hours depending on size.
Daycare would run in the basement and a screened rear yard enclosed by a solid 8-foot wood or vinyl fence, set away from neighboring homes so dogs wouldn’t be visible from adjacent yards.
Capacity was described as up to about 10–15 dogs a day, daytime only, with half-day options to spread out drop-offs and pick-ups.
No overnight boarding. Dogs would be mostly indoors, always supervised, with limited outdoor time; dogs that don’t get along or become a nuisance wouldn’t be kept.
The grooming business currently operates in Cambridge and is looking for a larger permanent home; the daycare side would be run by a separate operator (an employee, not a partner). The applicant does not yet own the building — a purchase is contingent on approval of the business use.

The applicants said they had walked the neighborhood beforehand to explain the plan to nearby residents.

A three-member board

The chair explained the board’s reduced numbers for newcomers: normally five members plus a secretary, the board sat with only three voting members this night — one member absent, and one member recused as a resident of the affected neighborhood. A first-time fill-in secretary covered for the regular one. With three voting, all three would have to agree for the application to pass.

Traffic and safety: the dominant theme

The most forceful opposition came from a neighbor on Eastover Road, who said he has been nearly rear-ended four or five times trying to turn off Route 40 onto Eastover while through-traffic moves at highway speed — a problem he tied largely to overflow parking from a neighboring business (“Choice”) whose visitors, he said, park on the road and block the turn despite having their own lot. Any new drop-off and pick-up traffic, he argued, would compound an already dangerous situation, and he warned that a serious accident at the intersection “is going to be hell for the town.” He also questioned barking from dogs at a nearby property and whether the use amounts to a kennel.

The board and applicant responded that the building has long housed a commercial use — the printing business, and earlier operations with even more traffic — and that the proposal isn’t expected to generate more traffic than had historically existed there. They drew a line between this application and the separate, ongoing parking problems at the neighboring business, which the board said are a code-enforcement matter for the town, not something tied to this permit.

Voices in support

Several attendees spoke for the project:

A member of a local family business spoke warmly about supporting a young local entrepreneur, acknowledged that Route 40 traffic is genuinely difficult, but argued a small business wouldn’t meaningfully worsen it — and stressed the value of filling a vacant, deteriorating building with a known local operator.
A nonresident with long ties to the area framed small businesses as community assets that support youth sports, the school district, veterans’ groups, and local causes — and said a busy state route is exactly where a small commercial business belongs.
An adjacent neighbor said he was glad the use was a low-traffic small business rather than a higher-impact one (a 24-hour smoke shop, a gas station, or a dollar store with frequent deliveries), and appreciated that the applicants had canvassed the neighborhood. He asked how the grooming and daycare sides relate, and why the daycare was relocating — the board clarified the move was driven by limited parking and capacity at its current site, not an eviction.

Stipulations — only as strong as enforcement

A resident asked three pointed questions that shaped the discussion: whether a future change could allow overnight boarding, the informal parking arrangement with the neighboring business, and staffing (the board relayed a maximum of about three to four people on site at once, with drop-offs directed into the on-site lot and side entrance rather than onto the road).

On the first, the board explained it can attach stipulations to any approval — and the applicant had consistently described daytime-only operation with no overnight or weekend animal holding. But one member offered a candid reservation: the town is currently struggling with code enforcement, and a stipulation is only as good as the town’s ability to enforce it. That member said their opinion hadn’t changed from the prior month. On the parking, the applicant confirmed there is no formal contract with the neighboring business — only an informal goodwill arrangement — and that current on-street practices would have to change.

Parking, signage, and the bigger picture

Much of the closing discussion was about where cars park and how to keep the intersection safe:

The board discussed posting no-parking signs along Eastover near Route 40. A speaker supported it while acknowledging it would push parking deeper into the neighborhood rather than eliminate it — and noted that with no town police department, enforcement of any parking rule falls to the state police or sheriff, who don’t always respond to such local concerns.
The town attorney walked through the many uses already allowed on the parcel by special permit and site plan review — churches, clubs or lodges, eating and drinking establishments, service stations, retail and convenience stores, personal-service shops, offices, funeral homes, bed-and-breakfasts, and more — making the point that some use will eventually occupy the building regardless, and that the lack of public sewer (the site has water and natural gas) practically rules out the higher-intensity options.

Why the kennel question was the whole ballgame

The classification fight wasn’t a technicality. The Zoning Law defines a kennel as any place keeping four or more dogs over four months old — or any number of dogs boarded or cared for for a fee. Read literally, that language could sweep in a paid daycare of any size. And kennels come with heavy requirements: they’re allowed only by Special Use Permit, with conditions that include a minimum 500-foot separation from adjacent properties — a standard a corner building at Route 40 and Eastover could never meet. (It’s not hypothetical: in April 2023, the Planning Board warned an applicant that even an 11-acre parcel on Master Street might not fit a kennel’s 500-foot setback.) Classified as a kennel, this project was dead on arrival; classified as a personal service shop — a use the Hamlet district allows by special permit — it has a lawful path.

The town has been here before

There’s a close precedent a few hundred yards up Route 40: Mason’s Place, the dog-grooming business in the former medical building at Meadowview Drive. It first appeared at a November 2022 Planning Board pre-filing conference, got its area variances from the ZBA in January 2023 (minutes), and then received its Special Use Permit and site-plan approval from the Planning Board in February 2023 (minutes) — a two-board path: ZBA for the zoning relief, Planning Board for the permit and site plan. And in January 2024, the Planning Board affirmed the rule now at the center of this application: dog grooming requires a special use permit and doesn’t qualify as a home occupation.

What happens next

By the accounts we’ve heard, the board settled the zoning question raised at the first hearing: rather than treat the business as a kennel (which isn’t allowed in the Hamlet district), it interpreted the use as a “personal service” business — the classification the applicant had sought — and a straw vote favored approval with restrictions. Notably, overnight boarding and kenneling are not part of this approval; adding them later would take a new application back before the board. The board also discussed a 2–3 year approval that would have to be revisited for the special use to continue — worth noting that the Zoning Law has no standard time-limited approval, so that would be a custom condition, one more reason to read the final written terms.

The remaining pieces are the stipulations — the town attorney is drafting the property conditions and will post them when ready — and, if the Mason’s Place path is any guide, a Planning Board special-use-permit and site-plan step: under the Zoning Law, special-permit uses also require site-plan approval through the Planning Board, and our earlier coverage noted the same. Because a straw vote is informal, the binding approval and its exact terms will be finalized in the official record, so treat the specifics above as unofficial until then.

For the official outcome, the final conditions, and the minutes, contact the Town of Schaghticoke — and watch our Public Notices board, where we’ll link the stipulations once they’re posted.

Prepared from a recording of the July 20, 2026 special Zoning Board meeting. Names and figures drawn from an automated transcript are unofficial until confirmed against the town’s official minutes. Background: our earlier hearing coverage, the June 4 ZBA minutes, and the ongoing Route 40 safety issue.

Dog daycare hearing: board backs personal-service reading — not a kennel — with conditions to come