Athol and Royalston are among the 49 rural communities to receive a portion of $10 million in grants through the Community One Stop for Growth’s Rural Development Fund.

Athol received $38,000 to use toward the design of an access road and wetland crossing to the 15-acre parcel behind Wendy’s and Dollar Tree at North Quabbin Commons which, the town hopes, will become the site of a hotel and function facility. Royalston received $50,000 to complete its master plan, which is meant to protect loal assets while balancing community needs.

Athol Town Manager Shaun Suhoski told the Athol Daily News, “We have basically completed civil engineering drawings for an access road that would run from Market Drive – between Wendy’s and Dollar Tree – to the proposed site of the hotel. It does cross a wetland in order to access about 15 acres of land owned by the Athol’s EDIC (Economic Development and Industrial Corporation).”

“We’ve taken those design plans to about 95% of the civil engineering,” Suhoski continued, “and there is a need to have a prefabricated bridge structure, engineered and then merged into that to cover the crossing itself. So, that’s essentially what this last batch of funding would do – get us to 100% design and bid-ready drawings.”

Once the design and renderings are complete, this should allow the EDIC to bring in a private sector developer to establish a 70- to 80-room hotel parcel, along with a conference center capable of accommodating 200 or more people.

“We’ve had some preliminary discussions with a promising hospitality group out of western Mass,” said Suhoski. “But first, we’re going to get the scope done, we’re going to get the technical specifications for the bridge, and they’ll be inserted into the civil engineering drawings.

“When we secure our development partner, we’ll look at all the costs associated with building it. The job creation and the private investment will probably be somewhere in the 10 to 20 million dollar range; probably closer to 20 by the time we get around to doing this. Then we may seek some grants to help construct the access road.”

Tracy Murphy, senior planner with the Montachusett Regional Planning Commission, said the $50,000 committed to Royalston will be used “to continue working on the town’s master plan. We’ve got the existing conditions on economic development, housing, and land use chapters. So, the town is going to finish the rest of the chapters.”

Murphy, who is overseeing development of the master plan, said, “We had actually applied for more than this, but we’re going to try to cobble together some planning assistance grants and the One Stop to get their master plan done.”

In addition to the three chapters that have already been completed, Murphy explained, “(The town) wanted to get all of the existing conditions done and then talk about the future and the direction in which the town sees itself going.”

Murphy said there is no set timeline for completing the entire master plan. Murphy said the Master Plan Committee has established a Public Outreach Committee “and they’ve done great. They’re coming up with ways to get input from the townspeople. So, in the background, MRPC is just looking at a lot of the existing conditions and stuff.”

When it comes to setting a budget to develop a master plan for a community of Royalston’s size, Murphy said, “We (MRPC) had budgeted $150,000. It’s usually between 120 and 150. It depends on the scope of services. But when you’re doing everything, it’s costly.”

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.