Four years after it was voted in by an 80% margin, the Wayland Town Center project is approaching its final approval. Although numerous issues surrounding the project have arisen from local boards in the past, Wayland town officials expect that high school students will be playing Frisbee on the town’s two greens by the spring of 2012.

KGI Properties, the project development manager, had initially announced in January of 2008 that the town center project was going to happen. At that point, the project had already been discussed by town departments, developers and residents for several years even before being voted in by the town in 2006.

The project had a lot of support from Wayland residents, and it was made public that the town center would be opening the fall of 2009.

It wasn’t until the following December of 2008 that reports went out retracting the statement. Twenty Wayland, the project developer, found that the permitting process was taking longer than expected due to the town’s disorganized approval process.

“Wayland had a number of separate processes that we needed to go through, and they’re not all always as coordinated as other communities have [been]. It took an extraordinary amount of time to work through those permitting processes. That’s probably the biggest time delay that we had,” Frank Dougherty of Twenty Wayland LLC recently said regarding the project’s delay.

In December 2008, Twenty Wayland had to deal with its first major complications, stemming from the Conservation Commission. Among other problems, the bike path route was intended to cross an area too close to protected wetlands. Despite this setback, both the residents and the developers stayed optimistic.

This optimism proved to be short-lived as development manager KGI Properties threatened to pull out of the project entirely in April 2009. The numerous controversies from local boards had drawn-out the process. Furthermore, the recession had reached one of its worst points. As a result, several companies interested in buying retail space in the center opted out.

Eventually, KGI Properties withdrew their threat and attempted to pick up where they had left off.

This October, a major obstacle in development was overcome. Twenty Wayland and the Historic District Committee resolved a lawsuit from July of 2009. Twenty Wayland had sued the Historic District Committee, claiming they didn’t have the authority to restrict roadwork construction until 94,000 square feet of retail space was purchased.

The lawsuit was resolved with a compromise stating that Twenty Wayland could begin roadwork after it demolished an office building on the property. As part of the compromise, Twenty Wayland would also have to obtain a building permit for at least 94,000 square feet.

Though it has been a long process, Dougherty believes the project will stay on schedule.

“I think they’ll start doing some demolition of the buildings over the winter. I would certainly hope that in two or three years they’ll have the retail up,” said Fred Turkington, Wayland Town Administrator.

Dougherty stated that the new Stop & Shop and town greens should be up in the spring of 2012. He envisions that residents will walk the bike path with ice cream from nearby restaurants and spend leisure time on the new town greens.

“High school folks may want to gather there and do their homework after school. People may want to stroll down the bike path, have some ice cream, or just go hang out in the afternoon,” said Dougherty.

Residents can look forward to a village-themed town center that will appeal to all ages within the next few years.