Billerica panel weighs pickleball courts on old restaurant site

Conservation · Meeting of July 20, 2026

Billerica conservation panel opens review of a pickleball facility planned for a long-vacant restaurant site. Attorney Stephen Dressler told the Conservation Commission that owner John Lee wants to demolish the building at 15 Middlesex Turnpike, home to "seven or eight restaurants" since 2000, and build a 15-court pickleball and badminton facility; the hearing was continued to September 14 amid concerns over a deteriorating retaining wall and a 118-space parking lot encroaching on the required 50-foot wetland buffer. Elsewhere, the commission denied a certificate of compliance for a Charles Anne Lane property over incomplete buffer restoration, granted variances shrinking a lakeside no-alteration zone to roughly 10 feet for a Nunning Lake accessory dwelling, and clashed over whether an existing shed near a wetland at 34 Doe Drive should be relocated, with member Diane DePasso pushing back after saying she missed the meeting where colleagues had settled the issue.

The panel also accepted a conservation restriction for 55A Richardson Street and released the final $5,000 of a wetlands-replication bond for the Summer Farm project.

In the full story:

• Who Was There
• Organizations And Documents Referenced
• The complete report — 2,688 words

Source: the Conservation meeting of July 20, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.