Whitman Board of Appeals Approves Meadow Lane Garage Conversion to ADU

WHITMAN -- April 27, 2026, Whitman's Board of Appeals cleared a garage-to-apartment conversion and helped a local cemetery clear a bureaucratic logjam at its April 27 meeting. The board voted 5-0 to approve site plan review for William Haran's proposal to convert the attached two-car garage at 61 Meadow Lane into a roughly 576-square-foot accessory dwelling unit for his son, following unanimous support from the Planning Board and no objections from Fire Rescue or the Board of Health. Chair John Goldrosen noted the project is "exactly the kind of thing we anticipated" when the accessory apartment bylaw was written, and flagged a pending town meeting amendment that would eventually let comparable interior conversions bypass the board entirely. The board then spent considerable time guiding St. James Cemetery manager Jim Lewis through the submission process for a 30-by-40-foot equipment storage building, a project the cemetery has tried to advance since November 2025 but could not file because of address ambiguity and the cost of a surveyor's stamp; Goldrosen said a GIS aerial plan would suffice and promised a letter to the town clerk the following day, with a formal hearing targeted for June 15.