The Planning Board heard their biggest round of applause of the year at yesterday's meeting with approval of an application to expand the dining area at Fellowship Village continuing care retirement community.

The courtroom in Town Hall was nearly two thirds full with Fellowship Village residents in support of the plans to expand the facilities. The new project will expand the current dining café into the regular dining room, and a new addition will be built on the patio space behind the building.

The new café will host multiple cashiers, several food specific serving stations and a more glamorous display, according to the project's architect, Quinn DeMenna. It will also house a series of venues that will be quick and easy to access, such as a coffee and desserts counter, beverage counter, pizza oven, take-out area, salad area, deli station and a grill station.

To make up for lost space reallocated to the new café, and to improve the cramped conditions of the current facility, Fellowship Village is planning a 1,250 square-foot addition on the back of the building that is designed to feel like a fully-enclosed terrace, with a mostly glass exterior.

The addition allows the community to modify it's current facility with three distinct areas – the current café, a formal dining area and a flex room that can be used for formal or informal dining – to five distinct areas: two separate cafés, including the expanded café, the terrace room and two formal dining areas, one of which will have a fireplace.

Several members of the public commented on the application. One request from Ellen Pinson of Allen Road for Fellowship Village to expand it's current screening buffer of trees between its property and hers. The other comments were general statements in favor of the addition.

Corrine Gunther, the President of the Resident Associaton at Fellowship Village, said during public comment, "We are very cramped in our dining, particularly in the café. In order to get your dessert you have to reach up over someone getting something else." Gunther quipped that she had became very popular because of her long arms.

"The phrase you most often hear in the [dining area] is excuse me," Gunther said, "We think that this is a great plan, and we are most enthusiastic about it."

Thomas Swan, a resident at Fellowship Village said, "My wife and I have been here now for just a little over a year. The one thing I can say to you is I think you can be proud that Fellowship Village is in your community, and what we'd like to do is keep it up to stuff, and make it a little better now and then."

The Planning Board negotiated conditions of approval including compliance with a 1998 resolution detailing the type of screening that must be in place along the edge of the property and exterior lighting will be only down lighting, among others, but passed the application unanimously.

"The proposed changes to the dining services are very reasonable and the land use aspects are very minor," Mayor Scott Spitzer said before the vote. The new addition will encroach slightly on the wetlands buffer of the property, but impervious coverage would go down by 168 square feet because the new addition is being placed on an already paved area and a walkway is being removed.

"I support the application and hope my colleagues will as well," Spitzer said before the vote. The mayor also added jokingly to his colleagues, "I am planning a brown bag lunch at Fellowship Village in the near future and I think supporting the application will make that visit a little nicer."