LEYDEN — After touring the 19-acre lot of land located at 63 North County Road, which a team is planning to turn into a short-term vacation rental, or “retreat center,” the Planning Board held off on voting on whether to issue the organization a special permit until its November meeting.

The three-house property, which the project’s “stewardship team” is calling the “Bent Birch Retreat Center,” needs a special permit to host up to 18 guests — or the number of guests the site’s septic tank can accommodate under health safety regulations — for no more than 220 days out of each calendar year.

Although those stewarding the project bought the lot in 2022 and began hosting events shortly thereafter, noncompliance with health codes prompted it to stop operating as a retreat center.

“Our mission is to provide a healing sanctuary for people working to make the world a better place, offering a space to reconnect with nature, each other and themselves,” Bent Birch stewardship team member Jen Kiok said. “We had sort of gotten a false start before we realized all the things that we need to back up and do in order to bring the building up to code and to come into compliance. Currently, we’re partnering with Miriam [Gee, of the project development company CoEverything] ... and a local contractor to reinstate the special permit.”

In response to the Planning Board’s request that the property be professionally managed and maintained, Gee explained to the board that the property owners are currently seeking a 10-to-20-hour-per-week property manager to greet guests, ensure compliance with health codes and make routine repairs on the property.

“Our intention would be that we have someone who’s greeting the people who are coming, orienting them to the space, to the rules of the space, how to use it well, how to live healthily there, how to take care of the buildings and the land while they’re there,” Gee explained. “Someone to check in throughout their stay and then to help them clean up.”

While the Bent Birch Retreat Center hopes to open in the summer, some residents, such as Beth Kuzdeba, fear that the owners’ past health code violations make it difficult to trust that the stewardship team would honor its promise of compliance to the board.

In response to these concerns, Kiok admitted that the group held the events not out of intentional violation of the town’s codes, but out of the false notion that the land’s former use as a retreat center would carry over to new ownership. She later added that the renovations made to bring the project into compliance were funded by donors, noting that the project itself was funded by a large quantity of donations made by a wide variety of community members.

“I’ve never been the executive director of a retreat center. I’ve never been responsible for an organization that has land and all of these buildings. Our mistake was thinking that we were buying a retreat center from a retreat center and it didn’t even occur to us,” Kiok said. “We just thought, ‘This is a retreat center, it’s always been a retreat center. We’re continuing to operate it as a retreat center.’ We were wrong, obviously. … We made some mistakes, but we weren’t trying to be sneaky.”

Planning Board member Emily Yazwinski responded to Kuzdeba’s concerns, arguing that since the property owners have been working with the board to come into compliance with local codes, she doesn’t believe they need to be further penalized for their mistakes.

“We are not Worcester or a larger town. I think that we should move forward with accepting the acknowledgment of mistakes made — not exactly a request for forgiveness, but for coming forward, trying to make amends and correct the errors that have happened in the past,” Yazwinski said. “That’s the kind of community we are — enlightened. I don’t think that we’re another kind of community that never will trust anybody who has made a mistake.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.