SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Appearing on the verge of making a major decision on the future of the town-owned, oceanfront former Hawthorne restaurant site, the Select Board instead tabled the discussion on whether to disqualify any proposal that included residential properties on the site.
For weeks, the Select Board has debated its preferences for scoring a Request for Proposal for the site development based on nine different areas of public interest — including open space, parking, commercial use and synergy with the adjacent business community — with little concrete resolution.
It appeared that the Board was on the verge of taking residential use off the table during Tuesday night's meeting when Select Board member Danielle Leonard's motion to do so gained a favorable response from three of five Board members. But after an additional 15 minutes of discussion, the Board opted to defer that conversation and vote to a future date.
"We should come out and say: 'No residential,'" Leonard said. "I really think that we could debate this for weeks and months and months. But, at some point, this body has to make hard choices. And we can't be so waffling on every single one of these.
"This is the one where we can definitively say that we do not want residential. (To developers), come up with some other grand plan that is fabulous, that is going to produce economic development, some green space and some parking. But we are saying no to residential. I think we had to do it.
"I think we absolutely have to do it. And formally do it."
Leonard noted that "no residential" has been one preference routinely favored by residents amid concerns that "if you put any number of residential (units) there then it becomes that they own the entire area."
"If there is one thing we've heard, it is that people in this town do not want residential there," Leonard said.
Leonard appeared to have the support of MaryEllen Fletcher and Wayne Spritz for the motion, with Ted Dooley and Katie Phelan arguing that, while they do not necessarily want residential properties on the property, they were wary of using that as a disqualifying factor in what might otherwise be a beneficial project for the town.
"If we are saying we don't want residential," Dooley said, "we are limiting the ability to get the quality of response that parcel deserves. I am not advocating for residential. I do not want to come off as a residential guy. I am not advocating for that. I am just saying that we should go into this asking for the best response that we can."
It was Fletcher who ultimately wavered on her vote after Phelan posed the hypothetical that a development, including some residential component, could be in support of the hotel across the street.
Synergy with the hotel, and its potential as a tax base for the town, has been one of Fletcher's stated preferences for the site.
Still also to be determined is how the Select Board will score open space — or even define what "open space" is — as part of any RFP, with residents appearing strongly divided between those who said the site purchase for $7 million was originally proposed as a means to maintain most, if not all, of the property as open community space, and those who say — including multiple people during Tuesday's public comment — that the town needs to use the space for downtown revitalization and commercial tax revenue over a public park.
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