SWAMPSCOTT, MA — A formal commitment of state housing financing and tax credits cleared a key final hurdle for the development of 41 senior housing units, with a veterans preference, at the 12-24 Pine Street lot in Swampscott.
The town purchased the lot two years ago with the plan to redevelop the lot into senior, veterans housing and to renovate the VFW. As part of an updated agreement with B'nai B'rith to build the housing — contingent on the state funding — the VFW will be relocated to the former Swampscott Arts building on Burrill Street.
At the time of the 2024 purchase, the Pine Street lot had recently been put on the market with an asking price of $1.75 million.
The Healey-Driscoll Administration announced last week that the Swampscott project was part of the most recently awarded $278 million in grants designed to create more than 2,500 housing units across 20 communities.
"We're on a mission to build more homes and lower housing costs in every part of Massachusetts, and today we're hitting the road to show that work in action," Healey said. "This is about making sure that Massachusetts is a state where teachers, nurses, firefighters and young people can actually afford to live."
The town released a statement on Monday, calling the funding promise an "important step forward for the project and for our community, helping create more opportunities for seniors and veterans to live, age, and thrive in Swampscott."
"We're excited to see this investment in affordable housing move forward and what it will mean for the future of our community," the statement said.
Former Select Board member David Grishman called the 2024 purchase and planned housing development a means to fulfill a long-forgotten and overdue obligation to the veterans of the North Shore and Swampscott at the time the sale agreement was reached.
"We've played ostrich with our veterans and our words of support for our veterans over the years have really rung hollow," Grishman said. "We've done the same thing when it comes to affordable housing.
"While I've given up all hope for a better past we can hope for a better future. Tonight we can start to rectify these two situations. Here's how."
The path to project development was not without its debate and contentious moments after B'nai B'rith was the only respondent to a Request for Proposal and indicated the VFW would have to be relocated to fulfill the scope of the project without adding an additional fourth story to the complex.
Pine Street neighbors expressed concerns about the impact of a four-story building that could profile even higher given its elevation necessary because of the floodplain and the mechanical equipment that needs to be on top of the building.
Critics, including Grishman and several members of the VFW, argued that it did not match the spirit of the purchase that town meeting approved. But supporters of moving forward with the plan, including the majority of the Select Board and housing advocates, said the project fulfilled a critical public need in senior, veterans-preference housing, and that the pledge to provide a renovated VFW never necessarily promised it would be in that current location.
The Select Board in December 2024 voted 3-2 to accept a land-use agreement that calls for a three-story senior veteran-preference housing development and the movement of the current VFW post to Burrill Street.
A citizens' petition aimed at halting or forcing the redesign of the project to include the VFW at the Pine Street site narrowly failed following a three-hour debate and vote of a special town meeting last March.
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