Swampscott 'Fully Committed' To Veterans Housing Despite Vote Delay

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — While a final Swampscott Select Board vote to finalize the town purchase of the Pine Street location set to become affordable veterans housing was postponed twice last week, Select Board Chair David Grishman told Patch the town remains "fully committed to the Pine Street veterans affordable housing project."

The final vote was on two Select Board agendas last week, including on Feb. 12 when the discussion and vote were postponed amid what turned out to be a 3-hour, 45 minute meeting. The discussion and possible vote were then supposed to take place on Thursday, but those attending that virtual Select Board meeting were told that night the meeting had been canceled because the executive session preceding it involving the purchase was running long.

"We are finalizing agreements and the Board had some final questions and nuances that needed to be addressed," Grishman told Patch. "We hope to bring this back at a regular season very soon so that we can close this transaction and move this project forward.

"I want to thank town staff and the Select Board for its thoughtfulness and thoroughness throughout this process."

Grishman and the Select Board announced in March 2023 the plan to use primarily American Rescue Plan Act funds to redevelop the property into 30 to 40 units of veterans affordable housing, as well as renovate the VFW Post 1240 on the adjacent town-owned parcel.

The Select Board a month later unanimously committed to a $1.7 million purchase-and-sale agreement, pending the approval of town meeting members.

"This is certainly one of the brightest days that I've had as a Select Board member," Grishman said at the time. "We've really reset our relationship with the veterans, with Veterans Crossing.

"This is a long time coming. And the fact that we're actually turning words into action is so important. We can say until we're blue in the face that we support our veterans, we love our veterans. But until we do something in a substantial way, it's just words. It's just words.

"So we're turning those words into action tonight."

The agreement was said to include a $100,000 deposit — $40,000 of which would be non-refundable if the town terminated the purchase for any reason — and the town's coverage of $25,000 in closing costs.

Select Board member Peter Spellios said at the time that he expected the units to be offered at 60 percent of the market rate, with some at 30 percent of the market rate. He said because of state guidelines regarding equity that while the intention is for all the units to be made available to
veterans, it is unlikely the town will be able to restrict eligibility to only veterans from Swampscott.

As of Tuesday morning, the Select Board had yet to schedule its next meeting with no meeting set this week amid the February Vacation week.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)