Swampscott's Elm Place Project Back In Front Of Zoning Board

SWAMPSCOTT, MA —The prolonged back-and-forth over the proposed Elm Place 40B affordable housing project in Swampscott will be back in front of the Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night.

The last Zoning Board meeting in February left off with the Board and WinnDevelopment still at odds over the number of parking spaces and how the development would impact a potential extension of a Swampscott Rail Trail.

While developers have offered redesigns of the project since the original 128-unit building was introduced last year, neighbors and some town officials have continued to argue that the size of the project is too big for the area considering the congestion and population density of the town.

"There is no way to solve the parking problem without reducing the number of units," said Marzie Galazka, Director of Community and Economic Development, at the Feb. 15 meeting.

The proposed 120-unit project's application for a comprehensive building permit is on the agenda for this Tuesday's meeting that starts at 7 p.m. and can be found here.

Parking has been an ongoing point of contention between developers and neighbors throughout the year-plus-long process with the initial proposal of 108 parking spaces criticized for not being enough for the density of the area, and the revamped proposal of 130 then criticized for causing public safety concerns for the area.

"There needs to be a comprehensive assessment of the project," Anne Driscoll, a nearby resident and member of the Swampscott Equity Association, told Patch on Monday. "It's way out of scale, way too tall, too dense to fit into that neighborhood."

"I'm hoping that the Zoning board of Appeals feels that they can either deny this petition altogether or place conditions that will ensure everyone in this community that their open space and safety concerns are adequately addressed."

Because this is a 40B affordable housing project, and the town is well below the state's 10 percent affordable housing threshold at 3.7 percent, the project is eligible to bypass some local zoning ordinances because the project fulfills "a critical town need" of creating more affordable housing.

WinnDevelopment has proposed that 49 of the units be priced at a below-market rate, which is well above the 40B's statute requirement of 20 percent, but developers have argued that only a project of that size makes the financing work to provide that many units at the lower price point.

"We do listen to the town and we're going to continue to listen to the town," WinnDevelopment Executive Vice President Adam Stein said at a July 2021 public forum. "But there is a breaking point we can't go below. We can't do a 99-unit development.

"If the answer is (neighbors) will only support 88 units, we're not going to get there. It has to be in the world of reality."

(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.)