Meeting to determine potential downsizing of KSS development

MARBLEHEAD – After three hours of presentations and wrangling Monday – the longest meeting yet on the KSS Chapter 40B project on the Salem-Marblehead line – the Board of Appeals still couldn’t decide whether to ask KSS to downsize their 44-unit development.Instead, the board authorized a special daytime meeting between Chairman William Moriarty, Attorney Lisa Mead, the town’s zoning lawyer, and KSS representatives to discuss the downsizing issues. After that meeting on Monday, Sept. 24 at 10 a.m. the full board will meet again in October.Architect Joseph Lagrasse of Andover reviewed KSS designs for the town and submitted a 13-page review to the appeals board Monday evening, proposing a 60-foot reduction in the length of KSS’s building and a six-foot reduction in height, making the project 52 feet high and 404 feet long and reducing the size of some of the units.KSS lawyer Carl King said that much downsizing was not feasible.Lagrasse told the board his numerous criticisms of the project plans were “just (being) put on your table. There may be a better solution.”There are 33 market-value and 11 affordable units in the design for the project, which is on the former Chadwick Lead Mills site off Lafayette Avenue. Lagrasse proposed a 200-300-square-foot reduction in the size of each unit, which he said would “not infringe on usable spaces, water views or profit margins.” King disagreed.