Lynn developer Needs special permit for Brookline Street project

LYNN – Local developer David Potter is headed back to the City Council to assure support for his $15 million plan to build four apartment buildings on Brookline Street.Potter requires a special permit for the project. “I’m going back to the City Council in May to re-affirm the existing special permit that is on the property today,” he said. “I have a building permit in place and have actually started the construction process.”According to Potter, the bank providing the project funds requested he obtain fresh affirmation from the City Council. “This will be a $15 million building job and I believe it will be one of the largest residential developments recently in Lynn,” he said.When the project was introduced in 2007, it described 156 owner-occupied condominiums spread over four buildings on five acres. The site was formerly home to two defunct factories ? the Nissen Bakery and Lynn Plastics.Potter said the apartment units would incorporate luxury items at affordable prices, such as remote-control fireplaces, Jacuzzi tubs, stainless steel appliances, granite counter tops and heated towel racks and toilet seats. Each building would have an elevator.Parking spaces would be located on ground level under the four-story buildings. In 2007, Potter said the units would sell for $170,000 to $200,000. “I’m not sure if these will start out as rentals and then become condominiums. Right now, there is really no condo market. If they do go on the market, the price would be in the high hundreds, $169,000 to $179,000,” he said Friday.The units were also reconfigured from the original drawings so that each has two bedrooms and two baths, he said.Potter said the project will reserve 30 percent green space on the development site and have extensive landscaping.”Right now there is zero percent landscaping, so this will definitely help. We’re planning on placing the buildings back off of the street and there will be trees and a huge amount of landscaping. There hasn’t been a single development this big since King’s Lynne,” he said, referring to the award-winning housing that replaced Lynn’s notorious America Park housing complex on O’Callaghan Way.