Volleys served in Swampscott

SWAMPSCOTT – A construction project, including plans to add lights and renovate two tennis courts at the Beach Club, has been put on hold after neighbors raised concerns about the permitting process and potential impacts.The dispute is the latest issue among the private club on Shepard Avenue and neighbors in the residential district that grew up around the area.”They all decided they are just going to stop so they can get all their ducks in a row,” Building Inspector Rich Baldacci said Tuesday.The Beach Club is a private summer club adjacent to Phillips Beach with a pool, tennis courts and a clubhouse. The club was founded in 1928 and predates the residential zoning of the surrounding neighborhood. But the growing density of the neighborhood and the club’s expansion have sparked increased tensions in the neighborhood.”The Beach Club as it was then was nothing like the Beach Club that it is now,” said Paul Levenson of Shepard Avenue, a 35-year resident of the neighborhood, last week. “It was originally a very small clubhouse.”The most recent dispute concerns a proposal to resurface and add lights to two of the club’s four tennis courts that neighbors said caught them by surprise.”I don’t want to look at seven 22-foot commercial-looking light posts,” said Longley Avenue resident Scott Burke, an attorney who is representing himself and his brother (also a club abutter) as they appeal the building permit.Levenson noted the proposed lights are specifically designed for sports facilities in local neighborhoods, and had concerns less about lights than about noise.”Tennis is not a quiet game, and it shouldn’t be; it’s a vigorous sport,” Levenson said. “Having to listen to it from dusk to 9 p.m. and then in the postseason, having to listen to it for 4 hours after sundown?.it’s a peace and quiet issue.”So when they heard rumors of the lights, neighbors began looking at the building permit and lingering distrust emerged.”The applicant went the route of ?Reconstruction’ while falsely representing to the town that it was merely ?Resurfacing,'” Burke wrote in an email asking Baldacci to order the project halted.The project as described in the building permit proposal filed March 13 lists five proposals of which three were recommended: a resurfacing option; a proposal to reconstruct two of the courts with a 4.5-inch concrete base; and a proposal to add lights to two of the courts.But in a series of emails between Beach Club Vice President and Guarantor Martin Grasso and Conservation Commission Chairman Mark Mahoney between March 20 and 23, Grasso described the project as a resurfacing of the courts that would add “a few inches of additional slab” and there were “no plans to build up the base footprint.” The emails do not mention lights.Because such work didn’t change the footprint of the existing courts and was less than “a couple of inches, Mahoney said in a response email that such work would not require a permit from the Conservation Committee (and notice of public hearing).Baldacci issued a permit dated March 31 for the reconstruction of the courts with a 4.5-inch concrete base and the lights. He said he didn’t send the proposal to the Conservation Committee because Mahoney had said it was unnecessary.Grasso did not respond to messages on his cell phone over several days.Burke cited flooding concerns from raising the courts (which appear to be within 100 feet of a pond), and concerns of “mission creep.” He notes the special permit for the club allows two courts to be used in the off-season. They are the courts the club proposes to light.”I’m trying to be respective of many of my friends who are members … but we’re just wishing (the club) had come to us,” Burke said. “The idea that they keep doing more and more, are they next going to put a bubble over the court and not use it year-round?”Levenson wondered whether the lights were even allowed. A clause in the 2001 special permit conditions specified any new clubhouse and reconstruction