Quinn Road and Judge Road residents have had their say at public hearings and the time has come to consign a proposed eight-home development bordering those streets to the scrap heap.

At a Jan. 21 Conservation Commission hearing and again at a Feb. 11 Planning Board hearing, residents linked worries about potential flooding problems, rock ledge blasting concerns, and wildlife migration disruptions to developer Flamino Lanzillo’s proposal. 

Both city boards have yet to issue rulings on the proposal. We urge them to reject Lanzillo’s plans.

By all appearances, Lanzillo, who has developed residential projects in Lynnfield and Revere, wants to shoehorn his homes into the hilly, rocky forested land that has been left unspoiled by construction bordering Quinn, Judge and other residential streets meandering up and down hills off Lynnfield Street. 

An Apple Blossom Lane resident warned that blasting for a previous development in her neighborhood cracked her foundation. A Judge Road resident wondered aloud during the Planning Board meeting how he was supposed to handle flood water runoff from Lanzillo’s project. 

The developer kept quiet and occasionally grinned during the Feb. 11 Planning Board discussion while his local attorney, Sam Vitali, and an engineer responded to residents’ concerns.

It’s a gross understatement to say Vitali knows his way around local zoning and planning bylaws. But his arguments paled in the face of a board-requested show of hands by two dozen residents attending the Planning Board meeting who were unified in their objections to Lanzillo’s development. 

The death knell for Lanzillo’s project was his proposed Quinn Road shared driveway. Planning Board Chairman Robert Stilian, who also is the city’s acting parking director, called shared driveways “a horrible, horrible thing” and frequent source of neighbor-on-neighbor disputes. 

Quinn and Judge roads neighbors are clear in their opposition to Lanzillo’s project and we share their objections.