SWAMPSCOTT — Possible parking and traffic-flow issues dominated the discussion of the Chapter 40B Elm Place housing-development project at the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) meeting on Tuesday night.
This was the second meeting regarding a comprehensive special permit requested by WinnDevelopment to build a 120-unit, mixed-income building on the plot framed by Pitman Road, Essex Street, Elm Place and the MBTA Commuter Rail. The project team presented updates to the site, parking layout and circulation plan without any changes to the scale of the proposed project.
“We certainly think we had a great plan before and now we think it is even better,” said Angela Gile, project director.
Gile said the team has also continued outreach with the stakeholders since the last ZBA meeting in November, and was exploring sustainable transportation alternatives. The Department of Public Works (DPW) has reviewed all the sidewalks in the project and the updated plan was cleared with the Fire Department again.
Changes to the parking included the relocation of 11 parking spaces on Pitman Road from the public roadway onto the private property of the project, and the elimination of a parking space across from the turnaround area for emergency vehicles. That slightly changed the parking ratio, but it still remained above 1 to 1, Gile said.
She also demonstrated that the Elm Place resident parking lot will have its own entrance and exits separate from the Burke Tumbling Academy portion of the parking lot.
“Parking spaces will be assigned per unit,” said Gilbert Winn, chief executive officer of WinnCompanies.
Next, the discussion turned to the ongoing peer reviews. Gile said WinnDevelopment had received commentaries from the traffic peer review and had responded to them the night before the meeting. They have also been processing commentaries from the stormwater and sewer review which they received on Tuesday.
The project was still waiting to undergo the architectural review. Ezra Glenn, a 40B consultant from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, said that the town has selected a company for the architectural review and they will be prepared for the next ZBA meeting.
Before the discussion was opened to the public, ZBA Chair Marc Kornitsky brought up his concern over snow removal, as the plan did not show any spaces available for the snow-removal equipment on site. He said he would like to see an appropriate plan since there were limitations to the site in his view.
Glenn suggested that all of the recommendations of the peer reviews can be turned into conditions at the end of the process, such as where to park cars in the case of a snow emergency.
Public comments at the Tuesday meeting were limited to the topics and issues at hand per the chairman’s instruction, including revised parking and traffic plans.
Neighbors from the adjacent streets like Maura White, who lives at Elm Place, were concerned that new residents and their guests would create more traffic. One of the suggestions voiced at the meeting was to turn Elm Place into a one-way street.
“We are committed to putting “do not block” signs and retiming the traffic signals,” said Jeffrey Dirk of Vanasse & Associates, the transportation consultant on the project.
Another big concern was possible overflow of the cars in need of parking to the rest of the neighborhood, as well as the loss of the parking spaces along the other side of Pitman Road. Deborah Colbert, of Hancock Associates, suggested that people were currently parking illegally on Pitman Road, as the width of the roadway does not allow for two-way traffic and parking. She said, according to their analysis, four to six cars that were parked there were halfway onto the sidewalk.
“We are widening the road with adequate payment and we are improving the public way,” she said.
The residence won’t be allowing more than one car per unit in their parking lot, Winn said, and violators will be towed.
“We don’t want to (incentivize) people to have more than one car,” said Winn. “It will not be a very attractive place to live for folks who have two cars. This is a transit-oriented development for a purpose.”
Winn said he was open to discussing creative solutions with the Pitman Road residents, and possibly creating driveways for them if they didn’t have one to park in. In terms of visitor spots, the project dedicated two parking spaces for guests and Winn said that their residents probably won’t be entertaining much, as the building mostly offers studios and one-bedroom apartments.
Kornitsky suggested incentivizing residents to not have a car at all by giving them a rent discount to open up some visitor spaces.
Comments from the public suggested that some neighbors were proactively participating in discussing the project outside of the ZBA meetings with the Fire Department and WinnCompanies.
Gerry Perry, a Swampscott resident living on Burpee Road, said he appreciated that the developer’s representatives met with him and other neighbors. The neighbors will have more comments and questions once WinnDevelopment finalizes the plan, Perry said.
“The challenges with parking will spill into the neighborhood,” said Perry.
He asked that the town develop a comprehensive parking-plan enforcement for the adjacent streets.
“I am getting worried the town is getting on the hook for a lot of expenses here,” Perry said. “The developer should be bearing some of these expenses.”
With a lot of traffic in the area and from the Burke Academy, Perry said he worried about public safety and suggested that the ZBA invite the fire chief and the police chief to discuss whether there are enough resources to handle traffic enforcement with this project.
“It is important for the petitioner to work with public officials to develop plans and satisfy the concerns,” said Kornitsky.
