The Manchester-By-The-Sea Zoning Board of Appeals voted 5-0 to deny the comprehensive permit for the Chapter 40B apartment complex on School Street on Tuesday night.
Only the five regular members of the ZBA voted – Chair Sarah Mellish, Brian Sollosy, Kathryn Howe, James Mitchell and John Binieris. The two alternates – James Diedrich and Sean Zahn – did not vote on the permit.
The ZBA spent most of the meeting discussing changes to the draft denial that George Pucci, of the town attorney’s office, drew up since the board’s Aug. 3 meeting. The multi-page document was not released to the public, as of Wednesday night.
Many of the changes were minor corrections, such as adding commas and semi-colons or splitting a long sentence into two sentences for clarity. But Howe and Binieris offered several additions intended to strengthen the ZBA’s case for denying the permit. For example, with one item, Howe suggested adding the fact that none of the hundreds of letters the board received from the public were in favor of the project.
Developer Geoffrey Engler of SLV School St. LLC was seeking the comprehensive permit to build 136-unit apartment building off School Street, atop Shingle Place Hill, to be known as The Sanctuary at Manchester-By-The-Sea. As part of the Chapter 40B permit, 34 of those 136 units would have been rented as affordable housing.
The ZBA debated how to characterize Engler’s responses to concerns the board raised during the public hearing. Some thought they should make it clear that Engler threatened to appeal the project to the state’s Housing Appeals Committee if the board required one thing or another.
But others thought the ZBA should avoid being adversarial in the denial.
Most of the discussion about change details in the draft denial centered about safety and environmental concerns.
“When it comes right down to it, despite the multitude of issues,” said Pucci, “the areas where you have obstacles with (the project) are the site access and the environmental concerns. And those are big issues.”
The site access issue mainly concerns the single access road up the hill to the building. Town bylaws call for multiple access roads for a project of this size and for the road to not exceed 500 feet. Plans for the access road called for it to be about 1,800 feet long. ZBA members were concerned that in an emergency, such as a fire, the single roadway would be a health hazard.
The environmental concerns, which were brought up at nearly every meeting during the public hearing by members of, and representatives for, the Manchester Essex Conservation Trust, questioned the effect the project would have on surrounding wetlands, including the Sawmill Brook, and the environmentally protected land.
Pucci kept notes of all the changes, large and small, that the ZBA members requested during the meeting.
“It’s pretty well written as it stands,” said ZBA member Jim Diedrich. “You could nitpick it to death.”
After the discussion on changes to the draft, the board tried to arrange another meeting, when they would have the updated draft in front of them. But the time restriction and the upcoming Labor Day weekend made it difficult to find a time when all the members were available to meet.
Instead, the ZBA took its vote to deny the permit then.
Pucci said he would have an updated draft of the denial ready for the board to sign by Aug. 23. The individual board members agreed to get to Town Hall to sign the final draft between then and Aug. 29.
The signed denial will then sent to the state, where it is likely to be appealed by Engler.
