Gloucester Daily Times, January 24, 2007

Despite developer's concessions, opposition to Annisquam Woods project remains fierce

By Richard Gaines
Gloucester Daily Times

Developer Michael Carrigan's decision last month to eliminate the back access to his proposed 28-home Annisquam Woods subdivision was a concession to the Planning Board and members of the community fighting his project.
On Monday night, the opposition let Carrigan and the board know it considers the revised plan requiring subdivision traffic to use an improved Hutchins Court and Revere Street the equivalent of trading a headache for an upset stomach.
The proposal calls for 28 homes on about 30 acres in an isolated enclave of Annisquam, the North Gloucester neighborhood where some of the city's earliest homes were built. The public hearing process, which began in June, continued this week. The next step is a Planning Board vote.

"The project was announced as a 'model' for future cluster developments. It is just the opposite," engineer Frederick Geisel wrote in a critique of the Annisquam Woods proposal. Geisel represents the 267-member Annisquam Bay View Woodlands Association.
"Road design (with) reduced width, no sidewalks, excessive slope, on a half-mile 'driveway' no less, lack of street lighting, only extend the inadequate and antiquated road system in the neighborhood which evolved from a roadway designed for horse-drawn traffic," Geisel added.

Michele Harrison, Carrigan's lead attorney, said the minimalist design of the roads inside the 32-acre site was consistent with the mandate of the city's cluster ordinance to maximize open space.
"A cluster wants narrow streets," she said.
A traffic study conducted for the developer projects Annisquam Woods adding 242 vehicle trips a day to Hutchins Court, Revere Street and Washington Street, a quarter-mile to the west.
Harrison also said that improvements to Hutchins Court, promised by Carrigan even before he dropped the back access to Tufts Lane and Bennett Street, would include a bypass of an incline so steep it deters school buses and challenges fire engines.
To compensate for the loss of the secondary access from Tufts Lane, Carrigan's revision added two looping fire roads within the subdivision, where the cluster of homes will allow three-quarters of the site to remain undeveloped.
Fire Chief Barry McKay and police Lt. Joseph Aiello, who condemned the use of Tufts Lane and Bennett Street, which were all but impassable before the improvements now underway, approved the single access via Hutchins Court.
But James Groves, a spokesman for the opposing association, argues Carrigan's improvements to Hutchins Court can only do so much.
"The road is extremely narrow, far less than the standard 40-foot width, has a reverse 'S' curve on a steep slope, and even with the modifications, a rubbish truck and a fire engine could not pass each other," he wrote to the board.
Access and safety are not the only issues on which the association has clashed with Carrigan and his development team.

Association members have raised doubts about the ability of the development's homeowners association to maintain a city-permitted septic system. Carrigan has to prove to the city that waste from the septic system can be disposed through the city's wastewater system and that the city has the capacity to accept waste from Annisquam Woods.
Carrigan scoffs at the concern; though the city's Sewer Task Force in 2005 recommended "no expansion whether by the city or by private parties" of the mechanical septic tank effluent pump system that has proven to be prone to breakdowns.
"There's plenty of capacity in the sewer lines," Carrigan said.
He will need to prove it with engineering or backtrack to an on-site septic system, officials said.

Carrigan argues that he presented an enlightened project and then was willing to improve it with recommended changes to maintain the rural nature of the isolated site.
City Planning Director Gregg Cademartori agrees, to a point. He wrote to the Planning Board that the elimination of the road and the land bridge for it from Tufts Lane to the development site affords "much greater protection of natural features."
But the opponents have not changed their view that the best way to do that is to build nothing.

"There are plenty of places on Cape Ann where it is impossible to build," wrote Daan Sandee, whose home is across Langsford Pond from the development site. "And this is one of them."

Both sides expect the end of the public hearing process will come perhaps as early as next month. Carrigan said he expects the opposing Annisquam association to bring the matter to court if the Planning Board approves Annisquam Woods.


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