Gloucester Daily Times
The Planning Board has decided to allow construction of a subdivision of 27 homes in three clusters in one of Gloucester's most isolated and physically challenging places - the Annisquam highlands.
The vote by the narrowest of margins - itself, subject to possible litigation - affirmed developer Michael Carrigan's confidence the 33 acres of outcrops, ravines, gullies and wetlands, could be adapted for housing.
The case was decided Monday night but not closed. Conditions defining design details, construction and organization of the homeowners association remain to be written. Carrigan pledged to seek input from the opposition to his proposal to keep the case out of court.
"I don't think it's over yet," said Carrigan's chief engineer, Peter Ogren.
A major unresolved side issue is the capacity of the region's mechanical sewer system to handle the waste from the new homes to be built at the end of narrow, hilly Hutchins Court. If it can't, Carrigan would need to substitute a huge septic system.
Annisquam Woods was organized under the city's Cluster Zoning Ordinance.
It would be only the second subdivision in the city reflecting current thinking that open space should be preserved - 70 percent in Annisquam Woods - by allowing a denser concentration of homes than can be achieved by the mid-20th century subdivision model now falling from favor everywhere.
Many involved in the permitting process, roughly 16 hours in nine meetings over nine months, including Planning Board Chairman Paul Lundberg, said they believe Annisquam Woods' cluster concept is the model for future residential developments in the city.
"There are no easy sites left," City Planner Gregg Cadermartori said.
The city's first cluster project - a condo village for the over-55 set off Atlantic Street in West Gloucester - was authorized in 2004 only after tumultuous Planning Board hearings that spilled into the courts with opponents left bitterly disappointed.
In contrast, while the vetting of Annisquam Woods was characterized by intense legal and engineering arguments from both sides, engagement on the plans was never ruptured as the project continued to evolve through the 11th hour.
Carrigan said neighborhood and Planning Board criticism forged a better Annisquam Woods.
James Groves, a spokesman for the opposition - a 267-member neighborhood organization - returned the compliment.
"You have to say a lot for Mr. Carrigan," Groves said. "He came to grasp a lot of these issues."
Carrigan was awarded his special permit by a 4-0 vote with one board member, architect Michael Rubin, abstaining. Approval came only after 11th-hour concessions that brought retired geologist Henry McCarl into the "yes" coalition.
Compromises, concessions, modifications and mitigations were the coin of Annisquam Woods' realm over the course of the year Carrigan and his team spent pushing the project past environmental, health, traffic and design reviews.
The project authorized Monday night was much different from the one he submitted to the Planning Board last summer. A second road connection to the development, typically preferred, was dropped in response to board and community opposition, and the number of homes was reduced from 30 to 27.
Carrigan estimated the changes reduced anticipated net income by about $1 million.
"More important, we reached a great balance," he said.
It galvanized the tenuous voting coalition that put him over the top.
Before an opinion delivered Monday by City Solicitor Linda Lowe that a simple majority of the board, four of its seven members, was needed to approve the project, Lundberg had said he assumed two-thirds of the board - five votes, one more than Carrigan got - would be required.
The confusion owed to the disqualification of one Planning Board member who missed two meetings and contradictory signals between the texts of the subdivision rules and zoning ordinance. Diane Tillotson, an attorney for the project's opposition, said Lowe's opinion could be challenged, but to do so would entail a legal battle that could drag on and up to the state Supreme Judicial Court.
At the end of a hearing two weeks ago, Carrigan had reason to believe he could hope for no more than three votes. While none of the five members sitting on the case had hinted support, two - Rubin and McCarl - made clear their opposition, arguing the terrain was essentially too rough for homes.
Carrigan personally lobbied Rubin, to no avail. He abstained after saying, "I'm not satisfied it's a safe project."
McCarl rebuffed Carrigan's invitation to meet to discuss the changes made after the Feb. 12 meeting, but said his opinion changed during a review of the engineering with city staff and because Carrigan erased one house from the plan, softened the grade on an emergency lane and showed that the movement of rubble and fill would be less than claimed by the opposition.
"It's the roughest site we ever looked at in my four years on the board," McCarl said. But he praised Carrigan's last-minute concessions.
"The one house that was eliminated was the one involving the most severe cutting and the most severe filling," he said.
McCarl, Lundberg and Marvin Kushner all cited the improvements to Hutchins Court that were included in the original plans and the decision in January to erase from them a secondary access from the south via Tufts Lane and nearly impassable Bennett Street as contributing to their decision to approve.
Nearly every detail was analyzed by the opponents' engineering and legal team and the independent engineering firm, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, which, financed by Carrigan, provided peer review.
Cadermartori said Vanasse corroborated the project's engineering projections which the opposition questioned.
For more than a year, the infighting was intense, never more so than last winter while Carrigan was seeking permission to connect to the area's balky sewer system.
After the Engineering Department turned him down, one of Carrigan's attorneys, Peter Feurbach, accused the city in writing of "bad faith," warned it would be "exposed to significant monetary liability for violating" Carrigan's civil rights and filed a public records request for all documents, notes, e-mails, memos and letters mentioning Annisquam Woods.
Weeks later, mayoral administrative assistant Steven Magoon overruled the Engineering Department and granted Carrigan permission to connect to the sewer system.
But at the same time, Carrigan's team, directed by attorney Michele Harrison, was continually adapting the project in response to the broad-based and passionate opposition centered in Annisquam - where Carrigan lives and where the family of his partner, property owner David Tufts of Atlanta, has roots.
The project was made feasible by Carrigan's decision to improve what became the single access to the site from Hutchins Court.
Cadermartori predicted Carrigan's approach, private spending on public infrastructure, will be followed regularly. Already, both Sam Park, for his pending shopping center near the city center, and DeMoulas, for its proposed supermarket in West Gloucester, have committed to similar private investment in public works.
"The state of the infrastructure is what it is," Cadermartori said. "Either you sit back and hope something gets done, or you take the initiative."
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