By Richard Gaines
Staff writer

Builder Michael Carrigan has asked the Planning Board to accept the idea that secreting 30 homes on 32 wild acres beyond the reach of the farthest, narrow country lane in the Annisquam highlands can be done without complicating life or the surrounding environment.

Carrigan's engineering firm said the filling and building will "increase the rural character of the neighborhood."

Don't do it

Perhaps 100 residents of Annisquam, including its ward councilor, jammed the City Hall auditorium Monday night to express disbelief.

In a letter, the Police Department found the claim of benign effect - at least on traffic - uninformed and misinformed.

Calling Carrigan's Annisquam Woods "the wrong development in the wrong place at the wrong time (and) a disaster in the making," James Groves told the board he was speaking for a neighborhood association twice the size of the audience.

"Put your common sense hats on," added Robert Stewart, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals. "This project can't work."

And Councilor Jackie Hardy insisted the project was fatally flawed by its "location, location, location." In an e-mail to the Times, she said, "I have not spoken to a single, solitary person that has so much suggested that this development should be allowed to proceed - except the developers, of course."

The four-hour hearing marked the start of what seems certain to be a struggle between the entrepreneurial impulse to build and a village's yen to maintain its delicate stability.

"This is a quiet, peaceful place," Annisquam's Lindsay Crouse said. She spoke shortly after her mother, Anna Crouse, a Bennett Street resident for 57 years, insisted, "There can be no answer for us that exists for 30 more homes."

"I exhort the board," Lindsay Crouse said, "to take great care."

The anger was directed at the project, not its developer.

"He's a decent guy," said Noel Mann, whose property on the side of Langsford Pond abuts the development site.

"He has a good reputation and does good work," anti-development activist Stevan Goldin added.

The hearings will last well beyond summer, according to the board's Henry McCarl.

Yesterday, he said, "The level of discourse was much higher than the norm. It was one of the better presentations on both sides."

The neighborhood association was organized last year before Carrigan filed even his preliminary plan, which underwent lengthy, non-public review by city department heads functioning as a "technical advisory group." It was vetted publicly this spring by the Planning Board, which gave Carrigan a nonbinding vote of confidence.

It is the product of these meetings that went before the board and community Monday night. The board can approve Annisquam Woods, require its modification or reject it outright.

"We recognize that we have a severe burden," board Chairman Paul Lundberg said.

Pros, according to developers

In making the case for the board's permission to cluster homes on property owned by summer resident David Tufts, thus keeping nearly three quarters of the land in a natural state, Carrigan's development team contended Annisquam Woods can:

• Add 10,000 gallons of waste a day to the notoriously undependable and expensive septic tank effluent pump - or STEP - sewer system without adding to the city's woes.

• Reorganize the topography and the property's natural drainage systems to accommodate foundations and pavement by forcing runoff harmlessly toward two ponds that feed two ocean coves far below.

• Add traffic from the project to the traffic from the existing community without making it worse on the bumpy, hilly roads around the site and at their three connections to Washington Street.

Moreover, Carrigan's lawyer, Michele Harrison, promised he would help the city by building three affordable homes and building a "critter" bridge into a steep, man-made embankment needed for the southerly access road across a ravine to give wildlife free range across the property.

Harrison told the board it was Carrigan's past tenure on the Community Housing Coalition that convinced him to keep 10 percent of the units affordable.

Traffic opinions vary

The vehicular traffic generated by the residents and visitors to Annisquam Woods would yield "no reduction in existing levels of service" to the feeder roads, considered among Gloucester's roughest, Carrigan's environmental impact report contends.

The project will have "little impact on the adjacent roadways" and "no major traffic impact" on the city below, adds the report produced by Hayes Engineering for Carrigan, himself a resident of Annisquam.

Police Lt. Joseph Aiello, the city's road safety expert, disputed the traffic study, which predicted most drivers would choose to come and go from Annisquam Woods on private, dead-end Hutchins Court - the development's sole connector - to Revere Street and Washington Street.

Revere drops onto Washington at a telephone pole a few yards north of the island at the intersection with Leonard Street that leads to the Annisquam peninsula.

The only nearby option would be nearly impassable North Bennett Street, which drops precipitously into Washington from the highlands just before Washington makes a sharp dip and curve on the approach to Leonard.

According to the study, the secondary choice for connection to Annisquam Woods would be to its south, along partially unpaved South Bennett Street to Dennison along the northside of Goose Cove, then on to Washington or behind it on to Holly, meeting Washington at the Willow Rest compound.

The study projected 242 trips a day into and out of Annisquam Woods - no more than 30 during peak periods, morning and afternoon.

"We have reviewed the traffic study provided by Hayes Engineering," said Aiello in a Sunday letter to the Planning Board, "and must disagree with the findings. It is clear that none of the persons doing the traffic study live in or are familiar with the road designs in the area.

"Their conclusion that the development would have no effect on current traffic patterns makes that clear," he wrote.

Aiello described the North Bennett-Washington intersection as "one of, if not the worst, corners in the city" and the Hutchins-Revere route, which is projected to accommodate most Annisquam Woods traffic, as "narrow and overgrown" with "several curves and hills that are a challenge in bad weather."

"Adding 30 homes with no effect seems inconsistent with logic," Aiello wrote.

Finally, he described South Bennett at Dennison as "steep and very dangerous in ice, snow and rain."

Harrison told the board the city was ready to embark on a long-delayed improvement of Bennett Street.

City engineer Michael Hale said yesterday no decision had been made on when to repave because of concerns the trucks and excavators needed to create Annisquam Woods would ruin the road work.

Annisquam Woods

• What - 30 homes on 32 acres, organized in clusters to keep most of the parcel natural.

• Where - In the Annisquam highlands between two dead-end lanes, accessible over some of the city's worst roads.

• How - Property owned by summer resident David Tufts, to be developed by Annisquam resident Michael Carrigan, in phases over five years.

• Pros - Adds to housing stock including three affordable units, will lead to road improvements, a playing field and school bus stop; adds to tax base.

• Cons - More traffic, adds pressure to sewer system, modifies ecology in isolated, unspoiled place, drains on tax base for city services.

• Who's for - So far, the development partners.

• Who's against - Large contingent of Annisquam residents and ward councilor.

• Decision time - No sooner than fall.

• Who decides - The Planning Board, with input from city departments and public.

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