Annisquam divided over plans for homes

Annisquam residents are taking sides over possible construction of 30
houses far from the isolated enclave where some of Gloucester's earliest
homes were built.

The homes would be built by an Annisquam resident on land owned by three
generations of the Tufts family. The opponents are a cadre of their
neighbors, who'd prefer to see the highland wilderness on the north side
of Bennett Street stay as it is.

Some opponents themselves are recent settlers, buyers of homes built at
the edges of Annisquam as civilization, following sewers, pushed outward.

Change in the woods?

Now notorious as the city's single roughest road, once, centuries ago ?
before there was a Washington Street causeway across Goose Cove ?
Bennett Street was the main path from the Annisquam peninsula around the
cove to Holly Street and the town, now the city, to the south.

After the quarrying industry closed down 75 years ago, all that was left
up there were a few isolated capes and reclusive mansions, an abandoned
tannery, steep ravines, dense thickets of briers and massive granite
outcrops and boulders between roads that closed in on walking trails.

But with the installation of sewers in northern Gloucester a decade ago
came new streets and homes.

Records in the Assessing Department chronicle the outward development,
some on property once owned by the Tufts family. In recent years,
property along Bennett Street was subdivided to accommodate 31 homes and
another eight on Tufts Lane for new residents in an area so desolate it
doesn't have a name, though traditionalists insist the area is upland,
mainland Annisquam. Even now, between Revere Street on the north and its
little spur, Hutchins Court, and Tufts Lane's connection with Bennett
Street, is an arc of more than 50 acres where electric lights are all
but unknown.But that might be changing soon.Atlanta-based real estate
executive David Tufts, 46, who owns and lives part time in a fine, old
country house, has decided to sell off more than 30 acres of surrounding
property his grandfather, a Boston physician associated with Addison
Gilbert Hospital, acquired after World War II.Annisquam's Michael
Carrigan, 38, a builder and member of Mayor John Bell's Community
Housing Coalition, has partnered with Tufts and has been laying plans to
bring 30 new homes to the backwoods between Hutchins Court and Tufts
Lane.Carrigan said he hopes to initiate the permitting and review
proceedings with the Planning Board early next year, perhaps as soon as
January.

Developers: Build with sensitivity

Wednesday night, more than 40 residents of the area met in the basement
of the Annisquam Village Church to organize the resistance.It was a
reaction Carrigan said he understood. "When there's land next to theirs
and there's nothing on it, they want to keep it that way. I can
understand that, sure," he said (Carrigan was informed of the meeting
but not invited; he did meet previously with opponents).But once Tufts
decided to sell, Carrigan said, there were two choices: their
development, which both promise would be done with sensitivity to the
surroundings, style, grace and class; or someone else's, maybe an
outsider to Gloucester, who might not care as much as a team rooted in
Annisquam, he said.Carrigan and Tufts said they intend to use the
cluster development model, which allows a tighter concentration of homes
than required under the normal one-acre zoning in exchange for keeping
more land pristine. Seventy percent of the 32 acres would be spared
bulldozers, Carrigan said.Tufts promised the development would set a
standard for enlightened adaptation of open space and "environmentally
friendly development." He said he intends to maintain the family's
summer home on property essentially surrounded by the sites of the
proposed clusters."It's a very special place for me," Tufts said. "Very
few neighbors will even be able to see this development," Carrigan said.
Of the three clusters in a conceptual drawing that has been circulated
for review within the Engineering and Community Development Department
and was tacked onto the corkboard in the church basement Wednesday
night, only one of the clusters, of five duplexes by the side of
Hutchins Court, will be visible from the road. To the south, Carrigan
would build a long, tall, black-topped brim from the end of present
civilization so deep into the woods that residents along dead-end Tufts
Lane would be unaware of the two clusters of single-family homes set
deeper in the wilderness.Carrigan said he agreed readily to honor not
only the wetlands but the 100-foot buffer zones around the wetlands in
lengthy deliberations throughout 2004 and early 2005 with the
Conservation Commission.His lawyer, Michele Harrison, said Carrigan
voluntarily chose to plan for a development significantly less dense
than allowed. He said, "I am passionate" about what he promised would be
"a great, great project." Noel Mann, whose end-of-the-dirt-road, Dorset
Drive home overlooks beaver-dammed Langsford Pond just to the east of
the Tufts-Carrigan property, is among the opposition organizers. Mann
conceded the property is legally developable and added that Carrigan has
been accessible and reasonable to deal with, but she and fellow
opponents insist the mass of the intended development, the terrain and
location combine to create essentially unsolvable problems.

An example, Mann pointed out, is the vast excavation needed to carry a
two-lane entry road into the southernmost cluster off Tufts Lane,
perhaps 50 feet above and skirting two vernal ponds. To cross the
"canyon," as members of the opposition termed the ravine, would require
a "mini Hoover Dam."

Mann said by her calculations, 12,000 tons of fill for the crossing
would be needed.

Much of it, Carrigan has said, would come from excavations elsewhere on
the site.

And opponents fear the work, especially ledge blasting, will degrade the
entire area.

Neighbors: Sewer a major concern

Even if the clusters can be built with delicacy, the Annisquam residents
who met at the church were united in worrying the development would
overburden the streets, water pressure and especially the sewer system.

In the 1990s, the area was brought into the city system ? but instead of
gravity systems, the properties in the northern section of the city were
fitted with septic tank effluent pump (STEP) systems. These stored the
effluent on site and used grinders to prepare the liquid for delivery to
the mains. The machinery, often installed carelessly, proved
undependable; at best, the tanks need to be pumped out periodically.

The work was rife with waste and worse, as the FBI and Massachusetts
inspector general recently affirmed. Residents grated at $23,000
betterment bills, far more than projected, and malfunctioning machinery.

"We were hosed," said Jim Groves, a co-organizer of the opposition to
the Tufts-Carrigan development.

Bell said he spent "the first six months in office" fielding complaints.

"They were lined up at my door with stories," he told the Times last month.

Ward 4 Councilor Vito Calomo said the STEP system has been improved.

"They've corrected some of the problems," he said, but he added the
machinery remains subject to chronic malfunctioning.

It is to this still balky system that Tufts and Carrigan would add 30 homes.

James McKenna, chief of staff for the mayor, said there is "a suspicion
there might be a limit" to how much additional sewage the system can
take. He said the burden of proving the system has the capacity for the
new homes lies with the developer.

McKenna joins Harrison's law firm next month, but under a state Ethics
Commission ruling cannot work on the Carrigan project for one year.

The city already has a problem with odors arising from the connection
below Goose Cove, where the sewage from the north joins a gravity main.

Public Works Director Joseph Parisi has advocated spending $1.4 million
to quell the smells. More than $300,000 a year is spent on routine
service to the STEP systems.

Opponents of the clusters also argue the feeder roads cannot handle the
additional traffic the developments would bring to Revere Street,
Dennison Street on the north side of Goose Cove and Holly Street, which
ends at the Willow Rest.

"The feeder roads are too narrow and too long," said a written critique
released Wednesday night. "The situation is compounded because of the
very steep entrances to Bennett Street and Revere Street."

In the local clash between a team of passionate developers and a larger
team of equally passionate opponents, the cliched, three factors that
determine real estate viability ? location, location and location ?
would seem to cut both ways.

Tufts' family estate is an ideal place for open-space-preserving cluster
development, if development is to occur there at all.

The Planning Board, in the months to come, must weigh the benefits of
the project in added living space and real estate taxes against the
adverse impacts before deciding whether to give Tufts and Carrigan
permission to build and bring an all but unknown section of the city
onto the beaten track.