Before the Everett Planning Board took up the Docklands master plan and the Ferry Street apartments on Monday, Planning Director Matt Lattanzi opened the meeting with two personnel notes and the board worked through five smaller items. Here is what happened.
Hart out, McColaugh in, a new senior planner
Michael Hart has stepped down from the board, Lattanzi announced. Stephanie McColaugh, who had been an alternate, has been named a regular voting member. The November 2 agenda already lists the board as chairman Frederick Cafasso, Leo Pizzano Jr., Shayane Rangel, James Tarr and McColaugh, with Thawanna Pessoa as the remaining alternate. McColaugh spoke before the City Council as a resident during the data center ordinance debate in the spring.
Lattanzi also introduced Francesca Cigliano as the city’s new senior planner. She will attend every Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals meeting and will be one of the two points of contact, with Lattanzi, for anyone filing with the board. The agenda letterhead now carries her name with the AICP credential.
380 Second Street removed without prejudice
The proposal to tear down an industrial warehouse on a 70,649-square-foot lot at 380 Second Street and build 310 apartments, 31 of them deed-restricted affordable, over 3,875 square feet of retail and a 91-space garage had been continued from August 3. Lattanzi said he had received nothing from the applicant since the last meeting and did not know whether they would be ready in December. On his recommendation the board voted 4-0 to remove the item from the agenda without prejudice, which lets the applicant refile. The filing, an updated application dated August 3, is still in the board’s online packet.
260 Elm Street: pavers, two trees and two stickers
Red Spade Development, care of Christian Marcu of 369 Broadway, won approval in January 2023 to replace a single-family house at 260 Elm Street with a three-story building of nine units and seven parking spaces, a plan that started at 12 units in November 2022 and shrank after meetings with neighbors. An Inspectional Services inspection this year found that the landscaping strips shown on the approved plan, including a five-foot strip across the rear, had been paved over. A corrective order followed, then this request to amend the site plan.
The August staff report had recommended denial, warning that eliminating the green space could worsen runoff and heat and that the extra pavement “may encourage the excess parking of vehicles onsite,” with photos of two cars parked on the paved strip. By Monday staff had visited the site and changed position. Lattanzi said the applicant would remove a four-foot strip of asphalt at the rear, replace it with gray permeable pavers and plant two shade trees of 12 to 15 feet to offset the heat island effect, and that staff supported that.
Marcu told the board the drainage system sat at the lowest point of the lot, inside the required landscaping strip, and that an unanticipated change of grade forced a retaining wall that needed asphalt run up to it for stability. He said the project was built to sell as condominiums but the market changed, the units are now rented, and tenants have different needs than buyers. He asked for up to five resident parking stickers, the maximum the ordinance allows for a lot with more than 100 feet of frontage, at one sticker per 20 feet.
Board members pressed on how the project got here. When Marcu described a verbal conversation with a city engineer about the drainage, one member answered, “Respectfully, nothing is approved by the board. So I’m having a hard time with that.” Another pointed out that the photos in the staff packet showed cars on the paved area and that the request now added up to 14 spaces for a project approved with seven. Marcu said no-parking signs are posted and notices sent, but ride-share drivers and visitors park there anyway. McColaugh asked whether he would accept bollards in front of the pavers to keep cars off them.
Staff, after consulting transportation planner Jay Monty, recommended two stickers rather than five, which brings the project to nine spaces for nine units. Lattanzi said the original approval allowed zero stickers. Lattanzi said the bollard or planter idea had already been tried on paper and dropped after staff parked a city vehicle against the wall and found a car in a legal space could not back out. The board approved the amended site plan with two stickers, 4-0.
A land swap on Broadway
Attorney Adam Sherwin, for DC Building Trust at 615-617 Broadway, and attorney Bill Granfield, for the owners of 611-613 Broadway next door, brought a joint approval-not-required plan to fix a boundary. Part of a landing on one property sat over the line onto the other, Sherwin said, and the owners agreed to an equal exchange of small slivers of land so the lot lines match what is built. Nothing new is being constructed, and one owner may sell down the road. The board endorsed the plan 4-0.
99 East Elm Street gets until April 2029
The board voted 4-0 to extend the site plan and inclusionary zoning approvals for 99 East Elm Street by two years. The project was approved April 11, 2022, got a one-year extension on February 5, 2024, and then was pushed automatically to April 11, 2027 by the state’s 2024 permit extension law. The new zoning law allows another two years, Lattanzi said, which makes the approval good to April 2029. “Staff understands the current economic conditions and the difficulty of building a project of this scale,” he said. “We do want to see this project built.”
Minutes and the 2027 calendar
The October 5 minutes were not ready; Lattanzi said October and November will come together in December. The board approved a draft 2027 schedule prepared by Cigliano with 11 meetings, generally the first Monday of the month, skipping July and shifting around holidays. Lattanzi said special meetings, usually set a month ahead, are likely for the Davis Docklands projects and “when the stadium comes before us too.”
The next regular meeting is Monday, December 7, at 6 p.m. in the Keverian Room at City Hall. The agenda and the packet folder are online, and the full video is on the city’s YouTube channel.
Read our full transcript of the November 2 Planning Board meeting.
