The Chelsea Planning Board voted Tuesday night to adopt Chelsea Pa’Lante, Onward, the city’s new comprehensive master plan. According to the meeting agenda, it is the first update of the city’s master plan in more than 55 years. The board then recommended approval of three housing projects that go to the Zoning Board of Appeals on November 10, including 60 apartments at 320 Revere Beach Parkway, and pushed Walmart’s site plan review for its Webster Avenue delivery depot to November 17.
Vice Chair Jordana Mather ran the meeting. Chair Regina Taylor and member Audrey Jones were absent. Members Hamza Abdul, Eric Czernizer, Mimi Rancatore, Sarah Ritch and Sara Haidar Escobar were present at roll call, and Geneliz Herrera arrived later.
The master plan
The vote took about three minutes. No board member asked to change anything, and no one in the audience spoke when Mather asked for comments. The plan is meant to guide land use, zoning, housing, economic development, community safety, environmental resilience and culture for the next 15 years.
William Cecio, the city’s planning director, thanked the plan’s steering committee and the consultants. “We haven’t had a comprehensive plan in over 50 years and so now that we have a unified vision, you know, we have a clear path forward,” Cecio said. The motion passed on a voice vote with no one heard voting against it.
The plan’s one public hearing before the board was on September 22, when one resident spoke. Among the short-term housing actions presented then was updating the city’s parking requirements. That came back later on Tuesday night: city planners asked the board for feedback on eliminating minimum parking requirements for new housing, and the board split.
Walmart: November 17
The board continued case 2026-14, the major site plan review for Walmart at 121 Webster Avenue, to its November 17 meeting without discussing the project. Mather said the department recommended waiting until after the community meeting the petitioner is holding on Thursday, October 29, at 6 p.m. at the Chelsea Public Library, so the public could weigh in before the board decides. The Zoning Board of Appeals continued its own hearing on the depot to November 10 for the same reason.
Abdul asked what Walmart had done to reach residents. Cecio said the meeting flyer had been posted to the city’s social media and that the property owner has been knocking on doors in the area.
320 Revere Beach Parkway: 60 units approved for site plan
The board voted to recommend that the Zoning Board grant a special permit for the 60-unit building at 320 Revere Beach Parkway, at Garfield Avenue, and then approved its major site plan. No one from the public spoke.
Peter Piantidosi, one of the owners, presented, saying the project’s attorney could not attend because of a family matter. According to Piantidosi, the plans had changed since the board first saw them: the building went from 67 units to 60 and lost a floor. Piantidosi described all 60 as one-bedroom units. The plans filed with the Zoning Board describe them as studios averaging 475 square feet.
The building has 16 parking spaces, one fewer than an earlier version, where Chelsea’s zoning requires 90. Piantidosi said giving up that space made room for storage for 20 bikes, a package room, a management office and a maintenance room. The trash room now opens directly onto Adams Street behind the building.
Adams Street took up much of the discussion. Piantidosi said the plan depends on making it one way, from Garfield Avenue out to the Parkway, with metered or timed parking on both sides that would be open to anyone overnight. According to Piantidosi, the city was in agreement, and the owners had agreed to put a security gate on a neighbor’s parking lot. Board members disagreed among themselves about whether Adams Street is already one way. Cecio said the board cannot make its approval depend on a Traffic and Parking Commission decision, but it can require the developer to ask the commission for the change, and that became a condition.
Asked about affordable housing, Cecio said the project falls under the city’s new inclusionary rules: either six affordable units, three at 50 percent and three at 80 percent of area median income, or three units at 30 percent. Piantidosi said the owners are “strongly considering” three units at 30 percent. “There’s a lot of the 50 and 80 out there,” Piantidosi said. “There’s probably not as much 30.”
Rancatore questioned whether one elevator is enough for 60 units. “It’s an awful lot of work for one elevator,” Rancatore said. Piantidosi confirmed the building has one. Czernizer asked how delivery trucks would drop off packages, and Piantidosi said deliveries would use the Adams Street side, possibly with spaces set aside for 15-minute parking or ride-share pickup. Mather said the units were “a little bit small,” while noting the developer had reduced the height at the board’s request.
Cecio said the department supported the project, calling the area a mixed-use node marked for growth in the plan the board had just adopted, while acknowledging limited transit access, pedestrian safety concerns and existing traffic problems at the site.
The conditions include consulting the city’s tree warden on landscaping, keeping residents out of the on-street parking sticker program, banning gas grills and umbrellas on the roof deck, marking the drop-off spaces, a drainage plan, lighting that meets Dark Sky standards, design review and the Traffic and Parking Commission request. One member suggested a living wall of plants on the Parkway side, and another suggested a mural instead.
139-143 Essex Street: 15 apartments
The board recommended approval of Philip Raccuia’s plan to build three floors of one-bedroom apartments over a garage on Essex Street, with six outdoor spaces set aside for visitors. Councillor Giovanni Recupero spoke against it again. Our full report on that case.
471 Washington Avenue: two-family to three-family
The board recommended approval, without opposition, of Hector Prieto’s request to turn the third floor of a two-family house now under construction into its own apartment. Prieto said the bedroom count, height, parking and open space would not change; the work adds a wall and a kitchen. The units will be rentals, Prieto said.
The board’s recommendation covers parking. The building has four spaces where a three-family needs five. Cecio repeated a point made to the Zoning Board on October 13: the lot is in Prattville’s R1 district, which allows only one- and two-family homes, so the third unit needs a use variance, a path state law now requires boards to hear. “The zoning board will have an interesting decision to make,” Cecio said. As a condition, none of the building’s residents will be eligible for on-street parking stickers.
What comes next
320 Revere Beach Parkway, 139-143 Essex Street and 471 Washington Avenue return to the Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday, November 10. The Planning Board takes up Walmart’s site plan on November 17, the same night as the 150-unit proposal at Broadway and Spencer Avenue.
Everything that was said is in our transcript of the meeting.