Revere’s Planning Board voted on September 29 to recommend that the City Council make a short new stretch of Overlook Ridge Drive a public way. The developer’s representative said that step lets a $4 million state MassWorks grant pay for a new traffic signal on Salem Street, next to the fire station Revere shares with Malden. The board also voted to recommend deleting the zoning rule that keeps tattoo and other body art shops 500 feet from each other and from schools, playgrounds and houses of worship.
Both votes were 5 to 0. Board members Hal Abrams, Leah Hoffman, Hector Rivera, Megan Simmons-Herrling and Garret Sullivan voted yes. Craig Castanza and John Stamatopoulos were absent. Both recommendations now go to the City Council.
A new entrance about 300 feet closer to Route 1
Overlook Ridge, the apartment complex built on a former quarry on the Revere-Malden line, has about 1,900 units today. Its traffic now comes and goes through what Frank Stringi of Revere’s planning department called a temporary curb cut on Salem Street. That entrance sits just past a curve for drivers coming from the Saugus direction.
Under the plan, the entrance moves about 300 feet toward Route 1, to the other side of the fire station. The fire station’s driveway becomes the new Overlook Ridge Drive. Wayne Amico, a transportation engineer with the firm VHB, said the Route 1 northbound off-ramp onto Salem Street will be slightly realigned, and every approach to the new intersection will get a signal and pedestrian crossings. The fire station will get its own emergency signal, connected to the main one. Sam Randall, who presented the plan for the developer, said the design also adds turn lanes, bicycle accommodations and MBTA bus stops.
Stringi said the off-ramp is now “a severe safety hazard” because drivers coming off it have little sight distance and conflict with traffic heading west on Salem Street. The move also takes the entrance away from the curve, where Stringi said “there’s been some accidents there that have been severe.”
The board’s vote covers only a small piece of land called Parcel A1, owned now by an Overlook Ridge entity. Randall said MassDOT requires that piece to be public before a signal can go in. The council will vote on the layout. MassDOT still has to give final approval of the design, and the developer would come back to the council later to grant a public access easement over the parcel. Randall said neither city will pay for the work.
617 more homes, and the first affordable units
Randall said the signal is the condition for the next phase of the development, 617 more apartments plus about 10,000 square feet of retail. Randall said three of the new buildings, in Malden, would be built by WinnDevelopment. The fourth, a 310-unit building on what the developer calls Lot 15, is the only residential parcel left in Revere. Randall said Overlook Ridge has no affordable units today and the new phase would add “a significant number” of affordable rental and homeownership units. No number was given.
The retail would go where the current entrance is, with a landscaped buffer along Salem Street, Stringi said. Jen Schultz, the developer’s lawyer, said it is laid out as two buildings of about 5,000 square feet each that could suit a convenience store, small grocery, restaurant or dry cleaner, and that the developer committed during site plan review to find out what the neighborhood wants.
The Route 1 ramps are still a maybe
A board member asked about the long-promised new ramps onto and off Route 1 at the north end of the site, which the member recalled as a main part of the original plan when the quarry was redeveloped. Schultz said the state environmental review split the traffic work into phases. The new northbound on and off ramps near Cappy’s are now a separate second phase, required only if someone builds beyond the 617 units. Schultz said about 150 more units are approved in the master plan but not yet designed.
“I can’t say from the DOT piece of it of what it will take for them to even say if they still would approve new on and off ramps to their highway,” Schultz said, adding that MassDOT has spent the last three or four years discussing only the Salem Street intersection. Randall added that the ramps would need another large grant, because they would have to be cut through ledge. Stringi estimated that the developer had donated about 25 acres for the future interchange. Once those ramps opened, the existing ramps near the fire station would be removed, Amico said.
Asked where the sewage from the new units would go, Stringi said all of it goes to Malden, because Revere’s pumping station there could not handle it. Randall said Malden has told the developer capacity is not an issue.
Stringi said the fire chief, the public works superintendent and the city engineer have reviewed the plans and agree with them. Randall said the council hearing is scheduled for October 26. Stringi gave the date as October 22.
Tattoo shops: the 500-foot buffer goes
Stringi said Revere already allows body art establishments in its general business district, described as Broadway, Shirley Avenue, Squire Road and the highway business areas. But the 500-foot buffer from schools, playgrounds, houses of worship and other shops would keep any of them from getting a certificate of occupancy, according to Stringi. The amendment deletes that one sentence.
Shops can’t stay open later than 11 p.m., and the Board of Health licenses them, Stringi said. Many beauty salons and barbers now do cosmetic tattooing such as eyebrows, which counts as body art, Stringi said. “It’s not the old tattoo days where you go in, get a tiger on your shoulder.” According to Stringi, the Board of Health has approved a few that have not opened yet, and its licenses so far have gone to beauticians doing piercing and eyebrow work rather than to a traditional tattoo shop.
No one from the public spoke for or against either proposal.
At the end of the meeting, a member asked that the minutes of the board’s previous meeting include seven conditions the board had discussed for the 310-unit project at 1290 North Shore Road near Wonderland station. Stringi said that building has only about 90 parking spaces and is meant as transit-oriented housing, so residents without a space would have to pay to park in the MBTA lot or go without a car.
Read the full transcript of the meeting. The meeting video is on RevereTV’s YouTube channel.
Photo: The shared Malden and Revere fire station on Salem Street, in 2008, with quarry ledge behind it. Anthony92931, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.