A vacant lot on Lash Street, 6,126 square feet of overgrown weeds with one pear tree, is going to hold a three-storey two-family house with four off-street parking spaces. The Planning Board recommended the special permit unanimously on September 22, with seven conditions attached.
The case is a useful look at how a house actually gets permitted in Chelsea, because almost nothing about the lot meets the numbers in the zoning ordinance, and the argument over one of those numbers turned on where a set of front steps ends.
What is proposed
The petitioner is Henry Vladimir Pinto Escobar, represented by an attorney from the Boston zoning firm Drago and Toscano and a project architect. The lot sits on the northwest side of the city, on a residential street whose far end touches the Everett line.
The building is two side-by-side units, each about 3,300 square feet, four bedrooms and four bathrooms, over a finished basement holding an office, a family room and a bath. Four parking spaces, 18 feet by nine, one pair for each unit.
The architect described trying to match the street: bays, sloped roofs, clapboard siding, asphalt shingles. Colours are not settled. The owner favours a dark navy; the architect noted the neighbourhood runs to white with black trim.
Two things are worth noting about the use itself. It is a vacant parcel, created by a subdivision the same owner did a few years ago. And a two-family here is allowed under R1 zoning by special permit, in the same district where the City Council killed an amendment in April that would have allowed three-families.
What does not comply
The architect went through the shortfalls himself rather than waiting to be asked:
- Frontage of 45 feet where R1 requires 60.
- A lot of 6,126 square feet where 7,500 is required, and where the per-unit standard of 3,500 square feet would want 7,000.
- Two of the four parking spaces sitting two feet from the property line where five feet is required.
On the front setback the project used a provision most residents have never heard of. Where the abutting properties sit closer to the street than the ordinance requires, an applicant may use the average of the two. A civil engineer surveyed the neighbours, and the average came out at 10 feet 3 inches rather than the 20 the code asks for.
The parking spaces are two feet off the line because of geometry, not preference. Fitting the 24-foot backup space a car needs left nowhere else to put them. A board member asked whether compact spaces would buy room. The architect said he would rather have full-size spaces, and pointed to a two-foot strip he had preserved so greenery could soften the driveway later.
Why the driveway is on that side at all: a light pole stands where the alternative curb cut would have gone, and moving a pole is a project of its own.
The disagreement about the steps
The interesting dispute was with Inspectional Services, and the architect raised it himself rather than letting it surface later.
ISD reviewed the plans and measured the side setback at about four feet three inches. The architect says that is the distance to the open entry steps, a landing with three or four treads depending on grade. Under the zoning definition, he argued, those qualify as open steps or a portico, which means the setback should be measured to the main wall of the building.
Measured that way the wall sits eight feet three inches back, which is a quarter of the building’s 32-foot height, with 12 feet on the driveway side, adding to the 20 feet the ordinance requires across both sides.
He was candid that this is a reading rather than a ruling. “Again, this is our interpretation. Just want to make you aware that we did not intend to ask for a special permit, because we thought that the setback is measured to the main wall of the building.”
The board did not resolve it. The Zoning Board of Appeals makes the final decision on October 13.
The conditions
The board attached more than it usually does, and most of them are about the neighbours rather than the building:
- An opaque fence at least six feet high around the driveway and parking, specifically so headlights do not reach abutting properties.
- All lighting compliant with International Dark Sky Association standards.
- Motion sensor lights rather than lights left burning, after a board member pointed out how close the entries sit to the neighbour.
- Participation in design review with the planning department.
- Consultation with the department on permeable pavement for the driveway.
- Consultation on removing the existing trees and what replaces them.
The board also asked for a design change. Because the entrances are on the side, the front of the house presents a sliding door to the street, and the chair wanted it to read as a real entrance so the building sits in the streetscape rather than turning its shoulder to it. The architect agreed to make it more formal.
On the trees, the architect was blunt that most of what is there is not worth saving: overgrown weeds on the property line, largely on the abutter’s side, “rotted and they just fallen on each other.” The larger trees at the rear are to be left alone.
Asked twice about the neighbours, he said the owner of the property on one side is the man who sold him the lot, that the plans had been shown to him, and that as far as he knew nobody objected. “If they had any objection, I think they would be here.” Nobody from the public spoke.
The other conversion, and a parking condition worth watching
Earlier in the same meeting the board recommended a special permit for a different property, converting a one-family to a two-family. That one is a formality of a particular kind: the owner bought the house as a single family, it has been used as a two-family, and he is making the paperwork match the reality. No construction, interior work only, footprint unchanged.
The condition attached to it is the one to watch, because it is becoming standard. The occupants of the new unit will not be eligible for the city’s on-street parking sticker program, and the owner must file a lease or sale agreement with the planning department that states that and identifies the new unit’s address.
Chelsea is, in other words, allowing density and withholding a curbside parking space in exchange. The petitioner told the board his tenants will park on the property.
Both cases go to the Zoning Board of Appeals on October 13.
This account comes from the recording of the September 22 Planning Board meeting. Personal names other than the petitioner’s are omitted where the recording does not render them reliably. Corrections to [email protected].