Walmart’s plan to run a grocery delivery depot out of a long-vacant storefront at 121 Webster Avenue failed at the Chelsea Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday night. A motion to grant the special permit drew two votes in favor and three against, short of the four votes a special permit needs.
At the same meeting, on November 10, the board approved a 60-apartment building at 320 Revere Beach Parkway and a third unit at 471 Washington Avenue, and turned down 15 apartments over a garage on Essex Street. This account is drawn from the city’s recording of the meeting on Chelsea Community Cable and from the board’s posted agenda. Written decisions have not been posted.
Walmart: two yes, three no
Vice Chair Arthur Arsenault made the motion to approve and voted yes, along with Chair Janice Tatarka. Joseph Mahoney, Marilyn Vega-Torres and Joan Cromwell voted no. Cromwell, the board’s associate member, voted because member Hugo Perdomo did not take part in the case. “The vote does not pass,” Tatarka said after the roll call.
The case, number 2026-14, was filed by Walmart Real Estate Business Trust and is listed on the agenda as a special permit for a supermarket. As described at the hearing, it would not be a store shoppers walk into. Orders placed online would be filled inside and carried to customers by drivers on Walmart’s Spark platform, who use their own cars.
The city’s planning department recommended approval. Planning Director William Cecio told the board the use would add roughly 300 to 350 vehicle trips a day, about 21 an hour, and said that is less traffic than a conventional store in the same space would bring. The board was also told to expect an average of five box trucks a day. He said the depot would give residents with mobility problems another way to get groceries and would bring some jobs to a space that has had none for seven years. The department proposed requiring delivery trucks to enter and leave by Route 16.
Most of the residents who spoke were against it. Councillor at Large Leo Robinson, who lives in the neighborhood, said he had received calls from neighbors and questioned how the city could keep drivers on Route 16 and off Webster Avenue. He also objected that the work would go to contract drivers and not full-time employees with benefits. Residents of Summit Avenue and nearby streets described Webster Avenue as already overloaded and said they did not believe delivery drivers would stay on the Parkway. Several said the neighborhood would be better served by a grocery store people can walk into.
Two speakers supported the depot, including a Chelsea resident who does not own a car and said that carrying groceries on a crowded bus in winter is hard. The owner of the building told the board the space has been empty for seven years, that a traditional grocer, a biomedical company and other tenants had been approached without success, and that the Walmart use would produce less traffic than the alternatives.
How the members explained their votes
Arsenault said delivery would help people who cannot drive to a store and that an occupied building is worth more to the city’s tax base than an empty one. Tatarka said the board has to judge the proposal in front of it and not the one it would prefer, and that she believed it met the special permit criteria, while adding that she did not expect it to be a strong source of jobs.
Cromwell said the plaza has always been a place where people shop in person and that Chelsea already has delivery services. She said contract driving without benefits is not economic opportunity, and that drivers in private cars cannot be held to a truck route the way box trucks can. Mahoney said he agreed with her and was concerned about the trucks. Vega-Torres said she saw a benefit for some residents but had concerns about safety and traffic and saw little employment for Chelsea residents.
Before the vote, a member raised the option of letting Walmart withdraw without prejudice. Cromwell said the board owed the applicant and the neighborhood a decision, and the board voted. Walmart’s site plan review had been scheduled for the Planning Board on November 17. The record does not yet show whether that review goes ahead.
320 Revere Beach Parkway: 60 units approved
The board approved the special permit and variances for a 60-unit building at Revere Beach Parkway and Garfield Avenue on a voice vote, with no opposition heard, after finding that the odd shape of the lot justifies the variances. The Planning Board recommended approval on October 27.
Attorney Rossi, for 320 Revere Beach Realty LLC, said the owners chose the affordable housing option that sets aside three units for households at 30 percent of area median income, in place of six units at 50 and 80 percent. The building has 12 parking spaces inside. Four outside spaces that the owners use under an easement will not be assigned to tenants and are to be signed for deliveries, pickups and ride services.
The conditions include:
- Three units restricted to households at 30 percent of area median income.
- Tenants are not eligible for resident parking stickers, and leases must say so.
- The owners must ask the Traffic and Parking Commission to make Adams Street one way from Garfield Avenue to the Parkway. The board cannot order that change itself.
- An electronic gate, paid for by the developer, on the parking lot of the apartment building across Adams Street.
- Review of the landscaping, drainage and lighting plans by the planning department, and no gas grills or umbrellas on the roof deck.
Tatarka read three letters into the record. Two came from owners of the apartment building across Adams Street who had opposed the project in October and now say they will work with the developer, citing the gate and the one-way plan. The third, from the owner of a restaurant on Adams Street, supports the project. Two residents of nearby streets spoke against it, citing traffic at the Parkway intersection, the height of the building and the shortage of parking.
139-143 Essex Street: 15 apartments denied
The board turned down the plan to add three floors and 15 one-bedroom apartments above the garage at 139-143 Essex Street. On the motion to approve, no member is heard voting yes on the recording.
The planning department and the Planning Board had recommended approval. Board members said the building was too large for a block of two- and three-family houses and found that it did not fit the character of the neighborhood. Tatarka asked the applicant whether he wanted to come back with a smaller building. He asked for a vote. After it, she told him the board would hear a smaller proposal.
Councillor Giovanni Recupero, who represents the district and lives on the street, told the board that neighbors do not object to housing on the lot but want a smaller building. Several other neighbors spoke against the project, and some speakers supported it.
Also decided
- 471 Washington Avenue (2026-23): approved on a voice vote. Hector Prieto can make the house now under construction a three-family in place of a two-family. Tenants will not be eligible for resident parking stickers.
- 212 Arlington Street (2026-24): the request for a special event venue was continued to next month without a hearing.
- 717-721 Broadway (2026-25): the board formally continued the 150-unit case to next month. The city has announced that hearing for December 8, as we reported.
- 37 and 37R Central Avenue (2026-08): the request to change two four-bedroom units into five-bedroom units was continued to next month because the petitioner was not present.