The city council approved a special permit for the conversion of a three-unit residential building at 95 Stanton Ave. to a nine-unit, four-story residential building at last week’s meeting.
Councillor-at-Large Michelle Kelley cast the lone vote against the special permit, stating that the conversion would triple the number of units on the lot, adding to problems like traffic and overdevelopment in the city.
“This project is for the improvement of 95 Stanton Ave., which currently contains a century-old apartment building which has fallen into disrepair,” said Nancy O’Neill, the attorney representing the developer of the property. “Our proposal tonight is to create a new, aesthetically pleasing structure on the lot, which will improve the appearance of this tired section of American Legion Highway.”
O’Neill said the building will feature an improved architectural facade, as well as new trees and landscaping.
“The size and scale of the building are consistent with the neighborhood as a whole, and the building has been deliberately designed to pull away from neighboring properties and to improve setbacks to neighbors over existing conditions,” she said.
The building will also feature one parking space per unit with a screened parking area.
At the zoning subcommittee meeting, O’Neill said the project design team made some adjustments to the project after getting some feedback from the council at a public hearing earlier in March. Those improvements include creating an internal trash room and providing two new water gates on Stanton Avenue to improve utility conditions along the street.
“This is a great project for the neighborhood that will increase aesthetics, provide new housing during the ongoing housing crisis, and have minimal impacts,” said O’Neill, adding that the direct abutters to the project at 340 American Legion Highway submitted a letter in support of the project.
Ward 1 Councillor Jim Mercurio said he was in support of the project.
“The developer has met the infrastructure needs that the city required from them, and it was an ask that I had put in for them for two new water gates on either side of their services, which is much needed,” he said.
Ward 5 Councillor Angela-Guarino-Sawaya said she also supported the project, and that it would replace a long-neglected property in the neighborhood.
“It is going to look phenomenal compared to what the other one looked like,” she said. “My priority was to make sure that the development improved the neighborhood and I wanted to make sure that the quality of life that was there for the neighbors still existed.”
Kelley said the biggest concern she hears from constituents is the ongoing building of apartments in the city.
“I really do feel like they take away from the fabric of the integrity of single-family neighborhoods,” said Kelley. “I believe we should try to keep those neighborhoods intact as much as we can, and every time we have a non-conforming structure of a single-family or a two-family or three-family, and we replace it with two or three times the amount of units that were originally there, to me that is a gross magnification of the non-conformity. It’s why we’re getting such a strain on our infrastructure, traffic congestion, and all the other complaints that I hear on an almost daily basis from my constituents.”
In other zoning business, the council approved a special permit to convert a former florist business to a 30-seat restaurant at 619 Broadway.