The Conservation Commission takes up the permanent repair of the seawall under Mission on the Bay on Tuesday, July 28, three years after part of that wall gave way. The filing asks the commission to permit a privately paid stone revetment topped by an elevated public boardwalk. Part of the work would sit on town-owned land, and the public record does not show what legal instrument would allow that or whether the Select Board will vote on it.
The hearing starts at 7 p.m. and is virtual only, over Microsoft Teams, under Ch. 2 of the Acts of 2025. There is no in-person attendance. The seawall is item 2 of 8 on an agenda the town clerk stamped July 23. It is a continued hearing: the same filing, DEP# 071-0367, was item 2 when the commission opened its review on June 23. Written comment goes to Conservation Agent and Land Use Planner Timothy Milliken, tmilliken@swampscottma.gov, 781-596-8829 ext. 1241. Tonia Bandrowicz chairs; Ted Dooley is the Select Board liaison.
The Notice of Intent covers “construction of permanent seawall and elevated boardwalk within coastal wetland resource area” across portions of Kings Beach, portions of 0, 126 and 149 Humphrey Street, and 141 Humphrey Street, the Mission on the Bay parcel, Map 2, Lot 184. The applicant of record is Ann Marton of LEC Environmental Consultants, filing on the ownership’s behalf. Marty Bloom, introduced to the Select Board in June 2025 as one of the owners of Swampscott Realty Trust and the restaurant, is the proponent.
Part Of The Project Is On Town Land
The design uses rock, not concrete. It lays stone against the existing wall and stabilizes the whole structure, not only the section that failed in 2023. Itemlive, reporting on the June 23 commission hearing, put the preferred alternative at a stone revetment costing about $915,000 and taking about four months, with the boardwalk elevated above the rock and portions falling on both restaurant property and adjacent town-owned land. Swampscott Tides, from an April 2026 site visit, gave the same cost and described the project as owner-funded with no town share. Those figures come from press coverage, not from Swampscott’s own meeting record.
When Marton walked the Select Board through the concept in June 2025, she estimated the revetment build at “three weeks, a month,” worked only at low tide. The public record does not reconcile that estimate with the four months since reported.
The alternative the applicant did not choose shows the town’s stake. The second engineered option was a “sister wall,” concrete poured in front of the existing concrete, which would have to be cofferdammed and would require tiebacks driven into the town-owned former Anthony’s Pier 4 parcel. Marton told the board: “We are going to advocate for the revetment solution.” Both options were described as structurally sound with comparable lifespans. A third, “do nothing,” was in the filing because the state’s alternatives analysis requires it.
The revetment option still touches town property. Marton, showing the plan, said: “The area shaded in blue is the footprint of where the revetment would be on the town-owned property.” A survey found the restaurant’s deed boundary runs “all the way to low water,” so much of what reads as public beach is not.
The Boardwalk Is A Permit Condition
The boardwalk is not a gift from the owner. “DEP waterways requires, when you have something like this restaurant, they require public access between the restaurant and the shoreline,” Marton told the board. “And I said — how about public access that looks like walking along the ground? That did not play well.”
The result is roughly 100 feet of elevated walkway connecting to the brick patio. “This will be 100% public.” The owner builds it and maintains it under a waterways management plan approved by DEP. As Marton put it to the board, “there’s nothing on you.” That no-cost-to-the-town commitment is on the meeting record; the broader “owner-funded, no town cost” framing for the whole project is press-sourced.
What is not on the record is the paperwork. In June 2025 the board asked directly what it would be signing. “There’s gonna be work done maybe from the Anthony’s Pier Four side, maybe from the town side, from the beach side,” a member said, “and you’re gonna need our permission to do that.” The answer was that the presentation was informational. Interim Town Administrator Gino Cresta said he could “be the conduit” for access and “grant them access.” No motion was made and no vote was taken.
The public record does not answer what instrument, whether a license, an easement or a Chapter 91 authorization, will let a privately built, privately maintained structure sit on town land. It also does not answer whether that question returns to the Select Board.
The 2023 Failure
Then-Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald told Town Meeting that “on May 4th, we had a collapse of a seawall in Swampscott at Mission on the Bay.” Part of the failure ran underneath the building. Fitzgerald reported to the Select Board on June 7, 2023: “We’ve had dozens of trucks bring rubble to stabilize the wall,” and crews were “using flowable fill to fill up void underneath the building.” The restaurant was set to reopen within days.
Board member Peter Spellios pressed that night for something the town did not have: a professional engineer’s stamp certifying that the rest of the wall was sound, not just the patch. He had read the legal notices posted at the ramp, including one from the Department of Environmental Protection saying the owners never obtained a Chapter 91 waterways license for the original restaurant build, the permit that would have forced a look at the wall. Marton independently confirmed this in 2025: “we discovered that when the restaurant was renovated, a waterways license was not obtained.”
Spellios said: “An empty building can fall into the ocean if no one is sitting in the ocean at the time. But a filled building, people on the beach — we were just lucky, and lucky is a really bad strategy.” Fitzgerald answered: “I do not have a letter yet from their structural engineer. I expect to have it tomorrow.” By Spellios’s account on the record, the town had already issued the occupancy.
Fitzgerald also drew a line that the July 28 hearing now tests: “This is a temporary design. We are not going to have rip rap on public space. The public deserves that beach.” The commission is now being asked to permit permanent rock whose footprint extends onto town-owned property.
Other Permits Are Still In Play
The filing took more than a year to negotiate the historic high-water line. It triggered MEPA review because an environmental-justice population sits within a mile, forcing public meetings. Per Swampscott Tides, the MEPA comment deadline was extended to April 24, 2026 with a certificate anticipated May 1, anticipated, not confirmed issued. The DEP waterways license, the 401 water-quality certification and an Army Corps general permit were all still pending as of April.
The Conservation Commission’s own lever is an Order of Conditions. Bandrowicz noted in March 2025 that “the commission hired a peer reviewer on hold,” waiting for a design to review. What that reviewer answers matters: Cresta said the town’s engineer found the municipal wall “in okay condition,” and Marton clarified that the applicant’s firm “did not necessarily evaluate your wall” but is designing so the work “does not negatively impact your wall or doesn’t cause scour.”
Unfinished Town Questions
In September 2023, with monthly engineering certifications not arriving, Spellios said: “The burden should be theirs. And it seems like the burden is ours at the moment.” Fitzgerald floated a bylaw requiring periodic inspection of all seawalls, public and private, to be worked out with the Conservation Commission. “There’s no other community in Massachusetts that requires an inspection of seawalls. So we would be the first.” It never reappears in the record.
Neither does a resolution to the money. On March 26, 2025, then-Chair Mary Ellen Fletcher asked whether a roughly $20,000 town bill from the emergency phase had been paid. Cresta: “We have not.” Fletcher: “It’s been invoiced probably now for like 20 months, 24 months… and we continue to give liquor licenses when there’s an outstanding bill.” In June 2025 Bloom attributed the dispute to “a lot of things that are going back and forth with the former town manager.” The status today is unknown; this reporter has asked.
The Town’s Other Seawalls
Cresta told a joint Select Board and Capital Improvement Committee meeting in November 2025 that the town has spent “probably five point five million dollars” repairing the municipal Kings Beach seawall across four phases, that “that wall is in excellent shape right now,” and that work has moved to Eiseman’s Beach, where he was seeking a $250,000 appropriation to finish.
What the record does not contain is a ranking. In April 2024, two members balked at a $320,000 request to raise the Eiseman’s wall. Spellios, backing a point Doug Thompson had just made, said “I don’t know how all of a sudden we do elevated seawalls just because elevated seawalls seem to be resilient.” A member asked the question that still has no published answer: “Which seawalls really have to be raised? Like, what’s the priority system?” Asked in November 2025 about the wall under Hawthorne-by-the-Sea, Cresta said an engineer had found it “in a lot better condition than the Mission on the Bay seawall,” and that “we’ll probably have to add that to the list.”
That gap has a cost. In October 2023 the board authorized a letter to the state pressing DCR to take back Swampscott’s side of Kings Beach; DCR would not consider it until the seawalls were in good repair. A member called the town’s 1968 takeover from DCR’s predecessor “an enormous mistake” that has “cost our town tens of millions of dollars.” The thread is live again: Town Administrator Nick Connors told the Open Space and Recreation Plan committee on May 12, 2026 that he would reach out to DCR “to check about ownership.”
The oldest version of the argument came days after the 2023 collapse, when a board member, opposing a $50,000 planning appropriation, read the capital plan aloud: “We only have $250,000 in seawall repairs forecasted for FY24, nothing for ‘25, nothing for ‘26, ‘27 or ‘28.” Another member pushed back: “we’ve spent millions on seawalls.” A third said: “No one’s wrong. It’s just a question of priority.”
Beach Bacteria Is Separate
The seawall project does not address Kings Beach water quality. Kings Beach closes on bacteria, and that failure runs through sewage in the Stacy Brook culvert and leaking private sewer laterals. The town has spent $2.9 million of public money on private pipes so far, with a betterment fight headed to December Town Meeting (prior coverage). A rock revetment does not change beach bacteria.
How to weigh in: Conservation Commission, Tuesday, July 28, 7 p.m., Microsoft Teams only, item 2 of 8. Comments to Timothy Milliken, tmilliken@swampscottma.gov or 781-596-8829 ext. 1241. Worth knowing: the commission’s minutes are posted only through Feb. 24, 2026, so attending is currently the only reliable way to learn what happens.
Sources: Conservation Commission agendas, July 28, 2026 and June 23, 2026 (DEP# 071-0367, letterheads, staff contact). Select Board, June 4, 2025 (ew4w73ojpSE) — revetment vs. sister wall, tiebacks, town-land footprint, boardwalk as waterways condition, maintenance, access-conduit exchange, unresolved finances. Select Board, June 7, 2023 (GrY-QzWrNbI) — emergency stabilization, Chapter 91 notice, PE-stamp exchange, “rip rap on public space.” Annual Town Meeting Day 2, May 2023 (kjBGnFfPyM0) — May 4 collapse date. Select Board, May 9, 2023 (hVWYfcoWuEc) — FY24–FY28 capital-plan exchange. Select Board, Sept. 6, 2023 (LI2vdg1s_y8) — missing certifications, proposed seawall-inspection bylaw. Select Board, October 2023 (PkFcskXFWKc) — DCR take-back letter. Select Board, April 10, 2024 (SwDcsTzExGE) — Eiseman’s elevation request, “what’s the priority system?” Select Board, March 26, 2025 (oOfnku2lZW4) — unpaid invoice, peer reviewer on hold. Joint Select Board / Capital Improvement Committee, Nov. 13, 2025 (7_w2Do-h6ak) — $5.5M across four phases, Eiseman’s, Hawthorne wall. OSRP minutes, May 12, 2026 — Connors on DCR. Press: Itemlive, “Swampscott talks Mission on the Bay seawall repairs,” June 23, 2026; Swampscott Tides, April 2026 site-visit report. Prior coverage: data/news/2026-05-30_kings-beach-water-quality.md. Speaker attributions left at “a board member” where transcript diarization could not be resolved against a named source.