Swampscott Town Meeting will vote Dec. 7 on commuter-rail 40R district

← All news · August 17, 2026

Town Meeting will be asked to create a voluntary Chapter 40R overlay around the commuter-rail station. The draft boundary has already changed after Porter Place residents objected, and residents still have chances to press for changes before December.

Swampscott Town Meeting will be asked on Dec. 7 to create a Chapter 40R “Smart Growth” district around the commuter-rail station, a voluntary overlay that would allow denser, mixed-use housing near the tracks in return for state money.

The proposal is the main piece of the town’s fall zoning package and one of the first zoning initiatives to come out of Master Plan 2035, which Town Meeting adopted in June. The map is still a draft. After two Porter Place residents asked at a July 13 Planning Board hearing to be left out, staff had removed three homes on that street from the concept boundary by early August.

Most of the July 13 hearing left little public record. The town’s YouTube channel carried no video, no minutes were posted, and the draft application the agenda said would be “on the Town’s website prior to the hearing” never appeared. The full record was available only through Swampscott TV’s separate cable archive, which this paper used to reconstruct what happened.

A voluntary district, not the MBTA mandate

The town has discussed three zoning tools in the same stretch of meetings. Chapter 40R is the voluntary one. “Unlike the MBTA Communities Act, its participation in 40R is voluntary,” Senior Planner Christa McGaha told the board. “Communities create their own overlay district and establish development standards that they want to apply.”

The MBTA Communities Act, MGL c. 40A §3A, required Swampscott to zone for multifamily housing near Vinnin Square and Essex Street in 2024. A 40R district works differently: the town designs it, sets its rules for height, setbacks, parking, building design and ground-floor commercial space, and chooses whether to adopt it. “This basically gives the town the opportunity to shape development on our own terms rather than just reacting to individual projects,” McGaha said.

The state pays for approved 40R districts. A qualifying 40R development must set aside 20 percent of its units as affordable. A board member asked whether that share differs for rental versus ownership projects, and staff said they would confirm. McGaha said the town would collect a one-time state incentive of up to about $75,000 once the district is approved, plus per-unit payments as housing is built.

This would be Swampscott’s second 40R district. The town approved a Glover Smart Growth district under the same statute in 2016; it sat inert for six years and produced nothing until a denser local overlay was written over it in 2022. Whether that 2016 district remains on the state’s certified list is unverified. The new proposal is a separate 40R at a different site.

Commercial land near the station

The district is a “floating” overlay drawn around the commuter-rail station and kept from overlapping the nearby MBTA Communities district, which staff said would make it cleaner to administer. The overlay would not erase the zoning underneath it. It would add an optional path; underlying zoning would still govern, and no existing use would have to convert. When a board member asked what would happen if the auto-collision business in the area wanted to rebuild, staff said the owner could keep using the current zoning.

Most of the land inside the line is commercial. “Everything in pink underneath this proposed district is B1 or B2,” McGaha said, referring to the town’s neighborhood-commercial districts. Two Swampscott Housing Authority properties “take up a significant amount of the land area,” and the overlay is being pitched partly as a way to support future modernization and accessibility upgrades at those sites. Only “five or less individual properties” are homes.

The Housing Authority, which owns those public-housing sites, is separate from the Affordable Housing Trust. A remote participant identified as Ted, speaking as a liaison from the Trust, said its chair, Kimberly Martin-Epstein, offered “overall support for the concept.” That was one chair’s relayed, concept-level support, not a vote by either board.

The purpose of the map is to steer new housing toward the train rather than into settled residential streets. “We don’t want to disrupt the character” of those neighborhoods, staff said. Master Plan 2035 names the commuter-rail station and Vinnin Square as the town’s primary “transformation nodes,” and calls for zoning and design guidelines there by 2028.

Porter Place homes were removed

Porter Place showed that the draft boundary can change. At the July 13 meeting, a comment arrived by chat from 7 Porter Place asking not to be swept into the B1 line. Then the homeowner at 11 Porter Place, who identified himself as Jeff Polito, spoke for both. He backed the vision, saying “nice pedestrian walking area, people get off the commuter rail, there’s some nice shops on the first floor … I think that sounds fantastic,” but not for his own block. “We both would preferably not like to be part of the changes of the B1 zoning,” he said. He cited concerns about building height, footprint and property-line privacy.

“At this stage, it’s still conceptual boundaries,” staff told the room, “subject to change based off of feedback.”

Three weeks later, at the Aug. 4 Select Board meeting, McGaha reported that three residential properties on the north side of Porter Place had been removed from the concept boundary after the July feedback. Two of those residents had spoken; a public comment redrew the map.

Public windows before Dec. 7

The town is working on a state-driven schedule because 40R has a 90-day review window. The regional planning agency MAPC is doing the technical work over July and August: build-out analysis, test fits, incentive math and draft design standards. The town filed its 40R application with the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities in mid-to-late August.

The remaining public windows are:

A resident inside the district should also know that, like the existing Glover 40R, a new Smart Growth district carries a 120-day “constructive approval” clock. If the town misses the deadline, a plan can be deemed approved by default (§4.6.11.5(b)).

Sources