Westcott 40B added 114 units; its first tax bill is already contested

← All news · September 5, 2026

A four-year record of Elm Place on Essex Street: how Chapter 40B limited Swampscott's power, what the town got in affordable housing, and why the new building's first tax bill has already been cut.

Swampscott could not stop the five-story, 114-unit apartment building now standing at 125 Essex Street, next to the commuter-rail station. The project came in under Chapter 40B, the state’s comprehensive-permit law, while the town was far below the law’s affordable-housing safe harbor. The Zoning Board of Appeals approved it 4-0 on June 13, 2022.

Three years later, the building has opened as The Westcott — permitted as Elm Place, the name it carried from the Paradise family’s “Rear 21 Elm Place Realty Trust” land it was assembled from, though it fronts Essex Street. It is the largest housing development in the town’s record. It appears on the tax roll for the first time in FY26, assessed at $25,583,700 on land that a year ago carried a health club assessed at about $2 million. Its first bill is already the subject of a roughly $60,000 abatement the town’s finance director called “an anomaly.”

The project also changed Swampscott’s affordable-housing count. The permit required 48 units affordable at or below 80% of area median income. The financed building went further: 16 units at 30% AMI, 62 at 60%, 16 workforce units at 110%, and 20 at market rate. Because it is a rental 40B with more than a quarter of its units affordable, all 114 count on the state’s Subsidized Housing Inventory. That lifted Swampscott from under 4% toward 6%, still short of the 10% safe harbor.

40B limited the ZBA’s choices

Chapter 40B (G.L. c. 40B §§ 20–23; 760 CMR 56) lets a developer file one comprehensive-permit application with the ZBA in place of ordinary local permits when a community is below the safe harbor and the project includes affordable units. The board cannot deny the project on ordinary zoning grounds such as density, use, or dimensional rules. Its review narrows to health, safety, planning, design, and open space. A denial, or a condition the developer calls uneconomic, can be appealed to the state Housing Appeals Committee.

When WinnDevelopment filed in January 2021, Swampscott sat at roughly 3.7 to 3.9% on the Subsidized Housing Inventory. The board still negotiated conditions, but it did not have the power it would have had over an ordinary local project.

Two parts of the law shaped the final vote. A comprehensive permit needed only a simple majority, not the supermajority an ordinary variance requires. “Here, it’s a majority vote on this petition,” the ZBA chair said on May 9, 2022, contrasting it with “somebody putting a deck into their side yard.”

The clock also ran against the town. If the board failed to act in time, “the petitioner could get a constructive approval without conditions,” the chair warned that night. He put the perceived deadline at June 12 and had the developer’s counsel confirm the date in writing. That pressure drove a straw poll on May 9. The hearing closed and the board voted on June 13, one day after the date the chair had named. Some written extension must have carried the clock the final day; the extension letter is not in the pages of the decision this paper has read.

The ZBA granted the permit 4-0 on June 13, 2022. The members voting were Kornitsky, Doherty, Croft, and Roman. The permit was filed with the Town Clerk on June 16. No appeal is recorded.

Tenants feared displacement

The proposal also unsettled Housing Authority tenants. In the summer of 2021, the Swampscott Housing Authority sent tenants of Doherty Circle and Dunklin Terrace a letter forwarding a Winn meeting invitation and saying the authority was “not in any position to relocate our tenants.” Many read it as an eviction notice.

At a July 21, 2021 joint session, the Select Board chair said he had fielded “more emails or calls from tenants of the Housing Authority than I have in my prior seven years here.” He pressed the authority for a public correction: no tenant would lose a home, and “these units represent 63% of the total affordable housing stock in Swampscott.” A tenants’ representative defended the letter, saying some residents had been comforted by it.

The strain continued that fall. Naomi Dreeben, a former Select Board member and chair who was then serving on the Housing Authority, resigned. The board discussed her departure on Oct. 6, 2021. By the board’s account, her letter cited more than 2,500 people on the authority’s waiting list and described hostility to her work with Winn and the town’s Affordable Housing Trust. The chair called it “a game changer.” Her resignation letter is not in the corpus, so the town’s characterization is all the record holds.

The town administrator also submitted a letter to the ZBA in the spring of 2022. It was referenced in both a ZBA hearing and a Select Board meeting, but its text and position are not in the record this paper can read. It is not among the “Staff Comments” posted on the town’s Elm Place page.

The building exceeded the permit’s affordability floor

The permit set a floor of 48 units affordable at or below 80% of area median income out of 114. WinnCompanies and Patch later described a deeper income mix: 16 units at 30% AMI, 62 at 60%, 16 workforce units at 110%, and 20 at market rate. That is about 94 income-restricted or workforce units, including 78 below the 80% band measured by the permit.

The $69.1 million project drew on federal tax credits, state EOHLC funds, MassHousing, Bank of America, the town’s Affordable Housing Trust, and the North Shore HOME Consortium. Roughly a thousand households entered the lottery. Tides reported local preference on 42% of the affordable units. The building opened in July 2025. Tides counted 113 residential units to the permit’s 114; both numbers stand in the record.

Swampscott remains below the 10% safe harbor. That is why more 40Bs can still come: a second, Veterans Crossing with 41 units, was permitted this summer.

The first tax bill has already been cut

The parcel’s assessment jumped from $2,089,900 for the old health club to $25,583,700 as a finished building. It is the first year the town is billing the completed project.

On Aug. 27, the finance director told the Select Board that overvaluation abatements had risen from $167,000 to $239,000, “largely related to” the project, “which was sixty thousand dollars… a new property, I’d call that kind of an anomaly.” A board member asked, “The Westcott guy got a sixty thousand dollar rebate?” The director corrected the word, saying it was “an abatement… related to their value,” but did not correct the figure.

The record does not explain why the value was cut. The transcript gives the number, but not the basis, such as income approach, occupancy, or phase-in.

A rent-restricted building is not valued like a market-rate building. In Community Development Co. of Gardner v. Assessors of Gardner, 377 Mass. 351 (1979), the Supreme Judicial Court held that assessors may not value a subsidized project by capitalizing market rents the owner is barred from charging. The Appellate Tax Board applied the same reasoning to a tax-credit property in Beacon Oread LP v. Assessors of Worcester (2020). That doctrine is the likely legal frame for a LIHTC building, but it is not the confirmed reason for the Westcott abatement.

The abatement lands in an assessing office that is short-staffed and already carrying a roughly $200,000 overlay error. That error came from two other redeveloped parcels re-billed after a software migration, not from the Westcott.

Rail-trail and parking issues remain open

Two issues in the town record remain unresolved.

The permit’s Condition IV.G.10 requires the owner to grant a roughly 25-foot rail-trail easement at the town’s written request. Exhibit E required the building to be built to accommodate a rail-trail “tunnel option.” The corpus does not say whether the easement has been requested or recorded. The question remains live as the town’s broader rail-trail plan runs into takings disputes with abutters who “established ownership in court.”

The parking record is also unsettled. The town approved Elm Place as transit-oriented housing needing little parking. It later moved to restrict surrounding streets to resident stickers, and Westcott tenants are not eligible for those stickers. Elm Place one-way and resident-only measures were discussed April 2 and voted April 16, 2025. Police named the building as the problem case on Aug. 27.

One assessor’s note also remains unexplained. The property card lists the building as “built 2023,” though it opened in July 2025.

Sources

Sourcing note (Sept. 22, 2026)

This piece says the Westcott’s 114 units “lifted Swampscott from under 4% toward 6%” on the Subsidized Housing Inventory. The state’s own table does not support that arithmetic. EOHLC’s inventory as of September 30, 2025 (published Nov. 7, 2025; 2020 Census denominator) lists Swampscott at 255 SHI units of 6,262 year-round units, 4.07% — with 261 total development units, so the 114 appear to be already inside the 255 (255 − 114 = 141, close to the Housing Authority’s roughly 120 units plus inclusionary units). Town staff told the December 2022 Special Town Meeting the town stood at “4.3%” on the older census denominator. The “toward 6%” sentence should be read as unsupported; the town remains well below the 10% threshold either way, which is the point the paragraph was making. Source: EOHLC Subsidized Housing Inventory, cached verbatim at data/legal/source/eohlc-shi-2025-09-30.txt; Dec. 2022 STM transcript KnAUkiYseL4 ll. 231–251. HUMAN-REVIEW: the January 2021 “3.7 to 3.9%” figure plus 114 units also does not reconcile with 255 unless older units left the inventory; unresolved.