Glover redraw removes height waiver; parking remains open

← All news · September 16, 2026

The Planning Board opened its Sept. 14 hearing on The Glover, LLC's 140-unit plan after the applicant redrew the project to fit the 2022 overlay: no building over 50 feet, no March height waiver, and the farmhouse preserved. Counsel said the plan meets 'all of the requirements that your overlay district demands.' The open issue is parking, and whether 144 spaces comply depends on how the bylaw is read.

The Glover, LLC’s redrawn apartment plan has dropped the height waiver that dominated the Planning Board’s March preview, leaving parking and traffic as the board’s clearest points of leverage under the town’s 2022 overlay district.

The board opened its Sept. 14 hearing on a 140-unit plan with no building over 50 feet, according to The Swampscott Tides. The earlier version included a five-story building rising to about 60 feet 5 inches, above the overlay’s 50-foot cap. Then-Chair Ted Dooley called that height “a significant concern and a threshold issue” in March.

With the height waiver withdrawn, the applicant’s counsel told the board the project now meets “all of the requirements that your overlay district demands.”

Town Meeting’s 2022 overlay already fixed the project’s core terms: 96 Swampscott units, 17 affordable units, a 50-foot height cap, and a 120-day clock that defaults to approval. The board can attach conditions, order peer review, and deny only on narrow grounds. It cannot reopen the density or affordable-unit count.

The hearing left one bylaw question unresolved: whether the project’s 144 parking spaces satisfy the overlay or require a board finding that the standard is impractical to meet.

The account that follows is drawn from The Swampscott Tides, whose Sept. 14 report by Monica Sager is the only published account of the hearing. Hearing facts are attributed to it unless the cached agenda or March minutes carry them. The town’s YouTube channel has a recording of the roughly three-and-a-half-hour meeting, which this paper has not yet reviewed.

What changed

The overall size did not change. The plan is still 140 units, 96 in Swampscott and 44 in Marblehead, per Tides, with 17 affordable units. The bylaw fixes both numbers: § 4.10.5.0 permits “ninety (96) Dwelling Units within the portion of the project located within the Town of Swampscott, and (b) not more than forty-four (44) Dwelling Units in the aggregate located within any other municipalities,” and § 4.10.10.1 sets “seventeen (17) Affordable Units” on the Swampscott side. The 17 affordable units are roughly 18 percent of the 96 local units, not a share of the full 140.

Height and parking changed. The March pre-application, brought by National Development, showed two four-story buildings and one five-story building. The September plan tops out at 50 feet. Parking dropped from 220 spaces in March to 144, above-ground and underground, according to Tides.

The farmhouse, the roughly 300-year-old General John Glover house, is preserved. Counsel said it would be connected by paths from each building with parking nearby. The professional team also changed: Tides lists KOH Architecture and Stonefield as the September architect and civil engineer, while the March team used a different firm.

The parking question

The overlay sets the parking standard at § 4.10.8.1: “Per Dwelling Unit — 1.5 spaces.” It also says, at § 4.10.7.3, that “all dimensional requirements, including without limitation parking required under Section 4.10.8 … shall be based on the Development Lot, including land that is not within the Town of Swampscott.” The district’s Development Lot expressly includes the Marblehead and Salem land.

If a project falls short, § 4.10.8.4 lets the board “grant a Plan Approval making such modifications in the parking standards … provided that it finds that it is impractical to meet the standards and that such modifications … will not result in or worsen parking or traffic problems in or in proximity to the GMOD.”

The arithmetic — this paper’s reading, not a finding Tides reported — cuts two ways. If the 1.5-space standard applies to the whole 140-unit Development Lot, as § 4.10.7.3 appears to direct, the project needs 210 spaces. At 144 spaces, it would be 66 short and would need the board to make the § 4.10.8.4 “impractical” finding before approval.

But 96 units times 1.5 is exactly 144. If the 144 spaces are only the Swampscott-side count set against the 96 Swampscott units, the project could meet the standard without that finding.

Tides does not say whether the 144 spaces are a site-wide total or a Swampscott-side count. The tidy reading is not free: § 4.10.7.3’s own language points toward computing the requirement on the full cross-border lot, not carving out the 96. The board or town counsel can settle that on the record.

Traffic review

The board also pressed on traffic. Members raised concerns that the project’s traffic analysis rests on counts taken in 2023, Tides reported. Chair Joe Sheridan singled out the Salem and Vinnin Street corner: “This is a complicated intersection. … It’s definitely worthy of being studied contextually so we can see.” A few residents echoed the concern, noting that the area is both a business district and a neighborhood.

That issue has roots in March, when National Development proposed substituting an updated traffic memorandum for a full study, arguing that the unit count and curb cuts matched the previously approved plan. The September applicant is a different entity with a different team, so the two are not the same document. But the 2023-vintage data the board flagged is the kind of shortcut March floated. Unlike the withdrawn height waiver, a peer-reviewed traffic study is something the board can still require as a condition.

What the board can do

Under the overlay, the board conducts plan review. It can attach conditions, order peer review, and deny only on narrow grounds: failure to meet the district’s standards, missing information or fees, or impacts it cannot mitigate. The density and affordable-unit count are not open. Conditions, completeness, traffic, and the parking-modification finding are.

On Sept. 14, the board took no vote and set no continuance date, according to the available account.

Farmhouse and file history

The farmhouse is to remain, a change from years when its survival was the open question. On Sept. 10, the Historical Commission cleared the property’s other three structures for demolition, finding two barns not significant and the A.E. Little House not significant on a 5-3 vote taken after a first vote deadlocked 4-4, as this paper reported Sept. 11.

The lawyer who presented Sept. 14 was Gerry D’Ambrosio, described by Tides as counsel for the project. He is a third attorney, not Lawrence DiGiammarino, the applicant of record named on the agenda, and not Kenneth Shutzer, who represented the developer at the Sept. 10 Historical Commission hearing. D’Ambrosio said the Glover House could serve as a museum or function hall, with its future use “determined by the Historical Commission following a public hearing.” That is counsel’s characterization; the corpus records no bylaw process by which the Historical Commission decides the farmhouse’s future use.

Two other threads remain unresolved. The record owner of 299 Salem St is still Sunbeam Development Ltd Partnership, the Athanas family’s entity, care of Anthony’s Pier 4 Restaurants. The Glover, LLC is the applicant, not the owner of record, and the public file does not establish its hold on the land.

The Planning Board’s own 2023 approval of an earlier Glover plan also remains unresolved. The board approved that plan 5-0, and its two-year construction clock ran out in February 2025 with no construction. A September corpus sweep found no public-record instance of anyone asking whether that approval survives; the redrawn application sidesteps that question rather than answering it. Of the five members who opened the Sept. 14 file — Sheridan, Vice Chair Angela Ippolito, Bill Quinn, Jer Jurma and Ariane Purdy — two, Ippolito and Quinn, sat on the board that granted the 2023 approval. Dooley, who raised the height concern as chair in March, won a Select Board seat weeks later and is now that board’s liaison to his former panel.

Sources

Addendum (Sept. 17, 2026, 06:00): the board’s own 2023 decision already read the parking clause

A post-publication check of the corpus found that the Planning Board settled the parking arithmetic once before, on this parcel, and read § 4.10.7.3 the other way from the “210 spaces” reading above.

At the Oct. 17, 2022 hearing on the Leggat McCall plan, the applicant’s presenter described the parking as “1.5 spaces per unit” for the Swampscott project: “Of those 144 spaces, 43 are located … within parking garages, and 101 are on the surface, 39 of which actually are on the other side of the line in Marblehead.” Marblehead’s 44 units carried their own 78 spaces, for “a total of 140 with 222 parking spaces provided for both projects” (data/professional_transcripts/7F91VlfX2S0.txt, l. 44, 52; the chair’s arithmetic at l. 126: “it would be 222, you’re 144 and the 78”). Speaker roles there are inferred from context, not self-identified.

The written decision the board read into the record before its Feb. 13, 2023 approval carries the same construction: the “proposal includes 144 parking spaces in accordance with the 1.5 space per unit requirement set forth in section 4.10.8.1,” with parking spaces “located in Marblehead” available to Swampscott residents, and it cites § 4.10.7.3 for the proposition that “land that is not within the town of Swampscott but is part of the development lot … shall be used” in “determining compliance with the parking requirements” (data/professional_transcripts/Yo7BUg4xTIg.txt, l. 493, [1:02:30]; the decision text was read aloud, and the transcript’s section numbers are run together).

In other words, the board in 2023 applied the 1.5 ratio to the 96 Swampscott units to get 144, and used § 4.10.7.3 to let spaces across the town line count toward that figure, rather than to enlarge the requirement to the whole 140-unit lot. If the 2026 plan’s 144 spaces are the Swampscott-side count on the same basis, which the Oct. 2022 and Feb. 2023 records make the likelier reading, no § 4.10.8.4 “impractical” finding is needed, and the open question becomes a narrower one: how many of the 144 sit in Marblehead, and what Marblehead’s 44 units carry on their own. Whether the 2026 board follows its 2023 reading is for the record of the continued hearing; the Sept. 14 recording (jVk7xUVqFro) was being transcribed as this addendum was written, and this paper will report what counsel and the board actually said about the count once that transcript is in the corpus.

One line in the body above is also corrected: the recording of the Sept. 14 hearing is a YouTube live-stream archive on the town channel’s Streams tab (3 h 25 min, scheduled Sept. 11, went live Sept. 14), not a regular upload. The 02:00 assignment described the hearing as “off-camera”; it was not.

Second addendum (Sept. 17, 2026, 06:20): what the tape says, from the first 90 minutes

The Sept. 14 recording was transcribed by hand-recovered audio after this piece shipped. The chunks covering the first ninety minutes were readable by 06:20 (data/chunks/jVk7xUVqFro/006–008.json; the full transcript data/professional_transcripts/jVk7xUVqFro.txt follows). Timestamps are from the recording. Within each chunk the diarizer labels speakers only by letter, so attributions below rest on self-introduction or on being addressed by name.

Outcome (chunks 016–018, read at 06:33). The board continued the hearing without a date. A member said the applicant’s filings, not the board, set the pace: “we have not received the data that we need to be doing our jobs … it would be malpractice for us to actually approve drawings that haven’t been studied and information that hasn’t been submitted … this board is not holding up a project. This board has not been given what is required by a planning board to make a decision” [163:22–164:36]. Schutzer answered that “if we check the boxes, this is an as of right project” [169:49]; the chair replied that the new material “were submitted today, so we don’t know what we don’t know” [170:07]. After public comment closed, the motion was “to continue this to the future once the application is completed,” seconded, with three audible ayes [179:29–179:37]; the applicant was asked to sign a continuation, and the application was described as “an incomplete” [179:39–179:47]. Staff then set a special meeting for Tuesday, Oct. 6 for the zoning-bylaw amendments, and the chair opened item 4 (the draft 40R district) by saying most of it would be kept for that meeting [180:48–182:29]. DiGiammarino, speaking from 14 Ida Road, Marblehead, said the applicant had already provided “the entire bio on DeMuro Construction” to a lawyer in the room (rendered “Drukis”/“Csukas”; identity unresolved) and to “the General Manager of Tedesco” [174:56–175:27]. Who moved and seconded the continuance is not identifiable from the diarizer’s letters; the chair’s lines are attributed by role.

Third addendum (Sept. 21, 2026): the full transcript

The complete professional transcript (data/professional_transcripts/jVk7xUVqFro.txt) and the processor’s minutes (data/analysis_markdown_prof/jVk7xUVqFro.md) landed after the second addendum was written. Three corrections and additions to the record above.

Also on the tape and not in the accounts above: the applicant said it cannot do “intrusive testing” under its purchase-and-sale agreement and does not yet own the land [2:34:21, 2:37:42]; the current owner’s demolition delay “expired on July the 20th” [1:59:16]; the public comment ran eight speakers, none in support, including attorney Chris Drucas for Tedesco Country Club with club president Ralph James [2:06:54]; and the applicant asked the board whether, after two developers walked, “the issue [is] with the developers or … with the process” [2:52:02]. The Tree Committee’s written review of the plan (32 trees removed, 26 planted; 42 percent American linden) reached the board the same week (Tides, Sept. 17).