Office building proposal for former BRMC site gets board sanctions added.
Published on May 28th, 2008
STONEHAM, MA - The town's Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) quickly sanctioned nine variances last Thursday for a proposed six-story office building at the former Boston Regional Medical Center (BRMC).
With no debate, the ZBA unanimously granted the relief, being requested by Burlington's The Gutierrez Company. The developer, who purchased the hospital site for approximately $25 million nearly a decade ago, wants to raze the vacant 350,000 square foot hospital site and erect a high-end office building.
That 225,000 square foot building, being dubbed the Langwood Executive Center, is part of a larger development proposal for the site, where the construction 405 housing units is also planned.
According to local attorney Charles Houghton, his clients had received permission last November to rehab the existing hospital building for a commercial use.
However, the primary goal of seeking those variances was to allow for the separation of the parcel into three separate lots, one for the office use, another for the residential component, and the last for the existing medical condo building.
Now that formal plans had been drawn-up, and with it a desire to rebuild an entirely new building with underground parking, a number of other variances were now required.
"Now that we have this final office building design, the building inspector said if you remove the entire hospital, you have to get variances," said William Caulder of the Gutierrez Company.
Houghton characterized most of those variances as minor in nature. For example, although the developer needed permission to construct a building in excess of 90-feet in height, the lawyer claimed that the topography of the site drove that need.
"The height is almost exactly the same as the existing hospital," said Houghton, who explained that the new building would be both on a much smaller footprint and set back further from Woodland Road.
The majority of the other requested variances were related to the proposed parking areas surrounding the site. Because parking spots would be widened from an existing size of 8.5 feet to over 9 feet, the pre-existing, non-conforming parking area lost its grandfather protection for side and front setbacks, Houghton explained.
The petitioners also maintained that because the three different uses at the BRMC site were all intertwined, with driveways and parking areas used by all, they needed relief from zoning requirements for landscaping buffers and screening.
Some walls being used to divide the office pavement from the other project components were also in excess of four-feet, another zoning violation.
"To do landscaping and screening inside the lot would be virtually impossible," Houghton argued.
Two local residents, both from Newcomb Road, urged the Zoning Board to deny the Gutierrez Company's request.
According to Andrew Celentano, he saw no reason why the Burlington developer couldn't comply with the town's zoning bylaws, given the size of the BRMC site.
The Friends of the Fells activist further worried that the developer would soon be back before the ZBA for even more variances, especially since the Gutierrez Company had dropped previous plans to seek state permits for off-site roadway improvements and widened curb cuts for the entrances to the property.
"I don't see why they can't build within the laws we have," Celentano said. "My concern is I thought the ZBA approved [this last November] in a certain way. I thought the building would be set-up in a way that meets all the bylaws we have."
According to Heidi Kelf, also of Newcomb Road, she believed the project as proposed was far too dense and would lead to a traffic nightmare for local neighbors, commuters, and Fells Reservation users.
In particular, Kelf estimated that office component itself would draw at least 1,000 cars to the site each day.
"I want to ask you to fulfill your duties to preserve local property values and prevent undue concentration of traffic," said Kelf. "This is such a nightmare to me, I'd throw the whole thing out."
Houghton later insisted that the project, in its entirety, would draw fewer people to the site than when the BRMC was still in operation. The local attorney also referred to the fact that the developer was proposing to downsize the project and reduce the size of the commercial space.
According to Juliano, while he understood both Kelf and Celentano's concerns, he considered the majority of the variances as minor in scope. Specifically, the ZBA chairman claimed that none of the requests would alter the nature of the project itself, which has already received all necessary municipal approvals.
"Since the initial proposal has been done, they have not asked for an expansion of anything. So the project as a whole has not deviated at all," Juliano said. "I don't see that granting some variances for shrubbery, or loading docks, or walls deviates from the intent of the entire project."
The future of BRMC parcel, spanning over 30 acres, has been the source of much debate, as environmental groups and the nearby municipalities of Melrose and Medford have challenged virtually every proposal for the site over the past eight years.
The property, located along the Fells Reservation Parkways across from Spot Pond, also sits close to the Malden and Winchester lines.
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