By GAYLA CAWLEY
SWAMPSCOTT — The reuse of the shuttered former Swampscott Middle School on Greenwood Avenue has garnered two disparate visions from two developers who submitted proposals.
Groom Construction, the Salem-based company that originally won approval for condominiums on the site five years ago, was one respondent to the Request for Proposals (RFP) released by town officials in September, according to Naomi Dreeben, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen.
The second proposal comes from Charing Cross Realty Trust, based in Peabody. Trustee Phil Singleton said the bid is for 11 single-family homes. He said the proposal is similar to what the trust did with Atlantic Crossing, which has consisted of building 14 single-family homes on Humphrey Street at the former Temple Israel site. Construction has been completed on all but three of those homes on the former temple site.
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Town Meeting members had initially approved a zoning change allowing a multi-family unit on the parcel, before neighbors filed suit in 2014. Massachusetts Land Court reversed the decision, reverting zoning back to single-family housing.
As a result, the town has been in the midst of pending litigation with Groom Construction, and officials have said their hope was that the company would submit another bid as a means of potentially settling the lawsuit. The litigation needs to be resolved before the town is able to proceed with the sale of the property.
The litigation was disclosed in the RFP. Potential developers had to adhere to an affordable housing component with their design for the construction of up to 28 residential units. A zoning change for a planned development district at the site, which was approved at town meeting last May, requires that at least 15 percent of the units be affordable. A second option allows a builder to contribute to an affordable housing trust fund, which would be used to pay for affordable housing elsewhere in town.
If Groom wins the suit, it could adhere to the zoning change for a 28-unit structure or build a much larger Chapter 40B affordable housing project.
The state’s 40B housing project allows developers to override local zoning bylaws to increase the stock of affordable housing in municipalities where less than 10 percent of the homes are defined as affordable. In Swampscott, less than 4 percent of its housing is considered affordable.
Tom Groom, owner of the construction company, did not respond to phone calls seeking a description of his proposal, but it’s expected that the bid will be for one structure with 28 units.
Charing Cross Realty Trust’s Singleton said the RFP for the former middle school frequently mentioned that developers should submit a proposal consistent with the surrounding neighborhood of single-family homes.
At prior public forums, neighbors have voiced concerns about being shut out of the process and the potential size of a building allowed by the zoning change would not fit in with the neighborhood.
“We believe we have almost the total support of the surrounding neighborhood because nobody wants to look at a seven-story building on top of that hill,” Singleton said.
Dreeben said the deadline for responses to the RFP was in October. She said town officials had some questions for the two bidders regarding the first drafts of their proposals, which the developers answered. In turn, the two developers asked for more information. Officials expect to hear back from the companies with modifications to their proposals in December. Those modified proposals will then be reviewed.
Dreeben said she expects the proposals will be made public in January and posted on the town’s website for at least two weeks before a public forum, where they will be presented. The selectmen will later vote on one of the two proposals, but Dreeben said there is no date set for that yet.
“I’m delighted that we have two proposals,” she said. “We were concerned that we would only get one and I think it’s wonderful that we have two.”
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley