'Everybody Needs To Give': Swampscott Veterans Housing Debate Extended

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — The latest prolonged and oft-contentious Swampscott Select Board discussion on the future of the proposed veterans affordable housing project on Pine Street led to a vote Wednesday that essentially requests that developer B'nai Brith present two versions of its plan — one with a VFW on-site and one without — before a final vote on a land-development agreement is taken later this month.

At stake is the $1.7 million in federal American Recovery Plan Act funds that the town committed to purchasing the property and developing it as senior affordable housing that will be forfeited if no contract is in place by the Dec. 31 deadline.

"We're not walking away," Select Board Chair MaryEllen Fletcher told Patch on Thursday. "We will be having a vote. Maybe we will lose our money. But we will have a vote about losing our money."

In an effort to reach some type of compromise among advocates for the long-planned housing project, VFW leadership looking to keep the current post on-site, and neighbors worried about the 4+-story building that developers said would be required to keep the VFW and build enough units to make the project feasible, the Select Board voted 4-1 to seek a set of options from B'nai Brith that could satisfy a consensus of stakeholders.

"We've already established that it's an imperfect (set of options)," Select Board member Katie Phelan said. "It's never going to be where everybody's pleased. Everybody has to give. Everybody needs to give something — not everything."

Select Board member Doug Thompson proposed the latest delay in a final LDA vote in an apparent effort to lay out the options in a way where ultimately picking one will seem the most palatable to the most people without letting the project fail.

"We have even two weeks to have a little more dialogue," Thompson said. "Maybe we'll come back and (say): 'Well, we really tried. We really tried to figure out how to put this all together. And there really is no way to do it.' But I feel like we've been having these piecemeal conversations."

Select Board David Grishman — one of the original chief proponents of the purchase of the site and veterans housing development said his opposition to the LDA lies in that the project was presented to town meeting members in May 2023 as a package deal involving a renovated VFW and a veterans affordable housing building and for the project to fall short of that is not to live up to the spirit of that vote.

"I strongly believe that if we had taken this article (to town meeting) and said we were going to relocate the VFW post somewhere else in town this article would have gone down in flames," Grishman said. "The article was very clear."

While the article didn't technically say the VFW post would remain in its current location, proponents have argued that was a reasonable inference given the language and the way it was presented.

Grishman also noted a citizen's petition put forth for a future town meeting that would essentially push to nullify the 2023 vote authorizing it in the first place, as well as an open meeting violation complaint filed with the state's attorney general charging that key decisions made about the project in executive sessions closed to the public should have been debated in open session.

B'nai Brith previously presented one option that included a 1,500- foot veterans common area inside the new building that could be used as a VFW post but in meetings with leadership it was deemed too small of a space compared to the desired space twice its size. Developers told the Select Board that keeping the VFW on-site as a separate building would require the housing complex to be four stories high with additional height needed for utilities on the roof since the area lies in a flood plain.

Fletcher said the compromise plan — which she pressed for a vote on during Wednesday night's meeting — would include a 3+-story building that she said neighbors would be more amenable to and a fully renovated VFW on Burrill Street at the town's expense.

Fletcher said the LDA vote will be back on the agenda for the Dec. 18 meeting — presumably the final Board meeting of the calendar year and the final chance to agree to the contract necessary to be able to use the $1.7 million the town has already spent on the land purchase for the project without having to return it to the federal government.

"This isn't a new thing," Select Board member Danielle Leonard said. "This isn't something that just came about a week ago, a month ago, in secret, in collusion — none of that. It was something I walked into (upon being elected to the Board in May 2024) that was already approved. You guys already approved it. You already allocated the money.

"So I can't fathom how we can turn around and say: 'One-point-seven million (dollars in ARPA funds), you're out. The 15,000 people who live here, you're going to pay it. You're going to pay back that money.'

"How do we sit here in good faith and say that? How do we kiss away 40 units, 41 units, 42 units of veteran-preference, (senior) affordable housing?"

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)