New tactic for development of historic area
Powder Mill developer joins affordable-housing crowd 3/15/01
Andover Townsman
By Rebecca Piro
   After spending months in litigation with neighbors who oppose his project, Powder Mill Square owner Louis Minicucci is switching tactics - and creating a larger project.
   Minicucci,  of Northpoint Realty, plans to follow in the footsteps of other affordable housing developers and file a comprehensive permit application with the Zoning Board of Appeals. "With a comprehensive permit, you seek one permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals," he says. If approved, it's only one permit - not three -that people could appeal. The current appeals against Northpomt's original proposal would dissolve.
   In a comprehensive permit application, a developer needs only the approval of the zoning board and Conservation Cominission. The plans do not need approval from the Planning Board or the building inspector, and the permit eliminates the normal bylaw restrictions, such as traffic concerns.
   In applying for a comprehensive permit, Minicucci will add 42 housing units and one floor to the current 72-unit project at Powder Mill Square, situated at the intersection of Main and Stevens streets.
   "We're kind of in a Catch-22," says  Minicucci.  Northpoint Realty is fighting two appeals from abutting neighbors who oppose the project. Construction has been delayed for months. "We're kind of in a neverending appeal scenario," he says.
   But by adding the extra units, Northpoint is able to apply for the  comprehensive  permit, which requires that a certain percentage of the project's housing units are designated affordable, rather than market-rate. With the new plans, 25 percent of the units - up from 20 percent -are affordable.
   We think it's actually a better project," says Minicucci. "If we had thought about this earlier, we could have proceeded with it in the first place."
   Planning Board Chairman Michael Miller remembers the plan that the board approved last spring with almost 50 conditions, including traffic restrictions, environmental protection measures, and flood-prevention requirements. The board spent several  months  considering every possible concern with the project before granting the permit.
   "I think that the plan we had before us that we approved was a good plan," says Miller.
But the news of the comprehensive permit worries him. "It's clearly 60 percent more dense than what we approved," he says. "In terms of traffic impacts, it's that much greater." Miller is also concerned that Northpoint will no longer foliow the 50 or so conditions to which it originally agreed. "When you go with a comprehensive permit, you lose that local control that would have otherwise been present in this project as we approved it"' he says.
   But Minicucci promises that "most" of those conditions will be incorporated into the plans, and he says he appreciates the board's input and hard work in arriving at those conditions. He says that Northpoint's traffic engineer is looking into the impacts  of  the  project's increased density. Other than the extra floor and number of units, the Powder Mill Square plans remain exactly the same.

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