MANCHESTER, NH – A variance allowing Dismas Home to operate a congregate care center at 571 Holt Ave. will stand after the Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously voted to deny two rehearing requests Thursday night.
Opponents of the conversion of the former Daniel Webster Boy Scouts of America headquarters to a 20-bed residence for women in recovery had appealed the board’s Jan. 11 decision to approve the variance. The complaints charged that opponents weren’t given a fair amount of time to air their concerns, that the board ignored evidence, and that Chair Anne Ketterer had “coerced” one member into voting for the variance.
Board members Thursday agreed the three-hour January hearing was sufficient, and that the two requests for rehearing didn’t meet the ZBA bylaw qualifications for doing so: a technical issue with the decision or significant new evidence that would change the decision.
The Thursday vote came after less than 10 minutes of discussion at the end of a five-hour meeting.
The most contentious item Thursday night, a request for a variance that would allow wetlands to count as acreage for a 22-home development on Bryant Road, was discussed for nearly two hours. A large group of neighborhood residents spoke against the project, but the issues between the board and applicants was a tangle of semantics navigating the city’s zoning regarding cluster developments, wetlands, and land use.
The two hearing requests for 571 Holt Ave. came after the Bryant Road discussion, and were administrative matters, meaning they weren’t part of the public hearing.
Ben Adams, of Waverly Street, in a petition signed by eight Waverly Street residents, and attorney Andrew Sullivan, representing residents of East Ridge Condominiums, filed the rehearing requests in February.
The Dismas Home plan calls for a congregant care residence at the two-story, 10,000-square-foot former office building on 2.5 acres at the end of Holt Avenue. The building has been vacant since 2021, and the Boy Scouts must sell it to help meet their obligation for the national BSA sexual assault lawsuit settlement.
Sullivan, in his request, said that the ZBA violated the procedural due process rights of the abutters and neighbors by limiting them to three minutes, and that his clients had offered to cede some of their time to him so he could speak longer, but he was denied that by Ketterer.
Members of the public both in opposition and for the application were given three minutes each to speak at the Jan. 11 meeting. Ketterer said that complaint came out of a misunderstanding of how the process works. “The issue of three minutes is standard” for all city boards, Ketterer said. She said it was not standard to allow one speaker to take other people’s time so he could talk for a longer period.
The Waverly Street residents’ request, submitted by Adams, listed three points that they said qualified the vote for a rehearing.
The first is that the applicant omitted “factual evidence” of truck prohibitions on Holt Avenue and Waverly Street.
The fact that the neighborhood couldn’t support truck traffic was discussed at length Jan. 11., and Ketterer Thursday said that the “trucks prohibited” sign provided with the rehearing request actually supported the board’s view that industrial use at the site would not be appropriate.
The second complaint by the Waverly Street residents is that “new evidence” and evidence from real estate brokers about property values wasn’t considered fully and that the board gave more weight to a study by Wells Appraisal that said the use wouldn’t hurt property values. Adams is listing his home and the broker told him he’d have to disclose that Dismas Home was a neighbor, which he said is something the board should consider.
Ketterer said that the real estate broker evidence was discussed thoroughly from both points of view.
The third complaint is that alternate board member June Trisciani was allowed to speak and take part in a straw vote during the discussion, even though she couldn’t take part in the official vote. The complaint asserts that part of the process put “tremendous pressure” on member Joe Prieto, who opposed the variance in the straw vote, but ultimately voted in favor, and that Ketterer “coerced” Prieto into changing his vote.
Ketterer said Thursday that alternates are allowed to take part in discussion. She and other members, including Greg Powers, who voted against the variance Jan. 11., said the straw vote was part of the discussion process.
She asked Prieto if he felt “coerced” by her to vote in favor of the variance.
Prieto said he hadn’t. He’d struggled on how he would vote on Jan. 11, saying a the time, “I just can’t get past some of the legitimate concerns from the public about the health, safety and welfare.” He’d then quizzed the applicants at length after the straw vote about that aspect of the project.
Thursday night, Prieto explained the thought process that led to his vote in favor of the variance. He said that Ketterer “had nothing to do with it.” He said he’d never seen Ketterer attempt to influence a member to vote a certain way.
The five ZBA members present Thursday – Ketterer, Prieto, Trisciani, Powers and Nick Taylor – agreed that the three-hour hearing in January was enough to cover the issues.
“It’s pretty clear it was not a formality,” Taylor said. “It was a really thorough discussion.” He pointed out, too, that board members had reviewed abutters concerns before the meeting.
Some 15 neighborhood residents spoke Jan. 11, saying that they were concerned about the effect on property values if the congregate care center is allowed and many implied that Dismas Home residents would be a danger or nuisance in the neighborhood.
The project needed a variance because the 2.5-acre property is in an industrial zone, where congregate care isn’t permitted. The plot of land, however, is surrounded on three sides by residential zoning, where it would be allowed without a variance. The residentially zoned areas include single-family homes as well as large condominium developments.
The industrial-zoned plot in the sea of residential zoning was created when the neighboring land was rezoned from industrial to residential so the condominium development could be built years ago.
The Holt Avenue property would be a transitional home for women who have completed the 90-day program at Dismas Home’s West Side center, which has been in operation since 2016. The women living at the Holt Avenue residence would be sober, learning life skills, and finding employment and a place to live.
The proposal is to renovate the interior of the 10,800-square-foot building and would also include Dismas Home’s offices. The proposal includes 20 beds for residents, five staff offices, and conference, treatment and meeting spaces.
Daniel Webster Council, which also needed a variance when it bought the property, occupied the building from 1982 to 2021. The council began to market the vacant property in May, and officially listed it in July for $1.3 million, a year and a half after the council’s board voted to put the property up for sale.
Dismas Home, which has been seeking space for some time, hadn’t closed on the purchase and sale, pending the variance. A site plan still must be approved by the planning board before the project can get underway.
The variance was approved with the conditions that any new owner can’t exceed the number of beds that Dismas Home has, and that a new owner would have to be certified by New Hampshire Coalition of Recovery Residences.
In other ZBA action Thursday night:
Bryant Road 22-home proposal
Representatives for the developer of a 22-home development at 30 Bryant Road withdrew the application after nearly two hours of discussion about how the city’s land use zoning ordinance regarding wetlands applies to the development, and what the ZBA’s role at this point in the process should be.
The development would be on 13.2 acres in the south end of the city, in between Bryant and Lucas roads. An additional nine acres, including wetlands, would remain undeveloped and be preserved “in perpetuity.” The property as a whole has the acres required for such a development in that type of residential zone, but the mount of acreage for actual development is far less because of the wetlands. The city’s cluster development rules don’t easily allow the wetland acreage to be considered the way many other municipalities do.
The homes would be detached condominiums, which means they would be single-family homes with the homeowner owning the house and the developer owning the property. Access would be from South Ridge Drive, a loop road off Byrant Road.
While the variance that would allow the undeveloped wetland portion of the site was just the first step in what applicants said would be a long approval process, a parade of area residents spoke in opposition to the project as a whole. Opponents said property values in the neighborhood, which several said has $700,000 homes on one-acre lots, would be hurt by the project. They also cited poor water pressure, lack of sidewalks, and other issues.
Board members were more concerned about the fact that the project, on a land-locked site with no public access, is in its initial stages, as well as the fact the state Department of Environmental Services should weigh in on the wetlands issue. Since the applicant has only supplied a yield plan, the board was not looking at an actual site plan. That, too, bothered board members.
“There’s not enough information to grant relief,” Ketterer said early in the discussion.
A yield plan shows the number of lots that could be developed if the property conformed with zoning, and differs from a site plan in that it’s a depiction of what would be allowed, not specifically what is planned. Since wetlands were involved, the applicants were told by city officials to go to the ZBA rather than DES, since that agency needs an actual site plan to make a determination.
Attorney Eli Leino and engineer Brent Cole, representing applicant Christopher DuPaul, of Bryant Road Development LLC, said DES does not want to use its resources to make determinations on land that is not going to be developed. They had been told by city officials that they should seek ZBA approval.
Much of the discussion about the variance request concerned what was actually being asked for, what the city allowed for planned developments, and why the applicants weren’t taking it to DES. The applicants said that the lack of adequate frontage and acreage for the project, cited as what the board would be voting for, wasn’t exactly what they thought they’d be going before the board for.
Both board members and the attorney and engineers agreed that it was a confusing issue, without a lot of guidance on how to proceed.
Early in the discussion, Leino said the 22-home development would address the “missing middle.” Missing middle is defined as housing for potential homeowners looking for housing beyond apartments and multi-family units, but who are priced out of the current housing market.
“It’s an unusual opportunity to add to the housing stock in the city of Manchester,” he said.
Trisciani, though, pushed back on that, since the site yield plan submitted by the applicants shows what could be allowed if the developer were to get approval, and is not an actual site plan for the project. She also said she was not comfortable making decisions that DES should make.
After a long and tortured discussion, as well as a lengthy parade of area residents speaking in opposition to the project, Leino proposed that he be allowed to withdraw the application.
Leino said he was withdrawing it rather than having the board voting to deny it, because they may need to come to the board again about the project in the future. A variance denial could make that a more difficult process.
After a discussion on whether withdrawal was appropriate, the board voted 3-2 in favor of withdrawal, with Ketterer and Trisciani voting in opposition.
The restive audience grumbled about the decision, but Leino and Cole noted that opponents would have many chances as the project navigated the approval process to speak again. Ketterer assured audience members that their comments wouldn’t “disappear,” but would still be part of the process.
One audience member after the vote approached the board and said she was concerned that the ZBA not acting to deny a variance would mean that DES wouldn’t be aware of their concerns. Board members didn’t respond. The state agency has its own process, and city meetings on ordinance issues don’t have an impact.
Insurance use allowed at 2650 Brown Ave.
The board approved a variance allowing State Farm insurance agent Cody Fait to change the use of the building at 2650 Brown Ave., which had been a restaurant before it closed four years ago. The 2,173-square-foot building has been vacant since.
The building is in an R1-B zone, just south of Pine Island Plaza, but skirting a residential neighborhood. Insurance sales use is prohibited in that zone. No members of the public spoke in opposition, or in favor, of the project.
Fait said he has always rented, but it’s been a dream to own the building his agency operates out of. He said he had no plans to alter the size of the building, but was just seeking a reuse variance.
Board members noted that the property had a long variance history, and the previous occupant, Beijing Cuisine, also had to get a variance to operate there.
The small white clapboard building opened in 1966, as a grocery store, and was approved for an addition of a small apartment and auto repair garage in the rear in 1968 and over the years was a convenience store, then a restaurant. There were variances allowing most of the uses as the zoning for the area changed.
The owners of Beijing Cuisine bought it in 1995. In 2005, the ZBA approved subdividing the lot, with the restaurant staying where it was, and the subdivided portion being used for residential.
Fait said Thursday the second lot is owned by someone else and his application is just for the lot with the building on it.
