10 Hill Apts OK’d After Backstairs, Dumpster Debate

A local developer won permission to construct 10 new apartments atop city-owned land in the Hill — even as land-use commissioners lamented that most of that building’s future tenants will have only one way in and out of their apartments, and will have to walk around the block when taking out their trash.

That was the outcome of Wednesday night’s latest monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.

In a 3 – 2 vote of support, the City Plan Commissioners approved a site plan application submitted by a holding company controlled by Concrete Creations’ Ralph Mauro to develop 10 new apartments at 232 and 238 Columbus Ave.

That roughly 0.32-acre vacant plot at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Salem Street is currently owned by the city. Back in 2019, the Board of Alders signed off on a Livable City Initiative-brokered deal whereby the city would sell the adjacent parcels to Mauro’s company in exchange for him building 10 new two-bedroom apartments — five to be rented out at market rates, five to be rented out to renters earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income (AMI).

That land deal hasn’t gone through yet, city Assistant Corporation Counsel Michael Pinto explained Wednesday night, because the city has been waiting for Mauro’s company to get site plan approval for the planned 10-unit development before actually selling him the property.

Mauro’s company did wind up winning site plan approval Wednesday night. But first, commissioners pressed the project’s engineer Jim Pretti (Mauro did not attend Wednesday’s meeting) on what they saw as some serious design concerns with the project.

Pretti explained that the proposed development will include five two-bedroom apartments on the ground floor of the building, and five two-bedroom apartments on the second floor. The project will also include 10 on-site parking spaces.

Where are the back doors for the apartments? City Plan Commissioner Ernest Pagan asked as he looked through the site plan.

“The only one right now that has a back door is the handicap [accessible] unit,” Pretty said. He said that the current design allows for the developer to convert the back window of each ground floor apartment into a back door, if necessary. But, as for now, the only one of the 10 planned apartments has a back door. 

“So the units that are on the second floor, how would they get down,” if, say, they want to take out the trash?

“There’s only the front stairs for those upper units,” Pretti said. 

That means that tenants in the upper story apartments will have to walk down their front stairs and then over to the dumpster, which is on the eastern side of the building closer to Cedar Street. For tenants who live on the western side of the building near Salem Street, that means they’ll have to walk down the front stairs, out the front door, walk a half-block down Columbus Avenue, and then a half-block down the Cedar Street side to drop off the trash.

“That is an inconvenience, to say the least,” City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe said.

“I don’t know how they could possibly add another stair to this,” Pretty replied. ​“We already had to get a variance [from the Board of Zoning Appeals] for the lot size per unit. To add any more building here, we’d have to go back to the variance process.” In order to squeeze in back stairwells, he continued, ​“you’d probably have to redesign the whole building.”

What about fire safety? Pagan continued. ​“How will people get out of the building from the second floor if there is a fire? Don’t we usually require two means of egress?”

Pretti said that the site plan and designs have already ​“gone through the Fire Marshal’s office” and received a sign off — so long as the building includes sprinklers. ​“This did become a sprinklered building because of their review,” Pretti said.

Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand and Radcliffe asked city attorney Pinto if the commission can legally consider these types of design issues — such as accessibility to the dumpster, and lack of rear stairwells — as part of their purview for site plan reviews.

“They are legitimate questions about how convenient it would be to live in this building,” Pinto replied. ​“If there was a legitimate question about whether the Building Department or the Fire Marshal’s Office had signed off,” then the commissioners could press on and consider that line of inquiry.

However, if the designs meet fire and building safety standards with the addition of a sprinkler system, then ​“the imperfections of the design are not grounds to either table it or request additional information.”

With that, the commissioners voted in support of the 10-unit site plan — with Radcliffe, Marchand, and Commissioner Edwin Martinez voting in support, and Pagan and Commission Vice-Chair Ed Mattison voting against. 

“Please convey to your people all of the items that we discussed here,” Radcliffe said to Pretti after the vote. If they can find any way to address any of the concerns discussed, please ask if they can ​“do their best.”

The commissioners also voted unanimously Wednesday night not to hold a public hearing on the 232 – 238 site plan application. At question was whether or not some Hill neighbors’ concerns that the 10-unit project is too dense merited opening up the City Plan Commission meeting to public testimony. Ultimately, the commissioners decided against allowing a public hearing for several reasons: because LCI had already hosted public hearings on the project during various board meetings in 2019, because the community management team had written a letter of support for the project two years ago, and because site plan review is a strictly technical process whereby commissioners are limited to reviewing whether or not a proposed project complies with city zoning laws.