Firm Secures Rare Court Order Remanding Large Nantucket Housing Development Project to Local Authorities

The Firm’s attorneys recently prevailed in the first phase of their Nantucket Superior Court appeal from a decision of the Massachusetts Housing Appeals Committee (HAC). That decision would expand a “comprehensive” permit under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40B for a controversial proposed 156-unit, 283-bedroom housing development in Nantucket’s Surfside District. The Firm successfully overcame HAC’s initial refusal to allow its clients to intervene as parties in that administrative appeal process and then presented significant new fact and expert testimony. Those clients, elderly residents who live next to the development site, are concerned with impacts of the proposed 18-building project on traffic congestion and safe access to their homes, firefighting capabilities and access, public safety, their private wells (including groundwater impacts and storm water controls), local water supply needs, and the architecturally varied and low-key character of their historic neighborhood. The Superior Court has agreed with the Firm’s arguments that the developer’s changes to its proposal in the midst of the HAC appeal were substantial. It therefore remanded the project back to HAC with specific instructions to further remand the project to the Nantucket Zoning Board of Appeals for public hearings regarding those impacts on “local needs” pursuant to Chapter 40B.