On Tuesday evening, Newton City Council’s Land Use Committee approved amending a special permit for a large office building at 275 Grove Street in Auburndale and replacing a two-family home in West Newton.
Tori Sabatino, senior development manager at Greatland Realty Partners, petitioned the Committee for the amendment, which would allow additional exterior signage for the property.
Sabatino explained Greatland Realty’s recent efforts to invest in the property, which the firm acquired two years ago with 30 percent of its office space vacant. Since then, the property achieved market stabilization.
The lobby of 275 Grove Street includes a café called Kendall Kitchen. There is no signage, however, advertising the eatery along Grove Street, since the current special permit restricts signs for accessory uses such as restaurants. The petition submitted by Greatland Realty sought approval for additional signs with the building’s address, as well as a larger sign including the logos of Kendall Kitchen and four other major tenants.
Evan Allen, director of design and creative services for the architecture firm Whitney Veigas, explained that the new signage would be large enough to increase roadway visibility for the building and its tenants but small enough to avoid disturbing the surrounding landscape.
“[The signs] are 6.5-feet wide … I would estimate the letters on the logos to be about 3 inches tall … it would be clearly visible from the eastbound side of Grove Street,” Allen said.
Richard Alfred, a Newton resident and member of the Auburndale Historic District Commission, spoke in opposition to the proposal. Alfred was concerned the increased signage would spoil the bucolic nature of Grove Street, which is designated by the City of Newton as a scenic road.
“There has not to my knowledge ever been commercial signage on Grove Street,” Alfred said.
He suggested Kendall Kitchen utilize media advertising.
“I follow several local bulletin boards and have not seen Kendall Kitchen advertise there,” Alfred said.
John Sisson, economic development director for the City of Newton, favored the special permit amendment. Sisson argued the scenic road designation does not apply here, since the signage would be placed on private property and not the public right-of-way. He also emphasized the importance of this property to the city in general.
“I applaud the efforts of Greatland Realty to invest in this property … there is precious little Class A office space in Newton,” Sisson said.
Ward 4 Councilor Randy Block introduced an impromptu motion to prevent additional tenants from advertising along Grove Street by restricting the number of permitted signs to the five included in the architectural plan. The Committee voted 6–2 in favor.
With that restriction, the Committee unanimously approved Greatland Realty’s request for a special permit amendment.
Local attorney Laurance Lee later requested to replace a two-family home at 273 Webster Street in West Newton with an improved two-family dwelling. This was a complicated request because the present two-family home is a nonconforming structure since the area is zoned for single-family houses only.
Lee argued that because this two-family house had existed since 1953, and there were other nonconforming uses in the vicinity, the new structure would not be incongruous with the rest of the street. He added that the current home was not deemed significant by the Newton Historic Commission and that the proposal meets all requirements for floor-area ratio and lot coverage.
Newton resident MaryLee Belleville expressed concerns over the nature of this project in light of the sort of dwelling that would be built on the site.
“This would replace a modest house with a much more expensive one,” Belleville said. “The Historic Commission should be considering the affordability of housing in Newton.”
Ward 3 Councilor-At-Large Andrea Kelley assured Belleville that the Historic Commission does consider affordability and that it was necessary to permit development projects that comply with land use standards in a free market economy. The motion passed in a 6–0 vote.
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