HomeMy WebLinkAboutPublic Comment from Herschler in Support of BC6/16/2026
Dear Chair and Members of the Zoning Board of Appeals,
I am writing in support of upholding the building permit for 307 Main Street / Harbor Vue and
denying the appeal unless the appellant proves a specific, material legal error in the Building
Commissioner’s decision.
I am an abutter through my building at 296–302 Main Street. I care about downtown Hyannis,
parking, traffic, access, public safety, business activity, Main Street design, and whether this
corridor works for the people who live, work, own property, operate businesses, and visit here.
Those concerns deserve serious review tied to the zoning ordinance and the permit record.
They should not be converted into a general referendum on whether opponents dislike
apartments downtown.
This appeal comes to the Board after a building permit has already issued. Under G.L. c. 40A, §
8, an appeal may be taken by a person aggrieved by an order or decision of the inspector of
buildings or other administrative official when that decision is alleged to violate Chapter 40A or a
zoning ordinance or bylaw. The Board’s task is therefore tied to the Building Commissioner’s
decision. The appellant must identify the provision, the approved condition, and the error.
Harbor Vue is proposed as a 120-unit mixed-income redevelopment of the former TD Bank site
in downtown Hyannis. The application describes the site as an obsolete vacant commercial
property in the heart of downtown, near the Hyannis Transportation Center, rail, ferry service,
Cape Cod Hospital, the airport, shops, restaurants, jobs, and services. The application says the
project would create 120 homes, all of which would count toward Barnstable’s Subsidized
Housing Inventory, with approximately 90 percent of the project income-restricted. The rent grid
shows 77 units in the 30% to 60% AMI / MRVP / PBV categories, 32 workforce or middle-
income units, and 11 market-rate units.
That housing mix should not get lost under the rhetoric. Public commentary has tried to make
this sound like “luxury” development, or like apartments that serve no local need. The
application says otherwise. This is a downtown, transit-oriented, mixed-income project with
substantial income restriction in a town still well below its affordable-housing needs. As a
downtown abutter, I do not see year-round residents on Main Street as a threat to downtown. I
see them as part of what downtown needs.
I also do not claim the project is perfect. I would prefer a stronger active ground floor on Main
Street and less parking screened behind the street-facing façade. The plan set itself shows
Level 1 parking integrated into or under portions of the building, elevations noting “parking
beyond,” and materials including frosted spandrel glass at the garage. Those are fair design
concerns, and the Board should ask clear questions about how the approved plans satisfy the
applicable frontage, façade, fenestration, ground-story use, and parking standards.
Those questions still have to be asked in the posture of a permit appeal. The issue is not
whether every abutter would have designed the building differently. The issue is whether the
Building Commissioner’s interpretation and permit issuance were legally defective.
The appellant appears to be Stu Bornstein, the owner of the neighboring former Cape Cod
Times property, now apartments. As an abutter, he may have a cleaner procedural posture than
earlier opponents who lacked standing in prior efforts to challenge this project. Standing,
however, only opens the door. It does not prove a defect in the permit. I am also an abutter, and
I am asking the Board to keep the appeal focused on the permit record rather than the broader
anti-housing campaign that has surrounded this project.
The public-records history is relevant because it shows this appeal posture was anticipated
before the building permit issued. In the materials I have reviewed, Eric Schwaab wrote that
John Julius had referred Stu Bornstein to him, that Stu intended to appeal parking once the
building permit issued, and that Stu planned to “hold them up for several years.” The same
materials reference crowd-building and Facebook amplification around this project. The Board
should hear any legitimate code argument, but it should understand that this appeal was
publicly discussed as a delay strategy before the permit existed.
The public arguments now circulating appear to focus on a few code issues: parking count,
landscaped buffer, building width, whether the project is one building or multiple buildings,
principal entrances, frontage treatment, ground-floor parking, and possibly water. Some of those
are real review questions. They should be tested carefully. They should not be padded with staff
attacks, tenant speculation, insults toward Councilors or downtown merchants, generalized
water panic, or claims that apartments themselves will devastate downtown.
On parking count, the objection looks weak on the current record. The Downtown Hyannis
zoning provisions require accessory parking to be provided as specified in Table 2, and the
ordinance provides that accessory parking may be located within a principal building, within an
outbuilding, or as surface parking. The project materials show 120 units and a 120-space
parking program. Public complaints that 120 units with 120 spaces is “grossly inadequate” may
be politically useful, but the appellant needs to show how the approved parking violates the
ordinance. General predictions that some tenants may own more than one car do not establish
that the Building Commissioner misapplied the code.
On the landscaped-buffer issue, the appellant has identified the most plausible code question.
The ordinance contains a real 10-foot buffer provision between “any building” and “any parking
lot with 10 or more parking spaces.” That language deserves a careful answer. The same
provision appears within the Surface parking lot design standards, and the applicability
language refers to construction of a new surface parking lot and expansion or modification of an
existing surface parking lot. The ordinance also distinguishes parking within a principal building
from surface parking.
The Board should make a clear finding on this point. If the disputed parking is surface parking,
the Board should identify the required buffer, the approved condition, and any relief. If the
disputed parking is structured or building-contained parking, the Board should explain why the
surface-parking buffer provision does or does not apply. The appellant should be required to
identify the exact parking area, the plan sheet, the required measurement, the provided
condition, and the legal error. A disagreement with the Town’s interpretation is not enough.
On building width, the issue also deserves a clean record. The Downtown Main Street
dimensional standards list a 180-foot maximum building width and allow 3.5 or 4 stories subject
to the applicable fourth-story rule. The Harbor Vue zoning table presents the project as
conforming, with proposed building-width figures under the 180-foot threshold, while the plan set
also shows a coordinated development with connected wings and a substantial overall frontage.
If the appellant claims this is one continuous building exceeding the width limit, he should show
how the ordinance defines building width, how the plan should be measured, and why the
Building Commissioner’s acceptance of the applicant’s calculation was legally wrong. If the
Town treated the project as multiple principal buildings or multiple compliant building-width
components, the Board should say so directly and explain how that treatment fits the ordinance.
The principal-entrance issue follows from the building-width question. The ordinance requires
buildings to have at least one principal entrance located on the façade, and multistory buildings
with ground-floor commercial spaces must have one principal entrance for each commercial
space in addition to any entrance needed for upper stories. If the appellant argues that the
Town used a multiple-building interpretation to address the width limit, he should identify which
claimed building lacks a required principal entrance or frontage treatment. The Board should not
allow the argument to shift back and forth depending on which code provision the appellant is
trying to use.
On ground-floor parking and the Main Street façade, I think the project raises a legitimate
design concern. A downtown Main Street frontage should not become a parking garage wearing
architectural trim. The ordinance includes standards aimed at frontage, entries, fenestration,
commercial depth, and a pedestrian-oriented downtown environment. It also contains a specific
ground-story commercial-space provision for certain Main Street lots between Ocean Street and
Sea Street. The Board should confirm whether that provision applies to this parcel and, if it
does, make a clear finding on how the Level 1 plan, garage treatment, lobby, amenity areas,
and Main Street frontage satisfy it.
That concern cuts both ways. It is a serious question for the Board to examine, and it is not the
same as the public claim that the project is a “behemoth” or that renters will ruin downtown.
Aesthetics and code compliance are different questions. The Board should require the appellant
to connect the ground-floor objection to the actual frontage or ground-story provisions that apply
to this property.
On height, the public argument is mostly noise. The DMS standards allow 3.5 or 4 stories,
subject to the fourth-story step-back provision. A four-story building in this district is not
automatically unlawful because opponents call it massive. The appellant needs to show a
specific step-back, height, or dimensional violation from the approved plans.
On water, the Board should require the same precision. A broad claim that Hyannis has water
concerns does not revoke an issued building permit. If the appellant believes a water-capacity
approval, utility signoff, permit condition, or other legal requirement was missing, he should
identify it and tie it to the Building Commissioner’s authority to issue this permit. General water
anxiety should not become another free-floating objection added to a pile of unrelated
grievances.
Massachusetts law supports that kind of disciplined review. A zoning board’s reasonable
interpretation of its ordinance may receive deference, but a decision cannot rest on a legally
untenable ground, arbitrary reasoning, or unsupported conclusions. Zoning bylaws are
interpreted according to ordinary principles of statutory construction, beginning with the text and
giving effect to the ordinance as written. The Board should therefore make findings clear
enough to show why the permit complies or, if the appellant proves otherwise, where it fails.
The public campaign around this appeal should not be allowed to substitute for that analysis.
Public posts have called the proposal “ghetto looking apartments,” called downtown merchants
“too stupid,” referred to Councilors as “bozos,” speculated about low-income tenants as parking
problems, accused Town staff of nonfeasance and favoritism, and described the hearing as
another chance to rescind a “useless permit.” That language is not zoning analysis. It is an anti-
apartment campaign trying to enter the hearing room through code sections.
The Board should separate the real questions from the performance around them. The real
questions are narrow enough to answer: Does the parking count comply with the ordinance?
Does the surface-parking buffer provision apply to the parking shown on the plans? How did the
Town classify the building or buildings for width purposes? How do the frontage, principal-
entrance, fenestration, ground-story, and parking-visibility standards apply? Did the issued
permit depart from approved plans or rely on relief never granted?
Those are the questions that belong before the Board. The rest is a long-running effort to make
this project slower, riskier, and more expensive until it fails. The record showing a planned
parking appeal to “hold them up for several years” should make the Board especially careful not
to reward volume over proof.
The financial record also shows why delay is not harmless. The application identifies a total
development cost of approximately $79.9 million, or about $665,000 per unit, and describes
extraordinary Cape construction costs, design-review costs, demolition costs, financing costs,
passive-house costs, and the difficulty of building substantial multifamily housing on Cape Cod.
Every appeal, redesign, legal theory, consultant response, financing delay, and month of
uncertainty increases cost. Those costs eventually land on renters, workers, families,
employers, downtown businesses, and the Town itself.
As an abutter, I ask the Board to require precision. If the appellant proves a material legal error
in the permit, the Board should address it. If the Building Commissioner’s interpretation is
reasonable and supported by the ordinance, approved plans, and permit record, the permit
should stand. The Board should make clear findings on the landscaped buffer, building width,
principal entrances, frontage treatment, ground-floor parking, parking count, and any water-
related claim actually tied to the permit.
Please uphold the building permit for 307 Main Street / Harbor Vue and deny the appeal unless
the appellant proves a specific, material legal error in the permit decision.
Respectfully submitted,
Nathan Herschler
Image discussing future appeal between then Council President Felicia Penn, Eric
Schwaab, and Heather Hunt