Scituate ZBA Grants Six-Part Zoning Relief for Country Way Condo Project

SCITUATE — May 21, 2026 — Scituate Zoning Board approves six-part relief for five-unit condo project adjacent to public drinking water pond. The Board of Appeals voted unanimously on all six required items of zoning relief for a proposed redevelopment at 18 and 20 Country Way, allowing applicant James Trents to demolish three blighted structures — none FEMA-, ADA-, or fire-code-compliant — and replace them with a single five-unit residential condominium building. Engineer Gregory Morse of Morse Engineering, who represented the applicant, told the board the two-lot, 26,705-square-foot site currently sits at 38.2 percent impervious coverage against a 15 percent maximum under the Water Resource Protection District overlay, with no stormwater management system in place; the approved plan reduces coverage to 37 percent and installs a rain garden treating all parking lot runoff before discharge to First Herring Brook. The board debated at length whether to grant relief through variances or through special permits and findings, with one member arguing a variance "almost writes itself" given the site's downslope relationship to Old Oaken Bucket Pond, and another member countering, "I'm not getting there for a variance — I'm there on a special permit and finding." The board settled on the special permit route, consistent with four prior Scituate decisions on comparable Water Resource Protection District buffer relief. Water Resources Commission Chair Bruce Arbinez, commenting online, asked that the site's southeasterly drainage direction away from the pond be codified in the decision language. The project now returns to the Planning Board on June 25 and to the Conservation Commission in June.