The Beverly Planning Board voted 8-0 on July 2 to consent to a repetitive petition from 7 Porter Terrace LLC, owner Brian Marks, to allow the applicant to return to the Zoning Board of Appeals on a denied building permit for 114 Livingston Avenue.

The board’s vote follows a Department of Environmental Protection superseding order and a subsequent finding by the Beverly Conservation Commission that the feature previously treated as a wetland is a municipal drainage structure. Marshall Henley, the applicant’s representative, told the board that the DEP determination “issued a superseding order identifying the so called, wetland resource as a drainage structure of the city of Beverly,” and that the commission’s finding restored the lot area above the 10,000-square-foot minimum required by the zoning code.

The planning board framed its role narrowly. Vice Chair Derek Beckwith said the board’s job “is not to make any decision or opinion on the merits of your argument, just whether or not there's substantial or specific and material change” in the application sufficient to permit the zoning authority to reconsider the permit denial.

Board members asked clarifying questions about the prior Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) decision, which Henley said had upheld the building commissioner’s denial based on reduced lot area due to the commission’s earlier wetland finding; the ZBA had declined to rule on a frontage issue as moot. Henley said the DEP action and the Conservation Commission’s subsequent finding overturn the factual basis of that earlier decision.

After closing public comment (none was received), the planning board voted to consent to the repetitive petition. The board’s consent is procedural: it allows the applicant to return to the ZBA; it does not grant a building permit or decide the permit’s merits.