Danvers planning board hears public concerns, continues hearing on mixed-use project at 83 Elm and 5 Essex

The Town of Danvers Planning Board continued a public hearing May 27 on a developer proposal to replace a surface parking lot and expand a one‑story commercial building at 83 Elm Street and 5 Essex Street with a three‑story mixed‑use building that would keep an existing dental office and add 16 residential units on the upper floors.

The project team — represented by attorney Nancy McCann and including developers MJP Properties Inc. and Johnson Construction Management LLC, architect Eric Zacherson of Context, and engineer Giovanni Fadero of Federo Engineering — described a building footprint of about 8,302 square feet on a combined lot of roughly 24,869 square feet in the Danvers Town Center (DTC) core character‑based zoning district. The proposal calls for a commercial first floor (including the enlarged dental office and roughly 2,700 square feet of additional retail), two residential floors above containing 16 three‑bedroom units (about 1,200–1,390 square feet each), and a 1,500‑square‑foot common roof deck. The applicants said the building height would be 35 feet, 10 inches and the submission includes site plans, a stormwater report, landscape designs and renderings.

The applicants asked the board for multiple forms of zoning relief under the DTC rules: special permits for density (16 units), to count three public street spaces toward the project’s…