The Gloucester Planning Board voted Nov. 20 to grant a Watershed Protection Overlay District (WPOD) special permit and a minor modification to an existing cluster-development special permit for Upper Banjo LLC, a 25-unit residential cluster proposed along Essex Avenue (Assessors Map 218, Lots 38, 39 and 46). Board approval was contingent on staff-recommended conditions and a revised plan set that clearly delineates areas subject to WPOD limitations.

Attorney Joel Vavazzo of Seaside Legal Solutions, representing Upper Banjo LLC, told the board that engineering, city staff and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection had completed investigations and that the applicant had located the original WPOD overlay map and scaled the boundary onto the plan. Vavazzo said the applicant agreed in concept to most of the engineering department’s six conditions and was prepared to accept the remaining conditions rather than challenge the historic map delineation.

Resident Camille Vicente urged the board to require more precise, contemporary watershed mapping and to require the applicant provide the total proposed impervious surface area; she argued that protected open space should follow the original erosion-control line rather than rear property lines and that the project presentation should be reopened if the plan requires major substantive changes.

Vavazzo responded the applicant would monument the WPOD boundary with granite posts in line with erosion-control markers, record the restrictions in deed and homeowners‑association documents, and accept the engineering memo language as the operative conditions with one small editing change requested by a board member.

Board member Jane Ramson moved to approve the WPOD special permit and to approve a minor modification to the cluster special permit, both contingent upon a final decision incorporating the engineering memo (as amended on the record) and a revised plan set that clearly shows lots and areas subject to WPOD restrictions. The motions passed on unanimous roll-call votes. The board required that the conditions and restrictions be included in the HOA documents and chain of title.