Portsmouth affordable housing project at Sherburne School advances, after intense debate

PORTSMOUTH — The city’s Blue Ribbon Housing Committee voted 8-2 to recommend The City Council work “toward the official disposition and land lease of Sherburne School property for the creation of permanent below market rate housing.”

The much-anticipated vote to endorse the creation of affordable housing at the former Sherburne School site came near the end of a more than two-and-a-half hour meeting Thursday night.

Committee members Erik Anderson and Megan Corsetti, both of whom live in Pannaway Manor — which is located near the former Sherburne Elementary School — cast the two no votes.

Committee co-chairs, Assistant Mayor Joanna Kelley and City Councilor John Tabor, are scheduled to ask the City Council Monday night to pass the same or a similar motion, according to the City Council agenda.

The Housing Committee’s vote came after numerous city residents turned out to a packed meeting room to offer impassioned pleas in support of and opposition to the housing development.

Neighbor says living in Portsmouth is not a right

Longtime Pannaway Manor resident Aaron Garganta encouraged the committee to reach out to nearby towns to help address the housing shortage.

The surrounding communities, he said, “contribute to the use of the city of Portsmouth but don’t really contribute much else to the city of Portsmouth in terms of housing.”

He added that he doesn’t believe “living in Portsmouth is a right, I believe it’s a nice to have.”

“Some people might work in Portsmouth and live two towns over, that’s completely reasonable to expect that some people need to commute to go to work,” Garganta said. “A lot of us have been commuting to Boston for years, and we live up here because we choose to live up here.”

He referenced the previous housing proposal that was pitched by the city and Portsmouth Housing Authority in 2023 and said it was “out of context for the neighborhood.”

“There really needs to be some thought about the type of structure that’s being put out there,” he said, while adding “the neighborhood has to absolutely understand what the disposition of the school is going to be.”

The initial proposal called for building new housing behind the existing school, current home to Lister Academy, the city’s alternative high school. Lister Academy is moving to Community Campus in the fall, leaving the site vacant.

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Garganta also pushed back against what he called accusations Pannaway Manor residents were behaving like NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard).

“We would be very welcoming to having new neighbors, we’re just very interested in having something done out there that is tasteful and keeping with the neighborhood, (and) does not overwhelm the neighborhood by its scale,” he said.

A call to make it possible for residents to stay in Portsmouth

Sherburne Road resident Ronald Martenson said he has lived near the entrance to the Pannaway Manor neighborhood for almost 30 years.

He and his wife have two adult children and a daughter graduating from high school this year.

“I’m concerned about their ability to be able to afford to live in Portsmouth,” he said during Thursday’s meeting. “As it stands now, that’s probably not going to happen.”

Martenson pushed strongly for using the former school site to develop housing there.

“I think it would be a travesty if it wasn’t built,” he said. “I’ve heard 80 units, I’ve heard 160 units, I say build a 10-story building and get as many people to live there as we can.”

Martenson said for residents “concerned about what kind of people are going to be moving in” to housing at the Sherburne site, he recounted his kids’ experiences.

“I’ve had three kids grow up in this city, they’ve had friends from Gosling Meadows and Wamesit Place, and Little Harbour and Dondero … and you know what, they’re all great people,” he said. “This city has great people … To single out some public housing neighborhoods, I think is inappropriate.”

More neighbors speak out against housing project

Schurman Avenue resident Genevieve Becksted Muske said the development that was proposed called for “taking away that one ballfield for those young girls.”

A girls softball field is located behind the school where the Portsmouth Housing Authority and the city previously proposed building new housing.

“It is our neighborhood, I don’t care if you think it’s a football field away, it’s our neighborhood,” she said during Thursday’s meeting. “It’s the entrance of our neighborhood, it’s where we live, where we breathe, where we raise our families.”

She said what city officials are doing by pushing a project at Sherburne School “is wrong.”

“It’s not what we want. We don’t like being bullied, that’s exactly what’s going on,” she said.

Bill St. Laurent has lived in Pannaway Manor for 50 years, and called it a “wonderful neighborhood.”

He encouraged committee members to “go slow” with a housing project at the site.

“The heads of the city decided this was going to happen,” St. Laurent said.

He asked, "Who are we helping here? All the people who just want to come and work in restaurants? That’s fine.”

But he believes housing at Sherburne “should be thought of as a project to help people in the city, not outsiders.”

'We need these projects' amid housing crisis, one neighbor says

Pannaway Manor resident Nicholas Ristaino, who’s a lifelong resident of Portsmouth, stressed not everyone “in the neighborhood could be characterized as a NIMBY. I wholeheartedly support this project,” he said.

He urged the committee and City Council – “when it comes to the Sherburne property, when it comes to any other property” to consider “the best interests of the city of Portsmouth.”

“We have a housing crisis, we’ve all seen homes being purchased, for seven, eight, nine hundred thousand dollars, all cash,” he said. “That means there’s a large number of people who currently reside in apartments, who would like to finance a home, but cannot.”

“This is the issue of our time. We need these projects,” Ristaino said. “You’re not going to get everyone in Pannaway Manor to agree on this particular project, but you represent the entirety of the city.”

Adam Ruedig is the chair of the Portsmouth Housing Limited Board, which he explained is the part of the PHA that “handles new development.”

“I volunteer with a nonprofit organization because I think this is an important issue,” he said.

He added “it’s much easier to kill a housing project than to do one. There are a million ways to kill housing. I think it’s time the community wants us to stop doing that."

He said the PHA is capable of doing multiple projects at the same time.

“We want a good project wherever we build one that the neighbors are happy with,” he said. “It’s important to us.”

Before the Housing Committee voted, Kelley pointed out passing the motion does not “tie us to a developer.”

“It starts the process of the discussions in a more formal manner,” she said, and explained that it “leaves the possibility” that the city could work with other nonprofit developers besides PHA at the Sherburne School.

The regular portion of Monday’s City Council meeting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. and be held in City Council chambers in City Hall.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth Sherburne School housing project takes key step forward