ZBA saves nearly finished Fern Street garage from teardown
This week, Waltham’s Zoning Board of Appeals heard a throwback case when it revisited a series of variances it granted last summer.
In July 2025, Vincent Mastroianni went to the Zoning Board of Appeals for permission to build slightly closer to the property line of a lot at 8 Fern St. to replace a century-old house with a garage for his landscaping business. The ZBA allowed him to reduce the legal setback between the front of the building and the lot line, and leave as little as ten feet in front of his garage.
On Tuesday, he came back to the ZBA with a request: Could it allow him to build an additional 3.24 inches closer to the front of the property?
In the months since his initial case, Mastroianni has been working to build the garage, filing plans with the office of the Building Inspector. According to his attorney Joseph Connors Jr., three months after filing the plans, the Building Inspector halted construction at the property, pointing to the plans showing the building encroached just over three inches into the front yard setback and into both side yard setbacks by 0.74 and 0.6 inches, respectively.
By the time the building department ordered construction to halt, Mastroianni had nearly completed construction, and his attorney argued the garage would need to be torn down to its foundation to fit it completely into the legally required boundaries.
The board easily granted Mastroianni the setback changes, although some ZBA members had procedural questions about why the case had come back to them. “I don’t know who’s down there with a ruler measuring the [building] is two inches off,” said associate ZBA member Sarah Hankins. “It’s crazy that you’re back here.”
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the ZBA granted the owners of a house on Gill Street leave to install a small pool close to the back of their lot.
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Why don’t you just let them build onto the sidewalk or their neighbors property. The house on the corner of Francis and School is just like that. This board needs to be replaced before they destroy the city even more.