NORTHAMPTON — Opposition to a proposed five-story apartment complex at the corner of Phillips Place and Hawley Street continues to mount ahead of a scheduled Planning Board meeting this week to discuss the project.

O’Connell Development Group of Holyoke is proposing to build the 54-unit complex opposite in the parking lot of the former St. John’s Cantius Church. O’Connell owns both the church building and the parking lot.

Plans for the apartment complex took shape after O’Connell abandoned an earlier proposal to convert the former church into housing. Under the new plan, the company intends to use the old church space as a temporary construction office during the building of the apartment units. Upon the units’ completion, the building would then be used as a leasing and amenity office for residents.

Dan Breindel, who lives next to the church and across from the proposed development, said his “life has changed” since the announcement by O’Connell two months ago, fervently contacting city officials to express his concerns about the property and researching the zoning history of the lot.

“First off, the height is insane. All of us are going to have our views blocked,” Breindel said. “The appeal of living on this hill is we look out over the Northampton skyline and we can see the train tracks and all the big trees. This would effectively end that.”

Breindel said he also had privacy concerns regarding the new building.

“This is going to be a wall of like 30 college students and 20-somethings staring at my 2- and 5-year-old kids,” he said. “It’s creepy to me the way this is going to be in my face.”

Breindel isn’t alone in his opposition. A petition on the website change.org opposing the project, titled “Save Our Neighborhood” has garnered more than 250 petitions and asks O’Connell to scale down the plans for the complex.

“More traffic and more cars needing parking will add pollution and congestion and make it more dangerous for the many people who walk here, including children going to and from Bridge Street School,” the petition states. “We urge the developers to modify their high-density plan and for our city’s representatives to stand up for a scaled-down project that supports community and sustainability.”

Faye Wolfe, who organized the petition, spoke during the public comments section at the Northampton City Council meeting last Thursday regarding her concerns.

“It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. It dates back to the early 1800s in its design,” Wolfe said. “Please don’t sacrifice it to a developer’s oversized design. Please consider how you can possibly get it to scale back.”

City Councilor Quaverly Rothenberg, whose Ward 3 contains the proposed development, has also expressed skepticism of the apartment complex. Rothenberg previously referred to the project as “gentrification,” and during Thursday’s meeting described the proposed complex as “something like a Soviet-style block building.”

During the council meeting, Rothenberg introduced an order that would rezone the two property parcels containing the lot from Commercial Business, which allows for building the apartment complex, to Urban Residential, which does not. One of the parcels had previously been classified as Urban Residential, but was changed to Commercial Business in 2022 as part of a change in zoning map boundaries recommended by the city and approved by the council.

“I was sort of jarred and startled to find out that this zoning change was affecting the neighborhood side of the street, not just the downtown or business side,” Rothenberg said. “It is the zoning that’s most important to this neighborhood ... the residential zoning gives them a lot of protections and that’s what they want.”

The council, however, rejected the Rothenberg’s order by voting against sending it to the Committee on Legislative Matters and the Planning Board. Council President Alex Jarrett said that even if the zoning would change, O’Connell would still be able to have means of grandfathering in the complex project.

“I’m concerned about initiating a process that will not have the intended effect and will, you know, cost money in newspaper ads and sending out notices,” Jarrett said.

Ryan O’Hara, an attorney representing the O’Connell group and himself a resident of Ward 3, said he felt the proposed rezoning order would be illegal under Massachusetts law, an implication that O’Connell would take legal action against the city if the order advanced.

“There are legitimate complaints to be raised about any particular zoning issue, but that’s best handled on a zonewide, a comprehensive, a legislative basis,” O’Hara said. “If there is a problem with the city’s infill zoning, the way to address that is by looking at the districts at large by coming up with wide solutions to those problems.”

O’Connell still must receive permitting approval from the Planning Board before it can get to work on the proposed complex. That process begins at this Thursday’s board meeting.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.