by Frank Schroth

Last night at a joint meeting of the Board of Selectmen and Planning Board a Housing Production Plan was unanimously accepted. The plan, if approved by the Department of Housing and Community Development, will give the town the prerogative of rebuffing unwanted 40B developments for a period of a year. There are currently 3 developments being proposed under MGL chapter 40. Under Chapter 40B, in any municipality where less than 10% of its housing qualifies as affordable under the law, a developer can build more densely than the municipal zoning bylaws would permit, allowing more units per acre of land when building a new development, if at least 25% (or 20% in certain cases) of the new units have long-term affordability restrictions.

The three developments are Milton Mews on property off Brush Hill Rd, the Hendries site, and a parcel off of Randolph Avenue near the DPW yard. All three have received letters of eligibility which gives them opportunity to apply for a comprehensive permit. The Milton Mews project may be coming unraveled at least one of the properties targeted for the development in on the open market. Tonight Carrick Realty, owners of 131 Eliot Street (Hendries) will be appearing before the Board of Appeals regarding their application for a special permit. HD/MW Randolph Ave, LLC have not yet submitted an application for a special permit.

All three proposals have raised concerns among neighboring residents and town officials.

With a Housing Production Plan in place the town will be able to deny these applications. To date developers have used the threat of 40b to wring concessions from neighbors who might otherwise oppose developments. Two recent examples are the St Pius property and the new Milton Hill House apartments. The former development calls for construction of townhouses (there is an article on the warrant for the upcoming town meeting on this). The Milton Hill House apartments are accepting applications for occupancy now. In both cases neighbors were told that a 40B was a fall back if their proposal did not receive approval (i.e. You think this is bad. What about a 40B!!!)

The challenge with developing a plan was meeting the requirement that calls for details regarding construction of a specific number of affordable units and their location. In Milton’s case, the commitment is for 48 units of affordable housing over the next 5 years. Alex Whiteside, the principal author of the plan and chair of the Planning Board, developed the strategy to address this.

Here is a partial list of developments that will make the greatest contribution for the affordable housing inventory.

Year 1 – 49 life lease units at Fuller Village
Year 2 – 44 rental units at 131 Eliot Street
Year 3 – 28 rental units on the Tileston & Hollingsworth property off Truman Highway
Year 4 – 35 rental units on the Granite Avenue Park & Ride lot
Year 5 – 28 rental nuits on town owned property off Randolph Ave or off landfill access road.

You can find the complete Housing Production Plan here.

Last week the Board of Selectmen voted an extension to the demolition of the Hendries building. The new date is November 30th.  A large portion of the building (131 Eliot Street) is owned by Carrick Reatly Trust; the town owns a small portion (0 Central Avenue). The building inspector, Joseph Prondak, has issued a demolition order and there is a contract in place between the two parties to have the building taken down by September 30th (i.e. today). That date cannot be met for several reasons: the town does not have an agreement in place with a demolition firm, a schedule has not been set with the Dept of Transportation for shutting down the trolley, and there is an ongoing discussion with the Connellys, principals of Carrick Realty, about the possibility of returning to a smaller mixed use development that incorporate the town-owned portion in exchange for them taking the entire building down. These discussions have been in executive session and there is no indication of what the probability of this is.