To catch people up on some of the things I have been doing about the proposed 40B:
- I had the Board of Selectmen set up the 40B informational meeting for Tuesday, February 28.
- I spoke with Superintendent Robert Maguire, and he told me that he has asked his expert on evaluating school enrollment changes resulting from developments, Dr. Kennedy, to opine to him on the expected additional school children that may result from both the proposed West Street and Medfield State Hospital developments. Dr. Kennedy has already done a couple of reports on the proposed MSH development.
- I spoke with Joanne Muti, Representative Daniel Winslow‘s legislative aide, and a former Walpole selectman (because of quotes I had seen attributed to her in a recent email), and she told me that Walpole refused to permit The Preserve. The developer was initially seeking to permit over 400 units, and their ZBA denied a comprehensive permit. The state Housing Appeals Committee (HAC) on appeal reversed the town’s decision and granted the permit. At some point, Walpole ultimately negotiated the number of units down such that The Preserve is over 300 units.
- I spoke with Walpole Town Administrator, Michael Boynton, who told me that he started to work in Walpole just after the HAC had overturned the ZBA’s denial, and that his dealings with Gatehouse were all positive. He said that he found the people from Gatehouse with whom he dealt to be good to work with. He said there were sewer issues because of the location, and that HAC basically just told the town that was up to them to fix. He also said that they did get more school children. Finally he suggested having our Chief and Superintendent call their counterparts in Walpole to get the details.
- I will ask that Chief Meaney get information from Chief Rick Stillman of Walpole, and that Superintendent Maguire get information from his counterpart in Walpole, on the effects of The Preserve on town systems in Walpole.
- I communicated with Representative Denise Garlick yesterday and she confirmed for me that it was not correct that she “supported” the proposed 40B project on West Street – one person had incorrectly stated so in an email.
- It was confirmed at the Board of Selectmen meeting last night that Medfield does not meet any of the three tests under which towns can qualify out of 40B’s, namely, the 10% affordable housing test, and also the following two lesser know and used tests that also allow towns to qualify out of 40B’s:
- If 1.5% of developable land is already occupied by affordable housing, or
- If development of the proposed site would result in development of more than 0.3% of the town’s developable land that year
Medfield02052's Blog 
Thank you for these updates. From the discussion last night, it sounds like the town was planning on the State Hospital site development being our solution to meeting our 40B requirements. My understanding is that a State-approved affordable housing plan would give us “safe-harbor” protections from 40B proposals…. Can we make an appeal to the appropriate state board for safe harbor, on the basis of the pending development of the hospital site? It sounds like we have been unable to come up with a plan there because of ongoing negotiations with another State agency (DCAM?) on serious environmental issues. Can we make a case to the state that we are serious about creating an affordable housing plan, but that can only be done after THEIR environmental damage to the land is dealt with… and therefore have a temporary safe harbor?
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Elizabeth,
Thanks for your input.
I am not an expert on the issues around the approved plan safe harbor provisions of 40B, but I do not think there is any such “temporary safe harbor” currently available to us. I will ask town counsel. I recall the expert Mark Cerel cited last night, Professor Mark Bobrowski, whom the Board of Selectmen retained to advise us with respect to the Medfield State Hospital development issues, telling the Board of Selectmen several years ago that if we had an approved affordable housing plan that it could afford temporary protection, but I believe it was only effective for one year and required a real development near to actual construction (pulling a building permit). I recall that the permit needed to be pulled within one year to keep the protection. As I recall the pulling of the building permit is the seminal trigger, both for having achieved one’s 10% affordable housing – i.e. – when the Medfield State Hospital developer pulled its permit – and for one’s plan continuing to be effective. Then after the permit is pulled, for one’s plan to continue to provide protection, one has to have actual units built regularly to keep the protection.
It has been my understanding that the Medfield State Hospital project never got close enough to reality for us to be able to have an approved affordable housing plan. While DCAM and the Board of Selectmen agreed upon a plan, the Medfield town meeting still needs to change the zoning if that plan is to proceed, and only then could an RFP be issued by DCAM, a developer selected by DCAM, and that developer pull a building permit.
My observation as things have unfolded over the past several years was that DCAM started to focus more on the site clean up and seemed to stop focusing on any proceedings related to advancing the actual development. Certainly that coincided with the real estate market tanking, so I had assumed DCAM was not proceeding because they figured there would be no interested developers who would respond to the RFP at the time. DCAM’s original plan had been to have the eventual developer do the site clean up, and around the this same time DCAM also switched to doing that site clean up itself, before getting a developer involved. So as a selectman I switched my focus to getting the right clean up for the town.
More recently, in March 2011 the new DCAM Commissioner, Carole Cornelison, arrived and said that she wants to start the planning process anew with respect to determining just what use will go on at the Medfield State Hospital, and we have been waiting for DCAM to start the feasibility study that will begin that process. At the July 11, 2011 meeting I had with Secretary Jay Gonsalves and Commissioner Cornelison about the Medfield State Hospital project, Secretary Gonsalves asked the DCAM staff person in charge of DCAM’s real estate, Dana Herrell, how quickly they could do the feasibility study and Dana said they do them all the time and get them done fast. Dana also assured me in response to my specific query that Medfield would have input into that feasibility study. Recently I raised the issue of moving forward with that feasibility study when I met with Commissioner Cornelison about two months ago, around the clean up issues. However, DCAM has now clearly put that feasibility study on hold while it does the clean up.
Pete
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