Housing Headlines

BOSTON --- Boston's planning department is seeking developers to build a mixed-use development with affordable housing on a city land parking lot at 290 Tremont Street. Proposals for Parcel P-12C must include an emphasis on family-sized units with at least 50 percent of them available to lower-income buyers and rental housing units targeting households between 30 to 60 percent of area median income.

In response to a Metropolitan Area Planning Council study showing that additional affordable housing does not significantly add to enrollment, the Salem News published an editorial calling on communities to stop using the "tired old" argument that new housing overburdens school systems, citing several communities in its region that lost students while adding housing.

SUDBURY --- The town will appeal a Land Court ruling, arguing that its claim that a one-acre road it gave to a family trust in a land swap came with a restriction that the road and the 8.6 acres it connected with could only be developed into one single-family home. Justice Howard Speicher ruled on Oct. 6 that multi-family development would be entirely consistent with existing zoning. Voters who OK'd the swap at 2011 Town Meeting apparently thought development would be limited to a single-family home. The outcome of the appeal will determine whether developer Christopher Claussen can continue to pursue his 250-unit Sudbury Station plans.

SWANSEA --- In what took nearly one meeting for every unit proposed the Swansea Zoning Board of Appeals has finally OK'd a Ch. 40B comprehensive land use permit that will allow developer Philip Martelly to build 14 condominiums (four affordable) on the site of the former Knights of Columbus Hall. The project will be called Knights Landing.

EASTHAM --- The Barnstable County of Assembly Delegates has voted to make a large portion of Route 6 a District of Critical Planning Concern, a designation which triggers a moratorium on most development until May town meeting. During this time, local officials and the Cape Cod Commission will try to come up with zoning regulations and plans to improve the area for traffic and pedestrians. This stretch of highway includes an abandoned driving range, which developers have eyed for multifamily housing.

BRAINTREE --- Complaints about conditions at Skyline Drive Apartments have attracted the attention of local and state officials, with Mayor Joseph Sullivan working with owners and residents to address code violations and the state Attorney General's office threatening to take the property into receivership if owners don't address problems ranging from no heat or hot water, inadequate ventilation, and lack of working washers and driers in dozens of the over 200 apartments.