Housing Headlines

SHERBORN --- At its special fall town meeting on Dec. 6, residents will be asked to vote on language that will clarify zoning rules for senior and affordable housing, as well as a second article that will ask voters to vote on an elderly affordable housing proposal called Meadowbrook Commons.

WESTON --- Following communications with residents who live around its 133 Boston Post Road office park, Boston Properties has apparently shifted its thinking from proposing 345 mixed-income apartments and is instead exploring the town's desire to build a lesser amount of senior housing units. Planning Board Chairman Alfred Ayedelott said senior housing has been identified as a need in the town's housing plan and senior housing "also mitigates a number of project impacts of the original proposal.” The office park currently houses two big national companies - Biogen and Monster.com.

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.