Housing Headlines

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.

FALMOUTH --- The town's unhappiness with a 104-unit Ch. 40B housing proposal on Main Street added a new chapter recently as Town Meeting authorized selectmen to to buy the land from Falmouth Hospitality LLC, The Westford-based company's first proposal - a hotel - was rejected by the Cape Cod Commission. The developers then proposed a mixed-income housing development - called a "spite project" by the resident who drafted the article proposing the town buy the land. Earlier this year, the Zoning Board of Appeals approved the 104-unit 40B with 38 conditions, sparking court appeals by both developer and neighbors.

BOSTON --- Combing enrollment figures from 234 school districts across the state, a new study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council found no correlation between growth in the number of housing units and growth in the number of students in public and charter schools. The MAPC found that school enrollment dropped in most districts in Greater Boston, with an overall drop of two percent.

NORFOLK --- Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash was in Norfolk recently to award a $1.8 million MassWorks grant that will be used in combination with $395,000 from developer Thomas DiPlacido to extend water service to the former Buckley and Mann industrial site so it can be redeveloped into 216 mixed-income apartments.

PROVINCETOWN --- The debate over whether a Provincetown condo project can move forward continued recently as the town's Zoning Board of Appeals is signalling it may reverse its stop order after the surveyor the town hired recanted his earlier statement that one of the townhouses was built four feet too high.