Housing Headlines

WESTWOOD --- Town meeting's OK of four articles has cleared the way for Westwood Station developers to pursue a scaled-down version of its plan to develop land around the train station at the intersection of Routes 128 and 95. The original Phase 1 plan - never started due to the economic crisis - included 2.5 million square feet of stores, offices, and housing The new version calls for a Target, a Wegmans (New York-based grocer), six mid-sized retailiers, 15 smaller retailers, and two restaurants on 35 acres of the 146-acre site.

BOSTON --- A Fairhaven real estate firm must pay thousands of dollars in penalties after Attorney General Martha Coakley busted an alleged foreclosure scheme that involved attempts to force tenants out of their homes.

BURLINGTON --- The downtown overlay district is beginning to show progress as 41 condominiums and 37 apartment units are under construction or near completion. More than 10 percent of Burlington's housing is affordable and the town is considering a measure that would require future developments to have affordable units so the town can keep its percentage of affordable units above 10 percent.

ARLINGTON --- Long Island-based Timber Ridge Homes has backed out of its arrangement to buy and develop the Symmes Hospital site after it balked at a town bylaw that requires large-scale developers to make 15 percent of its housing affordable. Timber Ridge was going to buy the property from another developer, JPI, and had offered the town $2 million to avoid the affordable housing requirement. Town officials say that is about $4 million less than the bylaw requires.

PITTSFIELD --- A total of $1 million in state grants will be coming to this city to support the rehabilitation of four neglected properties and to help a developer acquire and redevelop a mill building into rental housing.

WORCESTER --- With the city in the middle of revising its housing plan and the mayor hinting at a "diminished role for neighborhood development," city officials were given a tour yesterday of housing developments sponsored by the city's community development corporations (CDCs). Organized by the mayor, the tour was given to highlight the value of community input, although CDC supporters have voiced concern that a seven-member council being created to oversee the new plan has a spot for only one CDC representative.