Judge: HDC acted in ‘bad faith’ on Hildreth Corner house
Plans for a Lowell Road home may have new life after a judge said town officials unfairly rejected a developer’s proposals.
Controversial plans for a Lowell Road home may have new life after a judge said town officials unfairly rejected a developer’s proposals.
Preservationists say the town should appeal the ruling; others disagree.
The larger saga is shining a spotlight on the work of a group that regulates Acton’s most historic neighborhoods. It’s also pitting decades-old regulations against an applicant citing the realities of modern real estate.
“As hardheaded as citizens may think we are, the commission is really — for the most part — about compromise,” former Historic Districts Commission member Dennis Fiori told The Acton Bridge.
In this case, Judge Brent Tingle said the HDC was anything but. He annulled their decisions, saying members showed “bias and bad faith” as they considered plans for a single-family home at 615 Lowell Road.
The Select Board met in a closed session on August 31 to discuss the case. Despite the wishes of people like Fiori, Town Manager Kerry Lafleur said she doesn’t expect the town will appeal Tingle’s finding.
Jonathan Silverstein, attorney for plaintiff Archstone Builders, said he couldn’t discuss the decision.
The Select Board was already weighing larger questions about historic preservation and how to commemorate Acton’s past. Asked after the Archstone ruling, the board’s HDC liaison, Mary Hartman, suggested it might be time to revisit how HDC works.
Other town boards, the Acton Museum, and the Acton Free Public Library Corporation nominate the HDC’s members. Homeowners in historic districts need HDC permission for projects as small as replacing windows or repainting.
Current HDC Chair Kate Chartener told The Bridge this summer that the procedures can be “annoying.” But without strict rules, Fiori warned, the historic character that Acton tourists and residents so admire “could be eroded very quickly.”
Money pressure
Developer Michael Bushnell signed a contract to buy 615 Lowell from Archstone, court documents show.
The undeveloped property sits near Hildreth Corner, which in the 1800s was a “cluster of commerce” with a general store, blacksmith, cooper, and inn, per HDC documents.
Accounts vary, but some historians hold that minute men rendezvoused at Hildreth before heading to the North Bridge on April 19, 1775.
Starting in 2021, Bushnell went through four denials and six single-family home designs as HDC members advocated for a smaller building, documents show.
Bushnell said he couldn’t downsize the house and still make money flipping the site. He increased the square footage from 3,420 to 3,900 during the process.
Archstone formally appealed two of the HDC’s four denials. The case went to trial in March.
The state legislature created the HDC in 1960 to preserve and protect historic areas.
More than 600 Acton properties lie in places where the HDC can effectively veto projects.
Town lawyers rejected claims that commissioners acted in bad faith on Lowell Road, writing that HDC gave “consistent, specific guidance.” The applicant, however, kept presenting “dwellings it knew or should have known were inconsistent” with the area’s historic character.
A drawing of the penultimate proposal envisioned a two-story house and detached garage. The final design further adjusted the layout to create what attorneys for the plaintiffs said would look like a “cottage” from the street.
Illustrations show one concept of a proposed house at 615 Lowell Road. Image courtesy of Blatman, Bobrowski, Haverty & Silverstein LLC
Matters of scale
Town zoning would allow a home of nearly 10,500 square feet, per Archstone’s estimate. But what’s permissible by zoning doesn’t always fly with the HDC, which has some leeway for interpretation.
Commission guidelines note that homes around Hildreth generally take up “a lesser rather than greater portion” of their lots. 615 Lowell is smaller than several neighboring properties.
Town lawyers cited these facts in defending HDC’s push for a smaller house.
But the commission’s Paul Ware had sympathized with the developer during a 2022 meeting.
“In effect the committee is saying, ‘You can’t build anything unless you build a cabin,’” Ware said at the time. That didn’t feel fair to the public, he said, or like “a fair interpretation of our standards.”
Tingle said Luis Berrizbeitia, then HDC chair, “demonstrated open hostility” toward the plaintiff, including in a 2022 incident in which he allegedly said “no house will ever be approved” at 615 Lowell.
Berrizbeitia told The Bridge he ran into project architect Elise Braceras Stone in the Crosby’s Marketplace parking lot, but disputes her description of the conversation. Rather than vowing a “no” vote, he said he was “expressing some despair and a lack of enthusiasm” at having to go through the process again as the applicants advanced another plan.
‘Lack of support’
HDC trial costs contributed to a deficit in Acton’s legal services budget, Lafleur said this summer.
Although lawyers backed the HDC, Fiori said he’s been concerned about a broader “lack of support” from the Select Board that he said he felt during the 615 Lowell process and the recent debate over Black Heritage Trail Markers.
The Select Board called for compromise on the markers, and Hartman told The Bridge on August 27 that “there’s some discretion” in how HDC applies its founding state law. She suggested a review “to address process guidelines.”
In the meantime, Tingle’s ruling kicked the Lowell Road applications back to the commission “for reconsideration.”
The property sat silent one recent afternoon as Tingle’s ruling circulated among HDC critics and supporters.
A “sale pending” sign remained nailed to a tree near the street. A half-decade in, vines had grown over its face.
