MCI discord: Housing debate flares as planning pivots to zoning
Town leaders are rejecting some of the most ambitious housing estimates as they eye a spring vote.
Scattered applause filtered through the crowd at a recent MCI-Acton redevelopment meeting after resident Abby Marsh raised concerns about possible five-story apartment buildings.
She called the prospect “terrifying” and advocated for a three-story limit.
“Maybe, for some of you, this is terrifying,” consultant Chris Dempsey said. For others, it might seem “totally appropriate and reasonable.”
His comments earned their own round of applause.
“Clearly, opinions are mixed,” Dempsey said.
Debate about how much housing belongs at MCI-Acton is heating up as reuse talks continue. Town leaders are rejecting some of the most ambitious estimates as they eye a spring vote on zoning.
For Select Board Chair Wendy Rovelli, the October 6 public session was “a good precursor to Town Meeting.”
The state owns most of the prison property and plans to eventually hand it to a developer. Zoning is Acton’s strongest lever to shape what builders do.
State officials have estimated the area could support 800 to 1,000 new homes, which could be apartments, townhouses, or single-family houses. Some West Acton residents have raised concerns about traffic and school capacity.
“We really don’t want to see more than 800, and we might actually prefer to have fewer,” Rovelli told housing leaders at the latest quarterly housing roundtable.
Zoning possibilities
Consultants revealed and revised early development concepts in recent months. They’re ramping up zoning discussions this fall.
Possible rules could let developers construct five-story buildings on an approximately 19-acre tract facing the Route 2 rotary.
Draft zoning caps development at three stories on 5.5 acres bordering the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail. The remaining roughly 44 acres would be open to buildings as tall as four stories.
Zoning could also include a site-wide cap on how many units a developer builds.
Marsh grew up in Acton and said talk of “urban planning” was “a little frightening.”
“Acton is not urban. It’s a suburb, and we need to be mindful and respectful of that,” she said.
She said she supports prison redevelopment and is “all about adding affordable housing,” but she pushed for more community space.
Other development
Whatever happens at MCI-Acton will follow the construction on Baker Avenue and Forest Ridge Road that’s adding more than 400 apartments to West Acton’s housing stock.
The prison project team has touted the site’s proximity to the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail and West Acton’s Commuter Rail station.
Some remain worried about extra cars.
“Housing doesn’t come without traffic,” resident Cynthia Katz told officials at the recent roundtable.
The area already has traffic problems, Katz said. “To push it away and not deal with it is one of the reasons that people in West Acton are getting really frustrated.”
Renee Covalucci watched the October 6 zoning meeting and said she’s not opposed to five-story buildings.
She’s especially interested in affordable housing. As a retired teacher, she said, she’s being priced out. “My taxes just go too high,” she told The Bridge.
MCI Acton Master Plan Committee member Dan Gainsboro has built single-family homes and multiunit apartment buildings in his profession as a developer.
Dense development, which can include cheaper housing options, “doesn’t have to be bad,” he told The Bridge.
‘Something that works’
Prison redevelopment won’t need five-story buildings if the target for housing units on the site dips to around 600 units total, Dempsey told zoning event attendees.
If the number is 800 to 900, “You probably do have to have that height enabled,” he said.
Acton Housing Foundation President Frank Feeley thinks 1,000 units could be a reasonable townwide construction goal. He’s hoping for 600 to 700 at MCI-Acton.
“All of the dense development in the last 15 years has been in West Acton,” he told The Bridge. “There ought to be some [on] the other side of Route 2.”
As he and other advocates promote affordability, he acknowledged thorny issues at play.
“There’s clearly a group of people in town who are very happy if everybody in town has a multiple six-figure income,” he told The Bridge.
There’s also “a large number of people [who] know that this has always been a town with a mixture of incomes, and we’re losing that,” he said.
With MCI-Acton, leaders hope for harmony.
“We’re trying to come up with something that works best for the largest number of people,” Dempsey said.
