Town sites called ‘golden opportunity’ despite consultant report
Hope remains for affordable housing despite consultants’ worries of financial and zoning challenges.
The students are long gone. Town Facilities Department workers now walk the halls of Peabody School.
What comes next is still up for discussion.
Peabody, along with the public schools’ Ripley building and the town’s Keyes Road public works campus, presents “a golden opportunity,” Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Chair Matt Johnson told The Acton Bridge.
Despite what a recent consultant report says, Johnson’s not resigned to a few new “McMansions.”
“Even people that just bought their McMansion don’t want more of those,” he said.
Peabody’s classrooms went quiet when the new Ellen Garrison Building at Acton Middle School opened in early 2025.
Schools Superintendent Laurie Hunter said Ripley was “at end of life” last fall.
In 2024, then-Public Works Director Alan Cathcart said CPW’s Keyes Road home was already in “failure mode.”
Unlike the MCI-Acton prison land and its ongoing redevelopment process, the town owns these properties and could sell them.
On September 14, staff from the U3 Advisors consultancy gave the Select Board their findings from a recent reuse study.
Development prospects:
Town properties by the numbers
Peabody School
- Land area: 7.87 acres
- Building size: 54,892 square feet
- Year built: 1970
Ripley building
- Land area: 10.42 acres
- Building size: 47,802 square feet
- Year built: 1957
Keyes Road campus*
- Land area: 11.12 acres
- Building size: 32,117 square feet
- Years built: 1950, 1950, 1974
*The Keyes Road campus includes three occupied municipal buildings. Its significant garage space isn’t counted in its “livable area” square footage.
Sources: U3 Advisors report, town property assessments
Hopes and headwinds
The U3 review aimed to gauge land value and estimate how much housing a developer might fit on a handful of town sites.
Consultant Amy Fater said the nearly 55,000-square-foot Peabody building has been maintained “quite well.” The property spans nearly eight acres. The building’s “interesting shape,” however, could make residential reuse hard.
The Old Marlboro Road school’s windowless common area and gym leave only about 60% of the X-shaped building fit for housing, she said.
Zoning is another hurdle. Fater said the team stayed “conservative” when considering rezoning.
One approach using state affordable housing rules could net 30-50 condos or rental apartments, depending on whether a developer builds beyond the existing school structure.
Although that might boost Acton’s housing stock, it’s an unlikely outcome. Financially, consultant Jon Trementozzi said, it’s “not a feasible project.”
Subdivision speculation
A developer could fit three or four single-family homes by demolishing Peabody and building a subdivision. The town could get $2.2 million to $2.39 million by selling the land for this purpose, consultants estimated. The figure reflects the costs to a developer of leveling the old school and other work to get the site ready for houses.
Subdividing Ripley could net six to 12 lots. The town could receive $1.25 million to $4.75 million from a sale.
At Keyes Road, one concept would give Acton $2.7 million and 50 new townhouses. One challenge: The nearby Acton and Sudbury Rivers pose a flood risk.
Officials have considered more dense housing at places like Peabody.
Select Board member Mary Hartman serves alongside Johnson on the housing trust and told that panel on September 17 that the U3 report was “not encouraging” for affordable housing advocates like herself.
She told The Bridge that she’s “cooling” on Peabody housing hopes as she digests consultants’ findings about demolition costs, in particular.
Hartman is still suggesting “more creative zoning” that could allow “tiny houses” for people seeking starter homes or a place to downsize at places such as Ripley.
Consultants examining Peabody, Ripley, and Keyes weren’t “hired to be creative or imaginative,” Johnson said when asked about their report. “The onus is on us to make the cases for use of those properties.”
MCI likely to go first
Acton’s Land Use Working Group recently listed Peabody, Ripley, Keyes, MCI-Acton and the 2229 Main Street Superfund site as major redevelopment opportunities.
They agreed that the prison will probably be the first site available for redevelopment.
The Land Use Working Group suggested the town could hang on to Peabody for municipal use or sell it for residential development.
“With all the development about to happen,” West Acton Advisory Committee co-Chair Lindsay Wolff wondered if Peabody could house a new school for a future influx of children.
Fellow West Concordian Lynda Ferrari said her daughter and her classmates “fondly remember” attending Peabody. She lives near Rideout Park and suggested the Peabody property could offer similar benefits.
“There’s nowhere for that whole area of Acton to go,” she told The Bridge.
While Keyes Road bustles with public works trucks and Ripley hosts school programs and offices, Facilities Department staff keep a low profile at Peabody.
Facilities Manager Russ Karlstad estimates they’re occupying roughly 10,000 square feet of the building.
Other rooms sit mostly empty.
Children’s paper snowflakes taped to a window beside a “keep out” sign remain as reminders of the building’s past — and its current life in limbo.
