CHAMBER

Housing in MetroWest
Metrowest Chamber of Commerce April Board Meeting
Wednesday, April 26, 2006

This was the second of four panel discussions the Metrowest Chamber of Commerce plans on hosting. All four panel discussions will be moderated by Helen Lemoine, Director of the Leadership MetroWest Program.

Panel Participants :

1. Ted Gowdy – Land Entitlement Manager (Pulte Homes in Framingham)

2. Patrick Reffert – Hoop District Zoning (Town of Natick)

3. Mike Gatlin – Attorney (The Arcade in downtown Framingham)

4. Vera Kolias – Affordable housing & over 55 housing (Town of Southborough)

Introduction: Today we are going to hear about housing options and trends that may be a little non-traditional for our community. Housing costs and availability are major concerns for businesses in the MetroWest Region.

“As many businesses have come to realize the rising costs of housing is increasingly a bottom line concern. Availability of affordable work force housing directly affects the ability to attract and retain and adequate, stable and skilled work force pool at competitive wages”  (Joint Council for Housing Studies at Harvard University)

Local regulatory barriers such as Zoning and sometimes neighborhood opposition, designed to halt residential growth, make developing new housing a real challenge in the MetroWest. Today we will present some new zoning techniques and housing options in our towns. A collaborative effort is going to be needed between developers and municipalities to find a solution to the problem.

Panel Speakers:

1.     Ted Gowdy  (Land Entitlement Manager for Pulte Homes)

• Ted is responsible for all government permits and approvals in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. He is a current resident of Southborough and he has been in various capacities in the home building and construction industries for the last 14 years.

• Ted is currently working on project in Framingham called the Village at Dan forth Farm. It is a Planned Development Unit (PUD) that spent a lot of time on the front page of the news when it was going through the permit process.

• Last year Pulte Homes built over 48,000 homes nationwide. 500 of those homes were built right here in the MetroWest Region.

• National Development brought the Village at Dan forth through the permitting process and Pulte Homes purchased the development this fall.

• The land was originally zoned for 735 residential units – National originally tried to get a permit for 700 units – they were allowed 665 but upon appeal that number was decreased to 525 units.

• The project calls for a mix of residential types ranging town houses to three story complexes. Every unit will be for sale there will be no rental properties. It will be built in phases over the next several years. If everything works out the first units will become available in 2007.

• This project really illustrates the opportunities of a PUD. It allows you to take a large piece of land and renew some of the constrictions and under lying zoning laws. It allows the developer to be a little more creative in how they put together the plan.

2.     Patrick Reffert (Community Development Director of Natick)

• His newest project is the Hoop District in Downtown Natick

• Hoop (Housing Overlay Opportunity Plan) District – a program that is an overlay approach to taking commercial & industrial properties in the downtown area and allow these parcels to be utilized for residential development.

• This program was accepted by town meetings about 30 years ago.

• Natick introduced the plan to diversify the types of housing opportunities available to its residents.

• Hoop program is a very cooperation intense program. Developers and municipalities both benefit from the plan.

3.     Mike Gatlin  (Attorney representing The Arcade in downtown Framingham)

• Mike has practiced law since 1982 and concentrates his practice in the areas of commercial and residential real estate.

• He has represented quite a few developers in the area along with a few local planning boards.

• He gave a little history about downtown Framingham highlighting two phases of growth.

1.     Proximity to Railroad

2.     Industrial Revolution

• By the 1950’s downtown area in Framingham “Looked like something out of American Graffiti”. It was great 1950’s community.

• With the development of Route nine all the economic activity was transferred to that area. By the 1960’s Downtown Framingham started a long slow period of decline.

• This continued into the 1980’s when the Brazilian population began to grow and develop a number of very active and vibrant small businesses in the downtown area.

• The problem is that with the economic shift towards route nine. Downtown is a very uneconomic place to own property at this time

• Some tenants in the downtown area are paying as little as 200 dollars a month in rent.

• This kind of rent structure makes it very uneconomical to own and maintain property in the downtown area.

• About 3 years ago the town began looking into “Mix use developments” - Putting Residential uses together with commercial uses in the same building and same area with the idea that they will feed off each other.

• There have been no new apartment complexes built in Framingham in the last 30 years. This has created a substantial amount of demand for new apartments in the area.

• The population of Framingham is aging and many of these people would like to sell their homes and move into smaller apartments but they have no place to go to.

• The Arcade project is part of the solution. They currently have approval to build 290 residential units which include – single units, two bedroom units and a few studio apartments. They are also going to construct a 6 level parking garage that will accommodate 560 cars.

4.     Vera Kolias (Town Planner of Southborough)

• She has been the town planner in Southborough since 2003. Before that she spent five years in the city of Peabody working as a planner.

• Unlike Natick and Framingham, Southborough has far different issues on the housing front. The population is a little over 9,500 and they have no sewers. So it makes it difficult to do the forward thinking “Multi use / higher density projects” currently going on in Framingham.

• 94 % single family homes and only 12% of those properties are rentals. There are not a lot of rental opportunities in Southborough and there are very few opportunities beyond single family houses.

• Southborough’s zoning laws are fairly restrictive when it comes to housing options. The only multiple family housing they allow is 55+ housing.

• When these development where first built there was no affordability cap placed on them. The current median for sale price of over 55 housing is $655,000 dollars.

• This is not affordable to many Southborough residents over the age of 55. Because of this fact less than 15% of the condos are owned by Southborough residents.

• One of the options the town is looking into is exploring “Multi Use properties as they did in Framingham.