A rendering of one of Pulte’s proposed North Plymouth condominium buildings, part of a 163-unit project being permitted under the state’s Chapter 40B affordable housing law. Image courtesy of Pulte Group
And you thought Wellesley was bad for battling a state plan to build new housing on a little-used community college parking lot.
But at least in Wellesley, project opponents have had a fig leaf of sorts, noting the lack of any binding, legal commitment that would prevent state officials from building on an adjacent 40-acre woodland.
Never mind that the Healey administration has said it has no plans to touch the woods and is focused solely on turning that five-acre surface lot into 180 badly needed housing units.
But in Plymouth, NIMBY neighbors and local officials have no such excuse. Rather, residents of America’s Hometown have fought heroically to save an abandoned warehouse and vacant industrial sites near the waterfront from the horrors of unwanted redevelopment, apparently hoping to preserve these pristine sites for generations to come.
Just consider the angry declaration by Michael Main, the chair of Plymouth’s Zoning Board of Appeals.
Main didn’t hold back after he and fellow board members reluctantly approved plans for a major new project for those iconic sites, noting the ZBA’s hands were tied by state law.
“I want to bite my tongue but I’ll end up with a mouthful of blood. I’m so damn disappointed we have to have these kinds of things in our community,” Main fumed, as reported by The Plymouth Independent.
You’d be forgiven for wondering what evil development scheme the good folk of Plymouth were being subjected to.
What’s Being Proposed?
If you guessed that Main was referencing a sewage treatment plant, slaughterhouse, prison or strip club when he fulminated about having “to have these kinds of things in our community,” you would be wrong.
Rather, the Plymouth ZBA chair and neighborhood residents in North Plymouth are both up in arms about plans for something everyone says they want more of, but no one seems to want in their own town: new housing.
National mega builder Pulte Group is closing in on final approvals needed to start construction of a 163-unit Chapter 40B condominium development spread across three buildings on a couple of different sites, one of which features an abandoned industrial building in the Cordage Park mixed-use redevelopment of a former mill.
At least a quarter of the units, 44 of them to be precise, would be considered affordable for a family of four earning up to $132,300, which is roughly 80 percent of the area median income.
The estimated prices for these affordable condos range from $215,000 to $271,500, with market-rate units starting at $550,000 for a one-bedroom, one-bath unit, per the Plymouth Independent.
Try buying a condo in a new building near the waterfront at that price in Boston or even Quincy.
Opponents’ Odd Claims
Opponents have thrown out a kitchen sink’s worth of objections in a bid to kill the project, including concerns that traffic from the condos will clog up local streets and prevent police cars and fire trucks from responding to emergencies.
One of the oddest arguments against the project? That would be the fact that one of Pulte’s condo buildings would overlook a former federal Superfund site that was cleaned up in 1993.
The whole point of the multibillion-dollar Superfund program was to eliminate potential environmental dangers and free up land that would otherwise be left abandoned for generations for new uses.
Jim Woolford, the former longtime director of the EPA Superfund program, told the Plymouth Independent that he would be comfortable living next to the site himself, provided it were successfully decontaminated. Woolford also told the local news site that all indications are that the cleanup has been “successfully implemented.”
Hundreds of condos, apartments and homes, as well as restaurants and recreation areas, have been built over the years in “close proximity” to the old Superfund site, Pulte’s attorney Stephanie Kiefer noted in a letter to Main, the Plymouth ZBA chief. There is no evidence that the site still “poses any environmental risk” to surrounding properties, Kiefer added.
Scott Van Voorhis
Pressure to Trigger Court Battle
Still, even Main wasn’t strident enough in his opposition in the eyes of the NIMBY crowd trying to block new housing in a town where home and condo prices have gone through the roof.
Opponents wanted Main and the ZBA to vote against the project and battle it out in court, even though Pulte holds all the legal cards under the state’s Chapter 40B program.
Under that 1960s-era law, reaffirmed by a wide margin in a 2010 statewide referendum, developers are almost guaranteed local approval of new, below-market-rate units in communities where deed-restricted affordable units make up less than 10 percent of the local housing stock.
The state’s most recent data says Plymouth is far shy of the mark for “safe harbor” under Chapter 40B, with only 8.4 percent of its units counting towards the 10 percent threshold.
“The town doesn’t want private out-of-town developers building large projects that are bad for our neighborhoods and our residents,” Kevin Canty, chair of Plymouth’s Select Board, told the Plymouth Independent.
Meanwhile, as Plymouth battles to stop the dastardly Pulte from despoiling all those lovely old industrial sites, housing costs in the town founded by the Pilgrims over 400 years ago are spiraling out of control.
Plymouth single-family home prices jumped 10 percent in February, crossing the $743,000 mark. As for condos, they are up more than 11 percent, hitting $579,000, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
Railing against greedy developers and new condo buildings may make for good small-town politics.
But the rest of us end up footing the bill for this NIMBY nonsense, which has helped make Eastern Massachusetts one of the most expensive places to live on the planet.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist and publisher of the Contrarian Boston newsletter; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
