Since the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station closed in 1997, development has been limited to 920 housing units and 43,000 square feet of commercial space. Photo courtesy of LStar Communities.

A Norfolk Superior Court judge has ordered a multifamily developer hired to helm the troubled redevelopment of the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station to pay $63 million for failing to pay for a range of development and upkeep costs on the property before the firm was removed from its master developer role.

Judge Beverly Cannone awarded the Southfield Redevelopment Authority triple damages on $19.71 million worth of costs against North Carolina-based LStar Communities, ranging from designs for sewer and water infrastructure to demolition work on airfield structures and maintenance work like field mowing that had piled up during LStar’s tenure as master developer.  A default judgment was entered in the agency’s favor in September 2020.

LStar had bought the project from Starwood Property Trust in 2015 after the latter bought out the 1,500-acre site’s prior master developer in 2013 and work stalled. However, LStar failed to land a major commercial tenant or make much other progress beyond constructing a boulevard across the site and a collection of sports fields.

The suit claims that, throughout the development process, LStar officials knowingly and repeatedly lied to SRA officials and board members that delays in payments for the water infrastructure, including tens of millions of dollars to Weymouth for water and sewer service and even left a electrical conduit trench unfinished so long that water filled the trench around the conduit, which connected a subdivision to the main road. The company also allowed the development’s waste water pumping station to operate without a licensed supervisor, without a functioning pump, or backup generator in violation of local, state and federal laws, the suit said “in a manner that creates a substatnial risk to health and welfare” of the site’s roughly 2,000 current residents. The limited on-site water and sewer infrastructure it built was “abandoned” for the SRA to deal with, the suit claims.

“That left us with a sewer and water system that was, if I put it politely, in precarious danger of failing,” SRA counsel Robert Galvin told Cannone at a damages hearing over Zoom on Aug. 26. “I know the damages sound like a tremendous amount of money in this case, your honor, but there’s a tremendous amount of damage.”

Following civil lawsuits accusing an LStar executive of serious financial misconduct, Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund suspended an agreement to provide LStar water service for additional development in late 2018 saying the city had lost confidence in the developer. LStar was then removed from the project in 2019 after the SRA found the company had breached its master developer contract and Boston lender Washington Capital Management foreclosed on 115 acres of residential development land that the SRA had transferred to LStar as part of the development process.

“When you think of the magnitude of what’s going on here and the precarious position the thousands of residents have bee placed in here…it’s essentially like a small town failing,” Galvin said during the hearing. When [LStar] failed, it’s created extensive delays and a lack of confidence in this government entity.”

The South Weymouth site, now called “Union Point,” has had a new master developer since 2019: Brookfield Properties. The company began negotiations with the SRA in early August over how to proceed, and will pay the authority $1 million to fund its operations while details like rezoning are worked out. The company has said the site must be rezoned for significantly more residential development to be commercially viable.

Attempts to reach LStar for comment were unsuccessful. Southfield Redevelopment Authority Land Use Administrator Jim Young declined to comment.