Scott Van Voorhis
Milford’s town fathers were more than OK with the prospect of thousands of Las Vegas slot machines coming to town a few years ago.
In fact, they were positively drooling over the millions of dollars in promised tax payments, only to see their casino dreams go up in smoke after an agreement with Foxwoods was shot down by Milford voters.
But a proposal to build apartments at the old casino site, including badly needed affordable units? Well, no dice to that!
Steven Zieff, a respected local developer who has built well-regarded rental projects in Waltham, Hopkinton and Salem, now wants to put 300 apartments – 25 percent of which will be affordable – on a small portion of the 110-acre site on which Foxwoods once hoped to build a $1 billion casino.
Unfortunately for Zieff, everyone from Milford’s police and fire chiefs to the planning director now seems determined vet his apartment proposal with the same kind of vigor with which they shook down Foxwoods for millions.
Zieff is now sorting through more than a dozen letters from various town department heads and consultants.
“If Milford was willing to sell its soul for a casino at that site and all the negative effects of that casino, please explain to me what’s so bad about me coming in with a modest, multifamily project,” Zieff said.
There’s also this beauty of a comment from an anonymous resident, forwarded to Zieff as part of the voluminous package of letters from various town officials: “Milford on verge of allowing hundreds of low income housing on former casino site. If you want Milford to experience similar problems like Lawrence – crimes, drugs, etc., – than (sic) you should back this project.”
No matter that the rents at the proposed Robsham Village will range from just under $1,100 for an “affordable” studio to $3,000 for a market-rate three-bedroom – these are hardly Section 8 rentals we are talking about.
Zieff is now hoping to have a full proposal ready by fall. He’s just received a key green light from state housing officials to push ahead with his apartments under the state’s Chapter 40B affordable housing law, which essentially gives him the ability to cut through obstructionist local approvals and zoning rules, provided he commits to renting out a quarter of their apartments at below-market rates.
Addressing Residents’ ‘Concerns’
But for the moment, Zieff is faced with addressing a myriad of “concerns” Milford officials have raised about his apartment plans in what he has aptly described as nothing short of a “pile-on.”
My favorite is the insistence of the town’s police chief that a single officer won’t be sufficient to go on calls to the new apartments given the size of the project, which features a pair of stylishly modern buildings.
No, officers will only be able to venture in pairs into this Fort Apache-style urban jungle. After all, who knows what risks lurk in some of those $3,000-a-month apartments, filled with ornery empty-nesters and troublemaking gray-hairs.
So many apartment units – 300 is just an unbelievable amount – would “inevitably result in an increased need for police services,” the chief noted in his comment letter, citing everything from spats between neighbors to traffic problems.
“Cluster housing in which people are in close proximity to one another, as contrasted with single-family housing within a subdivision, inevitably results in an increased need for police services, resulting from neighbor disputes, complaints of noise, renters responsibilities, enforcement of the apartment management rules and regulations, parking disputes, traffic issues” and so forth, he wrote.
It sounds like someone should clue in Milford’s chief to the fact that the apartment management company will be handling things like “renters responsibilities” and “enforcement of apartment management rules,” not his patrol officers.
Of course, Milford school officials aren’t happy either, but are they ever? After all, there are just so many rapacious developers out there scheming to cram more children into the classrooms of unsuspecting suburban towns.
Then there’s the traffic – just think how much traffic two new apartment buildings will bring to Milford. OMG – clearly we are talking about gridlock on Route 16 and maybe all the way to I-495 as well.
I could go on for several more paragraphs relating the massive impacts Milford officials are claiming Zieff’s proposed apartments will trigger, but you get the point.
Let’s get real.
The casino that Milford officials struck a big money deal for would have had not just a huge impact on the bedroom community of nearly 28,000 just off 495, but on the Metrowest area as a whole.
Whatever traffic 300 apartments will generate, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the avalanche of traffic a Foxwoods-style casino would have generated, which would have required a new exit off of 495.
The casino would have had 4,000 slot machines, 175 table games, five restaurants, a ballroom and two parking garages – and that was just the first phase, with Foxwoods having drawn up plans for another 1,200 slots and an additional hotel in a later phase.
And Zieff’s proposed apartments would have far less of an impact than a business park, the current pet idea being pushed by Milford officials for the former casino site. That could mean as much as 2.5 million square feet of new development – provided there is any developer actually interested in doing such a project. A nearby site has been marketed for commercial use for years, to no avail.
What About The Children?
And what of all the school kids that Zieff’s new apartments will produce? Suburban apartments generally don’t draw a lot new families – typically it’s a mix of young professionals and empty-nesters, he notes.
Of course, this kind of conservation supposes children are some sort of societal or public health menace whose numbers have to be tightly controlled –a rather sad state of affairs for Massachusetts, given that we created the first public schools in the nation.
Projects Zieff helped develop, like The Village at Vinnin Square in Salem and Cronin’s Landing, have more apartments but still wound up with only a half dozen or so schoolchildren.
Still, Zieff also recognizes the fact that some of the units will be affordable – as in rented out at somewhat less than market rates – is also probably fueling some of the opposition.
Say “affordable housing,” and the NIMBY crowd starts blathering nonsense about welfare moms and ghetto-style housing projects – and sadly, some are probably stupid enough to believe their own nonsense.
Of course, at nearly $1,100 for an affordable studio, or over $1,500 for an affordable three-bedroom, we are still talking some decent rents.
“There is a certain level of xenophobia when you are proposing bringing people in who we don’t recognize as being part of ‘our crowd,’” Zieff said. “We did a 40B in Weston. The people who got the affordable units there are just like you and me.”
“They may not have the economic wherewithal that someone who wants a market rate unit has, but it’s not like we are giving them away,” he said.
