Westborough Village, a planned 350-home development in the town of Westborough, will incorporate smart-growth principles including being situated near a local communter rail station.
In a move that will infuse the heart of the MetroWest region with hundreds of moderately priced homes, Westborough planners have approved a transit-oriented development that has been hailed by smart-growth advocates.
Known as Westborough Village, the project will include 350 homes that will be built at a former gravel pit along Gleason Street within a quarter-mile of the town’s commuter rail station. The pedestrian-friendly development will be constructed on 35 acres in the town’s transit-oriented village, which was established through a special bylaw that Westborough approved more than a year ago.
Supporters of the project say innovative zoning and planning have helped to initiate one of the first transit-oriented developments in the Bay State that involves the transfer of development rights and combines a mix of uses, affordable housing and smart-growth principles.
“This is an exciting opportunity for the town, and the state should seize upon this to show how a town can utilize a number of planning tools to accomplish the state’s objective of smart growth,” said Robert C. Buckley, an attorney with Riemer & Braunstein in Boston who is representing the developers.
The development team, Michael Guiliano and Francis Zarette of Westborough Village LLC, say they plan to create a community that will appeal to a variety of homebuyers – from young single professionals to older empty nesters.
“It’s really going to have a cross section of prices and design and size of units to really capture every market,” said Zarette, an engineer who helped formulate the site plan.
The homes will be clustered around four or five different green spaces, including brick courtyards and small parks, explained Zarette. The properties will include garages and parking spaces that will not be seen from the front of the residences.
“The front doors of these houses all benefit by these open spaces,” said Guiliano, who noted that the development will de-emphasize the use of automobiles.
The community will feature a mix of architectural forms – including larger homes with attached garages, townhouses and small carriage-style units that sit on top of garages – with the residences ranging in size from 950 square feet to more than 2,000 square feet, explained Guiliano.
Twenty percent of the homes will be affordable to those earning less than 80 percent of the area median income. Zarette estimated that the homes will range from the mid-$200,000s to the high $400,000s.
Guiliano said the developers’ goal is to build moderately priced housing, which is difficult to find in Westborough – a town where single-family home lots can cost as much as $300,000 to $350,000.
‘A Real Partnership’
Due to its strong school system and convenient location near the intersection of Route 9, the Massachusetts Turnpike and Interstate 495, Westborough has become a popular destination for families. The town also has attracted the attention of developers over the last 10 years – all of which has helped to push home prices up.
The median price for a single-family home in the town reached $455,900 last year, according to The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman. Meanwhile, the average price of a newly built single-family home exceeds $750,000, according to market research done by Westborough Village’s developers.
Zarette and Guiliano began formulating a design and plan for the mixed-use community when Westborough planners began considering a bylaw that would establish a transit-oriented village surrounding the town’s commuter rail station. The station is so heavily used by commuters that the parking lot has been expanded at least three times.
Town planners, facing a slew of development proposals over the last several years, envisioned creating a district that would encourage the development of a New England-style village near the train station and that would also help reduce traffic along local streets.
Such transit-oriented developments have gained popularity as the Romney administration – particularly under the leadership of former Office of Commonwealth Development Secretary Douglas Foy – has pushed residential development near existing town centers and train stations or mass transit stops as part of an overall smart-growth agenda.
Several developments embracing the concept have emerged recently, including Arborpoint at Woodland Station, a 180-unit luxury apartment community near the Woodland Station MBTA stop in Newton that is being developed by National Development of Newton.
National Development is also behind Station Landing, a high-end mixed-use project being built in Medford that has direct access to the Wellington Station stop on the MBTA’s Orange Line.
And just last year, the state selected Trinity Financial and Hines Raymond LLC to develop a mix of about 400 condominiums, a supermarket and 51,750 square feet of retail space on two parcels near Boston’s North Station in an area known as Bulfinch Triangle.
In Westborough, a bylaw was approved in the fall of 2004 that established a transit-oriented village – a district where developers can build 10 residential units per acre as long as 20 percent are affordable.
Developers building within the district can get a density bonus of as many as 14 units per acre if they agree to transfer development rights from one or more parcels of land in town to the district.
In the case of Westborough Village, the development team will purchase nearly 24 acres on West Main Street abutting Suasco Pond and the town’s trail system, which it plans to donate to the town to use for open space or recreational purposes. In exchange for donating the land, Zarette and Guiliano will be able to transfer their development rights to the 35 acres adjacent to the train station.
Zarette and Guiliano said the town had been eyeing the donated property for a number of years.
“This was the premier piece of land that the town was trying to buy for several years,” said Zarette, who completed a 100-home active-adult community called Walker Meadow in Westborough about four years ago. “This was their No. 1 choice in town based on location and its attributes.”
Zarette and Guiliano approached the property owner about buying the property and are expected to complete the purchase in a few months. Under the town’s transit-oriented village zoning bylaw, developers swapping land can build as many as 14 units per acre in the transit-oriented district, but Zarette and Guiliano were granted a nine-unit per acre density bonus based on the parcel they were donating to the town.
Westborough Village, which will feature bicycle paths and walking trails, also will include about 10,000 square feet of retail and office space.
The development will be built in four phases, with site work expected to begin sometime in the late summer or early fall, according to Guiliano.
The project was recognized by the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission last year as a good example of smart-growth development. The town and project developers also were recognized by state legislators for their innovative planning and design.
“It’s quite an exciting project. This was a real partnership with the town,” said Guiliano.
Boston-based Linea 5 Inc. designed the project and Waterman Design Assoc. of Westborough was the engineer that worked on the site plan.
