And agrees to deal in good faith
The Shaker Hills Ad Hoc Committee, a subcommittee of the selectmen, met last week to continue to plot its course of action in regard to the 140-home development proposed under Chapter 40B for the 163-acre Shaker Hills golf course.
According to the Board of Selectmen, the ad hoc committee’s primary mission is to make sure the project is in keeping with the goals and tenets of Chapter 40B, the Harvard Affordable Housing Plan, and the Harvard Master Plan. The committee is also to assess the “potential impact the development will have on the town, and particularly Shaker Village, and try to minimize those impacts by reducing the overall size and scope of the project.”
Members of the committee are Meg Bagdonas, Mark Mikitarian, Ron Ricci, Hugh Silk, and Keith Cheveralls, as well as town board representatives David Hopper (Housing Partnership), Lucy Wallace (Board of Selectmen), Kara Minar (Planning Board), and Jonathan Feist (Historical Commission).
Cheveralls was concerned with strategy as he and other members reviewed a list of concerns and tried to decide whether to prune items from the list. “Do we lose a negotiating edge if we lay out all our concerns at the outset?” asked Cheveralls.
Mikitarian thought it best to ask all the questions, but in an open-ended way. “The answers we get, or don’t get, will tell us all we need to know,” he remarked, adding that the committee needed to talk to the developer and get permission to walk the site before entering into any negotiation.
Silk also advised against gamesmanship and emphasized the requirement for good-faith negotiation on both sides.
Wallace noted that demonstration of good faith on both sides would figure into MassHousing’s deliberations in the event that a project winds up in its appeals process.
Feist thought the group’s charge to minimize impact on historic Shaker Village legitimized a blunt question. “How much money would it take to make this development go away?” he inquired.
Wallace suggested that the question was valid, but was not for the committee. Other groups, such as the national Trust for Public Land and the Harvard Conservation Trust, might take up the question, she speculated.
The development proposed for the golf course is called “Harvard Village” and is proposed under the state’s affordable-housing law, Chapter 40B, by developer Woodland Corporation. The principal of Woodland is Norman Kenney, owner of the Shaker Hills golf course. Woodland is represented by attorney Louis Levine, and its site engineer is Northeast Site Development LLC, whose members are, according to the MassHousing application, Gloria, Michael, and Joseph Levine. Woodland submitted its application to MassHousing last fall. After analyzing the application, MassHousing will either approve or deny, in a letter to the developer, the eligibility of the site for a 40B development.
The site-eligibility letter is an important step in the 40B process, because an approval letter would let the developer pursue funding for the project. According to Wallace, the Housing Partnership and the selectmen sent objections to MassHousing about the project, including “too many homes,” lack of diversity, and inaccurate information being provided about the property’s wetlands and open space.
At meeting’s end, members agreed to wait for the state’s site-eligibility letter to arrive from the Department of Housing and Community Development before inviting the developer’s attorney to a question-and-answer session.
