A plan to address the town’s need for senior housing and an expanded senior center was presented to the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust (MAHT) by selectmen liaison Leo Blair at its meeting on Monday night.
The plan includes building senior housing on the land adjacent to Hildreth House, leaving Hildreth House itself in its existing form, and adding a new structure to house additional senior center facilities.
The meeting was heavily attended by Council on Aging (COA) board and Hildreth House Improvement Committee members, who had heard that Blair would be unveiling a plan regarding the Hildreth House at the meeting. After hearing the outline of the plan, trust members all agreed that the proposal has merit, and they voted unanimously to direct Blair to discuss the concept with the Board of Selectmen and convey to the board the MAHT’s recommendation.
Step one: Giving up Hildreth land
The proposal’s first step involves the town giving up the Hildreth land to a developer. The developer would then build some number of units on that land, possibly between 30 and 40, and also a new structure to house senior center facilities not currently available at Hildreth House, such as a large dining room and office space for additional staff. That building would be deeded back to the town upon completion.
By giving the land up to a developer, the town would avoid regulations imposed by the state on municipal buildings, such as prevailing wage requirements, resulting in substantially lower construction cost for the additional senior center building. Blair estimated that a new building could be built for about $1.5 million.
None of these ideas is new, as Blair said at the start of the meeting. The town took the Hildreth House and the 5.66 acres of land surrounding it by eminent domain in 1979, at a cost of $147,500. At that time, town officials were mostly interested in acquiring the land for future municipal expansion.
A question of sewer capacity
In 2008, the Hildreth House Development Task Force did a feasibility study on building 60 housing units on the Hildreth land and adding a 3,000-square-foot addition to the Hildreth House. That plan also included the developer’s contributing to the cost of the addition. According to MAHT Chairman Bruce Nickerson, who was on the task force, the project never went anywhere because there was no sewer. The Hildreth House is currently in the process of connecting to town sewer, opening up the opportunity for additional housing on the property.
Whether the town sewer would have sufficient capacity for this plan is still a question. Blair said that the town center is currently about 50 percent connected, but some of those connections are big users, such as the schools. He added that Sewer Commission member Rick Maiore is in the process of analyzing the usage curve, but it was Blair’s opinion that there would be sewer capacity to handle the additional housing.
Blair added that there were two more things that a developer might pay for. One is an impact fee for future sewer needs that would pay for a possible future expansion to the sewer facility. The other is a betterment for water. “The town needs another well,” said Blair. “We need to do that at some point, and that’s going to cost money. We have plenty of water right now, but we only have one well.”
No cost to taxpayer—maybe
An additional merit of this plan is that the design and planning could all be done by the MAHT, in conjunction with the COA, the selectmen, and other town boards and committees. It wouldn’t require money from the taxpayers, Blair asserted, thus avoiding the lengthy iterative Town Meeting process which has plagued the Town Hall renovation. “What we’d ask the town to do is give up the land to a developer,” said Blair. “But then there would be 30-odd units generating tax revenue. So for taxpayers, you have land that’s idle at the moment, transformed into land that’s serving a demonstrated community need and generating tax revenue.” Blair added that the town would also get a new additional senior center facility, as well as sewer and water betterments. “This would cost the taxpayer nothing,” he said.
Nickerson was not so sure that it would cost the taxpayer “nothing,” but, he said, “even if it does cost the town something up front, the extra tax revenue we’d receive would far more than cover the debt service on that money. I think it’s almost impossible for it to not be a financial benefit to the town over the long run.”
Nickerson went on to say, “It interests us not only because it fills some of the need for senior housing, but it also ties into the senior center. I would even foresee putting together a sidewalk that would come all the way down to the center of town that could be used by electric vehicles for those seniors that couldn’t make the climb. I was big on this idea way back when, but we killed it because we couldn’t see a way around the sewer thing.”
Comments few, but favorable
When Nickerson opened the floor to comments from the nine meeting guests, not on behalf of any committee or board, but as individuals, COA members Connie Larrabee and Sue Guswa were the only two to speak. Larrabee said that she was “happy to hear the plan, and excited about the possibility that we might be able to make something happen.” Guswa noted that at the all-boards meeting held last week, one of the main messages was to collaborate, work together, and solve problems. “I can’t think of a better first step,” said Guswa.
Next step
As directed by the MAHT, Blair will present the idea to the Board of Selectmen at their July 8 meeting and report back to the trust shortly thereafter.
