Harvard voters, along with those of Ayer and Shirley, will soon have a chance to weigh in on four zoning changes at Devens that MassDevelopment has been promoting for more than a year.
Last week the town administrators of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley agreed to hold a Super Town Meeting on June 8 to decide their fate. In a Super Town Meeting, each town that abuts Devens convenes a Town Meeting at the same date and time. For an article to pass, a majority of attendees at each meeting must approve it. If one town votes it down, the measure fails.
Now it’s up to the selectmen of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley to call their respective meetings and issue the warrant.
Meantime, MassDevelopment has made changes to two of its proposed articles following the forums it held during the fall and winter in each town and at Devens.
Affordable units
Responding to concerns voiced by Shirley officials, the agency has modified Article 1 to require no less than 25 percent of the senior housing units built in the Shirley Village Growth District be deed-restricted “so that they are affordable to households earning no more than 80 percent of the area median income” and for rental units that “at least 20 percent be deed-restricted for households earning no more than 50 percent of area median income.”
Ayer and Harvard officials have been worried that the new Shirley health-care district called for in Article 2 might compete with existing facilities in the two towns, specifically the Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer and the medical offices along Ayer Road in Harvard. MassDevelopment has responded by stating that hospitals, immediate-care facilities, and clinics “are not allowed’ in the new district. Moreover, said MassDevelopment’s Director of Land Entitlements Ed Starzec, outright competition with area towns is prohibited by a MassDevelopment policy.
Competing for business
For MassDevelopment, the change of most urgent concern to MassDevelopment is Article 4, which asks to rezone a 30-acre plot south of Grant Road for “Innovation Technology Business,” which can include “office, light industrial, industrial, research and development, academic/institutional/civic, and incubator type uses.” Though unstated in its literature, MassDevelopment has a very specific purpose in mind: to assemble a 50-acre tract with which to lure a “major biopharmaceutical company” to Devens. MassDevelopment is competing for the business with other sites in the state and the country and needs an answer soon to keep its bid alive.
So far, Harvard’s selectmen have not recommended for or against passage of any of the articles. MassDevelopment has scheduled a final public hearing for its proposals for April 30 at Devens.
