Part 2: Grant Road and disposition
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part interview with MassDevelopment CEO Marty Jones and members of her Devens team. The interview took place May 29 in the offices of MassDevelopment at Devens. Also present were Thatcher Kezer, Devens senior vice president; Ed Starzec, Devens land entitlement director; and Mark Sternman, MassDevelopment vice president of communications.
The interview covered a range of topics, from the agency’s push to create a “sustainable” economic engine in central Massachusetts to the zoning changes voted on earlier this week by the Town Meetings of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley.
In this week’s installment, Jones and her team discuss the lack of low-income housing on Grant Road, disposition, and the 2024 Olympics.
Harvard Press: Assuming that the deal being negotiated between the developers of Grant Road and Harvard’s Municipal Affordable House Trust is signed by the two parties and approved by the state, does MassDevelopment have any objections?
Marty Jones: No.
Ed Starzec: We’ve made it clear from the beginning that we’d be amenable to that.
Press: Are you putting anything on the table to help make it happen?
Starzec: We’ve put a lot of money into getting the site ready. The deal that we had [with the developer] before Harvard entered into the discussions was that all the units would be [affordable to anyone earning] 90 percent AMI (area median income). That’s 10 percent below the market rate for homes in the area. The … price that we’re receiving for [the sale of] that land reflects the developer’s discount. We got hit on that.
Press: So is the addition of low-income units to Grant Road a problem for MassDevelopment?
Jones: No, most of the [proposed affordable] units are in the apartment development, so they won’t really affect the [assessed value of the property]. From our perspective, if Harvard is willing to contribute their funds to get increased affordability … then that’s great.”
Press: Why did the Devens Enterprise Commission decide to depart from the definition of affordability that the state applies to towns?
Jones: The Devens requirements are for a combination of affordable and moderate-income housing, which is unusual. Other communities don’t have a requirement to provide moderate-income housing; We do in Devens, and that was built into the plan back in 1993 [Editor’s note: The reuse plan was approved in 1994]. And that is why we made sure that this development met that requirement.
Starzec: We have lots [17 percent] of low-income housing at Devens, and all of our affordable housing is owned [not rented]. Looking at Devens holistically, not just through the lens of [the Grant Road project], and [seeing] that [we are] getting to the end of our housing cap, [it was logical to ask] what goals we have not achieved from the reuse plan. It was clear that moderate-income housing was not represented.
Press: One of the rumors in town is that MassDevelopment really wants to get done and out of Devens, perhaps as early as 2019.
Jones: We still have a lot of developable sites, and the Commonwealth charged us with building out all of Devens. If someone came in tomorrow and was going to develop all of it, then we’d be thinking about what happens next, but I don’t really think that’s going to happen. I don’t think our projections show that we’re going to be sold out in the next five years, and the [real estate] market can go up and down. We can’t just walk away. I hope people understand that now. The Commonwealth said to MassDevelopment, redevelop Devens and submit to us and the Legislature by the year 2033 a plan for what should happen next.
Press: How will you know when you’re done?
Jones: From our perspective, about 75 percent of the infrastructure is in.
Starzec: At the completion of Jackson Road, about 80 percent. It’s hard to measure our progress at Devens because there are so many different ways to do it.
Jones: In terms of development sites … you have to first clean it up. … At the end of this fiscal year … we’ll have just one large piece of land, … Salerno Circle, which still [requires] some environmental cleanup, and the [Devens] landfill is a … different piece. … [Cleanup is] a big piece of getting ready for development. And the other piece is making sure the roads and utilities are available to the site. So when I talk about infrastructure being done, [I’m really talking about] those roads and infrastructure [as well as] sites … that are remediated and ready for development. We’ve made huge progress, [but] we still have lots of land available for sale, so we still have a long way to go.
Starzec: We differentiate between parcels we’re currently marketing and parcels that are not yet ready. [The Devens website] shows only those [parcels] we’re ready to sell.
Jones: One way to think about [the question of knowing when we’re done] is [in terms of] land. We took ownership of this land when the Army left. I suppose at some point our goal is to not own any of it … and to have sold it off to homeowners or to businesses or to other people. The majority of the land we transfer here is by sale, not by lease. And so at some point, we would no longer be a landowner or a developer; we would just be the operator of the town [of Devens].
Kezer: … the community.
Press: What about job numbers? Are those important?
Jones: From my perspective, just to play out that one, if a big employer came in tomorrow and added a lot of jobs, and we still had two or three hundred acres of land to sell, I wouldn’t say, “OK, we’re done now.” The job metric is important, and we’re pushing toward that, but from my perspective, and I think the agency’s perspective, it’s really the building out of Devens [that’s important], and in the process of building it out, adding jobs, … replacing what was lost.
Kezer: It’s my understanding that the number of jobs lost by the base closing have been replaced.
Jones: From my perspective, I feel like we still have a significant amount of development to do, and I’m interested in our staff focusing on the amount of development we have to do and working on making that happen. And because I don’t see a disposition happening in the short term, I don’t really see the need to spend a lot of our staff time theorizing about it. If people in the communities come to us and want to discuss specific things, we’re certainly happy to discuss [them].
Press: When you think about the buildout of Devens, do you think of it in terms of how it fits in with the other three towns in the area? Does it make sense to think of whether what’s going on in the commercial district of Harvard is a complement in some way to what you’re trying to do? And vice versa?
Jones: Well, again, we’re stuck with [the reuse plan]. And [the plan] was created by working with the towns back in 1993. What’s happening now with Shirley Village Growth District is the result of the town coming to us and saying, this is something we’d like to see that would complement what we’re doing in our town. If Harvard had something that they wanted to come and talk to us about, that would complement something that was going on in their town, then we could have a similar process and think about making a change to [the reuse plan]. I don’t know how long the Shirley conversations have been going on.
Starzec: Years.
Press: So you see it as a responsibility of the towns to come to you?
Jones: Because it’s the towns that came up with this. It was a collaborative, regional approach to what Devens should be.
Press: When you focus on making Devens sustainable, doesn’t that imply that you’re thinking of it as a self-contained town down the road?
Jones: We’re thinking about making sure there’s not a deficit [at Devens]. We’re thinking about it as a project. We have to make sure the [revenue and operational expenses] match up. Our mission at MassDevelopment is not to just sink our money into … deals; it’s to invest money but to get it back. I think about Devens the same way. It needs to be a break-even operation.
Press:So there’s no vision at the state level about how this should turn out?
Jones: No. Speaking from MassDevelopment’s perspective, [the vision is] “build it out.”
Press:But in doing that, don’t you have to think of Devens as a village?
Starzec: The Army developed it that way, with a river on one side and train tracks on the other. It is a separate geography—the way it’s constructed now. The old roads between Devens and the towns have been cut off.
Press:To a town like Harvard, the unwinding of Devens seems like this huge task. How would it ever get sorted out? And shouldn’t we be talking about it now, 20 years ahead of time?
Jones: Theoretically you could say that, but you also don’t know 20 years from now what the build-out will look like or what the numbers might look like. I guess the question from Harvard’s perspective would be, is it an economics conversation or is it how does Devens fit in with the mix of uses that are in Harvard now, and do [Harvard residents] want that or not. In my mind, it’s almost two separate conversations. And I’ve heard it expressed from some people in Harvard that they’re not interested in having their Devens land back because it would change the character of Harvard. That’s a different conversation totally than … whether the economics are positive or negative.
Press:Devens residents are citizens of Harvard, but they pay taxes to MassDevelopment and they don’t have an elected town government. Residents are in an advisory capacity for their services, but they come to Harvard and can attend our town meetings and vote on financial matters that affect the town. Is there any thinking that maybe that should be changed?
Starzec: That came up at some JBOS [Joint Boards of Selectmen] meetings last year. And I think we thought it was a worthy topic for … the JBOS to explore with the legislative delegation because that’s not really something MassDevelopment can get involved with. It’s a bigger issue than MassDevelopment.
Kezer: I’m here to serve the needs of this community. There are hundreds of millions of dollars of investment at Devens, and we’re here to ensure [that the residents and businesses] are getting the services they need … [that their] streets are plowed, and they’re safe, they have schools, they have fire protection—all those typical services of a municipality. So when I work with residents, I’m keeping them as happy as I can, whether they elected me or not.
