MassDevelopment, the agency that oversees real estate sales at Devens, was back before the Select Board last month to advise members it will soon ask for a Super Town Meeting to approve the development of Vicksburg Square for multifamily residential and senior housing.
At the board’s Oct. 16 meeting, Ed Starzec, MassDevelopment’s director of land planning and permitting, told members his agency was ready to hold hearings and would ask Harvard, Shirley, and Ayer—the three towns that must approve any zoning changes at Devens—for a May 2019 Super Town Meeting. The 20-acre Vicksburg Square district is currently zoned for “innovative technology,” which prohibits residential development. The changes MassDevelopment proposes would add residential development as an approved use.
A Super Town Meeting occurs when the three towns hold simultaneous town meetings to vote on the same warrant. No amendments are permitted and if any town rejects it, the warrant fails.
At a previous appearance before the Select Board in May 2017, Starzec and Richard Henderson, executive vice president, told members that efforts to attract commercial development to the complex had failed and that redeveloping the historical cluster of four-story brick buildings as multifamily units was the agency’s “best shot” at preserving them. Such a project would provide badly needed housing for younger employees among the 5,000 who, according to the 2017 Devens Annual Report, work at the former Army base, Starzec and Henderson said. The project would add units to the affordable housing inventories of Ayer and Harvard. An influx of new residents would also contribute to Ayer’s plan to revitalize its West Main Street retail district, the west end of which abuts Devens. Such a zoning change would require raising the Devens 282-unit cap on residential housing by as many as 300 additional units, 25 percent of which would be designated affordable.
The exact wording of the bylaw the towns will be asked to approve is a work in progress. When he appeared before the Select Board last month, Starzec said MassDevelopment wanted to hear from the residents of all three towns before drafting the final document. A Harvard public hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 27, at 7 p.m. in upper Town Hall, to be followed by a second hearing in Ayer the following night.
See MassDevelopment’s website, www.massdevelopment.com/vicksburg, for further information.
