Devens is full of positive energy, but there’s negative energy as well, Tracy Clark, the elected chair of the Devens Committee, told members of the MassDevelopment Board of Directors last week.
“People are very pleased with the progressive business development that is ongoing at Devens,” he said, citing the established presence of Bristol-Myers Squibb, the growing campus of Commonwealth Fusion, and new biotech facilities being built along Jackson Road. “It’s exciting and it provides a nice energy for the community to see this sort of activity going on.”
But residents also had concerns, Clark said. The ratio of businesses to residents is “flipped from the norm” when the footprint of the business community is compared to the footprint of the much smaller residential community. “There’s some concern amongst the residents of being a flea on the dog that doesn’t really have much say in how things are going on.”
The occasion was the traditional fall meeting of the MassDevelopment Board of Directors held once a year at Devens. Present at the Thursday, Oct. 12, gathering were the board’s chair, Yvonne Hao, secretary of the Executive Office of Economic Development, accompanied by four of its members. Also attending were Undersecretary of Economic Foundations Ashley Stolba, whose portfolio includes MassDevelopment; Dan Rivera, MassDevelopment CEO; and Meg Delorier, acting executive vice president for Devens
The meeting at 33 Andrews Parkway was a standing-room-only crowd, packed with MassDevelopment employees, residents, and interested observers. Because MassDevelopment is responsible for providing municipal governance and services to both residents and businesses at Devens, the board functions as the community’s de facto—but unelected—select board. The elected Devens Committee is an advisory committee that meets monthly with MassDevelopment representatives and employees to discuss resident concerns and plan community activities. But unlike a select board or city council, the committee has no decision-making authority.
Each year, the MassDevelopment board sets aside an hour from 11 a.m. to noon for community feedback, but this year’s session went well beyond that. Clark was one of four community leaders who addressed the board. He was joined by Mike Alves, vice chair of the Devens Committee, Maureen Babcock, chair of the elected Devens Education Advisory Committee, and John Katter, co-founder of the recently formed Devens Connect, a community group dedicated to educating residents about the issues surrounding the future disposition of Devens.
All four praised the quality of the municipal services that MassDevelopment provides, from maintenance and landscaping to snow plowing, police and fire protection, and the educational opportunities available to their children. Clark said community events such as the summer Celebration of Service and more recent “work and play” food truck events enlivened the community, and residents appreciated the opportunity to mingle with one another as well as workers and visitors from neighboring towns.
Concern about ‘negative energy’ of Vicksburg Square
But there were issues, he said. Residents were concerned by the Legislature’s vote in 2022 to raise the commercial development cap at Devens well beyond the number that Harvard, Shirley, and Ayer had agreed to. He said the more recent effort by state Sen. John Cronin to eliminate the Devens housing cap and to rezone Vicksburg Square for residential development without consulting either the residents or the towns was “a little scary,” reminding residents how little control they have over their fate.
A continuing concern, he said, was the fate of Vicksburg Square, the vacant and deteriorating cluster of buildings adjacent to Rogers Field that formerly housed Fort Devens soldiers and officers. “It’s an important landmark,” Clark said. “And [the buildings] are decaying … they’re becoming more and more dilapidated looking.” It’s not only an eyesore, he said, “but it’s also a negative energy … that’s just sucking the fun out of [the] place.” Residents were frustrated, he said, by MassDevelopment’s abandonment in 2020 of plans to rezone the area for housing.
MassDevelopment’s absence from ongoing discussions about future governance at the Devens Jurisdiction Framework Committee was another ongoing concern, he said. It was the opinion of the Devens Committee and residents he’d spoken with that MassDevelopment needed to take an active role in those discussions. The committee would like to see MassDevelopment involved in helping that process along, he said.
Clark’s thoughts were echoed by Alves, who spoke passionately of the need for resident involvement in decisions that affect the community. He cited as an example the appropriation of the Bob Eisengrein Community Center by the state last November to temporarily provide food and shelter to Massachusetts residents and migrants in need of emergency housing. He asked why residents weren’t consulted. “Mass Development could have come to the community and said, ‘Hey, we want to do this. Can you? Do you have any feedback on it?’” Alves added: “All the residents are for it, you attracted people that care about people. We just don’t want to find out secondhand. We want to be part of it.”
At Emerson Green, ‘unacceptable’ maintenance problems
Alves was also outspoken about the need to rehabilitate Vicksburg Square and ended with a blistering critique of the performance of the Emerson Green Homeowners Association, which is currently managed by the developer, NOW Communities, and to which residents pay a monthly fee. His was a litany of complaints, including failure to honor homeowners’ warranties and timely grounds maintenance, that Secretary Hao promised to investigate. “I really appreciate you sharing all this information,” she said. “I’ve only been in the job for nine months. These are really concerning issues; they’re totally unacceptable.”
The news of the day was the board’s vote to approve construction of a new public safety building on Barnum Road (see story on page 11). The polite but firm outspokenness of residents, however, seemed a departure from previous meetings, a sign perhaps of a growing sense of community among those living there. John Katter, a co-founder of Devens Connect, said his organization has signed up 36% of households at Devens and is planning a community symposium for November. The purpose, he said, was not to tell residents what to think, but “what they need to think about.”
“There are no bigger investors in Devens from a personal standpoint than the residents,” said Katter. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars every resident here has spent to live here. We’ve raised families here, and we are in complete respect of the industries that have located here as well. They’ve invested their future here. And but really, there is no greater stakeholder on Devens than the residents that are in this room. They put their life here, they put their flag here.”
MassDevelopment will not join stakeholder planning until 2030
CEO Rivera in his remarks throughout the morning encouraged residents to contact him and EVP Delorier directly with issues of concern. “We hope you feel that there’s every opportunity to get information to us,” he said. But he confirmed again that MassDevelopment will join Devens stakeholders in planning the future of Devens only in 2030—not before. He said the agency’s priority remains the operation and development of Devens, as stipulated by Massachusetts Chapter 498 and the Devens reuse plan.
A day earlier, Oct. 11, at a quarterly meeting of the Devens Jurisdiction Framework Committee, Co-chair Janice Livingston of Ayer told her colleagues that she had once again politely invited Delorier or a representative of MassDevelopment to attend their meeting, but that once again Delorier had “politely declined.” “I will continue to try,” Livingston said.
