Objections emerge as Devens Committee prepared to debate rezoning Vicksburg Square for housing

Days before a key Devens committee was scheduled to debate its merits, a plan for jumpstarting the redevelopment of Vicksburg Square for housing faced growing skepticism, even outright opposition.

The plan, scheduled for review at the Wednesday, Dec. 13, meeting of the Devens Jurisdictional Framework Committee in Ayer Town Hall, proposed to rezone the site of the former Army barracks for residential development and to allow up to 400 units of housing there. (See sidebar below.)

More controversially, the plan affirmed that although the final disposition of Devens was in the hands of the Legislature, the three towns on whose historical land the economic development zone is located had agreed that any housing constructed at Vicksburg Square should become part of the town of Ayer.

In addition to permitting a dramatic increase in housing units, the propoal defined the kinds of housing that could be built, either by rehabbing the decaying buildings at Vicksburg Square or starting from scratch. The lack of such specificity had doomed past efforts, proponents claimed. The proposal specified the following configurations:

• 25% of units as rental housing

• 25% of units as elderly and special needs rental housing

• 50% of units for sale to families and individuals.

Within each of these configurations, exactly 25% of the units would be defined as affordable, except that the elderly and special needs housing may exceed 25% affordable.

Objections to the proposal, which was drafted by Devens framework committee Co-Chair Victor Normand and Ayer Town Manager Robert Pontbriand, began to surface last week as its details circulated among officials and residents, first at the virtual Monday, Dec. 4, meeting of the Harvard-Devens Jurisdiction Committee and later at the in-person Wednesday, Dec. 6, meeting of the Devens Committee at 33 Andrews Parkway in Devens. (For a lexicon of Devens committees, see below.)

Some members of Harvard’s jurisdiction committee, including Paul Green, worried that dealing with Vicksburg Square was a distraction, that the Devens framework committee was chartered to explore options for its future governance, not the building of housing. “If we’re going to be working on Vicksburg Square, then we’re not working on final disposition,” he said “I would just as soon get going on [disposition] and solve it all.”

The Devens Committee meeting later that week was attended by a dozen residents as well as interim Devens Executive Vice President Meg Delorier and state Sen. John Cronin, who represents Shirley. Sen. Jamie Eldridge and Rep. Dan Sena, the other two members of the state delegation that represents Devens, were unable to attend.

Separating Vicksburg from Devens feels ‘exclusionary,’ premature

Auman Street resident Marissa Rivera said she was disturbed by the notion that Vicksburg Square had to be separated from the rest of the community before its rezoning could be discussed. A development of 400 units would be unique in scale for the region, she said. Separating it from the diverse and close-knit existing residential community felt “exclusionary,” “not inclusive,” she said. Others said that any carve-out of land, no matter how provisional, was premature and would limit future options.

Walnut Street resident Heather Knowles, herself a member of Harvard’s jurisdiction committee, said that offering Vicksburg Square to Ayer seemed like a “not-in-my-backyard” play by Harvard to avoid having to educate an influx of families with school-age children that a development might encourage.

Cronin said he had not read the article, but was opposed to making any decisions regarding the future disposition of Devens before 2033. He was not a fan of super town meetings as a way to get more housing built at Devens, he said. Besides, he added, “Vicksburg Square might be the most prohibitively expensive place to build” among the remaining 92 acres at Devens that are zoned for residential use. “That’s the reality. There is no developer knocking at the door to build. And that’s going to be a really tough project to finance. It might be impossible right now.” He said planners need to take “a broader look at where we can build housing, what’s feasible, what’s realistic.” But, he said, “waiting until 2030 or 2033 is, to me, too late.”

Changes to zoning at Devens are allowed by the 1994 laws and reuse plan that created the Devens Regional Enterprise Zone, but only if the town meetings of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley, meeting at the same date and time in a so-called Super Town Meeting, approve the changes. MassDevelopment, however, must approve the language of any such rezoning article and the agency and towns must hold two or more public hearings before the vote can take place.

With MassDevelopment no longer participating in Devens framework committee meetings, the future of the proposed article is uncertain. But Devens framework committee co-chair Normand believes that presenting MassDevelopment with an article supported by the three towns will change that dynamic.

“If this is approved by the [Devens framework committee], we will be handing MassDevelopment a plan for creating housing in Vicksburg Square,” Normand said last Monday. “If MassDevelopment objects to this carve-out, they will be the ones who will be interfering with the redevelopment of Vicksburg Square and not the towns.” The super town meeting proposal “puts things in play,” he added. “Where it goes, who knows? We’ll see next week how the [Devens framework committee] reacts to it. It’s something. That’s all I can say.”

The Devens Jurisdictional Framework Committee was meeting to debate the proposal just as this edition of the Press was being produced Wednesday afternoon, so the results of that discussion were unavailable for this report. Its passage depended on a majority vote by a quorum of its active members, who represent the three towns, the Devens Enterprise Commission, and the Devens residents and Devens businesses. The three-person MassDevelopment delegation was expected to be absent. Watch for breaking news updates at har vardpress.com.