As it faces the state’s December 2025 deadline to create zones in town for multifamily housing, the Planning Board has narrowed its list of possibilities to three. The board must now decide whether the enabling bylaw can be ready for a vote at the April 6 Town Meeting, an action favored by the town’s administrator.
The board has been chipping away at creating the overlay zones since soon after the state passed the MBTA Communities Act in 2021, a law intended to alleviate the state’s housing shortage by encouraging more apartment and condominium development. The law affects 177 towns that either contain a transit station or are near one. The state included Harvard as one of 34 towns in the “adjacent small town” category, which has the lightest requirements. (See below, “Requirements for Harvard, an adjacent small town.”)
The board is considering three zones for multifamily housing, which the state generally defines as three or more units in one building. One sits across from Dunkin’ Donuts, close to the Route 2 interchange in the town’s commercial zone. The other is also on Ayer Road, near Alltown Fresh on the Harvard-Ayer town line. The third is on Littleton County Road at Friendly Crossways, an upscale wedding venue. (See below, “Areas under consideration for multifamily housing.”)
An informal online poll with 554 respondents conducted by the Planning Board showed that the site near Alltown Fresh was the first choice, the Friendly Crossways site second, and the Route 2-adjacent site third.
Whether the bylaw can be written in time for April’s Town Meeting, however, remains to be seen. At their Jan. 8 meeting, Planning Board members were unsure whether to include just one, two, or all three of the zones in the bylaw. They also did not rule out evaluating sites that the public might yet suggest, provided they met state criteria. The board is working with a template provided by the state, adding, deleting, and modifying the text as it goes.
Despite the uncertainty, Town Administrator Tim Bragan and Select Board Vice Chair Erin McBee want to see the multifamily bylaw on the April warrant. Spring’s Town Meeting is better attended than fall’s, Bragan said, so the bylaw would get the attention it deserves. “Also, the bylaw has to be in place by 12/20/25 and if it fails [in April 2024] then there is plenty of time to bring it back before the deadline,” he wrote in an email. “What the Planning Board is doing is thorough and thoughtful,” he added.
McBee, a former Planning Board member, echoed Bragan’s remarks and said she favored the Route 2-adjacent site, which is zoned for commercial use.
“It is already up for development,” she said, adding that the site’s ability to accommodate some mixed use, through its underlying zoning, could make it more appealing to multifamily home builders and perhaps attract businesses that residents would like.
Plans for a badminton facility at the site were approved last year, though construction has not begun. A proposal by Minco Development for more than 200 apartments also surfaced in spring of 2023, a plan tailored to the requirements of the MBTA Communities Act. The multifamily bylaw presented by landowner and Harvard resident Lou Russo never made it to Town Meeting after it was criticized by town boards and residents for insufficiently regulating the mix of commercial and residential uses.
Planning Board member Stacia Donahue, who has worked extensively to create the list of possible multifamily districts, told the Press she was sympathetic to the argument for bringing the bylaw to Town Meeting this spring. But given the complexity of the law, she said, it is her opinion that it might be better to “wait and see if we get more help from DLTA [district local technical assistance] funds or other state agencies.” The board must be sure it is “correctly editing the language and selecting the parcels,” she said.
Noting that only four Town Meetings lie between now and the 2025 deadline, Planning Board Chair Richard Cabelus and Vice Chair John McCormack told the Press in an email that the board “welcomes” the chance to bring the bylaw to Spring Town Meeting. But they also said: “If the board decides more time is needed in crafting language and site selection, we can defer to a future town meeting and not be in jeopardy of being cut off from grant funding. We will not put forward a … hastily cobbled together product.” They declined to recommend a favorite site, but said, “Land that is currently actively being used for agriculture may not be the optimum choice for residential development.”
What is compliance?
Unlike the affordable housing law, 40B, in which compliance is measured by housing production, towns can comply with this law by creating zoning that allows multifamily homes to be built by right (instead of by special permit). Noncompliance is failing to implement the zoning: Whether the housing is built will depend on site conditions and the market. Towns lacking the infrastructure to support the density allowed in the zoning are also not compelled by the law to create it; that, too, will be a choice left to individual towns and developers.
Towns that don’t implement the zoning are ineligible for state funding from the Housing Choice Initiative program, the Local Capital Projects Fund, and the MassWorks infrastructure program, which provided $1 million to Harvard in 2021 for road improvements. The regulations also mention withholding other, unspecified aid. In addition, a 2023 advisory from the attorney general’s office warns that noncompliant communities risk “civil enforcement action” and “liability under federal and state fair housing laws.”
Public hearings on the multifamily bylaw will continue at the next scheduled Planning Board meeting, Monday, Jan. 22. In their email, Cabelus and McCormack said they wanted residents to attend the hearings and “share their thoughts through conversation with the board and the town planner.” They added, “We want the hearings to be more instructive than the survey, which has surfaced more questions than answers.”
Requirements for Harvard, an adjacent small town
The first regulations released in 2021 placed a much larger obligation on Harvard than those released a year later, after the public comment period. For instance, towns of Harvard’s size had been asked to zone for 750 units and given a deadline of December 2024, regulations that were later modified. The minimum requirements for Harvard, one of 34 towns in the “adjacent small town” category, are:
- Implement by-right zoning allowing for at least 113 units of multifamily housing, defined as three or more units in a building. (The minimum number of units to be zoned for must equal 5% of a town’s total housing stock.)
- Create at least one multifamily zone with a minimum density of 15 units per acre, which means Harvard must create at least one zone of 8 contiguous acres.
- Allow no more than 10% of the units in a project to be affordable; the cap on income can’t be less than 80% of the area median income.
- Locate the zone anywhere in town.
—VH
Areas under consideration for multifamily zoning
The Planning Board’s Stacia Donahue and Harvard’s director of planning, Frank O’Connor, worked for about six months with regional planners from the Montachusett Regional Planning Commission to create a list of possible overlay districts, in which the underlying zoning remains, for multifamily homes. Funding for the MRPC planners was provided by a state grant that has now run out, though Donahue said she hopes to renew the grant.
After eliminating parcels that were judged to be “not viable” by a state-provided software tool, the board narrowed the field to three areas.
- Parcels on each side of Ayer Road near the Harvard-Ayer town line. The zone would include the Craftsman Village development and an additional 18.7-acre parcel across the street from Craftsman. Part of that 18.7-acre area, 6½ acres, is in the state’s agricultural restriction program, and the rest is vacant. It is now zoned for agricultural-residential use. Donahue explained that although it might seem unusual to include an existing development in a new multifamily zone, the single-family home development was included on MRPC advice because if that land were ever redeveloped with municipal utilities—which it now lacks—more housing might be able to be built.
- A commercially zoned parcel on Ayer Road, across from Dunkin’ Donuts and close to the Route 2 interchange. This zone would encompass several contiguous lots totalling about 16 acres. It is zoned for commercial use and, if certain dimensional and other conditions are met, also allows for mixed use, via special permit, under Ayer Road Village zoning. A special permit has already been granted for a badminton facility for part of the site.
Together with Minco Development, one of the property’s owners, Lou Russo, has proposed 200-plus apartments and, along with Minco, has met several times with town officials to pursue the project. (Such meetings are commonplace in planning offices and do not violate Open Meeting Law if attendance is limited to two or fewer members of one board.) In a statement to the Press, the Planning Board’s chair and vice chair, Richard Cabelus and John McCormack, emphasized that the board was working from the state’s bylaw template, not the controversial developer-written bylaw Minco had presented in public meetings in spring of 2023. Cabelus and McCormack said that proposed bylaw “met the preferences of the developer,” not the town.
- An approximately 24-acre area on Littleton County Road, the home of Friendly Crossways, a wedding and event venue; its website advertises “farm weddings.” Unlike the Ayer Road parcels, which are closer to Ayer’s commuter rail station, this area is closer to the station in Littleton. It is zoned as agricultural-residential.
—VH
