The Planning Board has chosen an 8-acre parcel near the Route 2 interchange, across from Dunkin’ Donuts, as the town’s multifamily district. The board chose the site over two others, one on Littleton County Road and the other near Alltown Fresh on Ayer Road. Town Meeting would need to approve the enabling bylaw, which the board plans to bring to the April 6 meeting if it can finalize the details by then.
The board voted for the Route 2 site at its Feb. 5 meeting, with four yes votes and one abstention. However, members agreed they could not complete all the text of the bylaw by the Select Board’s Feb. 16 deadline for submitting warrant articles. Members agreed to keep working on it and distribute the final version at Town Meeting. But if the board cannot create a cohesive bylaw by then, it will withdraw the warrant article, Chair Richard Cabelus said.
The MBTA Communities Act, enacted in 2021, requires towns with or near MBTA stations to zone for at least one “reasonably sized” district in which multifamily housing is allowed by right, as opposed to by the more complicated special permit process. Harvard must zone for at least 113 units at a density of 15 units per acre, for an area of at least 8 acres. The zoning must be enacted by December 2025.
Vice Chair John McCormack, who abstained from the vote, told the Press he did so because he thought the board had not “adequately thought through the future course of the effort.” McCormack’s hesitation was precipitated by the board’s attempt, during a Jan. 22 meeting, to add more to the bylaw than turned out to be allowable.
At that meeting, the board tried to add language that they thought would create additional affordable units, cap the number of multifamily units at 120, and mandate mixed use. But on Feb. 5, the board learned from Montachusett Regional Planning Council planner Jonathan Vos that the parameters they’d chosen did not comply with the law and would in fact allow more housing units than the board had intended. The board abandoned the changes and settled for the minimum 8-acre multifamily zone.
McCormack said the development envisioned by the board was not feasible via an MBTA Communities Act district but might be achieved with complementary changes to the underlying zoning. “I just wasn’t ready to give up on the possibilities for [the Route 2 parcel] to address both the mixed use and affordable housing needs of the town,” he said, explaining why he abstained. Still, McCormack said, the board might be able to revise the Ayer Road Village zoning to “help steer the use of the parcel,” but it would be a time-consuming, complicated undertaking.
The perimeters of the 8-acre multifamily district are yet to be delineated on the 16-acre Route 2-adjacent site, all of which is up for development by sale or lease. A 4-acre part of the site has already been approved for a special permit to build a badminton facility and two other commercial buildings of as yet unspecified uses.
The board’s next public hearing on the multifamily overlay zone is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 26. Check the Planning Board’s webpage www.har vard-ma.gov/planning-board for the agenda, which will be posted late next week and will list the time of the hearing.
