by John Osborn ·
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Updated 7 p.m., July 16, 2024
State senators finished work on Gov. Maura Healey’s economic development bill late Thursday, July 11, and sent it to the House of Representatives, with a small but significant change to a section that deals with housing at Devens.
Like the House version, the Senate’s (S2856) would eliminate caps on both commercial and residential development in the former U.S. Army base. Like the House, the Senate bill calls for a working group of Devens stakeholders to meet within 30 days of the bill’s enactment and, in 180 days or less, deliver a plan for more housing in Devens, but not limited to Vicksburg Square.
However, the Senate bill, deliberately or not, alters the membership of the working group, adding the Devens Enterprise Commission but dropping the Devens Committee, the group elected by residents to advise MassDevelopment, the state agency that provides municipal services to Devens businesses and residents.
If the Senate’s version becomes law, the reconfigured working group would include representatives of MassDevelopment, the DEC, and the towns of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley, as well as the secretaries of economic development, and of housing and liveable communities—but no elected resident representatives.
In a phone call Monday morning, July 15, Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who voted for the Senate bill’s passage last week, said its altered language was an “unfortunate oversight,” but can be fixed in conference proceedings.
“I was pleased to work with the Senate Ways and Means Committee to include compromise language … that addresses the caps on housing and commercial development, " he wrote in a later email. Unfortunately, he said, he did not notice the slight difference in wording until Monday, July 15, when he began hearing from constituents. “I am confident that the final Economic Development bill can include both the Devens Committee and the Devens Enterprise Commission as members of the working group to determine the best use of the Vicksburg Square zone,” he said.
Eldridge represents Harvard, Ayer and the Devens residents living within their historical boundaries. Devens residents who live within the historical boundaries of Shirley are represented by Sen. John Cronin, who also voted for the bill,which passed unanimously, 40-0. The Press has been unable to determine how the Devens portion of the bill came to be altered and by whom.
Co-chair of the Devens Jurisdiction Framework Committee Victor Normand, who was also surprised by the change, noted in a phone call last Friday that Chapter 498, the state law that created Devens, assigns authority for changes in zoning to the three towns and MassDevelopment, who were seen in 1993 as the principal stakeholders in the region’s development. While Devens residents have the right, depending on where they live, to vote in town meetings and elections of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley, they were given no direct say in the zoning of their community.
Both the House and Senate versions of the economic development bill would require the Devens housing working group to evaluate whether up to 400 units of housing could be built in the Innovation and Technology District that surrounds Rogers Field and includes the former Army barracks at Vicksburg Square. Representatives of the three towns on the Devens framework committee have already said they would support more housing there.
But at Thursday’s Senate session Cronin called for more immediate action, offering an amendment whose passage would immediately rezone Vicksburg Square for up to 400 units of housing, bypassing the Super Town Meeting of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley that Chapter 498 specifies.
Cronin withdrew the amendment, but in an email to the Press Friday voiced his disappointment. “I am frustrated and disappointed that Vicksburg Square is going to sit and fall into further disrepair for the foreseeable future in the midst of a Housing crisis,” he said. “There are billions of dollars of state subsidies which will flow to other regions of the state that could have been leveraged to build much needed housing and rehabilitate the Innovation and Technology District to productive use. Letting Vicksburg Square continue to rot is a missed opportunity that I cannot defend.”
The House and Senate have until July 31 to resolve their differences when the current session of the Legislature—the 193rd—comes to an end.
This story has been updated to include additional reporting as well as exchanges with Sen. Jamie Eldridge.