The Wellesley Select Board lawyered up for its Oct. 16 sessions regarding the state’s plans to sell 45 acres of land to allow for housing development and to support new MassBay Community College projects. Town counsel took part in something of a live FAQ session during the public portion of the meeting (see Wellesley Media recording about an hour and four minutes into the meeting), then the board went into executive session behind closed doors “to discuss strategy with respect to potential litigation with Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM),” known as the state’s real estate arm.
The state’s intended disposition of land, including 40 acres of forest, has been the subject of town government meetings and MassBay forums over the past two months. The state legislators who represent Wellesley have also briefed the Select Board with their take on the DCAMM and MassBay situation.
Some are celebrating the opportunity for more housing units under the state’s Affordable Homes Act to address the local and regional shortage and possible significant upgrades at MassBay. Others fear destruction of open space adjacent to Centennial Reservation and seek a conservation restriction on the forest, and many worry of worsening traffic in the congested area.
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During its Oct. 16 meeting, which drew a standing-room only crowd to Town Hall, Select Board Chair Marjorie Freiman stressed that the housing initiative is state driven, not introduced by the town. She shared that the town has written to the head of the Commonwealth’s Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs (EEA) requesting an environmental impact review. She also said board and town leadership met with DCAMM reps, and that the state plans to wait to release its request for proposals for a project after the town has a chance to conduct a study to consolidate its feedback and share that with DCAMM by early next year (an interactive townwide visioning session is planned for December at a date to be announced). Select Board members went back and forth a bit on how urgently the town needs to act, as the state’s timeline remains murky. “We are looking at every way to approach this project, keeping the town’s interests in mind,” Freiman said.
Meanwhile, a parking study is underway at MassBay to figure out where vehicles for students and staff will go if the current parking lot across the street becomes the site of a housing complex.
Town counsel (Eric Reustle and Christopher Heep of the firm Harrington Heep) attended the meeting to largely read prepared answers to more than a dozen legal questions raised about the proposal. A recap of questions and answers has been posted on the town website.
Questions covered topics such as “What if the state sold the land to the town? Or to investors? Could the purchasers do whatever they wanted?” (Nope, needs to be for housing) and “Can this be considered Article 97 land (aka, protected open space) because it abuts Article 97 land?” (We’ll see: the town has reached out to the EEA and town counsel is conducting a review). Also addressed were the fact that development can take place on wetlands and that the town is readying for Massachusetts Department of Transportation discussions to address potential traffic management.
Town counsel also addressed the extent to which the town can control what sort of project is built, and confirmed that “unit size can be indirectly regulated through reasonable regulations on other dimensional requirements,” though a developer by right can build a minimum of four units per acre under the state law. Age restricted housing might be allowed, but probably not continuing care, town counsel said.
Following the legal briefing, members of the public had a chance to weigh in. They were urged not to repeat things they may have already said at previous meetings (Give your input on the 40 Oakland St. proposal by emailing DCAMM at realestate.dcamm@mass.gov ; Separately, a petition has been launched to urge state and MassBay leaders to save the forest.) One theme was encouragement to the board to push back on the state despite the Commonwealth’s upper hand in any negotiations.
Among those speaking was MassBay neighbor John Richardson, who asked why the state would choose to dispose of forest land rather than repurpose old prisons or state hospitals to achieve its housing goals. He said the plan would be hypocritical given the Commonwealth’s stated biodiversity goals; Separately a Wellesley Conservation Land Trust rep spoke to the benefits of building housing on the parking lot but saving the forest.
Neighbor Paul White, who has spoken at previous meetings, proposed that if the state is going to get its way, the town should play hardball with MassBay by letting it know approvals for campus redevelopment won’t be easy to come by (a town official and town counsel said because MassBay is a state educational institution it won’t go through a town regulatory process). Another speaker, Jennifer Beachell, asked to town to work with the state to conduct a financial analysis of what the cost impact of any project will be to Wellesley and its taxpayers.
Neighbor Leslie Hanrahan gave a brief slide presentation to help people visualize just how large a 180-unit development (that number comes from a minimum of 4 units x 45 available acres) would look on just the 5-acre parking lot site. We could be talking 10 or more stories, she said. A less dense option might be something like the Fieldstone development on Rte. 135 near the dump that also involved destroying forest. Hanrahan urged the town to start with a vision for 20 units on the 5 acres.
Wellesley Strategic Housing Plan update
While the state is doing some of Wellesley’s housing planning for it, the town itself has hired a consultant to create a Strategic Housing Plan, which has been completed. (See also: Select Board picks up Strategic Housing Plan discussion)
The Select Board and Planning Board are slated to review and accept the plan at a joint meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 28 at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall.
Oh my goodness. Suing DCAMM is a terrible substitute for the proactive leadership on housing issues that Wellesley needs. The Select Board should negotiate a higher unit total with DCAMM in exchange for a permanent conservation restriction on the forest in the RFP. Ideally, they would go even higher on the unit total and also include an affordability component.
Also, the 10-story boogeyman will never happen, in part because of structural and fire code requirements that kick in at 70 feet of height. The Boston Globe Editorial Board published a piece on this two weeks ago: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/05/opinion/high-rise-definition-building-code/.
Even 250 or so units would be compatible with a 4 or 5-story building on the site, especially if you put the parking underground. Also, you could probably design it so that nothing taller than 3 stories is visible from Oakland Street. Here’s a 3-story condo building in Newton with 48 units/acre: https://www.bldup.com/projects/the-gateway-condominiums.
Wellesley is meeting / exceeding the State’s affordable housing benchmark under Chapter 40B. Furthermore, the Town has put a lot of resources into creating a Strategic Housing Plan with a major focus on affordability and released it in October: https://tinyurl.com/Wellesley-SHP. It has shown itself to be thoughtful and proactive about affordable housing, and the State can help Wellesley deliver affordable housing where it makes the most sense for the local community with all constraints already considered in advance.
According to the letter of the law, DCAMM has the authority to build more than a thousand units on 45 acres while still following basic town’s zoning regulations. If DCAMM deems that wetlands or more minor wetlands do not matter as it did elsewhere, it can put a project the size of The Nines in Wellesley with 350 units, 88 of which are affordable on the 5-acre lot (eff. lot size of The Nines is ~5 acres). Affordability here is not a question/optionality. On State/MBCC lands determined to be surplus and disposed of under AHA, 20 or 25% of the units would have to be affordable to those at or below 50 or 80% of AMI respectively. That is what the State sees as a justification for its mandate.
As you suggested, adding 250-350 of what would most likely be rentals on MBCC lands on top of 350 rentals at The Nines would swell the # of housing units in Fiske’s district from perhaps 1.3K before the nines to 2K after, sharply transforming the area.
By themselves, meeting the safe harbor threshold under 40B and funding a housing plan don’t meet Wellesley’s housing needs. And complying with 40B was never proactive on Wellesley’s part. I agree that “the State can help Wellesley deliver affordable housing…with all constraints already considered,” but the town hasn’t made those decisions at the scale or speed necessary to solve the problem.
“If DCAMM deems that wetlands or more minor wetlands do not matter…” There are no wetlands within 600 feet of the parking lot. See https://massgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=26edab41f3214d1caf723661ba56d167
“Affordability here is not a question/optionality.” Please provide evidence of this. Where are you getting the 20-25% number from? The state doesn’t need a “justification” for something it has the legal authority to do.
Clearly, I don’t view “rentals” with the same shock and horror as you do. In fact, I am a renter. Also, by the time the MassBay project actually gets leased up, it will be nearly 10 years since The Nines was built.
Lastly, The Nines is the reason the town met safe harbor under 40B. State Land For Homes and other state preemptions happen because the towns aren’t doing enough on their own. The very projects you’re complaining about bolster my point that we need more proactive leadership on housing issues in Wellesley. That kind of leadership is the only way to make housing growth more incremental.
The State does not have sufficient affordable housing, in particular at lower price-points, and a problem with out-migration. In particular, future tax base: younger high-income families are leaving the State on the balance in large numbers. Massachusetts is among the 2 highest out-migration states of this demographic on a per-capita basis in the nation. Overall, things have been relatively OK due to people coming to Massachusetts from other countries. If that was not the case, the state’s population would have shrunk.
AHA was created to solve this problem and at least slow home-price appreciation. That is why the Administration believes it is justified in placing mandates on municipalities within their traditional jurisdictions with top-down planning. Housing is seen as an urgent problem by the State, and DCAMM conveyed that emphatically. It is inconceivable that development would take 4 years, let alone 10, and DCAMM hinted as much.
The units that will likely be delivered will be deed-restricted to rentals and conveyed at higher prices in a district that already has over 25% of the units of the housing type. Units allocated to one type of housing are units not allocated to another, worsening the imbalance locally and across the state if we are delivering the wrong types of housing. It is hard to argue that more apartment rentals are needed in Wellesley rather than owned townhomes or duplexes at lower price-points relative to the average.
I agree with your first paragraph, as well as that the AHA’s (political) justification is the urgent housing problem. But it absolutely is conceivable that this development takes 4 years. With DCAMM delaying the release of the RFP until 2026, a developer probably won’t be selected until the end of 2026. On average, building a large apartment building takes 22 months in the U.S. after approval: https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/09/apartment-construction-time-averaged-20-months-in-2023/, with the largest buildings taking longer. Two years for construction and one for lease-up, and it’s 2029 before we see the full effects of the MassBay development in the schools, traffic, etc.
You complain that your part of town already has too many multifamily rentals. Yet 82% of housing in Wellesley consists of single-family homes: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ma/wellesley/real-estate#data. Correcting the “imbalance” means building more multifamily. We’ll know pretty quickly whether this is the “wrong” type of housing based on how quickly it’s leased up. My guess is, like The Nines, young families and service workers are itching to move in.
Wellesley needs more rentals. We need more townhomes and duplexes too, but it’s much harder to build income-restricted for-sale units than income-restricted rentals. Look at the gap between market rate and affordable rents (a magnitude of 2-3) vs. market and affordable sales prices (a magnitude of 8-10).
I would hope/expect that one or more of the official parties would want to include the area’s next door neighbor to the south in these discussions. The Sisters of Charity property has already made its appearance on the “change is going to happen here” stage.