From the Boston Globe: Embracing the village model - creating useful communities rather than sprawled subdivisions.
Cranberry company envisions development across past expanse
On one of the region's largest undeveloped tracts -- a vast expanse of bogs and woods that is bigger than some entire towns -- the next chapter of Southeast Massachusetts' development is beginning to take shape.
The vision?
"This is really kind of back to the future," says Michael Hogan, president of
A.D. Makepeace Co., owner of the 6,000 acres in question and much of the rest of the immediate area. The giant cranberry company plans to build a to-be-determined number of old-style villages across the expanse, which includes parts of Carver, Plymouth, and Wareham, with the idea of re-creating traditional small-town New England.
If the development evolves as envisioned, it would cover more land than any other in the region. Comparisons are tricky -- Makepeace's plan is far more decentralized -- but 6,000 acres is double that of Plymouth's sprawling Pinehills development, and four times the South Weymouth Naval Air Base conversion.
Building villages may not seem unusual in these days of so-called smart growth, where dense, clustered development is the preferred model. What makes Makepeace's plan different is that it is starting with a blank slate, a totally rural area that has none of the retail and transportation infrastructure that smart growth is built on.
What now exists on the 6,000 acres is pretty much nothing, except cranberries. There is no public transportation, relatively few roads, and almost no services or stores.
Usually such areas end up as residential subdivisions with large lots. Makepeace plans just the opposite. The village model would create a village center, around which would be stores, services such as doctors' offices, and houses. Still, the plan has modern-day elements; its first phase is an office park that would be built in a newly created business district, near a planned village.
Trees and bogs, at least most of them, would remain. Overall, 70 percent of the land would be undisturbed, and 30 percent developed. Concentrated densities would let the company make money while meeting the preservationist goals local officials, state regulators, and the company itself say they want.
It is a long-term venture, expected to stretch out over 20 years or so, and the specific course it takes depends on many variables, including the marketplace.
For now, Makepeace is not speculating on how many housing units its vision might some day produce. But based on a deal the company made in Plymouth's Agawam Corridor development -- swapping development rights on one parcel for increased density on another -- construction of three villages of about 1,000 units each is within range. That would be a significant increase in the housing stock in the lower half of Plymouth County.
It is a scaled-down vision for a company that thinks big; Makepeace is the largest private landholder in Massachusetts, and the world's largest cranberry producer (based on acres in cultivation).
State environmental regulators have agreed to look at the long-term project in advance, under a special "get it all done at once" provision reserved for such long-term projects. So rather than submit just the first phase -- the 50-acre Tihonet Technology Park in Wareham -- for approval in January, the company opened the entire 6,000-acre property to environmental review.
At the local level, area planners like what they see, at least so far.
"It's a good model," said Loring Tripp , a member of the Plymouth Planning Board .
That's not what Tripp and other area planners said about Makepeace's original plan.
When the family-owned cranberry company announced at the start of the decade that it planned to go into the development business -- cranberry prices were plummeting -- it proposed building a massive development of more than 3,000 single-family homes stretching across the three-town property.
But the communities and conservationists objected, fearing demands on services in isolated areas and the loss of huge swaths of undeveloped land.
The company pulled back, and three years ago hired Hogan -- formerly head of MassDevelopment , the state's economic development agency -- as its chief executive.
While Makepeace pursued some smaller projects, representatives began talking with Plymouth planners about a concentrated, village-style development on a parcel in southwest Plymouth.
The result was the Agawam Corridor rural village project in which town houses, condos, apartments, and single-family houses are centered on a village green.
The proposal, currently under state environmental review, became the template for what the company could do inside its 6,000 acres over the next quarter century, Hogan said.
"Most traditional community centers that our towns grew up around are illegal in today's zoning," Hogan said. It requires large, 2- or 3 -acre lots -- which in turn chew up large amounts of open space.
The rural village model not only avoids that, but also leaves space for other amenities, such as coffee shops, a pharmacy, a book store, and public space "for either a library, a senior center, or charter school," he said, as well as professional services or an assisted-living center. Homes would be built closely enough together so that neighbors would "feel connected," he said. Villages would be surrounded by Makepeace's continued agricultural operations and large swaths of open space.
Local officials and environmentalists like the model, although they caution that more examination is needed for such issues as water rights, environmental impacts, and municipal property use.
"If they remain committed to that model, they have prospects to bring it to fruition," said Robb Johnson , Southeastern Massachusetts Program director for The Nature Conservancy.
Officials from all three communities agreed that one key to concentrating development is the concept, relatively new to the region, of transferring development rights. Plymouth has adopted it; Carver and Wareham are in the process.
The transfer allowed Makepeace, in creating the Agawam Corridor Village, to give up rights to develop some 600 houses on 3-acre plots in exchange for 1,100 denser units.
In Wareham, company officials said they expect about 600 units worth of residential development rights within the 6,000-acre district will be transferred to the site of the town's Tihonet Village , a one-time agricultural and industrial settlement that largely disappeared in the early 20th century. Transferring development rights from scattered properties could lead to a similar sized village development in Carver, too, said Jack Hunter, that town's planner.
The Plymouth portion of the 6,000 acres, the environmentally sensitive Frogfoot region, is the piece least susceptible to development. Thus, Makepeace would probably transfer development rights out of that section into a site in another part of town.
The biggest issue as Makepeace's village vision progresses? "Transportation," said Hogan.
But others say it's protecting water. Much of the Makepeace property is located above the Plymouth-Carver aquifer, which provides water in seven communities. It's one of the region's greatest natural resources. "The big nut here," said Hunter, "is any stress it would have on the aquifer."
Robert Knox can be reached at rc.knox@gmail.com.
John, Keith Schneider here from Michigan where I write about issues dear to both our spirits, and I help manage a non-profit group, the Michigan Land Use Institute. I commend my blog, www.modeshift.org, and our organization's Web site, www.mlui.org, for your blogroll. I found your site today and added to my blog roll. Nice work. Among the things I do is also write for the NY Times real estate desk on new development strategies. If you've got ideas in your area I'm interested in knowing about them. Be well, Keith
Posted by: Keith Schneider | April 24, 2007 at 08:47 AM