From the Boston Globe: Embracing the village model - creating useful communities rather than sprawled subdivisions.
Cranberry company envisions development across past expanse
By Robert Knox, Globe Correspondent | April 1, 2007
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 [email protected].
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