Groton Open Space Association

GOSA, Residents Ask For Moratorium On ASH

GROTON — GOSA and town residents asked the Town Council Nov. 8, 2006, to impose a moratorium on Active Senior Housing pending further study of the impact on ASH both on town finances and the environment.

The requests stem from a proposal by Hawthorne Development Partners LLC, of Woburn, Massachusetts, to build a 241-unit ASH project called Mystic Woods on 105 acres of Fort Hill.

Hawthorne subsequently trimmed its application to 219 units and last month withdrew its application after the application ran into a blizzard of objections at Inland Wetlands Agency hearings, centering on drainage issues. GOSA and a citizens group known as Friends of Fort Hill led the private opposition to the project. Hawthorne has said it will be back with a new application.

Sue Sutherland, a Mumford Cove resident who campaigned against Mystic Woods, asked the council to declare a moratorium so that the full financial implications of ASH can be analyzed.

She noted that ASH developments often are thought to be tax-advantageous to towns because they bring in relatively affluent people who don’t have children to be educated at taxpayers’ expense. However, she said, the age regulations in Groton specify only that 80% of resident ASH families have one member aged 55 or over. She said that if 20% of the families have one child each, the 241-unit project originally proposed would go from tax-positive to neutral. If a fifth of the families had two children, the project would go more than $500,000 into the negative from a tax point of view.

She also pointed out that pressures could develop in a senior housing glut to allow more younger people into the development. “Who are the zoning police and what would be the cost of policing?” she asked.

Sidney Van Zandt and Joan Smith, both directors of GOSA, urged that a definition of buildable land be fashioned and adopted during the moratorium. Such a definition, currently lacking, is necessary to prevent what Ms. Van Zandt said would be a “horrible mess all over town.” Ms. Van Zandt asked the council to think of a 10-acre tract of half-acre zoned land. If it had only two developable acres, then it normally would have at most four houses on it. However, current ASH rules don’t take note of unbuildable land and say that each acre entitles the developer to two units, which could lead to a dense cluster of 20 units on two acres.

The speakers also urged a full build-out analysis for the town, as urged by Council Member Elissa Wright.

Michael J. Murphy, head of the Office of Planning and Development, said in July 2005 that he was planning to come up with a buildable land definition that would discount unbuildable acres to an appropriate extent from the calculation of the number of allowable units.

Beth Robinson, a resident of Fort Hill, said: “Having fought at length just to have a small shed put on our property, it is ludicrous that any developer can put hundreds of condos in our backyard.”

At the request of Councilor Wright, the moratorium issue was referred to the Committee of the Whole. Ms. Wright also urged action on her previous request for a full build-out analysis.