One night after Town Meeting voted to bring the town into compliance with the state’s MBTA Community Law, the Select Board gave its support to a project within the proposed MBTA zoning district that will replace the two-story office building at 339 Chestnut St. with a three-story, six-unit apartment building that includes two affordable units.
Needham Enterprises, owned by former Select Board member Matt Borrelli, brought the project before the board. It requires the Select Board’s attention because the plans for the building, located directly across the street from McDonald’s, do not comply with either the current zoning for the site or the new zoning that would emerge if and when the town’s MBTA compliance plan is passed and implemented.
A few days after the Select Board vote, a petition drive was launched to hold a townwide election to repeal the Town Meeting MBTA Law compliance vote and bring the issue back to Town Meeting for a do-over.
The Select Board voted 4-1 to provide the support Borrelli needs to file a Local Initiative Program application with the state’s Executive Office of Livable Communities. In return for providing two units of affordable housing and giving the town greater control over any future rental increases for those units, LIP status will allow the project to go through a streamlined town review despite its noncompliant status.
At 6,200 square feet, the 339 Chestnut St. lot falls far short of the 15,000-square-foot minimum currently required for construction of multifamily housing on Chestnut Street. It also fails to meet the 10,000-square-foot minimum included in the proposed MBTA zoning district. In addition, it lacks sufficient frontage on Chestnut Street and is a half-story too tall.
George Giunta, attorney for Needham Enterprises, explained his client could have petitioned Town Meeting for a zoning change for the property or sought a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals — both time-consuming options he described as longshots.
“We all know that there’s a severe need for housing in town, and that Matt (Borrelli) has an interest in building residential housing,” he said.
LIP is a longstanding state program intended to facilitate the creation of affordable housing when it faces zoning hurdles and other challenges. The Select Board vote was needed because the state program requires communities and developers to work in concert to receive technical assistance and other support.
If the LIP is approved, the project would bypass the Planning Board and go straight to the Zoning Board of Appeals. The ZBA could choose to consider input from town departments and the public.
The dissenting Select Board vote came from Josh Levy, who was also the only board member to vote against recommending adoption of the neighborhood plan that passed Town Meeting the night before.
“We haven’t even given (the new zoning) a try,” said Levy, explaining why he opposed the Select Board’s cooperating with Borrelli on the LIP application.
Referring to the town’s MBTA Law consultants who identified parcels in the zoning district where development was likely to occur, Levy noted, “They said (339 Chestnut) is likely to be developed if it could be combined with other parcels. You just have to give the market a chance.”
Borrelli said he explored combining the parcels. “I did approach the abutter to discuss this,” he said, referring to the owner of the multiunit commercial building next door at 333, 331A and 329 Chestnut St.
“He has no interest in selling his parcel for development. And the one over from that is Kosta’s, and that’s just been condominium-ized, so that’s going to have multiple owners and that would be very difficult. Also it would be an exorbitant amount of money with the cost of real estate in this area.”
The other four Select Board members said the board would be greatly overreaching if it required Borrelli to expand his project and expend funds acquiring multiple abutting properties in order to consolidate the parcels into one large lot.
“I don’t view this as an abdication of the zoning,” said Marianne Cooley. “We always have known that there are challenges with Chestnut Street.”
Noting that Levy suggested “giving the market a chance,” Select Board Chair Kevin Keane motioned toward Borrelli and said, “Right now we are talking to the market. It’s his property.”
Vice Chair Heidi Frail added that consolidation “doesn’t work for this parcel. You can’t force him to buy other people’s land. It’s private property. We can’t force people to combine.”
“What I like about the project is it really adhered to the spirit of the MBTA Communities planning,” she said after the meeting.
Borrelli purchased the property in 2019 for $938,000. “I purchased the property with the original intent of rehabbing the office space in the future, but after COVID the demand for this type of space went down,” he told the Observer. “I realize that the highest and best use is for multiple residential units, especially workforce housing, considering the location.”
The proposal calls for the construction of five two-bedroom units just under 1,000 square feet each and a one-bedroom accessible unit on the ground floor. Borrelli said the rent for the four market-rate units would be less than the Needham average and attractive to people who work in the area and otherwise couldn’t afford to rent in Needham.
Save as PDF