The owner of the Castle Farm property at 484 Charles River St. has initiated development activity at the 58-acre site, which it acquired in late 2023 for $15 million – a sale that thwarted town plans to encourage a combined housing and open-space protection plan.
The 10,000-square-foot, 26-room mansion at the site, built in 1900, was demolished last month, and town officials believe it will be replaced by a single-family home in the same general location.
The site is the last significant parcel of open space on the west side of town, an area once occupied by multiple Gilded Age estates. The parcel is approximately half a mile deep from Charles River Street to the Charles River. The site is predominantly wooded and features an open lawn area around the former residence, nearly a half-mile of contiguous frontage on the Charles and scenic riverfront meadows with trails to the river and the adjacent 225-acre, town-owned Ridge Hill Reservation.
The Conservation Commission granted an Order of Resource Area Delineation last month. It establishes a wetlands map and defines what impact, if any, that may have on building plans. The order is often issued ahead of planned development, according to Deb Anderson, the town’s director of conservation.
“The existing house is not located in our jurisdiction,” said Anderson, because it’s not near enough to the wetlands. “I know that they applied for a demo permit which we had to sign off on.
“The recent permit that we issued was simply approving their wetland delineations,” she said. “It sounds like a single-family house project, which is kind of the best-case scenario for us at this point.”
Anderson was referring to the lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful Select Board-driven effort to execute a deal in which the town would have acquired more than half of the property and two adjoining undeveloped three-acre parcels fronting on Charles River Street. Town Meeting approved $2.5 million for the purchase in the fall of 2022.
As part of the deal, the Select Board had pledged to support a Concord-based developer’s plan to construct a 70-unit clustered townhouse community on a 14-acre portion of the site, sparing the balance of the parcel from development and retaining public access to the Charles River.
The plan met with intense opposition from neighbors of the site, the Finance Committee and others who objected to what they felt was an overly secretive process and an insufficiently vetted plan.
Nonetheless, the plan won overwhelming support on two separate Town Meeting votes – in October 2022 to appropriate the $2.5 million, and the second a year later to continue to support the concept. But when the developer failed to receive needed state approvals, the plan slowed to a crawl and the sellers ultimately decided to sell to another party.
The December 2023 sale from the Barbara Foster Trust to the Castle Farm Realty Trust ended the town’s attempt to place as much as 34 acres under town control. The sale was completed in two transactions on Dec. 18, 2023 – $15 million for the 58-acre Castle Farm property, and $3 million for two three-acre parcels fronting on Charles River Street near the intersection of Pine Street and not contiguous with the Castle Farm parcel.
What else may transpire at the totality of the sprawling estate is an open question, but the town remains interested in helping shape the answer.
“It sounds like the new owner appreciates what he’s purchased and isn’t looking to disturb much,” said Anderson. “Of course, that’s within his rights, you know, down the road.”
Select Board member Marianne Cooley, who played a lead role in the town’s original plan, said attempts have been made to engage with the new owner to further the town’s goals of preserving open space and retaining access to both the Ridge Hill trails and the river.
“The acres are important to us because they would give access to the town path on the town land,” Cooley said, referring to the undeveloped lots on Charles River Street.
“We’ll make periodic calls, and we’ll see if things get more settled,” she said, noting that Town Counsel Chris Heep makes periodic calls to the Castle Farm Realty Trust trustee, attorney Paul Popeo of the Boston firm Choate.
Choate also represented the sellers of the property during the negotiations with the town and the developer, so the firm is familiar with the town’s specific interests.
“It’s a different property owner, and they have different goals,” said Cooley. She said the owner has said it is not interested in talking “at this time.”
“We have not heard a ‘Go away, we’re never talking to you.’”
To date, the town does not know the individual(s) who comprise the trust and have dealt only with Popeo, a Needham resident. Cooley said she has no knowledge of the trust’s ultimate goal for the land and how that might affect their willingness to work with the town.
“The benefit to them keeping it ‘as is,’ I suppose, is if they really don’t want anyone else on their property,” said Cooley.
If such splendid isolation is indeed the owner’s intent, Anderson for one says things could have turned out worse from her perspective as the town’s conservation director. “It could have been a developer going in and putting in a subdivision or something.”
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