Much of the work of the Needham Planning Board is relatively mundane: reviewing building plans to ensure they meet zoning regulations and voting on permits when individual plans ask for special consideration. In this year’s election, however, two larger zoning issues — one in the recent past regarding multifamily housing and one upcoming regarding single-family house sizes — seem to overshadow the question of which candidate should get to do that work.
In Tuesday’s vote, real estate lawyer Eric Greenberg will face off against engineer and businessman Ken Buckley.
At a League of Women Voters forum last week, the candidates largely agreed on their approach to the role: above all else, they want to listen to residents and have constructive conversations about Needham’s future.
However, their angles into these conversations reveal key differences. Buckley entered the race as a member of Needham Residents for Thoughtful Zoning, the group that brought forward the referendum on the MBTA communities act.
Despite the fact that Town Meeting was offered the opportunity to choose only the minimally compliant zoning overlay, Buckley felt like the decision was railroaded. “The voices of residents, what I call the true consensus, were ignored during the largest rezoning effort in decades,” Buckley said. “From the start, people engaged … and still their input fell on deaf ears.”
At the forum, he was more skittish on advocating for any specific housing proposals in town.
Notably, he shared his reticence to convert existing areas designated for commercial space into residential housing. “While it was important to support more housing in Needham, I think putting it on top of existing businesses was actually a mistake.”
If so, the mistake persists in the form of the widely supported base compliance plan that will go before Town Meeting in May. That plan will still allow housing to replace commercial property in nearly all of those same districts.
Despite those comments, Buckley later said he’s interested in eliminating certain special permit requirements where they are frequently used, which would make it easier to build mixed-use housing in commercial districts.
Buckley also said he believes that Needham has gone about building housing “pretty correctly” thus far, and that residents may not realize how many multifamily units are already available in town.
The volume of single-family home sales has dropped in Needham year after year. Between 2018 and 2023, the median home price in Needham rose by roughly 40 percent, according to a Boston Globe analysis.
Greenberg took a slightly different tone than Buckley. While he also stressed the importance of listening to residents and building consensus, he took clear issue with the high price of single-family homes on the market in Needham, calling the $2.7 million average sale price over the past year “not sustainable” for new, younger families and seniors looking to downsize.
According to the assessor’s office, the average value of Needham single-family homes last year was $1.46 million, an increase of 22.3 percent from the previous year.
Greenberg said he’s interested in exploring over-55 housing and workforce housing options.
On the issue of large homes, neither candidate gave a definitive answer, but both expressed interest in having a community discussion about the topic and making residents more aware of the conversation. Both candidates also said that keeping smaller homes intact would help preserve Needham’s greenspace and tree canopies. Buckley said he would be interested in exploring historic preservation options for older houses in Needham, which are typically smaller.
“I think there does need to be a community-driven effort to look at why houses are so big and why they are ‘allowed’ to be so big,” Buckley said.
Outside of housing, Greenberg frequently touted the need for Needham to attract and maintain its cohort of small businesses. Asked if he could change one thing about Needham’s town bylaws, he said he’d look to expedite the approval and review process for new businesses.
Overall, Greenberg positioned his real estate law expertise as a clear asset to the board, as he’s spent 20 years “listening to people, building consensus and ensuring the best possible outcomes.” Greenberg previously said he chose to run partially because the Planning Board’s sole attorney, Paul Alpert, is leaving.
In his closing remarks, Buckley said he has “no financial ties to industry,” seeming to draw a pointed distinction between his and Greenberg’s background.
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