The canvas for the future plans for the Stephen Palmer property is being painted with the broadest of brushes. At its most recent meeting on Feb. 5, the Stephen Palmer Development Review Committee discussed how to include ideas that emerged from a January community meeting seeking public input. At that “blue sky” meeting, residents favored housing, a community center and open space/recreation, either on their own or in some combination of all.
That list, as reviewed at last week’s meeting, still presents many possibilities, a mélange of housing and recreation options that range from 5 to possibly 100 housing units. Housing might co-exist with a recreation center, a childcare facility or pre-school. The existing structure could be preserved, demolished or kept and added on to.
“So, we did a blue sky and then it’s, well then there’s reality,” Town Manager Katie King said. “What about cost or revenue implications for the town? What about legal hurdles?”
And that’s where the blue sky planning becomes something more cloudy.
One option that seems extremely unlikely is the town working on its own to develop and eventually operate a housing or mixed-use development. Town officials have been consistent that they don’t want the town to be a landlord nor the operator of a community center. The town could sell or lease the property or enter into a public-private partnership.
Waiting on the School Committee
A missing voice in the Feb. 5 conversation was that of the School Committee, the town entity that has jurisdictional control over the Stephen Palmer site. That authority is derived from the building having been originally constructed in 1914 as an elementary school before being declared surplus property and converted to apartments in 1977.
When the 50-year lease with the apartment operator expires in May 2027, the building will revert back to School Committee control. Initially, school officials declined a role on the development review committee, but subsequently expressed interest in participating.
School Committee member Matt Spengler was added to the committee but was unable to attend the Feb. 5 meeting due to a work travel commitment. School Committee Vice Chair Alisa Skatrud said the entire school board will come up with an answer to the “what do the schools want to see there?” question.
“The school committee has expressed ideas that may be things that the school community at large could use and has shown an interest in doing — like a pre-school or after school care, that sort of thing.” Skatrud said.
She also mentioned that workforce housing could be considered, possibly creating housing options for teachers, police and fire staff, nurses and others who work in town and serve the school community at large.
When the Palmer committee next convenes on Feb. 26, it hopes to receive the perspective of the schools and further fine tune the ideas it discussed at length on Feb. 5.
That discussion was framed around the likely four types of uses — housing, a public community center, a private community center, and some open space/recreation element.
“Those are four uses, but we actually have way more than four options in front of us,” said King of the potential for a mixed-use development.
The committee’s drawing board can be expanded to include the abutting Greene’s Field and perhaps the Charles River YMCA facility on Great Plain Ave.
The YMCA has expressed an interest in engaging in a public-private partnership as a means toward realizing the creation of a community center. It could also address housing needs as other YMCAs in the region have collaborated on mixed-use projects with a housing component.
Given that the inclusion of some form of housing seems a virtual certainty, the question then becomes what type of housing and how many units. This led to a discussion of the site’s capacity and the neighborhood’s level of tolerance if what gets proposed exceeds the impact of the 28 apartment units that have been there for nearly 50 years.
Near the end of the meeting The project’s architectural consultant, David Gamble, took to a whiteboard and fairly rapidly ran through a wide range of housing options. There was a five single-family home option, a smallish iteration of what are called pocket neighborhoods — clusters of houses in which small-footprint homes are arranged around a shared common area. Or new development could be as expansive as the 80 or more units possible if the building footprint were expanded.
“The good news is that the site is actually large enough to accommodate a variety of densities, even densities that are probably palatable to the existing residential neighborhood which is likely going to resist a lot of density,” Gamble said.
“There’s a lot of potential on the property and I do think that there’s lost space here.”
There was also discussion of the difficult balance of maximizing overall public benefit while minimizing the impact on the neighborhood.
“There could be a use that you think would be appropriate and desirable in this location that could meet community-wide needs … but it may not be what the neighborhood would consider the most advantageous from their point of view,” said Judi Barrett, the project’s lead planning consultant.
“We wanted to see you wrestle with that a little bit because, clearly, you don’t want to have a neighborhood coming to Town Meeting and waging World War III on your proposal.”
Down the line, the committee intends to settle on three scenarios that it will present at a second community meeting to gather more public input. That meeting has not been scheduled but could happen in early spring.
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