MetroWest's Path Forward
photos/Edd cote
These Framingham office parks on Route 9 house some of the region's most prominent companies. The sites are on a short list of priority development sites in the region identified by the state in the recently released 495/MetroWest Development Compact.
At 78 pages, the long-awaited 495/MetroWest Development Compact is anything but compact.
But given that its purpose is to inform development decisions for the next three decades in 37 communities (including Worcester) along the Interstate 495 belt, it's a wonder the plan released last month isn't thicker.
After more than a year of meetings and collaboration between cities and towns, businesses, state planning officials and regional economic development agencies, the compact lays out priority zones for both development and preservation and makes a case for tying state infrastructure funding to them.
The state's top economic development official, Gregory Bialecki, said in an interview that the plan will make MetroWest more competitive when it applies for state money for economic development efforts, such as road and sewer infrastructure, zoning studies or site cleanup grants.
For the MetroWest region, that competitiveness could be the most important function of the compact, but the most interesting is surely the list of priority development areas laid out within it.
Scare Resources
The team of state and regional officials collected a list of both priority development and preservation areas from each community. Altogether, there were 300 such areas identified by cities and towns.
Then, regional agencies like the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission (CMRPC) and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council narrowed that list to 91 “regionally significant” areas. The selections emphasized sites that are already developed or have potential for reuse, contain existing infrastructure, serve multiple communities and have the potential for workforce housing.
Vera Kolias, principal planner at the CMRPC, said the core question in whittling down lists of priority development sites was: “How do we focus those limited resources?”
Finally, the state chose 21 development areas – sometimes combining nearby sites – that it considers the most important. In culling its list, the state shared some of the same criteria as were on the regional list, but also focused on supporting mixed use, Gateway cities (like Worcester), and transit-oriented development.
The state's priority list includes:
Major sites in Framingham, such as its downtown and its tech park near the intersection of Route 9 and the Massachusetts Turnpike;
Parts of Westborough's industrial zones along Interstate 495;
A section of Simarano Drive in Marlborough, as well as the Hewlett Packard and Fidelity Investments sites;
A number of areas in the Harvard section of Devens, a mixed-use community overseen by MassDevelopment; and
Worcester's downtown CitySquare development, now under construction.
That's not to say there won't be development and investment in some of the local and regional priority sites that did not make the state list. There surely will be. But exactly what sort of state resources get committed to each project is yet to be seen and will be evaluated case by case, Kolias said.
Bialecki, secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, doesn't like to call the process a “narrowing down.”
The state does not plan to ignore priority sites that didn't make its final list. But he acknowledged: “It's probably true the bigger dollar investments will be spent on the regional and state investment areas.”
Hudson is one of a number of towns that saw its local priorities cut in half and then narrowed to just one on the state list.
Jennifer Burke, the town's planning director, said she was pleased to see the abandoned Tower Street Mill make the state's list.
“It could employ a lot of people,” Burke said. “And it's right off Route 62,” the main east-west road in the town.
And work just started on a state-funded road widening and repaving project on Route 85, the chief north-south route in Hudson. The corridor is on the regional priority list, but has been in the works for some time. The state is spending $9.6 million on the project, according to the Massachusette Department of Transportation website.
But the town is less pleased about another of its priority sites, an industrially-zoned property on Cabot Road where a developer has applied to build a Chapter 40B housing project The affordable housing projects can be exempt from some local zoning laws in communities that have less than 10 percent affordable housing stock.
State approval for the project was still pending as of press time, but Burke said the state has indicated to the town that the state will approve it. The town has objected to the 40B in that location, she said.
The 176-unit project will not use any state funding, but Burke said town officials feel the state is not taking into consideration the town's desire to see industrial development at the site.
“One would assume they would take zoning into account,” she said. “Especially with the compact in hand.”
Regional Approach vs. “Business As Usual”
The compact draws a clear line in the sand about future requests for state economic assistance.
Cities and towns will compete for economic development and state resources, as they always have. But there just won't be enough public money available to suit every community's wish list since other areas of the state will want similar aid.
“With economic development scattered throughout the region, requests for infrastructure funding would quickly outpace available resources,” the report read.
The compact calls that scenario the “distributed growth model,” otherwise known as “business as usual.”
Spreading out state resources across all locally identified priority zones would result in more communities hosting 1,000 or more new jobs by 2035, but there would be three times fewer jobs created through redevelopment, fewer jobs close to public transit, and 43 percent of the new jobs would be in areas that currently have no sewer infrastructure, according to the compact, which deemed the model “unsustainable.”
On the other hand, if state resources are focused on regional and state priority areas, 33 percent less undeveloped land would be converted to commercial use, 56 percent of new jobs would be near public transit, and increased traffic congestion would be concentrated in select areas.
Paul Matthews, executive director of the 495/MetroWest Partnership, said he found the evolution of the priority development lists, from the local level ultimately to the state level, “very interesting.”
“There are some implications there,” Matthews said.
Not that he disagrees with the state's approach. Matthews said he understands that focusing development in strategic areas will be a more effective use of state resources.
“Those investments can still be made, but they have to be made in areas where the investment will pay off in economic activity,” he said. “It's an exercise in wishful thinking to invest infrastructure money and hope development will come.”
The Challenge Ahead
The compact concludes by acknowledging the challenge of thinking regionally in a state full of cities and towns that exert so much control.
“It must be remembered that it is frequently a challenge for the stewards of a village, town or city to envision themselves and their immediate responsibilities within a larger regional perspective,” it reads. “A perspective that is complex in logistics, diverse in thought, and (that) asks for close and trusting cooperation or sharing of scarce resources with organizational entities over which they have no control.”
Bialecki said the state's goal is not to impose its will on cities and towns. Officials and businesses know what's best for their local areas. That's why the process started with gathering local-level priorities.
But the compact does give the state a bigger role to play. Its economic development officials who consider funding or assistance requests will cross reference the requests against the priorities laid out in the compact. Bialecki said the compact will help the state better act as a filter, the purpose of which is to get the best economic bang for the taxpayer's buck.
“If we're going to be partners with you in the local community, we want to have a role that's more than just being the partner who writes the check,” he said. “It's appropriate to say, if you're asking for a state investment, ‘Wait a minute! Does this make sense?”
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