The Heights Hotel Part III - The Waiting Game UPDATED with new meeting date

The Heights Hotel Part III - The Waiting Game

UPDATE - Once again the next hearing has been cancelled.  Attorney Mary Winstanley O'Conner has written to the Redevelopment Board asking that it be continued to January 27th, without explanation of reason of the delay or why the developer waited so long to make this last minute request.

So, what’s up with the "Hotel Lexington" project?  The last real news goes way back to July 22 when residents gathered in the Lyons Room to hear the proposal and provide their concerns.   The developer left with a long list of potential problems and zoning issues to resolve.  The Redevelopment Board was left with the thorny legal issue of an estimated $100,000 in building permit fees that were being waived.  These are fees that are set down in our bylaws by Town Meeting but were somehow negotiated away by the Town Manager and the Planning Department.

Since then, hardly a peep.  There was a continuance to September, and then another to October.  At that time the developer postponed it again, this time for another two months until the  JANUARY 27th December 16 meeting of the Redevelopment Board.  Nothing more has been released for the public.

There has been some activity behind the scenes, though.  Back on August 12th, the developer did meet with some members of the Redevelopment Board to discuss the project.  Not at the public meeting that same evening, but just beforehand behind closed doors.  It was another of those unannounced, closed to the public, very private get togethers that leave the public in the dark about what is going on.  No minutes kept and not even a brief announcement of what went on or who attended.

Meanwhile, there has been a new development next door at 1215 Mass Ave.  The building that formerly housed Nicola’s is being converted into a liquor store.  The owner has already been before the Select Board and next will seek approval of the Redevelopment Board.  Whatever traffic studies the hotel developer has conducted need to be amended to account for the new use next door.

To refresh your memory of the history of this drawn out process, it was four and a half years ago that Town Meeting voted to approve the sale of 1207 Mass Ave. The Town budget actually included an expected $1,000,000 from the sale to help pay for the Stratton School project. The RFP bid that was accepted in late 2016 was for only $750,000.  The actual Purchase and Sale Agreement was signed just about a year ago, but the transaction has yet to be completed and it seems that the developer can back out of the deal if he does not get what he wants from the Redevelopment Board.

There is every reason for the developer to stall.  His purchase price for the town property remains fixed at the 2016 level even as real estate prices in Arlington have rocketed in the last three years.  More ominously, the Planning Dept is again pushing zoning changes for the Heights business district which conveniently has been defined as extending all the way to Forest St, thus including the hotel.  The proposed changes were authored by our old friends, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and go even further than the zoning changes that failed at Town Meeting last spring.  The new version would have that entire block of B2 (small businesses serving the neighborhood) rezoned to a super B3 district.  What does that mean for the abutting homes on Clark, Peirce, Forest, and Locke?  Think about higher and denser buildings, four or five stories in your backyard.

And for the developer, it means that many of those pesky zoning limitations that restrict him will go away.

Stay tuned.  Or better still, come to the hearing on JANUARY 27th December 16 in the Town Hall auditorium location TBA.

Density and Displacement

NIMBY v. YIMBY                                                                                                             

Density and Displacement

Zoning is more than a bloodless means of regulating what may be built and where.  It shapes demographics, economic zones, and the look of neighborhoods.  It can also give rise to strong emotions between planners and residents, between long-time residents and newcomers, and between local control and top-down initiatives.  At its worst, it provokes disparagement of those with differing views on what is important and how to achieve it, to the point of labeling them exclusionary and/or racist.

Broadly, there seems to be agreement in Arlington that many residents want to preserve aspects of the town that they love, such as our trees and green spaces, our older neighborhoods, and our unique small businesses; and also that Arlington is becoming ever more expensive, and that we need to provide affordable options for existing residents and newcomers both.

For a long time, the best path to creating more affordable, and more-affordable, housing was believed to be by allowing greater density and loosening zoning restrictions.  But density efforts have been in place long enough now for new research to emerge, based on outcomes rather than theory.  Much of it paints a different picture of what works to create affordable communities, and shows how current efforts have actually led to a decrease in affordable units, the displacement of existing residents at the lower end of the income spectrum, and a homogenization of economic and demographic diversity.

         “Real estate interests and some scholars argue that unaffordable housing costs

               are primarily due to a shortage in housing supply, and that any increase in

               supply—including luxury development—will ultimately help depress rents. While

               there is some evidence new housing production does eventually help lower

               median rent in the neighborhoods where construction occurred compared to

               other areas, these effects take decades to surface. Worse, by the time such

               price effects register, large numbers of low-income residents have likely already

               been pushed out ... During the decades analyzed, significant displacement had

               already occurred and median rents were hiked up by gentrification.”

                    -- “Here’s What We Actually Know About Market-Rate Housing 
                              Development and Displacement”

                              Amee Chew

                              Shelterforce.org

One of the most significant findings is that new development can actually decrease the overall number of affordable units, because it destroys “naturally occurring” affordable units when new units are built in their place.  Consider the older “garden apartments” in Arlington that line Mass. Ave. and Broadway, with rents at or below HUD-defined affordable rates.  Once targeted, they are likely be redeveloped as market-rate rental units, with a certain percentage of affordable units required.  The overall result is the addition of market-rate apartments to a community, a small number of affordable units, and a net loss of existing lower- rent units.

               “In Chicago, where rezoning also occurred to allow for more growth and taller,

               denser construction (known as upzoning), the changes have been shown to have

                 no effect on housing supply while ‘housing prices rose on the parcels and in 
               projects that were upzoned.' "

                    -- “Is It Time for American Cities to Stop Growing?” 
                              Vinnie Rotondaro
                              Vox.com

In “Neighborhood Upzoning And Racial Displacement: A Potential Target For Disparate Impact Litigation?” a paper from the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change, author Bradley Pough says, “... upzoning changes are taking part in the same underlying activity as exclusionary zoning tactics: maximizing the value of land in the hopes of attracting or retaining mobile capital.  The perhaps not so obvious corollary to this activity is that, by maximizing the value of land, residents and elected officials are gradually pricing out consumers who can no longer afford this product.  In the case of exclusionary zoning, these consumers are the low-income minorities who, but for the cost, would move to the desirable suburb.  In the case of upzoning, these consumers are often the low-income minority renters already living in the neighborhood who are gradually pushed out (i.e. displaced) due to higher rents and pricier surrounding amenities.”

In “Zoned Out! Race, Displacement, and City Planning in New York," editors Tom Agnotti and Sylvia Morse also present the case that upzoning drives minority displacement.  They use neighborhoods in New York City as examples, where upzoning has led to an increase in average rents, a reduction in affordable housing units, an increase in white residents, and a noticeable reduction in the neighborhood’s minority populations.  They go on to say: "But rezonings are very difficult to deal with.  With zoning, most people don't understand it.  It's kind of a hocus pocus, a lot of technical terms, and the way they're explained at community meetings, they're explained in way that doesn't encourage most people to get engaged in any serious way - a lot of pretty pictures and maps, and a lot of nice sounding fairytales about how great the neighborhood's gonna be after the rezoning.  The big challenge today is to discredit this kind of charade."

Here in Arlington, the US Census indicates that we have around 7,200 rental units, of which 1,100 are subsidized, leaving roughly 6,100 non-subsidized rental units.  And of these, approximately one-third is in older, higher-density district apartment buildings.  The overall median rate for market rate rentals in Arlington, including studios, one-bedrooms, etc. in apartment buildings and two-and three-families, is $1,593.00, which is right between the HUD rates of $1,647 for a two-bedroom, and $1,484 for a one-bedroom.

By contrast, if we look at new market rate developments, we see much higher rents.  For instance, at Vox on 2, just across Rt. 2 from Arlington, a studio apartment starts at $2,275.  Two-bedrooms run between $3,085 and $4,395.  This building has 228 units.  At a 15% affordable requirement, it would have had to include 34 affordable units.  Our own Housing Corporation of Arlington currently has two projects underway which are 100% affordable, and which combined will provide 48 units.

The way to create affordable housing is to build affordable housing.  Trickle-down development will never supply affordable housing in meaningful numbers.

                “A real solution to the economics of American cities would require more work—more          

                taxes, more laws, more intervention from the federal government. Those things 

                are hard. Gentrification is easy.”

                      -- How to Kill A City
                              Peter Moskowitz

                “ ...despite stable economies, liberal leanings, and high involvement in municipal 
                politics in both New York and San Francisco, policies that could potentially help 
                poorer residents have been much slower to come and less robust than the influx of 
                new private capital that devours neighborhoods and displaces residents. In just 
                about every city [Peter] Moskowitz examines [in How to Kill A City], he finds that 
                choices by city and state governments limited the creation of affordable housing 
                and changed public-housing policies, giving poorer residents little refuge in 
                increasingly expensive cities.”
                     -- “The Steady Destruction of America’s Cities” 
                             Gillian B. White
                             The Atlantic

And as Pough says in the UPenn paper, “... while inclusionary zoning programs aim to counteract the lack of new affordable public housing units, in practice they often end up serving a demographic noticeably wealthier than the intended recipients of the original public housing programs.”

He goes on to say that there are methods of creating affordable housing, such as community land trusts, that are succeeding, and that “At its core, the community- based planning movement simply asserts that residents living in areas slated for change ought to have some real say in how their neighborhoods develop. ... While full veto power almost certainly is not appropriate, the ability to cast votes of consequence over the changes occurring in their neighborhoods is necessary for ensuring that municipal policies do not completely trample local considerations.”

                “Twenty years into this grand experiment, residents are bucking against what all this

                growth has wrought: high rents, displacement, and a gutting of the very character
                of  their cities.”

                     -- “Is It Time for American Cities to Stop Growing?” 
                             Vinnie Rotondaro
                             Vox.com

It's on again: Mugar property - 219 units threaten to increase flooding and load on Arlington services

By Aram Hollman

The proposed 219-unit development at the Mugar property near Thorndike Field in East Arlington is once again moving forward, despite the as-yet unresolved problems it presents to residents. Flooding, traffic, and education costs are all major concerns, and have not been realistically addresssed by the planners of this project.

Whether flooding can be mitigated, and to what degree, depends on the details, including topography. The closer a site is to the lowest point around, the less feasible it is to mitigate flooding, because that's where the water goes when it dumps, and Mugar's Florida swampland on Rt. 2 is pretty close to the low point.

State law requires that a property owner's "enjoyment" of his or her property, for example, by developing it, does not adversely affect one's neighbor's right to the same. To that end, developers must create "compensatory flood storage", additional flood storage on their property to ensure that their development does not simply displace flooding onto their neighbors' properties. In addition, any developer wants to protect his or her own investment from flooding. If you look at what Cambridge developers along Rt. 2 have done, they have sculpted out a retention basin inbetween Acorn Park Drive and Little River to compensate for some of the flood storage their buildings occupy, and they have raised their buildings several feet above surrounding ground level to keep them dry. These measures are inadequate, but, because those properties were initially developed before compensatory storage requirements were enacted, they need not be fully adequate. As a result, floodwaters spread out furth
er and higher, including into East Arlington.

In large storms, 3 of which occurred from 1996 to 2002 (large enough to shut down Rt. 2, and requiring Arlington and Cambridge Fire Departments to pump out homeowners' basements once the floodwaters started to recede), existing buildings displace floodwaters elsewhere, generally onto someone else's property. That is exactly what all those buildings in Cambridge will do, various flood abatement measures notwithstanding. Since then, many more buildings have been built in and near the floodplain, each one making its small contribution towards worsening flooding.

In 2016, the would-be developers of the Mugar property said that if they were allowed to build, they would "fix" the flooding problem on their property. It was not clear whether the fix that they proposed (additional regrading of the site) would actually solve the flooding problem, or simply displace it elsewhere. Furthermore, that fix was not overly expensive. The Mugars could have and should have done it simply to be good neighbors, and it would have given them some credibility as such. That the Mugars held on to this bargaining chip in exchange for being able to develop their property shows just how little they care about their neighbors or the rest of Arlington, despite words to the contrary. For Arlington to rely on the Mugars or their developers to ameliorate flooding is like having the Kurds rely on Donald Trump for security.

No matter how much development occurs on the Cambridge side of Rt. 2, it's wrong, and it's wrong to allow the Mugars to develop their property in Arlington for the same reason: It will worsen area flooding (haven't mentioned climate change thus far). The best use of the Mugar site would be to dig a big hole in the ground, call it Mugar Pond, and use it as compensatory flood storage for the surrounding area.

Of course, there's also the traffic. In the triangle bounded by the bike path, Rt. 2, and Spy Pond, there are roughly 500 residential structures. Roughly half of them are 2-families, so there are about 750 housing units. Lake St. is critical for residents of these units to get in and out of their neighborhood (notice that I'm ignoring the portion of Lake St. between the bike path and Mass. Ave, for which Lake St. is important, but not absolutely critical). Allowing a single project, all on one side of Lake St., to increase demand on this already-congested portion of Lake St. by roughly 30% is not only absurd and bad planning, but a safety hazard. As it is, drivers headed for even more congested Alewife divert to Lake St.

Then there's education. Any children in grades K-5 living at the Mugar Monstrosity there would attend the rather full Hardy Elementary School. Its population has increased from 300 in 2006 to 350 in 2012 to 450 today, a 50% increase since 2006. This has been possibly only because, systemwide, all 6th graders were relocated to the Gibbs School in 2018.

This 40B project, with 25% affordable units, would not make Arlington more affordable. On the contrary, it would make Arlington even less affordable than it is now. More affordable units push up the price of market-rate units. Arlington does not need more market rate units, but more affordable units, ideally 100% affordable.

In short, construction of over 200 units of housing on the Mugar site would worsen flooding in a flood-prone area, worsen traffic in an area that is terribly congested even by Boston standards, would further overcrowd the local elementary school, and would make Arlington even less affordable than it is now.

-- Below, is the text of a recent Newsletter alert from the Arlington Land Trust with details of the ruling against Arlington and allowing the Mugar development to continue.  Since it is not yet available on the http://arlingtonlandtrust.org/ website, we have included it here:

State agency rules against Arlington on 40B "Safe Harbor"   Mugar hearing resumption postponed at developer's request The state's Housing Appeals Committee (HAC), in a decision that is disappointing but not surprising given HAC's longstanding bias against local control, ruled this week that Arlington has not achieved a target that would have strengthened the Town's hand in controlling 40B development.

How Arlington’s Process for Zoning Changes Works

How Did We Get the Density Articles, and How Can We Make Better Decisions? 

——-

How Our Town Government Is Structured 

Arlington is a town, not a city.  We have an administrative Town Manager, not a Mayor.  The Town Manager is appointed by the Select Board - 5 people who essentially volunteer, and are elected by the residents and voters.  The Manager works for you only through your vote for the Select Board members and their instructions to him.

The Town Manager hires Department of Planning and Community Development (DPCD) staff, and appoints Arlington Redevelopment Board (ARB) volunteers (except for one ARB position, which is filled by a State appointee to provide some independence), and directs the work of both employees and volunteers.

A citizen-proposed Article for this past spring’s Town Meeting would have made the ARB elected, instead of appointed.   The proposal failed - it wasn’t supported by the Town and was voted “no action.”  Additional draft proposals suggested a partially elected board, to insure resident/business/voter representation.

The Rise and Fall of the Density Articles

In April 2019, Town Meeting discussed many zoning-related Articles that DPCD developed and the ARB largely supported.  After much debate, overwhelmingly focused on the process behind drafting the Density Articles, and their potential effects, the Chair of the ARB was forced to withdraw his board’s support from most of the Density Articles.  Changes to zoning bylaws must be made by Town Meeting, or for certain changes, by the voters during an election.  When Articles at Town Meeting lack the support of the relevant Town board they come under, Town Meeting votes “No Action” to say “No." 

The Director of DPCD, Jennifer Raitt, had worked with several non-Arlington organizations - the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, Metro Mayors’ Coalition, and Citizens’ Housing And Planning Association  - to develop and promote the Density Articles, at the direction of our Town Manager, Adam Chapdelaine.  In late 2018, select groups of people were invited to planning sessions held at Town Hall over the draft Density Articles. The CHAPA-facilitated meetings were not widely advertised and attendees were generally favorable to the proposed draft rules, although the meetings were officially open to anyone who wanted to attend.

The Director of DPCD also sits at ARB meetings, and presented the Articles to the ARB for their review and eventual approval.  DPCD, at Town Manager direction, conducted the Density Articles through the ARB process, revisions, and to the ARB vote, supporting most of the proposals, just prior to April Town Meeting.

Resident and Business Response to the Density Articles
ARFRR and others in Town learned about the proposed Density Articles and were concerned that the benefits were too few, with a lack of data supporting the proponents’ claims of these benefits, and that they presented the possibility of many unintended consequences.  ARFRR members and others attended ARB and public information meetings and worked to raise awareness among residents and businesses.  At Town Meeting, the message to DPCD, the Town Manager, and indirectly to our Select Board was: “These Articles were not put together in an appropriate fashion - go back and improve your process, involving voters and other stakeholders before you return with zoning changes.”

Video of the Town Meeting No Action Vote:

This process highlighted the limited control that residents and businesses have over the Town.

The Zoning Process Should Work Better For Residents and Businesses

Normally, we assume unelected Town officials act as our agents, via the elected members of Select Board.  We pay their salaries and they get on with the process of managing the affairs of our town on our account - for us.  This past year’s experience suggests that changes may be necessary. The ARB’s focus on working for the residents and businesses is suspect, with public meetings where the public isn’t always allowed to speak, allowing major mistakes like the building at 887 Mass Ave - one of the first new “mixed development” projects.  The ARB’s dependence is obvious - it’s appointed by the Manager, except for the sole State appointee.  

The work by DPCD to push proposals that did not originate with residents is a concern.  The Town Manager’s direction for DPCD's work as exemplified in his July 22 Select Board and October 22 ARB presentations, which advocated for outside-groups’ goals of increased density in Arlington, are at odds with the wishes of residents as shown at Town Meeting.  The Select Board have carefully avoided ruling on the matters of the Density Articles. Since they are the only part of the zoning process the voters can influence, or remove, we hope they will apply brakes to DPCD and the Town Manager’s office.

Looming Trouble for Arlington: Loss of Local Control of Our Zoning Through Gov. Baker’s Bill H3507

At the same time as there is concern about who benefits from the work of the Town Manager and departmental staff, Governor Charlie Baker is proposing removing zoning bylaw voting requirements in Town Meetings across the Commonwealth.  Currently, it takes a vote of 2/3rds plus 1 person in Town Meeting to change zoning bylaws. Under Baker’s plan, it would be reduced to a simple majority vote.  Zoning bylaws are tricky to change for a good reason: they are like the constitution of our neighborhoods.  They determine what may be built and where, providing protections from inappropriate development for all residents.  What developers and urbanization forces call our ‘paper wall’ laws can either support the aspects of a community that its residents value, or allow those aspects to be destroyed.  Indirectly, they influence whether the traffic is terrible and the bus is overcrowded, how many parks and how much green space we enjoy, and whether we have true input into shaping our community. 

Making these important bylaws easy to change would be like making the US Constitution easy to change.  It sounds great, until you realize the risks.  Any changes to our zoning bylaws must be well planned, thoroughly discussed, and broadly supported.