New Housing Choice Act options to be presented on Oct. 24

Town officials will review two new Housing Choice Act rezoning options at a Planning Board meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 24.

The town has already forwarded Option C — which clusters all the rezoned subdistricts in South Lincoln — to the state for a pre-adoption compliance check. But at a well-attended multiboard meeting on October 10, residents expressed a desire to see new options that would allow less multifamily housing in South Lincoln while also allowing some in the areas of Battle Road Farm and/or the Lincoln North office building.

Two earlier options (A and B) included those North Lincoln areas, but they were drawn up before the state changed its guidelines to allow towns to “count” multifamily housing permitted in areas with some commercial use as well, such as the mall property.

On November 13, another three-board meeting will select one of the two new options created by consultant Utile (D1 and D2) to continue exploring. Before that, there will be two public forums on November 8: one in person at Town Hall from 8–10 a.m. and one on Zoom from 7–9 p.m. At those forums, officials will review option C as well as D1 and D2, take questions and ask for feedback on which of the new options people prefer.

Two final options — Option C plus either option D1 or D2 — will go before residents at the Special Town Meeting on December 2 for an informal “sense of the town” vote by paper ballot. On December 4, another multiboard meeting will confirm one final option to put before voters at the Annual Town Meeting in March. 

Several attendees at an October 16 meeting of the Select Board, Planning Board, and Housing Choice Act Working Group were worried about excessive development in South Lincoln resulting in a village center resembling the reconfigured mixed-use Wayland Center, which “most of us consider to be ill-conceived and not very attractive,” Select Board member Jennifer Glass said. She assured everyone that the town is not thinking of expanding business use in the mall but “just supporting the bit of commercial that we have.” 

Part of what will make the mall more financially sustainable is having the “cross-subsidy” from housing on the same parcel, in effect “de-risking the property” for a developer, said Michelle Barnes, chair of the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust/RLF Board of Trustees, which owns the mall.

Additionally, any development proposed for either of the two commuter parking lots adjacent to the railroad tracks would have to go before Town Meeting because they are owned by the town, not the RLF, Town Administrator Tim Higgins noted.

If people want to offer opinions and feedback on Options D1 and D2 between the October 24 presentation and the November 8 public forums, they can email Glass at jlrglass@mac.com or, if the comment is specific to the mall, to Barnes at la_vise@yahoo.com. A number of comments and questions on the HCA have been posted by residents to LincolnTalk, but Glass warned that “we can’t engage in dialogue on LincolnTalk without running afoul of the Open Meeting Law.”

The December 2 Special Town Meeting will feature official votes on a preferred community center option, and on whether to amend the overlay district zoning at The Commons in Lincoln to pave the way for a proposal to add 28 independent living units.