Neighbors appeal decision to allow vet clinic on Minuteman land

(Editor’s note: this story was updated on April 16 to include the ZBA hearing date.)

Mill Street neighborhood residents have appealed a decision that allowed a veterinary clinic to open on the Minuteman High School property based on its planned educational use.

Ally Specialty Veterinary Center, now located on Bear Hill Road in Waltham, is leasing an unoccupied home at 16 Mill Street from Minuteman. The plan is to have the schools’ veterinary science students do clinical observation and training in the for-profit clinic. The Dover Amendment exempts religious and educational uses from some zoning requirements, including educational uses in a residential zone such as the one occupied by the high school and the intended clinic building.

Planning Board members asked pointed questions about how the property will be used at hearings on March 24 and April 14. Ally owner Michelle Custead assured them that her lawyers had OK’d the use and that Minuteman was eager to use her clinic to help educate its students rather than busing them to other locations off campus. Building Inspector M. Jon Metivier approved the use on March 18 with the proviso that the “educational component is maintained.”

But on April 10, Mill Street residents including Bob Domnitz, a former Planning Board member, appealed Metivier’s decision to the Zoning Board of Appeals. They cited the court case Regis College v. Town of Weston saying that projects allowed under the Dover Amendment must the project must have a “bona fide goal” that is “educationally significant” and must also show that the educational goal is “the primary or dominant purpose” of the proposed use.

“To our knowledge, there is no documented agreement or contract between Ally and Minuteman that describes the parameters of their educational relationship,” the appeal says.

“Our onsite partnership with Ally Veterinary Specialty Center is not supplemental; it is foundational,” Minuteman Superintendent Heather Driscoll wrote in an April 6 letter to Metivier, outlining the clinical skills that students would need for future including certified veterinary assistants (CVAs).

“What makes this model uniquely effective is the daily integration of learning and application. Students are not limited to occasional clinical exposure; they are immersed in it every day,” Driscoll wrote. “Without consistent, onsite clinical access, students encounter significant gaps in both required CVA hours and demonstrated proficiency.”

The ZBA will hold a public hearing on the matter on Thursday, May 7 at 7:00pm.

Even if the ZBA decides that the business is permitted under the Dover Amendment, Ally should still have to abide by the town zoning bylaw’s parking regulations and submit plans showing how they will do so, the appeal argues.

The Dover Amendment was also at the core of a battle in Lincoln over whether a McLean Hospital facility should be allowed in a residential zone on Bypass Road. The hospital planned to house boys aged 15–21 in a large former private home to give them classroom training in dialectical behavior therapy, teaching them social and emotional skills including mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and behavioral flexibility.

The use was originally permitted but then overturned by the ZBA. McLean sued the town, lost in land court but eventually prevailed in the Supreme Judicial Court in 2019, but the hospital never went ahead with its plans. In 2021, it found another location for the intended services and put its two Bypass Road properties on the market.