The Lincoln Squirrel – News, features and photos from Lincoln, Mass.

land use

Property sales in May 2023

8C North Commons — Shanshan Yue to Aditi Agashe and Radhakrishnan Srinivasan for $445,000 (May 30)

82 Virginia Rd. #A102 — Anne Coyle to Harold Posgate for $216,706 (May 31)

47 Deerhaven Rd. — Thomas Griggs Jr. to Clary Realty Trust for $1,100,000 (May 1)

24 Sandy Pond Rd. — Geoffrey Hargreaves Heald to Douglas A. Melton Trust and Gail A. O’Keefe Trust for $1,950,000 (May 31)

58 Weston Rd. — Joachim Fruebis Trust to Vincent Roche 2004 Trust for $3,250,000 (May 1)

139 South Great Rd. — Lawrence B. Cohen Trust to Ethan Litman and Cara Sunberg for $1,007,000 (May 8)

140 Lincoln Rd. #115 — Mary S. Cancian Trust to Kathleen Stewart for $418,000 (May 8)

136 Weston Rd. — Jude McColgan to 126 Weston Rd. Nominee Trust for $2,480,000 (May 31)

194 Lincoln Rd. — Umar Ashad to Benjamin Shiller and Laurie Gray for $1,920,000 (May 16)

300 South Great Rd. — Daniel A. Nelson to Robert Haslinger and Rheinila Fernandes for $1,764,750 (May 11)

New zoning option includes more South Lincoln land

Option 7 for rezoning Lincoln to comply with the Housing Choice Act. Not shown is a fifth subdistrict encompassing the Lincoln North office park. (Click image to enlarge).

To comply with the Housing Choice Act, town officials are considering a new multifamily zoning district in addition to those that were previously examined after consultants refocused on the village center in response to feedback at two public forums on June 16 and June 20.

The HCA requires Lincoln to approve new zoning that would allow at least 15 multifamily housing units per acre and a total of 635 units on a total of 42 acres. The final district can include several subdistricts in various locations as long as several requirements are met (i.e., one of the subdistricts must account for at least half of the district’s total land area, 20% of the land must be within half a mile of the commuter rail station, all the land targeted must be developable, and existing properties may not be divided into more than one new zone). 

Five initial subdistricts were presented on June 6. Two combinations of those subdistricts met all state requirements. Both included several South Lincoln parcels around the intersection of the railroad tracks and Lincoln Road. One of them also included a 39-acre Battle Road Farm/Lincoln North/MinuteMan parcel, while the other included a 37-acre Commons of Lincoln/Oriole Landing segment instead.

Two new options discussed at the Housing Choice Act Working Group meeting on June 30 (video here) include subdistricts of various shapes in the South Lincoln village area as well as some land in North Lincoln. One variation, Option 6, probably isn’t viable because it’s uncomfortably close to the minimum HCA requirements around wetlands and other exclusions. “This is sort of a precarious version, threading the needle a little too much,” said Zoë Mueller, an urban planner with consulting firm Utile.

Option 7, which Utile is recommending to the town, includes:

  • Lincoln Woods, which now has 125 units but would be allowed to have up to 159.
  • A Lincoln Road subdistrict encompassing both sides of Lewis Street east to Ryan Estate and 136 Lincoln Rd., including the first rectangular Ridge Road condo building but not the “flying nuns”.
  • A Codman Road subdistrict bounded by Codman Road to the west, Lincoln Road to the north, the railroad tracks to the east, and 108 Codman Rd. to the south. The DPW site is inside that subdistrict but can’t be included in the housing calculation.
  • The Lincoln North office park property, but not Battle Road Farm or other parcels in the area.

None of the proposals that have been discussed include the Lincoln Mall because the HCA says that towns can’t require multifamily housing in commercial districts. In a separate plan, the town hopes to redevelop the mall in partnership with Civico Inc. to as a three-story building with businesses on the ground floor and residences on the two floors above. That rezoning proposal, which may also end up including the Doherty’s Garage property, will require separate voter approval at Town Meeting.

Option 7 “very comfortably”  meets state guidelines, Mueller said. “This was a really good outcome, I think, responding to a lot of the feedback that was provided.”

Some of the earlier ideas would have allowed significantly more total units that the HCA requires, so some of the feedback included questions about “whether we could get closer to what our [minimum] target was,” said Select Board member Jennifer Glass. Others wondered why the proposals included so much land around Oriole Landing and North Lincoln. There is an MBTA bus stop in North Lincoln but the train is far more heavily used by commuters and others, which the HCA aims to encourage.

If approved at Town Meeting in March 2024, the rezoning would allow affected property owners to build (or sell to a developer to build) denser housing on their land, but no one would be required to sell. Construction on the site of an existing condominium development would require approval or sale by every condo owner. Any multifamily development would also be constrained by septic and parking requirements.

Property sales in April 2023

140 Lincoln Rd. #111 — Correia Family Limited Partnership to Elizabeth Szekely for $575,000 (April 29)

38 Lincoln Rd. — Matthew Cummings to Thomas and Hayley Wilcox for $1,623,000 (April 28)

110 Concord Rd. — Frank Forti to MDEpaula LLC for $780,000 (April 21)

80 Trapelo Rd. — Anthony Buendia to Kevin Kingman and Abigail Wattley for $2,447,500 (April 14)

21 Blackburnian Rd. — Mary Williamson to Mario Chiuccariello and the 21 Blackburnian Rd. Nominee Trust for $2,400,000 (April 14)

Mall redevelopment coming sooner than state-mandated rezoning

An illustration of what the mall building might look like if the area was rezoned to allow 25 units of housing per acre. This sketch shows a denser massing of 42 units per acre at the front of the subdistrict, which would be balanced by a lower concentration of housing in the rest. Donelan’s is in white at left rear.

Rezoning to comply with the Housing Choice Act may some day result in more multifamily housing in South Lincoln and perhaps other areas, if developers are interested — but change is probably coming much sooner to the mall. Civico, which designed and built Oriole Landing, is poised to redevelop the mall’s main building with more commercial space and housing — assuming a separate rezoning proposal is approved by voters.

In the second of two public forums on June 20, consultants recapped their June 6 presentation about rezoning options to comply with the HCA. The law will require Lincoln to allow at least 15 housing units per acre (for a total capacity of 635 units) on parcels of land totaling at least 42 acres, 20% of which must be within half a mile of the train station — click here to see the updated slide deck.

Running alongside the HCA work is a separate effort to rezone just the mall area with the goal of encouraging more commercial use while also adding housing above stores in the main building (the post office and restaurant buildings would not be affected). One of the HCA’s stipulations is that commercial use can’t be required in the rezoned areas, but the Rural Land Foundation (owners of the mall) and Civico are proposing a new subdistrict that would pave the way for a mixed-use buildout by right with improved commercial space and 25 multifamily housing units per acre. The subdistrict would include the commuter lot on the east side of the railroad tracks.

“We need to think holistically about this area,” Select Board Jennifer Glass said. “These two kind of work together — two ideas with one zoning package.” The two proposals — a preferred rezoning option selected from five viable HCA concepts, and the mall subdistrict — will be presented at the State of the Town meeting on September 30 and submitted to votes at Town Meeting in March 2024.

“Without a mall subdistrict, it’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to revitalize the mall in keeping with Lincoln’s values and rural character,” said Michelle Barnes, chair of the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust/RLF Board of Trustees. This effort would go beyond the HCA moves (which simply allow denser housing but do not require anyone to build them) because the RLF already has a development partner and a preliminary sketch of a project.

Civico, a developer that is “known to and trusted by the town,” went through the arduous Town Meeting approval process for Oriole Landing but has indicated that “they would not be willing to do so again,” Barnes said.

The mall project would actually allow Lincoln to respond more quickly to the area-wide housing crisis and the state’s push for more transit-oriented housing, she added. If all goes as planned, Civico and the town (which does not have the resources to redevelop the mall on its own) would collaborate on a project in keeping with the town’s character, with the sale of the mall contingent on such a design.

One stumbling block to redevelopment is the age and limited capacity of the wastewater treatment plant that services both the mall and Lincoln Woods. The plant is owned by TCB (The Community Builders, Inc.). Paula Vaughn-MacKenzie, Director of Planning and Land Use, said that the RLF is working with TCB on a plan for upgrading the plant, but the financial details are still unknown. However, the town already received $400,000 from the state in late 2021 to design an upgrade.

TCB and Civico are “both more than confident that they would be able to get a Massworks grant for the mall project as long as the town complies with the HCA,” Barnes said.

Massworks grants are often in the millions and could pay for more than half of the project, Vaughn-MacKenzie said. Even if the HCA weren’t in the picture, “the state would be thrilled [with the mall project]. It’s just the type of project they’d want to support,” Vaughn-MacKenzie said.

Town rezoning approval for a mall project funded by Civico and the state would be a big plus for Lincoln, which would broaden its tax base as well as improve housing and commercial options there, said Planning Board member Gary Taylor. “Right now everything seems to be aligned in trying to make this happen.”

Lexington is the first town to approve rezoning to comply with the HCA while also encouraging improved commercial use. The measure was the subject of articles in the Boston Globe and the New Yorker.

Rezoning ideas to comply with HCA and redevelop mall are aired

The five parcels proposed for multifamily rezoning (click to enlarge). Some combinations of four of them would satisfy HCA requirements.

Five parcels of land in Lincoln have been identified for possible multifamily rezoning to satisfy the state Housing Choice Act, according to a consultant hired to help the town comply with the law. In a separate effort, the Rural Land Foundation is also proposing to rezone the area occupied by the Mall at Lincoln Station to allow redevelopment of the mall along with multifamily housing.

The HCA and mall initiatives were both presented at a multiboard meeting led by the Housing Choice Act Working Group on June 6. There will be two public forums later this month where residents can get information and ask questions, and more detailed proposals will be presented at the State of the Town meeting in September in preparation for a vote at Town Meeting in March 2024.

The state law aims to encourage more transit-oriented zoning areas on land surrounding MBTA stops by mandating “by right” zoning of at least 15 units per acre across the district. Lincoln, which has two MBTA stops (the train station and bus stop), must allow a total of 635 units.

The timeline is tight because the HCA requires commuter-rail towns such as Lincoln to have a rezoning plan in place by 18 months from now. Plans must be presented prior to a townwide vote ahead of time to the state Department of Housing and Community Development, which (along with the Attorney General’s Office) must also sign off after voter approval at Town Meeting — all by December 2024.

Early proposals for rezoning parts of Lincoln have identified five candidate parcels, four of which together would allow enough multifamily units to satisfy the HCA. Three of the parcels are in South Lincoln near the train station; the others are in north Lincoln around Oriole Landing and the Lincoln North office complex. Four of the five possible subdistrict combinations would meet all the conditions.

“You have options as a town. This is a good place to be,” said Will Cohen of consulting firm Utile Design.

Towns aren’t required to create a single multifamily district; they may split it up into several nonadjacent subdistricts. However, the work to determine which areas would together meet state requirements is constrained by a complicated set of rules and formulas. For example, one of the subdistricts must account for at least half of the district’s total land area; all the land targeted must be developable (i.e., not conservation land or wetlands); and existing properties may not be divided into more than one new zone.

In Lincoln, the district must total at least 42 acres, and 20% of that land must be within half a mile of the commuter rail station. Some of it may also be around the bus stop at the corner of Hanscom Drive and Old Bedford Road. The working group focused on those areas as well as others that already have multifamily housing.

Additional wrinkles:

  • Since the HCA is aimed at residential zoning, commercial use cannot be required in a compliant district (though it may be allowed). This limits the ability to require mixed-use development in places like South Lincoln.
  • Lincoln now requires 15% of the units in multifamily developments to be income-restricted, but the HCA doesn’t have any requirements around affordability. In fact, if a town wants to have a zone mandate that more than 10% of the units are affordable, it must pay for an independent feasibility study that will demonstrate that that local requirement will not hurt the economic viability of a proposed project. Lincoln has already taken steps to have such a study done.

Lincoln and other towns can require developers to submit a site plan review and comply with reasonable design guidelines relating to traffic circulation, screening, lighting, etc., but “they can’t put out guidelines that make it impossible to do something,” Planning Board member Margaret Olson noted.

Finance Board member Andy asked if the state would pre-approve several rezoning proposals and allow voters to choose which one they preferred. “Lincoln has a history of getting state approval, [then] turning things down at Town Meeting and getting in a bind,” he said, referring to the school project that was pre-approved and partially funded by the state but was subsequently shot down at Town Meeting in 2012.

“That’s a great question that I don’t know the answer to,” Cohen said.

The HCAWG public forums will be on:

  • Friday, June 16 at 8 a.m. in person at the Town Hall
  • Tuesday, June 20 at 7 p.m. via Zoom — click here to register.

Redeveloping the mall

Along a parallel path in recent years, the Rural Land Foundation has been thinking about how to redevelop and revitalize the Mall at Lincoln Station to make it more attractive to commercial tenants and encourage multifamily housing. They propose to create a mall subdistrict that could accommodate 42 housing units above the building now housing the Bank of America and other stores (the portion with the post office and restaurant would not be affected).

“We though that looked pretty nice and in keeping with a town village center feel,” said Michelle Barnes, chair of the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust/RLF Board of Trustees, as she showed a rendering of one idea. “Greater density doesn’t have to look as scary as we might think.”

An artist’s rendering of one concept for how the mall might look after rezoning and redevelopment. Donelan’s is the white building at left rear.

As a commercial use, the mall area can’t be in the HCA district, as noted earlier. Instead, the town could rezone the mall to allow mixed use by right while also ensuring that commercial space is preserved.

A better quality of commercial space is crucial for the economic viability of the mall, which the trustees see as “an increasingly risky and hard-to-justify fiduciary obligation of the RLF,” Barnes said. However, without the opportunity for a developer to create a viable mixed-use project, the value of the mall will decline and the RLF will probably need to sell it (which it may have to do in any case).

RLF doesn’t have the capital to redevelop the mall by itself, so the group is working with CIVICO, which won approval for and built Oriole Landing before selling it in 2022. The RLF and CIVICO are conceptualizing a project with the idea that the mall would eventually be sold to the company, but contingent on an agreed-upon design “in keeping with the town’s ethos and values” that’s developed with input from residents and town leadership, Barnes said. To guarantee long-term financial viability for the project, a minimum of 25 housing units per acre built above the commercial spaces would be needed, she added.

Along with the HCA proposal, a mall rezoning measure will be presented at the State of the Town meeting on September 30 and at Town Meeting in March 2024.

Meeting, public forums to tackle town’s options under Housing Choice Act

The Housing Choice Act Working Group (HCAWG) has scheduled a virtual multi-board meeting and two public forums in June to discuss the town’s path towards compliance with the state housing law.

The goal of the Housing Choice Act is to create more transit-oriented zoning areas (meaning areas surrounding MBTA stops including Lincoln’s train station) where multifamily housing is allowed by right. Under the updated guidelines released last fall, Lincoln would be required to allow either 692 or 563 units in one or more multifamily zones, depending on whether or not the Hanscom housing units are counted. In March, HCAWG met with consultants from Utile Design to review how the state calculates developable land and to walk through an initial analysis of current zoning in Lincoln to begin identifying areas that might be logical places for rezoning. 

The meeting co-hosted by the Select Board and the Planning Board will be on Tuesday, June 6 at 7 p.m. Click here for the Zoom link. The public forums will be:

  • Friday, June 16 at 8 a.m. in person at the Town Hall
  • Tuesday, June 20 at 7 p.m. via Zoom — click here to register.

Property sales in March 2023

5 Laurel Drive — Fred Tingley to Sivaram Balakrishnan and Vaneeta Singh for $1,220,000 (March 31)

10 Blueberry Lane — Solomon Manson Trust to Charles Harold Ryback Trust for $1,560,000 (March 30)

59 Oxbow Rd. — Shihab Ahmed to Denis and Heather Malkov for $1,228,000 (March 30)

129 Lexington Rd. — RE Investments LLC to Elizabrth Yanez for $1,895,000 (March 29)

42C Indian Camp Lane — Vicki Brathwaite to Diana Brenda Trust and Virginia Leonard Revocable Trust for $379,000 (March 27)

12 Deer Run Rd. — Suvitya Nopakun to Mitchel Westwood and Sherya Dave for $1,515,000 (March 22)

200 Old County Rd. — Gulrez Arshad to Shengjun Ren abd Yu Zhang for $650,000 (March 16)

128 Chestnut Circle #6 — Stephanie Smoot to Philip and Mary Jane Sarocco for $675,000 (March 15)

Town moves forward with firm to build solar installation at landfill

After years of stops and starts, solar panels may finally start appearing on the capped town landfill in late 2024. 

The town recently selected HESP Solar of Montvale, N.J., to build a solar voltaic facility that will provide 1 MW of electricity, which is about what’s needed to power town-owned buildings excluding the schools. The electricity will go directly to the electrical grid and the town will receive income from a power purchase agreement (PPA).

Although the firm is not based in Massachusetts, during the bid process they brought in a Massachusetts attorney to better understand the Commonwealth’s regulatory and incentive processes, an electrical engineering firm that has built solar projects atop landfills in the past, and a geotechnical firm to learn more about the landfill, said consultant Beth Greenblatt at the March 20 Select Board meeting. Greenblatt works for Beacon Integrated Solutions, which was also involved in creating the PPA for the Lincoln School’s solar installation.

“They will work to accommodate the town in all ways possible. I think they’ll be a very good partner for the town,” she said.

Lincoln won’t have to pay anything and will actually see three revenue streams from the deal. In addition to income from the PPA in the form of electricity savings — estimated at $170,000 to $200,000 per year — HESP Solar will make lease payments for use of the land and PILOT (payments in lieu of taxes) for their personal property on the site.

“Financially it’s an attractive proposition for the town,” observed Town Administrator Tim Higgins.The project was slowed by several factors including the pandemic and lengthy negotiations with Minute Man National Historical Park. The park owns the right of way on either side of Route 2A, so the town needed their approval to install power lines from the landfill out to the road. Before the facility can go on line, the interconnection process will need multiple approvals including Eversource and MassDEP, which will permit reuse of the landfill. Construction contracts could be signed in about a year.

Hanscom runway repaving will affect nearby Lincoln residents

Starting in June, part of a Hanscom Field runway will be repaved, causing disruptions for Virginia Road residents. 

The routine 20-year repaving of the runway that runs from southwest to northeast is not related to a recent proposal to add hangars and reconfigure a taxiway at Hanscom Field.

Massport officials said at a recent Hanscom Field Advisory Commission meeting that paving trucks will be routed along Virginia Road in Lincoln to Hanscom Drive to Route 2A and Route 128, according to HFAC member Chris Eliot and a March 24 article in the Bedford Citizen. During a 37-day period, the paving trucks will operate for 20 days (daytime Monday through Friday), with about 100 truckloads (50 round trips) for each of those days.

There will also be some changes to flight patterns resulting from the monthlong closure of the runway, so some residents will hear more flights and some will hear less during this period. 

Residents of the nearby Battle Road Farm condo development, which is accessed from Old Bedford Road (which runs between Virginia Road and Hanscom Drive) are also worried about dust and construction debris that may be shed by trucks leaving the construction area.

The northern segment of the runway will be repaved in 2024, but the truck traffic for that work will be routed through Bedford. 

The 2023 project will also include restoration of more than nine acres of grass along the sides of the runway, which was originally sized for larger military aircraft.