land use

The new HCA Option C includes the mall (in yellow) but not any parts of North Lincoln. The dotted circle indicates the required half-mile radius from the train station in which some multifamily housing must be allowed. Click image to enlarge.

Thanks to a change in state guidelines for complying with the Housing Choice Act, Lincoln now has the option of creating a single multifamily district around the train station without involving parts of North Lincoln — unless residents decide they want to rezone those areas.

Residents will see three rezoning options at the State of the Town (SOTT) meeting on Saturday, Sept. 30 starting at 10 a.m. The first two were formulated by the Housing Choice Act Working Group (HCAWG) and consultant Utile before the state’s change in August. Both include three subdistricts in South Lincoln (excluding the mall) as well as either (A) a Lincoln North mixed-use subdistrict or (B) a Battle Road Farm housing subdistrict.

Before August, towns couldn’t allow commercial development in a multifamily housing district as part of their plan to comply with the HCA. This meant that redeveloping the mall as a mixture of ground-floor commercial and housing on the second and third floors wouldn’t satisfy HCA’s multifamily housing requirements, and the mall would have to be rezoned separately in order to allow housing there.

Now the state says that towns can count multifamily housing units they allow in commercial areas. As a result, the two rezoning efforts (HCA compliance and redeveloping the mall) can be folded into a single Option C that includes four South Lincoln subdistricts and none in North Lincoln.

In Lincoln’s rezoned HCA or “3A” subdistricts (named after the relevant section of state law), multifamily housing at 15 units per acre for a total of at least 635 units must be allowed by right, without the need for a special permit or Town Meeting approval. That housing may not be age-restricted, and commercial uses can’t be required in those districts, though now they are allowed since the August change.

The new option met with general approval among officials and residents at a Planning and meeting on September 26 — to the point where some questioned why Options A and B were even still on the table. Given the recent change in HCA guidelines, the town should simply “take the win and go home” rather than add the complexity of offering two other rezoning options, said resident Vicky Diaduk.

“We felt it was worth having a discussion in town and getting people’s feedback to see if there was an overwhelming feeling about one or the other of the options,” Select Board member Jennifer Glass said. In conversations with Battle Road Farm residents, some were in favor of the idea of allowing a coffee shop or a few retail locations in their neighborhood, she noted. (However, as Diaduk pointed out, residents can propose rezoning those areas or any others in the future if they decide they want to.)

HCAWG will host a neighborhood conversation about the proposed HCA zoning options on Thursday, Sept. 28 at 7 p.m. in the Lincoln Woods Community Room (50 Wells Rd.). They have also posted an updated set of FAQs that address issues including the consequences of noncompliance with the HCA (go to the HCAWG page and scroll halfway down to “FAQs – updated September 17, 2023”).

At Saturday’s State of the Town meeting, officials will gather feedback about which of the three zoning options that residents prefer. On October 10, the Select Board, Planning Board, and HCAWG will formally select one option to submit to the state for preapproval in December. Residents must then vote on that rezoning proposal at the Annual Town Meeting in March. That vote requires a simple majority. In past years, zoning changes required a two-thirds majority to pass, but the state changed that requirement as part of the HCA. Affected towns have until December 2024 to have a new multifamily zoning plan in place.

The SOTT meeting will also include presentations and discussion on three other topics: the proposed community center, the town’s new Climate Action Plan, and the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Anti-Racism Action Plan.

Mall redevelopment

Any of the three rezoning proposals would allow the Rural Land Foundation, which owns the mall,  to redevelop the main building (Donelan’s and the post office/restaurant building are not being considered as part of this). Civico (which built Oriole Landing) and town officials will work toward a mutually agreeable design; the RLF would then convey the property to the company via a sale or long-term lease. The RLF/Civico partnership is necessary because the town does not have the resources to do the project itself.

The town is also working with The Community Builders, which owns Lincoln Woods, to design an upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant that serves that housing and the mall. That upgrade will also allow development on the town-owned MBTA parking lot at the back of the mall. State grants — which will be mostly unavailable to the town if it doesn’t approve the new 3A zoning — are expected to offset some of the upgrade cost. Construction will be phased to accommodate the existing anchor tenants.

It’s too early in the process for Civico and the town to develop a concrete proposal, other than the general plan of putting two stories with about 50 housing units above the ground-floor retail portion of the mall. Planning Board member Ephraim Flint expressed concern that lack; “without it, you put the [rezoning] vote at risk,” he said. However, because there is already an interested developer, the mall project will likely come to pass in the next few years. Properties in the other districts would need to attract developers to actually result in more housing — a longer-term prospect, officials noted.

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.

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.

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.