Faced with demands for more Housing Choice Act rezoning options, the Select Board promoted the issue to a full warrant article at the Special Town Meeting on December 2 and promised to add a fifth option to the array. Previously, officials had proposed a paper ballot on which residents ranked their choices among the options…
South Lincoln/HCA*
Dozens at forum urge a go-slower approach to HCA compliance
More than 200 people turned out (virtually) to ask questions, urge a go-slow approach and ask for more options at a public forum on the most recent proposals for complying with the Housing Choice Act. A new group called the Lincoln Residents for Housing Alternatives (LRHA) formed to propose other options that would comply with…
My Turn: New website offers appealing options for compliance with the Housing Choice Act
By Lynne Smith The Housing Choice Act (HCA) asks Massachusetts communities with public transit in the greater Boston area to rezone parts of their town to allow “by right” development of multifamily housing if they want to remain eligible for three state grant programs. “By right” means that the developer of the property would not…
New HCA options would move some allowed units from south to north Lincoln
Editor’s note: this article was amended on October 26 to include mention of the upcoming public forums. Faced with a torrent of protest over the “Lincoln Station only” option for allowing multifamily housing, town officials discussed three more options that include subdistricts in north Lincoln and fewer units allowed around the train station. The Housing…
Town moves forward with Housing Choice zoning option, but another may be coming
(Editor’s note: this article was updated on October 12 to revise the headline [replacing the incorrect phrase “affordable housing”] and to say that the possibility of presenting options to residents for a nonbinding “sense of the town” vote on December 2 is being considered but is not definite.) Officials at an October 10 three-board meeting…
Third multifamily rezoning option omits North Lincoln
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…
New rotating-topic format for State of the Town meeting
There are four important topics to be discussed at the State of the Town (SOTT) meeting on September 30, and the Select Board has devised a new way to help residents focus and give feedback on them. Rater than one continuous meeting, there will be four 45-minute repeating rotating sessions in different locations at the…
New zoning option includes more South Lincoln land
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…
Correction
The June 25 story headlined “Mall redevelopment coming sooner than state-mandated rezoning” indicated that the rezoning proposal for part of the Lincoln mall calls for 42 housing units per acre. The proposal actually calls for 25 units per acre overall. The sketch of the front of the mall showed what a denser concentration on the…
Mall redevelopment coming sooner than state-mandated rezoning
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…