South Lincoln/HCA*

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.

• Download the Powerpoint slide deck from the June 6 multiboard meeting

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.

In a response to the state’s new multifamily housing guidelines now being drafted, town officials will argue that the requirements are draconian and impracticable for Lincoln.

Lincoln was one of 42 Massachusetts towns designated by the ​​Housing Choice Act (HCA) as “MBTA communities” that will be required to allow 750 units of multifamily housing within half a mile of an MBTA stop (15 units per acre over 50 acres). Towns have until March 31 to give feedback to the state Department of Housing and Community Development. Those that don’t eventually comply risk losing millions in state grants.

Planning Board and SLPAC members met with the Select Board on February 28 to outline their objections to some of the law’s provisions. The most clear-cut issue is that Lincoln was designated as a “bus” rather than a “commuter rail” town. This wouldn’t change the number of multifamily units required, but towns that fall into the commuter rail category have one more year to implement zoning changes, with a deadline of December 31, 2024 rather than 2023.

The housing density required by the HCA would also have a huge impact. Adding 750 units would increase the town’s total number of housing units (excluding those on Hanscom Air Force Base) by 30%, which is “extremely burdensome” for Lincoln and other small towns when considering the effect on schools, public safety, water usage, and infrastructure, said Paula Vaughn-MacKenzie, Director of Planning and Land Use.

Officials from Lincoln and other towns would like to see more flexibility in the zoning requirements. They suggested that the state let Lincoln split the multifamily zones between two areas (those in proximity to the commuter rail station and the MBTA bus stop near Hanscom Field, for example), or rezone a larger piece of land at a lower density, such as 93 acres with eight units per acre. Basing the number of required units on a percentage rather than units per acre would make more sense, they said.

“No one wants to see a 10-story building in Lincoln center. It’s not a project that would fit within the aesthetics and methods of our town, and we are not alone in that belief,” Vaughn-MacKenzie said.

Meanwhile, the train station itself is not ADA-accessible and does not have a platform, shelters or seating, and the schedule and ticket prices do not encourage commuter use. “We have been asking for upgrades for years,” she said. “If you want all of these towns to build more housing near commuter rail stops, then you have to make the MBTA schedule and fares better serve the users.”

Another problem for Lincoln is that much of the land within the half-mile radius of the commuter rail stop is wetlands or land belonging to the Codman Estate and Mass Audubon, while most of the rest is already zoned for some level of commercial and multifamily housing.

The response letter will be signed by the chairs of the Select Board, the Planning Board, SLPAC and the Housing Commission. Many other towns feel the same way as Lincoln does about the new rules and may collaborate in responding to the DCHD. “I think there will be broad statewide support for advocating something different,” Town Manager Tim Higgins said.

One thing is clear after a pair of informational sessions this week: by order of the state, some type of multifamily housing will be permitted by right in South Lincoln some day. Still to be determined is how dense that housing might be — and what will happen if it fails to comply with the new state rules.

The Housing Choice Act will “have a significant impact on the town, whether we choose to comply or not,” Planning Board Chair Margaret Olson said at a joint meeting with the Select Board on January 31. 

The Housing Choice Act asks that Lincoln and other designated MBTA communities amend their zoning to allow 750 units of multifamily units within half a mile of an MBTA stop or lose eligibility for three categories of state grants. Lincoln has not received grants from any of those programs (though other area towns have received millions from one of them in recent years), but a state official on Wednesday indicated that noncomplying towns would have lower priority for other state grants as well.

“All [state grant programs] are discretionary and oversubscribed,” said Mike Kennealy, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, during a February 1 Zoom session with dozens of officials and residents from eastern Massachusetts towns. “We may want to fund more for communities that are trying to get housing done. There’s a lot of discretion about what gets funded and what doesn’t.”

• Slides from the January 12 and February 1 state webinars
• Slides from the January 31 Select Board/Planning Board/SLPAC meeting downloadable from this page 

Kennealy and two other state officials began the hourlong session by recapping their presentation at a January 12 webinar. They explained that the final rules will have more flexibility than the draft guidelines that were issued in early January.

For example, the 50 acres in the multifamily zone needn’t be contiguous, said Chris Kluchman, Deputy Director of the Community Services Division in the state Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). There will also be some flexibility for towns that don’t have 50 acres of buildable land within the prescribed radius because of wetlands, obstructing physical features, or issues with water supply or Title V septic regulations, though a future developer could be required to provide wastewater treatment facilities if necessary, she said.

One of the attendees at the February 1 session noted that more than 40 MBTA stations are not currently ADA-compliant and asked how that situation would be rectified for communities that are subject to the Housing Choice Act zoning rules. That event was co-hosted by MAGIC (Minuteman Advisory Group on Interlocal Coordination) and the MetroWest Regional Collaborative.

“We are working closely with the MBTA and MassDOT,” Kluchman said. “I’ll take that as a comment.”

Lincoln attendees raised another issue: the documents issued by the state show Lincoln as a bus community by virtue of having an MBTA bus stop at Hanscom Field. However, Lincoln obviously has an MBTA train station in South Lincoln as well, and the timelines for the two types of communities are different. Bus towns must submit a proposed action plan and timelines for studies by March 31, 2022 and have new zoning rules adopted by Dec. 31, 2023, whereas the deadlines are July 1, 2022 and Dec. 31, 2024 for commuter rail towns.

The state guidelines assign MBTA communities to one of four service categories from highest to lowest: subway or light rail, bus, commuter rail, and “adjacent” (meaning the town has no MBTA service but there’s a stop in a neighboring community within half a mile of the town border).

“If you’re within a half mile of the highest service category, that’s what category you’re in,” said Clark Ziegler, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, said at the MAGIC/MetroWest session.

“This is where our designation as a bus service community is a problem,” Olson said. With a Planning Department staff of two, “this is actually a very tight deadline for the town to come to an informed conclusion.”

Olson and the state officials reminded everyone that the new guidelines do not require actual housing construction. “It does not force anybody to do anything at all. It simply says that property owners have the right” to build multifamily housing without needing a special permit,” she said. “For actual housing, someone has to sell, someone has to buy, and someone has to build.”

Multifamily housing will take years if not decades to appear in the affected towns. “Zoning is a long-term play; it’s not like flipping a switch,” Kluchman said.

Even so, given the burden that hundreds more residents will eventually place on schools, the town water supply and other services, “it might be cheaper to pay for stuff ourselves” and forego state grants in order to avoid state-mandated housing densities, resident Sara Mattes mused.

“We need to organize with other small towns to speak with a single voice about the inequity of how this legislation is drafted for small towns,” said Gary Taylor, chair of the South Lincoln Planning and Advisory Committee, said at the Select Board/Planning Board meeting.

“As a town, we have to figure out what our strongest message is,” Select Board member Jennifer Glass said. But given the fact that Lincoln has already been exploring how to allow more commercial and residential development in South Lincoln, “it’s also an opportunity for us to really stretch our thinking about what does this mean and how can we do some thoughtful planning. Sometimes the best thinking is when you’re kind of pushed to have to do it.”

When all is said and done, “it might not be 750 [units], but there will be a number that the state expects and a number we should probably expect of ourselves,” said Select Board member J.D. Dwyer.

Officials from MBTA communities are required to submit an online form by May 2 that asks for town information and verifies that the draft guidelines have been presented to their Select Board. Other stakeholders and residents may also offer feedback via this comment form by March 31