In an effort to ensure Belmont receives the $110,000 McLean Hospital agreed to pay the town in a 1999 Traffic Monitoring and Mitigation Agreement (TMMA), Town Meeting will revisit the question of ratifying a revised version of the agreement later this month.
At the special Town Meeting on Wednesday, Town Meeting members planned to address the ratification of the revised TMMA. The article, however, was not taken up by Town Meeting. Instead, Select Board Chair Roy Epstein moved to adjourn the meeting, to be resumed on Monday, June 10, for a discussion on municipal skating rink funding.
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The McLean traffic agreement, which is key to redevelopment plans at the McLean property, will be the subject of a special Town Meeting after a public hearing later this month.
“We’re all cognizant of the additional time and effort and inconvenience involved,” Epstein said. “But I would say it’s a one-time, unique experience, and we should really just do that and get it behind us and look forward to construction starting later in the year.”
According to Epstein, the redevelopment of the McLean land began in 1999, when the Select Board and McLean struck a deal, allowing the land to be rezoned. Jack Dawley of Northland Residential is redeveloping the land.
As part of that 1999 agreement, 11 conditions were outlined, including preserving some of the property as open space and conveying some to Belmont for the development of affordable housing. Another condition stipulated monitoring traffic to and from the property, limiting it to predetermined levels, and mitigating its effect on local roads.
In 1999, potential uses of the land included residential development, a continuing care or senior living development, or some type of hospital/institutional development. According to Epstein, the TMMA was drawn up to manage the anticipated traffic those projects would generate, but over 25 years, “very little happened.”
In 2020, Town Meeting approved zoning that would allow up to 150 residential units in Zone 3, a Senior Living Subdistrict of the McLean district. Subdistrict A would include 40 age-restricted townhomes, of which 15% (six units) would be affordable to households with 80% area median income (AMI). Subdistrict B, then, would include 110 rental apartments with 53 age-restricted units and 57 non-age-restricted units. Of those, 20% (22 units) would be affordable to households with 80% AMI, and 5% (six units) would be affordable to households with 50% AMI.
On May 20, the Select Board voted on a revised traffic agreement that it expected to ratify on June 5.
Several residents and abutters joined the discussion that night, voicing support for the development itself but raising concerns about the agreement. They raised questions about McLean’s financial obligations and the burden of traffic on their neighborhood.
“Our belief on May 20 was that McLean had fulfilled all of its financial obligations from 1999, so the only thing left was to address traffic,” Epstein said. “The May 20 revision didn’t address McLean’s financial obligations because we thought that was all done.”
However, after investigating further, town officials discovered that McLean still owed the town roughly $110,000.
“The way the [revised] TMMA was written, that $110,000 didn’t have a place,” he said.
According to Epstein, the town council expected to have a “suitably revised agreement” by Friday for the Select Board to vote on at its June 10 meeting. Following the Select Board vote, a public hearing is scheduled for June 17, and a special Town Meeting will be held on June 26 to ratify the agreement.
Epstein said the new, revised agreement will include a stipulation that a traffic signal be installed, at McLean’s expense, at Pleasant Street and Olmstead Drive. In the original revision, this would require the installation if a certain traffic volume threshold was met.
Epstein emphasized that the timing of this process was essential in that all parties would like to see an agreement in place before the end of June. Town Engineer Glenn Clancy said the developer was in conversations with equity partners who have deadlines.
“As somebody who has done hundreds of millions of construction financing, it’s almost certain that construction loan has a start date requirement and a completion date requirement,” said Jack Weis, a Town Meeting member for Precinct 1.
Precinct 8 Town Meeting member Mark Kagan applauded the Select Board for slowing down while also ensuring the development project doesn’t get delayed. Precinct 5 Town Meeting member Travis Franck agreed.
“Thank you for slowing this down,” he said. “It is better to take time and not rush things through.”
