Meeting with CSH
9/9/02
At Ken and Christie’s
Present: CSH, Kim, Ben, San, Marty, Sophia, Kim, Roxanne, Greg, Sarah, Dwight, Kai, Emma, Pascal, Ken, Christie, Dave.
- Taylor Brook Feasibility (CSH): Sewer, water, and access are the major issues we need to confirm. Daylor gave us independent confirmation that each of these can be handled and dealt with. We did not ask them to deal with the politics b/c CR has been dealing with that already. The TB project would need to be approved at a town meeting with a 2/3rds majority in order to complete the necessary re-zone. CSH believes we could get significant support from the neighborhood coalition for our project, based on his meetings with them. CSH cautions that we could spend a lot of time and money and get to the meeting next spring and be one vote short. So we need to reduce the risk by arranging a "back door"alternative. In this case, if the rezone isn’t approved, we would want a development partner who would work with us–CSH is trying to set this up with Nexum. Nexum isn’t sure if they want this site if it doesn’t work for Mosaic. They need to do some more reviewing. Nexum would ideally help compensate us by buying the rights to buy the property if we determine that we do not want it. TB will need to be a risk evaluation on our part. We have from the 16th through the 27th to decide. CSH hopes to make a firm recommendation by the 16th as to whether we should pursue a rezone on this property. We could ask for an extension if we need one (CSH will handle this if we need to do that). Ben: I believe the main concern from the townspeople will have about our project is taxes and the demands on schools. CSH: Yes, a main thing is schools and traffic. Unfortunat
ely, there’s no easy way to handle that. You will know who a lot of your children are, however, and you can talk about how some will be in private schools, home schooled, etc. Greg: What about making a 40B next Spring? CSH: If we decide that the rezone is so great that we need to do a 40B, I think we should look for a friendlier opportunity, such as Stow or Lincoln. Kim: The chair man of the board of selectmen in Maynard knows about our project and what we are planning to do, however, did not indicate one way or another whether they support it. I think TB is still a good bet and we can mitigate our risks and shoot for a rezone. I do not think a parallel 40B project will work. If we decide we need to avoid the rezone, then we should look in other towns. To wrap up, for the next week or so, I think you should think of TB as conceivable but a possibly challenging project. Go into next weekend believing that this will be your site so that you can get the most out of the workshop, and keep in mind that 80% of what you do there will be transferable.
Other properties
Stow: Nobody understands why the lawyer hasn’t written up a first right of refusal for us to read and sign. CSH has discussed the situation with Boothroy. The seller owes Boothroy’s firm a commission, but CSH believes that the seller doesn’t know this yet. Boothroys and the realtor are highly motivated to get us a first right of refusal. We are having these conversations right now. Keep in mind that this could erupt quickly, and we may want to do an opportunities and constraints map to be ready for it. Dwight: How fast could Daylor do the feasibility if we needed it? CSH: 2 weeks; but that’s partly dependant on how good the information is that we can give them. CSH believes we will have enough time to evaluate this property if this erupts. Roxanne: If we can get a first right of refusal on the stow property, will that give us what we need to do a feasibility? Y
es, if it includes our rezoning needs.
Gravel Pit: Asking for 2 million. Let’s wait on this until we complete the evaluation on the Maynard rezone. We can include this among 3-4 alternatives to Maynard if we need to.
Lexington Road–Beautiful. Possibility of working with Land Trust in Lincoln who is working with us. He took this to the Land Trust board. The idea would be that they buy land rights to the land to make it more affordable for us if we would agree to keep a small footprint on the property. This is in the works as we speak. The asking price right now is 2.5 million.
32 ac., in S. Lincoln, on Rt. 2, recently purchased, has building that was the Boston Institute for Intercultural Communication (high school). According to Buzz Constable and others, they need to do stuff with this property besides build a high school, including up to 100 units. CSH is working on seeing if we can get a piece of this site in exchange for helping them do this project.
Preparation for next weekend: Get to the slide show; get help with the kids; pretend this is going to be your site. San: We’re supposed to start at 9, but we agreed to be there at 8:30. Friday night, the event should start at 6:30.