Continuing an earlier discussion with Atty. Pam Brown and developer Brian DeVellis, the Bedford Housing Partnership voted unanimously to support the Carlisle Road Project at last night’s meeting.
Atty. Brown reviewed the site plan again, with particular emphasis on the location and distribution of the 35 affordable units that will be available for sale or rent, out of 139 total units (split between rental and sale.) A major concern of the Partnership has been to make sure the distribution of affordable units by type is equitable and not clustered in any one building. Interior finishes will be uniform throughout all the units.
Questions came up on details such as location of bike racks, trash disposal bins, and this project’s impact on traffic. DeVellis responded that a traffic study will be done.
As Brown explained, the current site plans do not yet include these details but they will be included once the project goes before the Zoning Board of Appeals.
Mark Fougiere, member of the DeVellis team, presented a Municipal Impact Review, which indicated there would be net revenue to the town of $400,000 after accounting for the impact on police, fire, and other town services (trash disposal will be handled privately) and on the school budget. The project would generate a revenue stream to the town of $735,000 from property taxes, automobile excise taxes, and CPA surcharges.
Costs to the town for the impact on police and fire, miscellaneous town services, and the schools would be about $300,000, leaving a net gain of $400,000. The calculation is that approximately 27 school age students across all grades would be anticipated. Fougiere said he reviewed the impact with the School Director of Finance, including the potential added cost to the special education budget, and school officials were satisfied with his projections. As reported, the school-age population is trending downward in Bedford.
In his original plan, DeVellis envisioned a “co-housing” facility on a separate parcel of land he owns closer to the Carlisle/North Road intersection. This idea has now been put on hold, pending further discussions with the Department of Housing and Community Development. DeVellis hopes to come back with this concept at a later time. Co-housing takes various forms: in the DeVellis plan, a single building would have clusters of four individual bedrooms, with a common kitchen, dining, and living space.
For more detail on the development, read https://thebedfordcitizen.org/2022/12/town-boards-to-continue-digesting-carlisle-road-housing-proposal/
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This seems less controversial than some are making it out to be.
Does anybody – maybe somebody who attended the meeting – know where the $300K and 27-school-children (one child per 5 new families) numbers came from? Both of those numbers seem ludicrously low if you do the math.
Their estimate of school-aged children follows from the numbers for comparable housing in town: 154 from 503 units in apartment complexes (Taylor Pond, Avalon, Bedford Springs), 33 from 124 duplexes, 1 from the 12 townhomes on Caesar Jones Way, and 0.5 students per single-family home.
Strange. The single family houses around me that have changed owners in the last few year have 3, 2, 5, 2, 1, and 2 students (2.5 students per house). Maybe people who move into a town with good schools are disproportionately people with school age children.
The overall number in town is ~0.5 students per “housing unit”: 2615 students from 5444 homes. The numbers I’ve seen – the ones above and analogous ones from a few years ago – indicate fewer students per multifamily unit than townwide average, implying a higher ratio for single-family homes.
The traffic argument has to be had, but it always amuses me, the “new” residents will NOT all leave at the same time, causing a huge traffic mess, they will enter and leave at various times throughout the day, it will hardly be noticed, which happens anywhere…