Towns fighting back against McMansions
Wellesley proposal riles contractors
It's a fight that has come to many of Boston's western suburbs in recent years. Now, officials in Wellesley are placing their community on the front lines in the war against the construction of massive new homes.
For the second time this year, the town is trying to pass regulations aimed at curbing the onslaught of so-called "McMansions" -- giant new homes, often plopped on tiny lots, that dominate the landscape. The Wellesley planning board has been pushing forward new rules to require site reviews for large houses, and builders have been fighting back tooth-and-nail.
The town's efforts lag behind those of such neighboring, ultra-affluent suburbs as Lincoln and Weston, which instituted stricter restrictions years ago. Some fear it might be too late now for Wellesley, where many residential streets have been transformed, with older homes overshadowed, by larger new houses with an average of 4,437 square feet of living space wedged on 100-by-100-foot lots.
In Weston, the town voted in 1997 to require homes with a footprint larger than 10 percent of their lot, as well as any home larger than 6,000 square feet, to gain town approval. However, the problem may be less drastic there than in Wellesley.
More rural towns like Weston tend to have larger building lots available than denser suburbs like Wellesley, and gigantic homes are still being built there -- including an under-construction 22-room, 27,000-square-foot estate near Regis College for megamillionaire investor Jim Pallotta. To get his plans past the town in 2005, Pallotta eliminated exterior lights, drilled his own wells, and planted extra trees as a buffer along Wellesley Street.
Since 1999, Lincoln, which also has larger lots than tightly packed Wellesley, has required a review for any new home that could exceed 4,000 square feet of gross floor area or 8 percent of the lot area, or anything over 6,500 square feet. Undeveloped or vacant lots are also automatically examined, said Mark Whitehead, town planner.
New homes in Lincoln tend to be about 6,000 square feet in size, so the town reviews about a dozen projects a year. Some take one meeting to gain approval; others take a month or more. Builders quickly adapted to the new rules, Whitehead said, adding that the limits have benefited Lincoln.
"People said they came away with a better house than they had planned before," he said.
Other close-to-Boston suburbs, like Wayland, Natick, Medfield, and Dover, have had to grapple less vigorously with mansionization complaints because there is more room to build, fewer wealthy homeowners, or more preexisting restrictions on home building.
But sooner or later, for all communities, "it will come down to how people view this evolution," she said. "Do they want to protect existing housing stock or will they feel ill-equipped to take on the challenge?"
Wellesley officials are seeking more say in how very large homes are built, designed, and landscaped, with an eye to "harmony and scale with other structures" nearby, according to a draft version of their proposed bylaws. Dan Picking, a local builder, took the microphone at a Planning Board meeting last week to make one final plea before a Thursday deadline to allow contractors to pull permits under the old rules. He recited a well-worn litany of opposition: the rules were overly restrictive, they were confusing to builders and architects, and site reviews by the town would cost homeowners time and money. It is, he said, unfair to allow a town design review board to scrutinize, as the proposed rules would mandate, homes 3,900 square feet and larger on small lots, or houses larger than 4,500 or 6,000 square feet on larger sites.
The apex of his argument -- a contention that might make some Wellesley residents tremble -- is that the new restrictions will lower property values.
"You're putting a gun to everyone's head," he exclaimed.
That seemed to be going too far for Rose Mary Donahue, an eight-year board member. "All we're saying is that if you want to build a large home, you have to think about it differently," Donahue told him. "You have to look at how you're affecting the neighbors."
"We have to draw a line," Donahue responded.
Where to draw that line in Wellesley -- or even if it should be drawn at all -- had occupied public debate much of the year, ever since proposed curbs were tabled for further discussion before the April Town Meeting. The regulations have been hashed over for months -- and as of last week, the board was still tweaking how much basement and attic space should be included in a home's total living area.
About two dozen local builders who have opposed the effort offered an unusual olive branch to the board in March by agreeing to self-imposed limits on new home building -- keeping them "reasonable" and close to the proposed new limits, said Joe Grignaffini, leader of the group. The builders want to delay the vote on new rules until next spring, he said.
The struggle between officials seeking the rules and local builders has not drawn hordes of citizens to recent planning meetings. Some observers say most residents are confused by the complexity of zoning regulations, or just too busy to get involved.
Florence Maddix, 77, was one of a handful of residents who did come to support the board at last week's meeting. In the Cliff Estates neighborhood, where she's lived for two decades, new six-bedroom homes with copper-trimmed roofs have popped up almost everywhere -- and many others have been supersized via back- or-side-yard additions.
She knows the drill.
"First the trees come down," Maddix said, gesturing to a pair of new homes under construction at the corner of Hampshire and Lowell roads. "Then the old house comes down. Then the big new house goes up.
"What does it say about our values as a community when we just rip down a perfectly good home? The whole thing just makes me sad," she said. "I think the builders have so much power here."
She sees many McMansions as unattractive monuments to conspicuous consumption.
"It says, 'I want to show you how much money we've made,' " she said. "But there's no quaintness, no aesthetics."
The builders group says the lack of public outcry shows they are building the homes that customers want, and that the majority of Wellesleyites are happy. They also contend that longtime residents deserve the largest possible retirement payday from their home -- which in some cases has grown tenfold in value.
Those people who have sold the family home over the past several years "are thrilled that their value is improved," said builder Ken Barber of Natick-based Barber Fine Homes.
He said he bought a home from an elderly Wellesley couple six weeks ago. Had the new zoning rules been in effect then, limiting the lot's potential for rebuilding, he would have paid 20 percent less for the home, he said.
"It's money out of their pockets, and I mean a lot," Barber said.
"We have no basis to agree that this will bring down property values," said Frisardi. Assessed values in Lincoln and Weston, for example, have continued to go up.
Wellesley's proposed process would be considerably simpler than Weston and Lincoln, which can require multiple site visits and extra professional time from home builders and architects.
The Planning Board estimated that 70 percent of the 52 new homes built last year in Wellesley would have triggered a review -- and estimates 50 to 60 applications annually if the new rules pass.
The as-yet undetermined fees from the new applications will fund a part-time town planner to do the extra work.
"We don't intend to make it that burdensome," Frisardi said.
The board will clarify the proposed regulations further at its next public meeting on the topic on Sept. 17, when the rules will be codified for the warrant.
It is uncharted territory, he said, but the time to act is now: "We can't make zoning changes without a little uncertainty."
Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com. 