Fells condo developer may bypass permitting
Opponents' efforts could prove futile
A developer who wants to build an office and condo complex within the Middlesex Fells Reservation is taking an unusual bypass around a stubborn bottleneck in the environmental review process: The Gutierrez Co. is saying it reduced the project so much to satisfy public concerns that it no longer needs state permits to build it.
The move represents a rare but seemingly defensible end run by a developer around the state environmental review process. And the park advocates opposing the project may have pushed so hard for changes that they lost their chance to help shape the project under a public review process.
"It's not that we're getting away with anything," said Bill Caulder, managing director at Gutierrez Co. "We thought we had done the right thing for the last five or six years working through the process. But there's some people out there that don't want to see anything happen with this site and they hide behind the guise of environmental disaster of magnificent proportions."
Last week, opponents beseeched officials in a letter to the state Department of Conservation and Recreation to force Gutierrez to remain in the process, saying that traffic generated by the project will warrant changes along the parkway that winds along Spot Pond.
"You know what Route 1 looks like?" griped Mike Ryan, executive director of the Friends of the Middlesex Fells Reservation. "Nobody would want to go vis it this area anymore - filled with traffic, noise, and danger. It would rob the visitors of their right."
He argued that the state should be protecting the Fells from inevitable harm.
"This is the cornerstone of the metropolitan parks system. It's just unconscionable the developer would be able to slither out from under just and reasonable decisions that were made to protect the environment," Ryan said.
But DCR is unlikely to relent. Regardless of the level of traffic it generates, Langwood Commons requires a review only if the developer proposes to change the parkways leading to it, officials say.
Though the property is within the Fells - the 2,575-acre state-owned parkland north of Boston - it was redeveloped a century ago, before the Fells were protected, as a complex by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Nearly a decade ago, the Boston Regional Medical Center abruptly shut down, leaving the hospital vacant, though an assisted living facility and medical office buildings there remain in use.
The Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act requires developers to come before permitting agencies to study their projects' environmental consequences and to modify their plans to reduce any harm.
But only certain developments warrant MEPA review - if they are transforming protected land or need state permits or state funding, for instance.
Langwood Commons called for a review in its earliest form. Gutierrez once wanted to build a 900,000-square-foot office park that would have demanded changes to the surrounding state parkways to accommodate rush-hour commuters and, as a result, a full environmental review.
Gutierrez later switched to a smaller office footprint and 450 condos. After the environment secretary asked for more traffic analysis - and for Gutierrez to work with DCR to redesign state parkways to accommodate new traffic - the Massachusetts Historical Commission balked at making changes to historic parkways.
So Gutierrez fired back.
"We have no alternative but to further significantly reduce the size and scope of the project to the point that no state permits will be required," the company's lawyer wrote to the MEPA office in January.
The developer was already scaling back the project to 405 condos and 225,000 square feet of office space in order to settle a lawsuit. At that size, Caulder said, no traffic changes are needed.
DCR has been unwilling to test that assumption, since Gutierrez is no longer asking for permits.
"I don't think this is a good outcome for the public's interest," said Ian A. Bowles, the state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs. "From an environmental perspective, the revised project will now likely be without the substantial mitigation for the Middlesex Fells . . . and from a permitting perspective, it is unfortunate that any developer would withdraw in frustration."
The developer could end up being forced back into the process not by the state but by the plaintiffs who sued previously. Their agreement demanded nonspecific traffic mitigation; if, in negotiations, that comes to mean parkway changes, Gutierrez could be back in MEPA territory.
The $120 million development has been embraced by the town of Stoneham, which would reap an estimated $600,000 in annual tax revenue - no small change in a cash-strapped town.
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