Lantana land deal advances after state accepts its report
The odds are increasing that 3 acres of the Blue Hills Reservation will be given to Lantana for use as a parking lot as part of a land swap between the Randolph function hall and the state.
The state has accepted Lantana's environmental report, paving the way for the next step in the controversial land deal.
Opponents of the deal were encouraged last fall when the state demanded a full report on the environmental impacts of the land transfer, seeing it as a serious obstacle to implementation.
But Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles recently accepted Lantana's draft environmental impact report, writing that it "adequately and properly" complies with the state's environmental protection act.
Bowles also praised Lantana's addition of a 2-acre parcel on the Blue Hills River in Randolph, which added to its original offer of 3 acres near Route 24. The total package creates what Bowles called "an acceptable" 5-acre trade for the 3 acres of Blue Hills Reservation land.
"We sweetened the pot," Lantana owner Paul Hart said Tuesday.
Hart also agreed to increase the buffer space in his design for the new parking area, reducing the number of parking spaces.
The Lantana - a family-owned business and popular venue for weddings, proms, and other events - wants an overflow parking lot so patrons don't have to risk crossing the street from the function hall to the current lot.
Hart said Lantana's environmental impact report was buttressed by a consultant hired by the town who concluded that customer safety could not be guaranteed by alternatives such as a traffic signal or an overpass.
The crossing does not have enough traffic volume to justify a traffic light, Hart said, and the study concluded that other measures such an overpass or underpass, or a well-marked crossing with a speed bump, would be only a "Band-aid."
Hart also agreed to reserve 10 parking spaces in the new lot for use by Blue Hills trail hikers and pay the state some $250,000 worth of in-kind contributions to mitigate the loss of the parkland.
The land swap has been strongly opposed by conservationists, including the 1,000-member Friends of the Blue Hills, ever since it was sponsored six years ago by Randolph's legislative contingent. The deal's critics said Lantana should have been required to show that a "public purpose" necessitated the deal. "There is no 'public purpose' for the sale of the park property for private developers," said Robert Quinn, co-chairman of the Friends of the Blue Hills' advocacy committee. "Nobody else goes there but customers of Lantana." The Friends argue that the land swap would mean the loss of environmentally valuable land that has been in the state's hands since the 1930s.
The land has "ancient stone walls, ledgy knolls "topped with giant brick-colored boulders, and includes the first 250 feet of the Smith Trail," the Friends' Tom Palmer said last fall. The land "has exactly those qualities that the park was made to preserve." The Friends also estimate the value of the 3-acre parcel at $1.2 million, not the $290,000 assessment the Lantana has placed on it.
Bowles has required the Lantana to get an updated appraisal of the value of the parcel and to respond to minor concerns raised by state agencies in a final environmental impact report.
Bowles's spokesman, Robert Keough, said that the decision to approve the land transfer was made by the Legislature and that state regulators lack the power to reverse it. The law does give Bowles the authority to place appropriate conditions on the land transfer, such as the updated appraisal, which may raise the price for Hart. The Friends of the Blue Hills are now asking those opposed to the deal to contact Senator Brian Joyce, a Milton Democrat, one of the enabling law's sponsors, and ask him to file legislation repealing it.
Joyce's chief of staff, Matt Gaines, said Joyce sponsored the legislation "at the request of the town" along with four other Democratic legislators then representing Randolph (Walter Timilty of Milton, Bruce Ayers of Quincy, Bill Galvin of Canton, and Joe Sullivan of Braintree) and does not deserve to be singled out by the plan's opponents.
Citing the state's regulatory demands on Lantana since the bill's passage six years ago, Gaines said "the process could not have been more open and had more review." He pointed to other transfers approved this year and said the Lantana deal has received more scrutiny than any other.
The Trustees of Reservations is backing a new law that would require transfers of state land to be reviewed by the appropriate state agencies before the Legislature could act on them.
Robert Knox can be contacted at rc.knox@gmail.com. 