Senior housing gets OK
48 units to be built on golf course
A Lynnfield nonprofit group is gearing up to build 48 units of moderately priced senior housing on part of the Sheraton Colonial Golf Course after the project received its final approval earlier this month.
The Zoning Board of Appeals granted site plan approval and variances for the project, which has been named Colonial Village Senior Housing. The Conservation Commission gave its approval in June.
The nonprofit, Lynnfield Initiatives for Elders (LIFE), is seeking financing for the project from several area banks. Construction is expected to begin in June on the $16 million development, which would be built on 6.8 acres off Walnut Street. All units would be for Lynnfield residents age 60 and over.
LIFE, which already operates two senior complexes in town, will acquire the site under an agreement with the town and National Development, the firm that plans a village-style development on 68 acres of the golf course property.
Under the agreement, National Development will donate the 6.8 acres to the town, which will then sell it to LIFE for $1.8 million.
"We've been looking for land for a third village for a long time because we have over 350 people on our waiting list," said Joseph Maney, president of LIFE and a former Lynnfield selectman and town administrator. "So when this became available to us, we were excited to move forward with it."
Selectmen chairman Arthur Bourque said the town supports the project.
"They've done a great job up to now," he said, referring to LIFE, which was established in 1982 to create housing for local seniors. The organization operates the 60-unit Center Village on Main Street and the 66-unit Essex Village on Essex Street.
The new development "will be the nicest of them all," Bourque said. "This is a really spectacular place with a spectacular location."
The plan calls for 36 housing units in a garden-style building, 12 units in five town house buildings, and a clubhouse. With the exception of a single one-bedroom unit in the garden-style building, all units will be two-bedroom, according to LIFE's attorney, Ted Regnante.
The heavily landscaped site will be accessible from the same loop road that will serve National Development's own project, which calls for a mix of retail, office space, and 180 units of rental housing.
LIFE is expecting to charge in the low $300,000s for the garden-style units, and the low $400,000s for the town house units, which Regnante said is well below market rate but above state affordable housing guidelines.
Following LIFE's rules, buyers will not purchase the units, but the right to occupy them. LIFE will own and manage the site. If occupants move or die, LIFE sells the units to someone on the waiting list. Once the sale is finalized, the occupant who has moved or his or her estate receives all the money originally paid for the unit, plus half of any increase in the sale price. Occupants will pay their own utilities plus a monthly maintenance fee.
Town Meeting last year approved creating an elderly housing district for the site, at the same time it approved a smart-growth district to accommodate National Development's project, Meadow Walk of Lynnfield.
The project had to overcome one snag when the state's National Heritage and Endangered Species Program determined that the development was too close to Reedy Meadow, potentially threatening three endangered bird species.
LIFE came up with a revised design that moved the site farther from Reedy Meadow. In the spring, Town Meeting approved the change.
In order to generate the additional funds needed to meet the cost of the redesign and higher-than-anticipated costs of connecting to the Wakefield sewer system, the project size was increased from its original 40 units to 48, Regnante said.
Zoning board approval came at the end of a hearing lasting only one night.
"I am pleased with the expeditious and favorable review and approval of the LIFE proposal by the zoning board, allowing the development to proceed," said Regnante, a Lynnfield resident.
He said the project will meet a need for more moderately priced housing in Lynnfield with the added plus of being situated next to a future retail development, giving residents the ability to walk to stores and restaurants.
Residents also will be within close proximity to the nine-hole municipal golf course the town plans to operate on part of the 102 acres that National Development has agreed to deed to Lynnfield from the overall site.
As with its other projects, LIFE will provide the town with annual payments in lieu of taxes. Maney estimated those payments from the new site would be about $125,000 per year.
Maney said that if all goes well, the housing will be ready for occupancy in the fall of 2010.
John Laidler can be reached at laidler@globe.com. 