City explores buying Northeastern land

The Whispering Hill Woods property, located west of Cambridge Road and adjacent to Mary Cummings Park, had been the site of a proposed housing project the city successfully blocked in a legal fight that concluded last year.

Mayor Thomas L. McLaughlin said the city has had discussions with Northeastern over the past several months about acquiring the property to protect it from similar developments.

“We’ve had two meetings with them where we expressed our interest in wanting to purchase the land,’’ McLaughlin said. “It’s something that we’d be very excited about.’’

McLaughlin said the city’s conversations with the Trust for Public Land, initiated a number of weeks ago, are focused on what help the group might be able to provide Woburn in buying the site.

“It seems like they would be very good partners in the process,’’ he said of the trust, a national nonprofit land conservation organization.

McLaughlin and Edmund Tarallo, the city’s planning director, recently briefed the City Council on discussions with Northeastern and the trust. Trust representatives are set to attend the council Liaison Committee’s meeting Monday.

“It’s a property we have some interest in,’’ said Christopher LaPointe, a project manager for the trust in its Boston office. “If the city wants to ask us for our assistance in trying to protect it, it’s something we are ready to consider.’’

LaPointe said when the trust gets involved in a municipal land purchase, it will typically enter into a purchase and sale agreement with the owner. It will then assist the municipality in identifying funding sources, while also taking on the title search, environmental testing, and other work needed for an eventual purchase.

In a successful project, the municipality is able to raise the funds needed to acquire the property by the deadline set in the agreement. The trust also may buy the land and hold it temporarily until the municipality completes its financing.

“The ultimate goal is really to leave these top priority projects in local ownership, permanently protected and available for public use,’’ LaPointe said.

Mike Armini, Northeastern’s vice president for marketing and communications, said “while we have no immediate plans to sell the property, we are certainly exploring the option. We are in conversations with the City of Woburn and working out a sale to the city is something we are open to doing.’’

Armini said he could not speculate on what price the university might be seeking.

Northeastern acquired the site as part of a series of purchases in the 1960s and 1970s for botanical research and because of its close proximity to Northeastern’s campus in Burlington, according to Armini.

McLaughlin said the city’s intent, if it purchases the property, is that the “vast majority of the land’’ would be protected as open space. In a resolution last spring calling on the mayor to explore the possible land purchase, the City Council mentioned senior housing, recreational uses, and a new cemetery as possible uses of the land, in addition to conservation.

The previous development proposal, offered by Archstone-Smith, originally called for 640 housing units to be developed under the state’s affordable housing law, Chapter 40B. The Zoning Board of Appeals in 2001 granted a comprehensive permit for the project, but limited it to 300 units.

Following a series of legal challenges to the state Housing Appeals Committee and in the courts, the figure was adjusted to 540 units. But in a 2008 decision, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of the Woburn zoning board, restoring nearly all its original conditions, including the restriction of the project to 300 units.

Armini confirmed that Archstone-Smith is no longer pursuing the development.

Ward 7 Alderman Raymond Drapeau, whose ward includes the Northeastern land, said if the city is able to buy the land, he and the residents of the surrounding neighborhood would ideally like to see all of it remain open for recreational use.

“That’s the starting point,’’ he said, adding that only if that does not prove financially feasible would residents want the city to consider other uses on part of the site.

The Friends of Mary Cummings Park, which has fought in recent years to protect the 210-acre park and the Northeastern land from development, supports Woburn’s efforts to buy the land, according to Patrick O’Reilly, the group’s treasurer.

“I think it’s very encouraging,’’ O’Reilly said of Woburn’s possible acquisition of the Northeastern property. “It’s a great opportunity for the city.’’