Autopsy of a vote

After my colleagues on Town Council blew off applying for a quarter million dollars of free money toward the purchase of the American Legion property at the April 18 meeting, I was so disheartened I went out and got #NeverAgain tattooed on my chest. (Just kidding, Mom.)

So when I walked into the April 25 council meeting and saw that the free money pile had spiked to $1.5 million, this time for affordable housing, my resolve kicked in. Much to the dismay of many people in the community, I voted for taking the money in exchange for allowing a project to proceed that no one particularly liked but no one could stop.

Here’s what happened:

The Form-Based Code created in 2014 aimed to spur office and retail development in the shopping centers clustered around the intersection of Ephesus Church Road and Fordham Boulevard. The zone omitted ordinances and regulations applicable everywhere else in town, such as expectations for green space, trees, affordable housing and not building in Resource Conservation Districts that soak up stormwater runoff.

Because the area is the only place in town where developers don’t have to contribute to affordable housing, the district became a magnet for luxury apartments. The area has more than twice the number of apartments than the town’s business model expected.

The new owner of the aging and affordable Park Apartments on Ephesus Church Road made plans to tear down those 200 units and build 700 market-rate apartments. But first, a new road must be built connecting Fordham Boulevard and Ephesus Church Road to handle the extra traffic.

The process has gone slowly, and meanwhile, Hillstone and Fordham apartments have been approved by the town manager. (Council doesn’t have any say, as it is in the FBC district.) To get his project out of the ground and not fall too far behind his competitors, the Park Apartments owner offered a $1.5 million contribution for affordable housing in exchange for council removing its review of the road at 70% completion. This would enable him to start the permitting process right away.

That trade-off seemed fair. I made sure the town attorney specified when the money was to be paid (upon issuance of the building permit) and that we wouldn’t have to pay for the intersection modifications requested by the applicant.

State law won’t let us cap any rent, and the FBC won’t allow us to demand a payment toward affordable housing. This $1.5 million of found money is equivalent to subsidizing 60 apartments, according to the town’s formula of $25,000 per subsidized unit, which is fewer units than the 15% we expect elsewhere, but 60 more than we could demand.

We could not slow this project down much longer without risking a lawsuit. As it was, we were in danger of busting deadline and losing the final $900,000 reimbursement from DOT. The landlord already had stopped renewing leases, and even if council makes changes to the FBC, as we will consider in June, he would have a good case to go forward with building under the old rules.

The vast majority of people who rent apartments fall in the 80% to 120% AMI, and if the applicant is smart, he will build to meet that target market. One phase of the development will consist of three-story buildings with exterior staircases, designed to rent for a non-luxury rate. With the over-building of luxury apartments in the FBC, competition should keep rents from rising too quickly.

Community members raised valid concerns about the advisability of building a road in a flood plain and the traffic impact analysis not capturing other approved development, among other points. So this was a tough decision to make. But when I weighed the pros and cons, and the limits of what council could do to prevent more market-rate apartments from being built, the best option seemed to be to accept the money and move forward.
— Nancy Oates