[Continued from Friday’sÂ Part 6 and the preceding Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

By: David A. Smith

â€œThe mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.â€

â€• John Milton, Paradise Lost

The crowbar or-else of Chapter 40B, as we have seen from previous installments in this multi-part post, is the ability to have a higher density development approved by the state, over the localityâ€™s objections, and to place this crowbar in the hands not of local elected officials or even state elected officials, by private parties â€“ a land seller and a housing developer â€“ who may be from out of town and hence who do not give a rodentâ€™s rear for local sensibilities.

Where the Texas developers chow down

Sources used in this post

Miltonâ€™s 2002 zoning map; pdf

Karen Sunnarborg housing study of Milton (February, 2006, pdf; green font)

Chapter 40B fact sheet, 2007; pdf

Boston Globe (June 21, 2012; deep purple font)

Massachusetts subsidized housing inventory (April, 2013; caramel font)

Boston Globe (March 22, 2013; powder-blue font)

MyTownMatters blog post (April 15, 2013; midnight blue font)

Canton Citizen (June 27, 2013; mumble font)

Boston Globe (August 21, 2013; olive font)

Boston Globe (October 31, 2013; pink font)

Canton Citizen, (November 14, 2013; red font)

Boston Globe (April 27, 2014; buff blue font)

Boston Globe (July 24, 2014; robinâ€™s-egg-blue font)

Town of Milton draft housing production plan, September 25, 2014; pdf, orange font)

Boston Globe (September 11, 2014)

CHAPAâ€™s Chapter 40B fact sheet, pdf

Thatâ€™s critical, because as we saw yesterday, absent Chapter 40B, the Town of Milton will say no to large greenfield developments close to arterial roads, and will say no to smaller townhouse development in lieu of even smaller single-family manses.

Now we come to the piece de resistance, the finale of rejections, the case that brings it all together:

We always save the best for last

7.C. The derelict commercial property

So far weâ€™ve established that Milton doesnâ€™t like one big property that would really make a difference; and it didnâ€™t like two smaller greenfield properties that would have each been worth a year-plus of required production; and it didnâ€™t like the idea of three homes on four-acre lots â€“ so it must like adaptive reuse or derelict and boarded-up buildings in the commercial area.

Mustnâ€™t it?

Developers are moving forward with the 57-unit Chapter 40B project at the former Hendrieâ€™s Ice Cream site at 131 Eliot St. â€“

To me, the Hendrieâ€™s site is the smoking gun, because if Milton is going to reject the Hendrieâ€™s site, then it will reject anything:

Fitted into Miltonâ€™s processors

The existing building which has been boarded up for years.Â

The site was the original home of Bentâ€™s Cookie Co., famous for the hardtack it supplied Civil War troops and for its water crackers.Â In 1930, Hendrieâ€™s opened an ice cream factory there, and a decade later added its popular Dairy Bar, according to the Milton Historical Society.

Photographs across the decades show a building slowly and steadily expanding, and also shifting from a residential look to a boxy commercial configuration.

Customers often would eat their treats under the shade of the massive oak tree.

Hendrieâ€™s has been gone for decades, and Connellyâ€™s original plan â€” calling for a building with 38 condominiums and about 7,500 square feet of commercial space, along with 98 parking spaces â€” was heralded by town officials as a welcome addition to the Central Avenue village business district.Â

Heralded â€“ but somehow, not approved.

It will reserve 15 of the 57 for affordable housing.

[That assumes the Chapter 40B proposal is approved by the State; in its pending housing action plan, the Town counts on 44 rental apartments, not 57, on that site â€¦ and if the developer were to withdraw its Chapter 40B petition, thereâ€™s nothing to bind the town to approve those 44. â€“ Ed.]

131 Eliot Street, Milton, today

A big empty use of location

Here thus are 15 â€˜freeâ€™ apartments of affordable housing (meaning no town resources required), to be built on a site that is currently unused.

The Hendrieâ€™s site, circa 1955: note single-story ice cream shop and three-story apartment block behind

â€“ following years of difficult negotiations with the town.

Iâ€™ve previously documented the death of as-of-right zoning, and the development of veto-by-endless-process; Milton is Exhibit A for this.Â Just listen to what these property owners have experienced and endured:

Father-son developer duo Jerry and Steve Connelly negotiated a proposal with town officials from 2010 to 2012 to build some 30 housing units plus commercial space on the property, where the Connellys own one portion and the town owns the other. But Planning Board officials denied the special permit in December 2012 because they thought the project was too big and did not meet required zoning setbacks.

Hendrieâ€™s site in the 1970s: now two stories, apartments still behind

The proposed Hendrieâ€™s development has a planning saga stretching back at least four years (Boston Globe (June 21, 2012; deep purple font):

Itâ€™s been more than a year since developer Steve Connelly took down the 200-year-old oak tree in front of the long-vacant Hendrieâ€™s ice cream factory on Eliot Street, saying it was too decayed to survive construction on the site. The treeâ€™s gone, the factoryâ€™s still boarded up, and thereâ€™s still no sign of the condominium and commercial building that Connelly wants to put up there. He first applied to the Planning Board for a special permit in July 2010.Â

But the boardâ€™s new chairman, Alexander Whiteside, says heâ€™s confident the permit process is nearing an end.

â€œItâ€™s gone on long enough, and it really is time to get that building taken down and something better in its place,â€ Whiteside said last week.

In print, Mr. Whiteside is always the soul of sweet reason, but the entity over which he presides can never find the Y word in its vocabulary, no matter how it tries.

Have you been to Planning Board hearings, Lord Byron?

Some residents who support the development have written to the Planning Board, asking it to approve the permit so the new complex can go up and the town can start collecting more tax revenue from the site.Â â€œI drive by it every day, and anything is better that what is there now,â€ said Eric Seamans, who was among those writing to the Planning Board. â€œItâ€™s mind-boggling that they canâ€™t come to an agreement.â€Â

But others have urged the Planning Board not to rush the process.

After all, one can always find a new issue to worry about, a new study to order and then wait for.

The Columbine Cliff Neighborhood Association, which [claims to] represent about 900 households in the area, sent a letter to the board last month supporting the decision to keep its review open â€œuntil all design issues are resolved.â€Â Â

Having condemned the property to struldbrug dereliction, the neighbors are now worried

Peter Mullin, a Town Meeting member from the area, said people â€“

Whenever someone references concerns of unnamed others, a good auto-replace is to presume that heâ€™s speaking for himself, and that the concerns heâ€™s imputing to those unnamed others are in fact not the real concerns.

â€“ also are concerned about the safety of the existing building.Â An engineering study performed for the developer found that the building was safe, and the town is awaiting results of an independent engineering study, according to Town Administrator Kevin Mearn.Â â€œWe did a site walk with the fire chief, building inspector, and engineer, and I donâ€™t think thereâ€™s any real immediate issue with public safety,â€ Mearn said. â€œBut the town wants to do its due diligence.â€Â

Translation: Another delay that can be justified on the grounds of checking the previously checked engineering study.

Mr. Whiteside (facing us) at a planning board meeting

â€œI think that things are moving forward. Not everyone will be totally happy, but certainly not everyone will be totally unhappy. I would hope that by the end of July, they would have a permitted project.â€

Mr. Whitesideâ€™s confidence was misplaced â€“ so the developers moved forward under Chapter 40B, whereupon the town pulled this trick:

Milton Town Meeting members have decided to change the guidelines for the sale of the dilapidated Hendrie’s site, as a way of gaining leverage in negotiations with the person who owns most of the building.

It never gets old, does it?

The article, which was only briefly discussed Tuesday night before it was approved, authorizes selectmen to sell the town-owned portion of the building and land to whoever is willing to pay for it.

This is a delicious hypocrisy: having refused all attempts to develop the property, the town now envisions they can sell their chunk of it to somebody else who can be lured into thinking it can be developedâ€”so theyâ€™ll outsource ownership while retaining their veto.

The vote effectively reverses the language of a 2007 Town Meeting vote, which authorized selling those assets only to Jerry Connelly and his son Steven Connelly, who own most of the building.

â€œThis article is important to providing the selectmen with the flexibility they need to transfer this property and develop the whole site at the former Hendrieâ€™s location,â€ Peter Mullin, a Precinct 2 Town Meeting member, said Tuesday.

Translation: We didnâ€™t like the Chapter 40B project, so weâ€™ve decided to sabotage it and then sabotage whoever else comes forward.

So we lied again; so vat?

The vote could place in jeopardy a recently reached agreement between the town and the developer to buy the town land for a residential/commercial development. Yet some town officials feel they need a backup plan, given the past controversy between the two parties.

Translation: As the Chapter 40B property is going forward, we need a backup plan to stop it another way.

[Continued tomorrow in Part 8.]

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