Land Owner Interested in Selling To Town

The owner of a 21-acre parcel off Stop River Road is interested in selling or otherwise conveying at least a portion of it to the town. The property borders land owned by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and conservation-minded residents have had their eye on it. Development potential of the parcel is limited by wetlands and ledge and the Planning Board’s policy of not allowing cul-de-sacs more than 500 feet long. The town’s Community Preservation Committee showed interested in recent years in recommending that the town purchase the land but opted not to bring it to Town Meeting.

Andrea Langhauser, a member of the town’s Plan­ning Board and the Community Preservation Commit­tee, said last week that the land would make good open space because of its natural features.

“This land was very highly ranked by Community Preservation. The only reason we didn’t bring it forward … was because we had just purchased a property down­stream

on Stop River, and we were cognizant of the fact that other neighborhoods weren’t getting looked at,” Langhauser said during the Planning Board meeting Thursday, June 3. “So it was just the timing of the last purchase.” The owner of the property, Gil Axberg, of Seekonk Street, probably can’t build four houses on the land as he has been hoping, because the fourth lot would require a dead-end road longer than 500 feet, which the town’s Planning Board doesn’t ordinarily allow. Axberg’s sub­division proposal is known as Oak Knoll Estates. Axberg told the Planning Board a roadway wouldn’t even reach his land until it is about 318 feet long, which gives him less than 200 feet of roadway on his property. To get frontage for a fourth house he would need to build a dead-end road that is about 800 feet long, he said. “Getting to that one’s very difficult. I’m hesitant to give any waivers on the 500-foot cul-de-sac,” said Steve McClain, a member of the Planning Board. Axberg pointed out that he lives at the corner of Brookside Lane, which is an 1,800-foot-long cul-de-sac built before the Planning Board implemented its 500-foot restriction. He said he doesn’t see a problem with Brookside Lane. But McClain said the Planning Board needs to hold the line on cul-de-sacs. “If we allowed 1,800-foot cul-de-sacs, still, we would have no through connections in this town. Everyone would want to build a cul-de-sac on every single par­cel

in this town when they put in a subdivision. … The reason we have everything being developed now with through connections is because we didn’t allow longer than a 500-foot cul-de-sac in the first place,” McClain said.

An engineering consultant for the Planning Board, Thomas Houston, noted that many towns limit the length of cul-de-sacs because longer ones can lead to problems.

“There are also public safety issues, in terms of if you had long cul-de-sacs and there were ever a blockage of the road, the number of people who could be isolated by that,” Houston said. “Water main connections want to be looped … There are a number of engineering and safety reasons for it.” Axberg could in theory build a longer road that connects with Brookside Lane, but that would require three wetlands crossings, which are expensive to design and expensive to build, and which in recent years have been hard to get approval for from the town’s Con­servation Commission. The longer-roadway option led to a theoretical discussion last week that highlights the level of discretion the Planning Board has over residential subdivisions. At one point in the meeting last week Planning Board members and Axberg discussed ways Axberg could maximize the number of lots. The Planning Board encourages developers to design so-called “open space” subdivisions, which allow developers more favorable development terms in exchange for donating a portion of the land to the town as open space.

Developers can build on lots with less frontage than would oth­erwise be required and can build houses on smaller lot sizes — and if they have at least 10 lots under a conventional subdivision design (a so-called “yield” plan), they can get a bonus lot for going the open-space route. Developers must first figure out how many lots they can get from a conventional subdivision design in order to determine how many lots they could build in an open-space plan. In Axberg’s case, under a conventional plan with a roadway that connects to Brookside Lane, Axberg could easily build four homes. (An early proposal called for about 13 homes.) But the cost of the three wetland crossings (or bridges) that he would have to build is prohibitive. “According to my engineer it’s going to cost a ton of money to engineer that,” Axberg said. That led Planning Board members to discuss how much a so-called “yield” plan can differ from an open-space plan that the “yield” plan leads to.

“We’ve run into yield plans with wetland issues before,” Lang­hauser said. “We don’t take that into consideration. .. We just see whether or not it can legitimately be done,” McClain said.

“And then when we go to the real plan we avoid the wetland is­sues,” Langhauser said, referring to the open-space plan the “yield” plan would lead to.

Gino Carlucci, a planning consultant for the Planning Board, not­ed that the Planning Board can contest a developer’s calculation of how many open-space-plan lots he can build. “You have the right to challenge lots. … You have the right. You don’t necessarily have to challenge them,” Carlucci said. “I think the board has sufficient discretion within the rules and regs to establish what you consider a reasonable development thresh­old on the property. I mean, there’s enough give and take on this I think you … can reasonably say four,” Houston said, referring to the number of lots Axberg’s property could yield.

“You can make an argument for four, on a yield plan?” Langhaus­er asked. “Well, if he has an ability to have a through roadway. Again, the board would have the authority to quote-unquote ‘challenge’ the through plan if in fact it required the bridging of wetlands and that reasonably were to cost a million or millions of dollars. You could rea­sonably

challenge that. Alternatively, you could, I think, reasonably accept that, if you so chose. It depends on what each board thinks is a reasonable interpretation of your ability to challenge,” Houston said.

It turns out the question is moot, because Axberg told the Plan­ning Board he is planning to sell his home and a portion of the land that would be needed for the roadway to his son. So that leaves him with three lots, unless the Planning Board waives its 500-foot limit on cul-de-sacs.

Axberg told the Planning Board he has a buyer interested in pur­chasing the land if he can get four lots from it, but not the three lots that the Planning Board appears likely to allow.

“I’m trying to make a deal here, O.K.? I have a buyer who’s inter­ested in this if it’s four lots,” Axberg said. “If it’s not four lots, it isn’t to his advantage to put all this road in …” He said maximizing the sale price for the land is important to him because he is relying on it for his retirement. “I’m trying to get the most yield I can, dollar-wise, out of what it is that I have here,” Axberg said. Langhauser floated an alternative idea — Axberg could sell about 18 acres of the parcel to the town as open space and keep enough land to build two houses. The 18-acre parcel would be appraised as a so-called “estate lot,” which refers to a large lot with a single house on it.

The town’s nine-member Community Preservation Committee could recommend the purchase to Town Meeting, out of the town’s Community Preservation Act funds. The town in recent years has had at least a couple of million dollars available in Community Preserva­tion Act funds for purposes allowed by the law, which are open space and recreation, historic preservation, and below-market-rate hous­ing. The town has a 3 percent property-tax surcharge that goes into the Community Preservation Act accounts, and also receives match­ing funds from the state. “There’s a lot of value to the town in the back land, and it will give us a nice trail head,” Langhauser said. Langhauser suggested it’s a parcel the Community Preservation Committee should take seriously. “I can’t speak for CPC, nor the town, but I understand the value of the offer,” Langhauser said.

Axberg seemed interested in the idea. But he wasn’t on the agen­da of the Community Preservation Committee meeting scheduled for Wednesday, June 16 as of late this week.