BOS takes a side in budding senior housing rivalry

By Jay Turner

Concerned about the impacts that a proposed assisted living facility would have on a larger cross-town competitor as well as the community as a whole, the Canton Board of Selectmen took the drastic step last week of writing to the zoning board and insisting that they oppose the applicant’s bid for a special permit.

The surprise correspondence, which ZBA Chairman Paul Carroll said he received at the “11^th hour” in advance of last Thursday’s hearing, cited a laundry list of reasons why the project in question — proposed by the owners of the Plymouth Rubber property on Revere Street — should not go forward as planned.

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“We request that you find that the adverse effects on the proposed use will outweigh its beneficial impacts to the town,” stated the letter, which was signed by all five selectmen.

The letter goes on to detail concerns related to traffic flow and safety, as well as the natural environment and associated remediation efforts.

Selectmen said they were also worried that the Revere Street project — which would be located on the 2.4-acre parking lot across from the factory site and consist of 105 sleeping rooms — would compete with and possibly jeopardize the status of the 225-unit assisted living facility proposed on the old AA Will Sand & Gravel pit on Turnpike Street.

In the case of the latter project, the developer has agreed to provide a sizable mitigation package to the town, including a $600,000 cash payment in lieu of affordable housing that would be BOS controlled, in exchange for approval of the Senior Housing Overlay District (SHOD), which was backed by voters at the last town meeting in May.

In response to the selectmen’s letter, Paul Schneiders, attorney for the Revere Street developer, told the ZBA that he had never seen anything like it in his 40 years on the job.

“It’s a shocker,” he said. “We never heard any word from the selectmen. We were never asked to come in and discuss [the project] with them. We never had an opportunity to address any of those issues.”

Schneiders added that “at least 95 percent” of the selectmen’s concerns are either unfounded or have already been addressed — everything except for the possible impact on his client’s competitor on Turnpike Street.

“This is a very transparent attempt to run interference for another project,” he said. “And granted, they like the other project. Okay, fine, but they could have at least called us in and discussed it with us.”

Bernie Plante of Canton Holdings LLC, formerly the Napleton Company, called the selectmen’s letter “ill founded” and compared it to their handling of the proposal for the main 40-acre site, which was roundly criticized at a meeting in June after months of behind-the-scenes discussions.

“We’re prepared to go through that letter with you line by line and address all of the misstatements selectmen have made in here,” Plante told the zoning board members.

Alan Leary, a former town official and an abutter to the proposed project, said he has met with the developer’s representatives on numerous occasions and they “appear to be on solid ground.”

“We’ve been dealing with this company for a year,” said Leary, who lives at Paul Revere Village. “They’ve been very cooperative; they’ve met 99 percent of our needs, and we had a full house down at the library on your suggestion to hear their concerns.”

Leary said he shared the outrage of the petitioner over the letter from selectmen. “I hope you consider the precedent that you’ll set if you don’t proceed with this hearing,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

Attorney Richard Staiti, who represents the competing developer and drafted the SHOD bylaw, also testified at the hearing and reiterated the selectmen’s concerns, although he insisted he had nothing to do with the letter itself.

“It was as much a surprise to me as it was to your board,” he said, adding that his client, BrightView Senior Living, has taken no position on the Revere Street project.

However, Staiti suggested that the parking lot site might be too small for such a use and that the addition of another assisted living facility could put a “significant stress on our [town] services.”

But Schneiders argued that the presence of a competing project should have no bearing on the zoning board’s decision, adding that the other developer has not even filed an application with the Planning Board.

Meanwhile, he said his own client has been approved 5-0 by the planners and has satisfied all of the concerns of the board’s consulting engineer.

“In every respect,” he said, “we have addressed every single issue raised by the Planning Board, the Planning Board’s engineer, the DPW, the Fire Department, the abutters. We have answered everything that had to be answered, and we really were expecting to come in tonight and get a favorable vote.”

Carroll, however, said the zoning board would not be prepared to vote in light of the selectmen’s letter.

“They are the Board of Selectmen,” he said. “They represent, to a great extent, the will of the people and reflect the will of the people. I think they deserve our attention.”

Carroll added that there were still some questions with parking that had to be ironed out, and there was also the matter of eight waivers that the applicant would need in order to move forward with the project.

The ZBA ultimately decided to continue the hearing until November 14, although Carroll insisted there was nothing political about their decision.

“This is not a political football,” he told Schneiders and Plante. “Nothing is a political football to us. We take our job very seriously, and to have some more time to look into these issues is most reasonable in my belief.”

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