Wellesley Office Park Master Plan | William Street | Wellesley

Equilibria

Equilibria

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If Northland, Riverside, et al get threads, this should too:


This is one of the worst ideas I've ever seen, and it's transparently so. Let's shove all the poors in a corner with a single two-lane access to one direction of Route 9, an intersection which is already so unsafe and poorly-conceived that they have to use cones and a traffic cop every day to keep people from dying there, without a hint of a prayer of transit access, and call it good! 40B threshold met! Off to the tennis courts, Welleselyites!

Wellesley already takes a hit in my book for their prior approach to public housing on Barton Road, another location shoved up against the town line and freeway that is so depressingly planned it looks like a prison camp, but hey, at least they're consistent.

If they want to actually do this, the conversation should start with extending William Street across 128 and through the Harvard Pilgrim parking lot to curl back to the much higher-capacity intersection on the west side. Better yet, let's see them be good people and put the affordable housing in the village centers next to the rail stations, where the legislation clearly meant it to go (a fact this presentation includes in detail, then shrugs off by saying that this site is somehow an "area of concentrated development"). That's what Newton is doing, however much some people have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming. That's what Weston is doing by placing its town-approved 40B apartments next to the future Fitchburg Line Route 128 multimodal station.

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Equilibria said:
Better yet, let's see them be good people and put the affordable housing in the village centers next to the rail stations, where the legislation clearly meant it to go (a fact this presentation includes in detail, then shrugs off by saying that this site is somehow an "area of concentrated development"). That's what Newton is doing, however much some people have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming. That's what Weston is doing by placing its town-approved 40B apartments next to the future Fitchburg Line
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Comparing Newton (especially the Northland and Riverside projects) to Wellesley is silly. Newton is a large city with a six figure population that has several subway/trolley stops and large transportation centers like Riverside. Putting the silly comparison aside, I thought Wellesley did have multiple 40B projects in the works at or near rail centers. Problem is space is MUCH tighter than sites in cities like Newton so even if they are built, they are going to be much smaller developments well under 100 units. That begs the question which is preferable, 100 total units of affordable housing spread across multiple developments at or near rail centers or 4 times the amount of affordable units at a place like this office park?
 
Oof. If any slice of land should be single family McMansions, this should be it. I can honestly think of no way to support density on Williams Street without a major reconfiguration of Route 9.
 
BosDevelop said:
Comparing Newton (especially the Northland and Riverside projects) to Wellesley is silly. Newton is a large city with a six figure population that has several subway/trolley stops and large transportation centers like Riverside. Putting the silly comparison aside, I thought Wellesley did have multiple 40B projects in the works at or near rail centers. Problem is space is MUCH tighter than sites in cities like Newton so even if they are built, they are going to be much smaller developments well under 100 units. That begs the question which is preferable, 100 total units of affordable housing spread across multiple developments at or near rail centers or 4 times the amount of affordable units at a place like this office park?
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Newton's population is not six figures, FWIW. It's sub 90k.

I've heard of one other 40B in Wellesley, which is adjacent to Linden Street and a Commuter Rail station. They are fighting it tooth and nail.

Space is tighter, but it's not tight. Wellesley is still a low-density place. Here's the Wellesley Hills station:

1580926275545.png


All of those parking lots could host apartment buildings, and they represent the same sort of opportunity Newton is taking next to Newtonville and West Newton (it's not just Riverside and Northland that are getting apartments). I won't screencap Wellesley Square, but the same applies. Heck, you could put a building on the Wellesley Farms parking lot and maintain the lot under a deck.

There's no such thing as "not enough land" in the suburbs.
 
BosDevelop said:
Comparing Newton (especially the Northland and Riverside projects) to Wellesley is silly. Newton is a large city with a six figure population that has several subway/trolley stops and large transportation centers like Riverside. Putting the silly comparison aside, I thought Wellesley did have multiple 40B projects in the works at or near rail centers. Problem is space is MUCH tighter than sites in cities like Newton so even if they are built, they are going to be much smaller developments well under 100 units. That begs the question which is preferable, 100 total units of affordable housing spread across multiple developments at or near rail centers or 4 times the amount of affordable units at a place like this office park?
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BosDevelop -- while you gave Newton too many people -- it is still totally dissimilar to Wellesley.

Newton is as City with a Mayor. Wellesley has a Town Meeting with Selectmen making decision making a totally different process.

Newton has had in the past a substantial Industrial economic footprint as well as more sedate "Office Parks". Wellesley has only one significant Office Park right on Rt-128.

Much of Newton's population already lives in dense clusters of apartments and condos located near to Green Line D-branch Stations. Almost all of Wellesley is housed in single family and some townhouses.

Newton would be willing to develop housing more densely on its own based on an ordinary development proposal. Wellesley only will develop more intensively because of the -- current law enabling a sort of loop hole around the local zoning.

By the way -- the new budget from the Governor proposes increasing the ability of developers to come into a town and develop despite some amount of NIMBY's. Of course its up to the Legislature to enact that kind of State bypass of the local zoning.
 
A pedestrian bridge across the Charles River connecting this master plan to the Charles River Wetlands Trail near the intersection of Quinobequin Road & Larkspur Road would do a great deal to reduce vehicular trips on Williams Street. It's only 3,000 feet from the Waban green line T station in Newton. For comparison, it's a similar walk as from Davis Square T station to the Tufts University Campus (a little shorter, actually).

Williams Road Master Plan Wellesley.JPG


Although it wouldn't address all the vehicle concerns with Williams Street at Route 9, it would definitely be a smart tactic for the developer to address mitigating net vehicular trips onto the property. Would be a better sell to prospective commercial and residential tenants if this was in fact marketable as accessible to the T. A pedestrian link here to Waban would be a 2,000-foot shorter walk than to Eliot.
 
dshoost88 said:
A pedestrian bridge across the Charles River connecting this master plan to the Charles River Wetlands Trail near the intersection of Quinobequin Road & Larkspur Road would do a great deal to reduce vehicular trips on Williams Street. It's only 3,000 feet from the Waban green line T station in Newton. For comparison, it's a similar walk as from Davis Square T station to the Tufts University Campus (a little shorter, actually).

Although it wouldn't address all the vehicle concerns with Williams Street at Route 9, it would definitely be a smart tactic for the developer to address mitigating net vehicular trips onto the property. Would be a better sell to prospective commercial and residential tenants if this was in fact marketable as accessible to the T. A pedestrian link here to Waban would be a 2,000-foot shorter walk than to Eliot.
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I see someone else reads Village 14 :).

When I kept looking that this, I was surprised at how short the walk to Eliot is, too. A little over a half-mile isn't bad, though I'd question whether the environmental approvals would be easy there given that the Wellesley river bank is pretty marshy. There's also basically no drop to the river there, so the bridge would need a stair/ramp system. It would be a long, complicated bridge. There's also the question of opposition from the Newton side, given that there's nothing the Waban neighbors would want to walk to in the office park (there's already pedestrian access to Wellesley proper over Echo Bridge), so it would basically be a way to funnel pedestrians in front of their houses. I'd support that as the right thing to do, but I don't think everyone would (and I don't live there).

That said, the developer would absolutely do well to think about it. My complaint is that the Town clearly isn't interested in asking them to, and even if they did, it doesn't make this project a good idea in the absence of improved vehicular access.

EDIT: I am reminded now that MassDOT's non-solution to the William Street intersection was to block it off from the Route 9 mainline instead of actually fixing anything, so at the moment the sole vehicular access to this site runs through two stop-controlled intersections of neighborhood streets with bad sightlines. Northland has promised to fund at least some stoplights around there, but not if Newton votes them down next month.
 
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Equilibria said:
I see someone else reads Village 14 :).
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I didn't! However, I just read the site, comments, and Newton Planning's Comment letter--GREAT MINDS! :)

An even more direct connection to the Waban MBTA stop would be to construct a pedestrian/bicycle bridge from the Office Park across the Charles River to Quinnobequin Road (near Lakerspur), which would result in a short walk or bike ride to the Waban MBTA stop.
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Anyone who lived here would be screwed from both directions.

If the richest village in Newton didn't fight like a cornered dog the construction of a pedestrian bridge that would just invite loiterers and na'er-do-wells onto their leafy streets, I'll eat my hat.

I really tried to look on the bright side here - the river is right there and most of your neighbors are workers who ghost the place by 6 on weekdays and don't come in on weekends, and the kids will get to benefit from Wellesley Public schools - but there's no access to the river, no sidewalks to escape the neighborhood on foot, and a required westbound exit when you're forced to drive. This is fencing people in with a highway, an interstate, and a river that can never be developed over time to help meaningfully unite these structures to Wellesley or Waban. It's housing plopped in an office park.

This is the biggest middle finger a town can give to low-income residential.
 
Pearl clutchers gonna clutch.
What's the 40B income cutoff for Wellesley? $100k per household?
 
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