Last week the Planning Board granted special permits for three buildings at 203 Ayer Road across from Dunkin’ Donuts—the first new commercial development approved in more than a decade. The board had labored over the decision for more than 16 months, finally voting to approve the project at the end of a four-hour hearing June 26.
The board granted three special permits under various parts of the town’s zoning laws. All the permits are needed to construct the project as currently shown in the approved plan.
The centerpiece will be a 16-court badminton gym of 33,381 square feet, but the permit applications did not specify the exact uses for the other two buildings. One would consist of 15,500 square feet of commercial and office space with three apartments on the second floor—and possibly several more apartments if the septic system allows. The third building was identified in plans as a commercial building of 8,000 square feet.
Wheeler Realty Trust and Yvonne Chern applied for special permits in March 2022. Wheeler was represented at the Planning Board hearings by Lou Russo, who owns the land with Tom Kurian and is a Harvard resident and developer. Chern is owner of Boston Badminton, a facility in Westborough with six courts. The Westborough facility offers evening hours during the week, daytime hours on weekends, and 24/7 access to what its website calls “premium members.” Over the months of hearings, Wheeler’s engineering firm, represented by Bruce Ringwall of Goldsmith, Prest, and Ringwall, said Chern would be interested in similar hours in Harvard.
Finalizing the 11-page decision was difficult, Planning Board Chair Richard Cabelus told the Press. In particular, dealing with two special permit applications—one asking to develop under standard commercial zoning and the other under the overlay district zoning of Ayer Road Village—made for complicated deliberation, he said. And initially, none of the buildings specified mixed-use, which the board said was required to meet Ayer Road Village zoning requirements and is the reason why several apartments were added to one of the buildings.
Balancing stakeholder interests
“The great challenge we faced as a board was taking extremely dense applications and applying them to some of the most complex and rarely used bylaws in our town, all while balancing the interests of all stakeholders and trying to act in the best interest of Harvard,” Cabelus told the Press. Vice-chair Stacia Donahue agreed that the decision was tricky, likening it to separating the strands on a heaping plate of spaghetti. Donahue said she hoped people could appreciate the need for some growth in the commercially zoned area as the town deals with budget shortfalls and is, in the near future, “looking an override square in the eye.”
Trying to balance the rigid requirements of the town’s standard commercial zoning and the more flexible rules for Ayer Road Village zoning is what prolonged the hearings, outgoing Planning Board member Brian Cook told the Press. To build just the gym in a three-building project, for instance, would not be in keeping with the spirit of the Ayer Road Village zoning and the advantages it affords a developer.
In the end, the board attached a condition to the permit that voids the privileges granted to a three-building project. This does not necessarily mean that the badminton gym could not be built, nor that other plans could not be submitted later. Septic plans are the most likely to be affected if developers want to build only the gym.
“The Planning Board approves the Ayer Road Village special permit for a mixed-use development, however, incentives as described in 125-52 [for the gym] may not be realized without a building permit being issued for Building B [the 15,000-square-foot structure] which includes the required mixed-use occupancies of commercial and multi-family,’’ the condition reads in part.
Finally, the board decided the proposed development would need four special permits: Ayer Road Village; Mixed-Use Village Development; Large-Scale Commercial Use; and Major Buildings, plus a standard, state-mandated special permit for site plan review.
Russo declined to comment for this article.
A separate proposal at 203 Ayer Road: Is it still viable?
The Planning Board, in hearings conducted over a period of 16 months, ultimately approved special permit applications for a three-building project that is substantially commercial, though it was later changed to include three apartments to satisfy mixed-use requirements needed to get a permit under the zoning overlay district known as Ayer Road Village Special Permit.
But about a year into hearings for 203 Ayer Road, beginning in February 2022, the property was also the subject of a bylaw proposal—submitted by landowners Lou Russo and Tom Kurian—that if passed by Town Meeting could have allowed Minco Development to seek permits for several large apartment buildings on the site. Preliminary plans for more than 200 apartments included the badminton facility, but not the two other commercial buildings. The landowners did not bring the bylaw to the spring 2023 Town Meeting as they had originally planned after current and former town officials and other residents harshly criticized it.
To be clear, the apartments couldn’t have been built on the site without a bylaw change. They were not part of the 203 Ayer Road special permit application the Planning Board approved last week. And the bylaw change and apartments that would have been allowed by it were not discussed at those hearings.
But the board did add a condition making it more difficult to avoid building just the gym—an action designed to avoid granting Ayer Road Village privileges meant to apply to a three-building project as opposed to just one commercial structure.
However, proponents of the overlay district that would allow the apartments are still interested in pursuing a bylaw change. Last week, Minco Development executive Eric Loth said his company hoped to reintroduce the bylaw at the fall Town Meeting. He also confirmed that the two smaller commercial buildings that were just approved “would not work with our current plan; we would need to repermit that portion of the site.”
–VH
