In Florida, volunteers from Ballantrae, The Brittany, Estates at Heathbrook, Grandeville on Saxon, Lakes at Suntree, Paramount on Lake Eola, Rialto, and Saddleworth Green organized a beach cleanup at Paradise Beach in Melbourne, helping to protect the shoreline and surrounding marine environment.

Further north, members of our Finance and Asset Management teams spent the day revitalizing the Newton Little League fields—cleaning, painting, and preparing the grounds for the 2025 season.

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February 28, 2021

By Steve Adams

Five years after joining Newton-based Northland Investments as chief investment officer, Matthew Gottesdiener is taking over the multifamily investor’s leadership role in the CEO’s office. His father and the former CEO-turned-chairman, Larry Gottesdiener, built the firm’s 26,000-unit portfolio with a focus on garden-style suburban apartments in New England and the Sunbelt. The firm is expanding its national portfolio with the recent entry into new markets including Atlanta, Denver and Albuquerque. At the same time, it’s preparing to break ground on one of the largest projects in suburban Boston: the transformation of the 22-acre former Clarks Shoes headquarters property in Newton Upper Falls into a 1.1 million-square-foot mixed-use development.

Q: How long has the succession plan been in place and why was this the right time for a change of leadership?

A: I joined the firm five years ago and my father had a concrete set of goals for improving the fundamental quality of the portfolio by selling some of the older assets and adding more core and luxury properties, and a culture that would be more transparent and supportive and put our tenants, employees and investors first. During the pandemic, we took a look at how we’ve done and what the structure was for continued success. That began in the summer and was about each of us focusing on where we could make the most impact.

Q: What’s the average age of the properties in the portfolio?

A: When I joined, it was 1990 and currently it’s 2003. We fundamentally have two core investment strategies. We have the business we’ve done since 1991: Buying predominantly garden-style suburban assets that are undercapitalized or undermanaged, with a 10-to-20-year hold horizon, and transforming the community. The complementary piece that’s grown into half of our building is buying best-in-class, class A-located infill assets, predominantly luxury, with a 20-to-50-year hold horizon. We’re currently investing our eighth fund, and will acquire $400 million to $500 million, investing $100 million of equity.

Q: What’s Northland’s strategy on the development side?

A: In the early 2000s, we slowly and carefully started to build a boutique development business, focusing on New England only, that would use almost exclusively our own capital. One of the most foundational aspects of Northland’s DNA from our founding to today is to be our largest limited partnership investor and never be less than 20 percent of the equity in a fund or investment. Development takes that to another level. As we grew, we invested 70 percent of the equity. We had to build a competency, and it’s your own capital you’re risking.
The Merc in Waltham [which opened in 2018] is an iconic development project. We took an office building and a bank at a “Main & Main” corner and a transit-oriented site that was ripe for redevelopment, in what we believed at the time was not a best-in-class suburb, but we continued to believe that the flood of jobs would lift all tides including Waltham. One of my goals will be bridging this patient boutique New England development niche with our national acquisition business.

Q: What was the key to winning the referendum in Newton approving the Upper Falls project, including 800 apartments?

A: We were thrilled that Newton voters said yes after three years and hundreds of conversations in the city. Newton is home for us, and for me personally. By putting 1,400 parking spots underground in Newton, it’s not just that the project is permeable, but we’ll have an unprecedented level of green space and open space where the structured parking would have sat. Now it’s about the future of the site and getting in the ground. We’ve spent the last 10 months in development review by the city and moving towards the construction loan. As we look across the country to markets like Atlanta and Denver and Austin where we’re growing, we’ll bring that same quality to our national platform.

Q: What’s some of the most useful advice you’ve received in real estate?

A: Have a commitment to your core principals, do what you say and make decisions for the long term. That’s the advice I’ve been given and how I hope to lead Northland in the coming decades.

Gottesdiener’s Top 5 TV Shows:
1. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
2. The Wire
3. La Casa de Papel
4. The West Wing
5. The Sopranos

The post In Person: Investing for the Long Haul in Multifamily Properties appeared first on Northland.

August 23, 2020

The contentious referendum this winter over the fate of a huge housing development in Newton’s Upper Falls neighborhood was supposed to be close. After all, if there’s one thing residents of wealthy, golf-and-garden suburbs like Newton hate, it’s dense housing, right?
Instead the project, an 800-unit development near the Charles River, cruised to a 16-point victory.

Now, as they begin crafting broader changes to the city’s housing rules, Newton’s leaders ought to take the March referendum results as a bellwether of a heartening shift: The longstanding consensus against denser, more affordable housing in America’s suburbs is beginning to crack. For generations, large, single-family housing has been the only kind many suburbs wanted. But the way that once-cherished limits on growth have harmed the environment and deepened racial segregation is coming into ever-sharper focus, aided by local activists and the national soul-searching over systemic racism fostered by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Now, Newton’s City Council has an opportunity to meet the moment by getting rid of the blanket regulations that, for almost a century, have outlawed lower-cost, multifamily housing in much of the city. It’s those kind of zoning restrictions that have mapped racial and economic disparities onto America’s geography — and it’s by abandoning them that Newton and other suburbs can lay the groundwork for a more inclusive future.

Currently, about three-quarters of Newton’s 23,000 residentially zoned lots are reserved for single-family homes, according to the mayor’s office — which means they’re limited to people who can afford median home prices that have ballooned to about $1 million. With an initiation fee that high to join Club Newton, the city’s racial demographics shouldn’t come as any surprise: the city is about 3 percent Black and 5 percent Latino, according to the Census, well under half the rates in the state as whole.

Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s office has presented several preliminary drafts of a revised residential zoning code to the City Council, all of which involve some increase in the allowance for multi-family housing. The details, though, remain in flux. The City Council committee working on zoning reform hopes to agree on the residential section this year, before moving on to commercial zoning.

Allowing multifamily housing in inner suburbs like Newton can also have environmental benefits, if it reduces the pressure in more far-flung towns to tear up farms and forests to make way for housing. Sprawl into distant suburbs with little or no mass transit can also increase car dependency and pollution.

One idea the councilors have discussed is to allow multifamily zoning within a quarter- or half-mile radius around MBTA stations and bus stops, in order to concentrate the most growth near transit so that residents would be less likely to drive. If environmental concerns were the only factors driving the zoning overhaul, it might make sense to stop there.

But a piecemeal approach also means that some parts of the city would suffer from the purported burdens of new housing density, such as more traffic, while others could keep single-family-only rules. The more equitable solution for Newton residents, current and future, would be rule that allow some multifamily housing everywhere. The community can still prioritize development with access to mass transit, but that shouldn’t preclude the ability to put up a few duplexes in other areas.

This is the time for bolder thinking, and not just because of the nationwide protests against racial injustice that were inspired by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The state Legislature is also on the verge of passing a bill proposed by Governor Charlie Baker that will make it easier for communities like Newton to relax their housing limits. It allows municipalities to change zoning with a simple majority vote, instead of requiring a two-thirds majority. Once that law is enacted, it will deprive the anti-housing minority on Newton’s city council of its ability to thwart changes.

Other jurisdictions, notably Minneapolis, have been ahead of the curve removing restrictions on multi-family housing. But for Newton — a suburb with so much money and such good schools — to take down barriers to multifamily housing would send an even louder message.
And it would correct a historic mistake. Earlier this year, a Newton historian, Alice E. Ingerson, dug up a tantalizing bit of long-forgotten history from the city’s archives. When Newton was debating its first set of zoning rules in the early 1920s, the mayor at the time vetoed the first ordinances because they banned two-family homes in parts of the city, which he predicted would make it impossible for young families to find a home. Single-family-only zoning, said Mayor Edwin O. Childs in 1923, was “founded on selfishness.”

Within a few years, Childs was out of office and single-family zoning was the rule in Newton. Now, after a century that proved how prescient its long-ago mayor was, the city has a chance to lead the way in undoing the harm that so many communities imposed on American life.

View the full article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/23/opinion/tear-down-this-paper-wall-newton/?event=event12

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The city of Newton wants developers to know that it’s open for business.

Some might argue that Newton has already had a soft opening of late, approving the massive Northland Newton, Residences on the Charles and Dunstan East mixed-use developments.

The city is reviewing Wellesley-based Mark Development’s proposed 1 million-square-foot Riverside project, a behemoth that will bring 582 apartments, 250,000 square feet of office/lab space, 38,000 square feet of retail space and a 150-room hotel to an MBTA-owned property at the terminus of the Green Line’s D branch.

Combined with the soon-to-open 140-unit Trio project, also by Mark Development, Newton is suddenly experiencing its largest commercial building boom in decades – all via mixed-use projects – and city officials say they would welcome more.

“It’s a high priority for us,” Barney Heath, director of planning and development, said of the city’s desire to increase its commercial tax base, partly as a way to relieve the property tax burden on residential homeowners.

For those who have tried to develop just about anything in Newton in recent decades, the newfound openness to development comes as a pleasant and welcome surprise considering its reputation for grueling permitting processes.

Commercial Growth Lags Neighbors
Indeed, a recent report conducted for the city by Camoin Assoc. found that, between 2008 and 2018, Newton saw no increase in the total value of its commercial properties as a percentage of overall property values in the city, remaining stagnant at 8.7 percent.

By comparison, nearby cities and towns, such as Waltham, Watertown, Wellesley, Needham, Brookline and Weston all saw increases, both big and small, in the total value of its commercial properties as a percentage of overall property values, according to the Camoin report.
As a result of that stagnation, Newton residential owners have paid the price, literally, in higher property taxes. And that partly explains why, last year, city officials approved an economic development plan that calls for expanding the commercial base via a more “efficient” and “predictable” review-and-approval process.

Robert Korff, chief executive of Mark Development, said Newton needed change. Until a few years ago, he said the development process in Newton, was, to put it diplomatically, “daunting” and “frustrating,” with drawn-out reviews often marked by bitter and long debates.
But Korff, whose mixed-use Trio project in Newtonville opens next month, said the times have slowly changed, and he praised Mayor Ruthanne Fuller and the current City Council for being more open to development in general.

Korff, whose firm is considered a sort of pioneer in the resurgence of new construction in Newton, is now following up its Trio project with the proposed Dunstan East and Riverside projects. At the current location of the Barn Family Shoe Store in West Newton, Dunstan East would include 234 apartment units, some of them affordable, and 8,000 square feet of retail space. The city’s Zoning Board of Appeals recently approved the project.

The ambitious Riverside project – with its huge office component, as well as nearly 600 apartments – remains under review by the Newton City Council which is the special permitting authority.

Newton voters approved the massive Northland Newton development at a March referendum, transforming a former shoe company property in Upper Falls into the future home of 800 apartments, 180,000 square feet of office space and 115,000 square feet of retail.

Major Project Could Begin in 2021
Peter Standish, senior vice president of development at Northland Investment Corp., agreed that getting development approvals in Newton has been historically difficult.

“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating at times,” said Standish, whose Northland firm first proposed its Upper Falls project in 2016.
The Northland Newton project – which consists of 800 apartments, 180,000 square feet of office space and 115,000 square feet of retail space in 13 buildings centered around the old Saco-Pettee Mill – wasn’t approved until this past March, when voters in a much-watched city referendum OK’d the project along Needham Street.

Standish, whose firms hopes to start construction on the Northland project next year, said the prolonged review ultimately led to a “better product.”

Dan Krysiak, senior managing director at Newmark Knight Frank (NKF), said he understands why Newton in the past has been so tough on developers.

“It’s a balancing act,” he said of the competing interests of residents and businesses in the densely packed city. “They have a unique situation in Newton, where everything is so jammed together.”
But Krysiak agreed that, if Newton wants, it can indeed boost its commercial base, precisely because many office and lab tenants love its “live, work, play” mix of commercial, retail and residential neighborhoods.

According to NKF data, Newton currently has about 2.8 million square feet of Class A and B office space, with a vacancy rate of about 10.8 percent. Krysiak said he’s convinced new offices at Northland and Riverside will prove popular with future tenants.

Leeanne Rizzo, senior vice president and principal at Hunneman, agreed, noting Newton’s numerous restaurants and shops – as well as its convenient transportation access – are key pluses for the city. Besides its access to the Massachusetts Turnpike, Newton also has Green Line and commuter rail connections, perfect for potential transit-oriented developments.

“Newton is an attractive location,” Rizzo said, noting that Hines Global REIT recently sold the Riverside Center at 275 Grove St. for $235 million. The buyer is Alexandria Real Estate Equities, known for its extensive life-science properties in Kendall Square and elsewhere across the region.

City Pledges ‘Thorough’ Reviews
But Rizzo, like others, said there are worrying signs in the market about the desirability, and need, for office space in general, not just in Newton, due to the recent pandemic lockdown and subsequent remote-work habits acquired by employees. The question moving forward: Will corporations require as much office space in the future, now that they know that remote work is popular among employees while not necessarily harming productivity?

“It’s an interesting time,” Rizzo said. “The ‘old normal’ may not be the ‘new normal.’”

The city of Newton’s economic director, Devra Bailin, said she’s also concerned about the future of office buildings due to COVID-19.
“It’s a difficult time,” she said, noting that there may be a shift to more life science lab development if the market so dictates.

No matter what happens, Bailin, as well as the planning department’s Heath, say they hope and expect developers to show more interest in Newton, though they stress the city intends to maintain a “thorough” review process that leads to projects that maintain Newton’s suburban-urban ambience.

Mark Development’s Korff said he has more development plans in store for Newton, perhaps along the Washington Street corridor.
“There will be more coming forward,” he said. “It’s an exciting time for Newton.”

To view article online, visit https://www.bankerandtradesman.com/newton-embraces-growth-spurt/

The post Newton Embraces Growth Spurt appeared first on Northland.

The Northland Newton Development referendum had been contentious, but there was broad agreement that the project’s buildings would be environmentally-friendly. Among other attributes, Northland had committed to three Passive House certified buildings with 280 housing units, which would make it the largest Passive House development in Massachusetts. Passive House sets a very high standard for energy efficiency, indoor air quality, noise reduction and resilience.

Now, the company announced that it upped its game by committing to at least five Passive House buildings with 422 units of housing. Northland’s original commitment to Passive House has influenced other developers to follow their lead. Their new commitment will be widely noticed, too.

Green Newton is grateful to Northland for its leadership in advancing green construction in our state.

The post Northland to be even greener appeared first on Northland.

CommonWealth Magazine
May 9, 2020
By Halina Szejnwald Brown

This is story about a fight over a new large housing development in Newton. Such stories, which involve stiff local opposition, play themselves out hundreds of times yearly in attractive suburbs of economically prosperous US cities. But this story has a trajectory and an ending different from the typical ones.

A typical story line goes something like this: A developer proposes a large housing project of several hundred apartments; the neighborhood or the entire community becomes alarmed and begins pressing local politicians to block it. A large controversy ensues whereby the local proponents of the project — a fraction of the local political leaders, some in the business community, and usually a minority among the citizenry — point to the housing crisis, dwindling tax revenues, and the stretched municipal budget; the opponents cite traffic, overcrowded schools, and the loss of the community character (a catch phrase that can include anything from the architectural design to xenophobia and racism). The specific tactics of the fight vary but the outcome is usually the same: the project gets killed. The wealthier and more educated the community, the fiercer the battle and the more likely the project’s demise.

This Newton story deviates from this narrative. It does include a fierce confrontation between the opponents and proponents, but the proponents, including me, formed an unusual united coalition representing a wide range of interests: the developer, local activists and most of Newton’s civic organizations. The outcome is also different: overwhelming approval of the project in a citywide referendum.

The background of this story is the increasing income and wealth inequality in Massachusetts, a growing distrust between cultural groups, the housing crisis in the Boston metropolitan area, the looming climate crisis, and the recently released Newton Climate Action Plan.

The Garden City is Newton’s well-deserved nickname. In this city of 89,000, about 90 percent of houses are single- and two-family structures framed by flowering bushes and green lawns lining quiet sidewalks shaded by old tree canopies. Over half of the houses were built before 1930. They are known for their external beauty: rich in detail and endless variety. While daily life here is very much car-dependent, and zoning favors separation of residential from commercial buildings, Newton’s density is much higher than in typical US suburbs, and all the streets and roads have sidewalks. Since the 1980s the city’s housing has changed in three ways: replacing older one-family homes with new ones, generally two to three times larger than the originals; replacing older single-family houses with 2-4 family condominiums; and building multiunit buildings in a limited number of areas zoned for mixed use, generally by replacing old commercial structures.

Newton has excellent amenities: It is located only a few miles from downtown Boston, to which it is connected by several modes of public transit, and has access to two major interstate highways: north-south and east-west. It has an abundance of athletic fields, a lake with a public beach, parks, and several large parcels of public forests. The picturesque Charles River borders it on three sides, offering bicycle paths, woods, and boat rentals. Newton is known for excellent schools, an extremely low crime rate, good services, and rich cultural life. These amenities are increasingly strained because the residential property tax revenues — the bedrock of its budget — are falling behind the growing obligations to the pension fund.

Newton is experiencing a rapid disappearance of housing for middle and lower income budgets. While a generation or two ago middle class families could still find houses in their price range, this is no longer the case. In 2019, the median price of a single family house listed for sale was close to $1.2 million. The housing crisis in Newton mirrors that in Boston and numerous other cities and towns in its larger metropolitan area. Newton is also aging: 25 percent of residents are over 65. Many elderly residents live in homes that are far too large for them but cannot find affordable smaller alternatives within the city.

The project, its opponents and proponents

Sometime in 2016, Northland Development Corporation proposed to build a village of sorts, 950 apartment units in several buildings, with retail and office space, on three adjacent parcels of post-industrial land it owns (22.7 acres in total) in the area called Newton Upper Falls. For decades the site has been an eyesore of decaying buildings and parking lots, and everybody agreed that something should be done with it. But the size of the Northland proposal took the idea of development to a whole new level. Nothing on that scale had ever been built in Newton.

Apart from the visual impacts of the project’s large size, an increase in automobile traffic would be the most difficult problem to solve. The main road connecting the development with the closest transit stop and the rest of Newton is a very congested commercial street. The congestion has increased recently due to commercial developments in neighboring Needham and the creation of a new Route 95/128 highway interchange nearby. Potential supporters of the project proposal included environmentalists, housing and senior advocates, and social progressives who believe that Newton has a responsibility to address the state’s and its own housing crisis and who are concerned about the increasingly for-the-wealthy-only character of the city.

Emphasis on affordable housing was very high among the proponents. Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller shared the views of the progressives and additionally looked to the project to generate tax revenues. “(W)e must preserve the wonderful quality of life we have in Newton while we make room for people of all means in our community,” she said. In 2019 Newton released an ambitious Climate Action Plan which aims for zero carbon emissions by 2050. With regard to new residential construction, the plan calls for higher density, radically greater energy efficiency, and elimination of gas heating in favor of electric heat pumps. The building standards committee of Green Newton, a highly respected local grassroots organization, approached Northland independently of the review process by the city to directly negotiate about Passive House construction and the elimination of all new gas hookups in favor of cutting-edge electric heating technologies. It was a brilliant move because the developer needed allies to fend off opposition to the project. The Newton Citizens Commission on Energy, an appointed advisory body to the mayor and the City Council, supported the Green Newton initiative and so did other local environmental organizations.

Northland had never even heard about Passive House, a trademarked technology that tightens the external building envelope in a way that reduces energy use by more than 40 percent and often requires no heating at all. Northland initially resisted the idea, but over time, and with the help of a consulting firm specializing in that type of construction, and state subsidies, Northland acquiesced, pledging to use the technology on three of the eight buildings, or 280 units.

Public transit and bicycling advocates such as Bike Newton and the mayor’s transportation advisory group supported the Northland project, pushing for limited parking facilities, hoping to attract one-car families and residents with no cars at all. They hailed the fact that the project would indeed be connected to the nearest T stop by the Upper Falls Greenway, a currently existing one-mile-long wooded bike path. Open space advocates pushed for an underground garage while ecologically-minded groups wanted to see restoration of a natural stream which had been confined to a culvert for more than a century. The sustainable living advocates within the Energy Commission viewed it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a “sustainability village” in Newton whose residents could meet all their daily needs within an approximately one-mile radius and create a thriving self-contained community. The affordable housing advocates and social progressives aimed for maximizing the number of “affordable” and “workforce” units. And advocates for seniors pressed for senior-friendly building design.

The most vociferous opposition to the project came from two directions: the village of Newton Upper Falls and a citywide coalition of anti-development and anti-urbanization advocates organized under the umbrella of Right Size Newton.

The City of Newton comprises 11 villages. Most villages have semi-urban walkable centers, and each has unique character, depending on the level of urbanization, average income, architecture, access to public transit, and cultural diversity. Some of the smaller villages, such as Upper Falls, have strong neighborhood cohesion and a sense of belonging among residents. It is a cozy place. Upper Falls is also one of the last vestiges of relatively affordable housing, partly because its industrial history traditionally attracted working families and immigrants to the area.

The main points of contention by the opponents were as expected: additional traffic, school overcrowding, and the loss of village character. They called for a much smaller, though undefined, project. The Northland proposal had come on the heels of several other residential construction projects in Newton (far from Upper Falls). This accelerating pace of new buildings, although not extensive relative to Newton’s size and population, unnerved many long-time residents who are averse to change, especially change toward a more urban character. “We will soon be like Brookline” is a common phrase. One of these projects – a single four-story residential building with 68 apartments – was at the time being fiercely (and eventually unsuccessfully) opposed by the host neighborhood, leaving behind lingering resentments, grievances, distrust of the government, and suspicions about the future of Newton.

Between 2016 and 2019, the 24-member Newton City Council worked with the city’s planning department, the developer, consultants, local activists, and residents to shape the proposed project to its and others’ liking. This included a reduction in the number of residential units to 800 and a decrease in the amount of traffic-generating retail space.

In December 2019, after many dozens of meetings with the developer; 14 meetings of the Land Use Committee of the City Council, of which 12 were public hearings; and intense last-minute lobbying, the City Council approved the project with a 17-7 vote, one over the required two-thirds majority.

The final design had something in it for all the proponents and opponents, including: 17 percent affordable units; a garage put underground to increase open and park space to 40 percent of the site; secure bicycle parking; ecological restoration of a brook; several mini parks; three Passive House buildings; apartments heated with advanced heat pumps rather than natural gas; a strict traffic management plan; free T passes for residents; a free electric shuttle to the closest T stop, every 10 minutes, 16 hours per day; and $10 million cash, including $1.5 million for the local school and $5 million for street improvements, including utility connections underground rather than on poles to create space for a protected bicycle lane along the main street. The large size of the project made these amenities fiscally possible.

The Referendum

But the fight did not end with the council’s vote. The Newton city charter provides for putting a council’s decision to a citywide referendum vote if a petition is signed by at least 5 percent of registered voters. This is a low threshold relative to the similar state-level provision (12 percent) and to other Massachusetts municipalities (12 to 20 percent range). Over the next three weeks the opponents, carrying clipboard and signature sheets, fanned out to supermarkets, the public library, drugstores, anywhere residents congregated, and easily collected over 3,000 signatures. The vote was scheduled for March 3, the day of the state presidential primaries. The “Vote Yes” coalition favored that date, reasoning that a large turnout would represent the larger Newton community, not only the most passionate opponents and proponents, and would work in their favor.

During January and February, the battle lines sharpened, emotions on social media exploded, alliances became reconfigured, and the nature of the debate changed. While in the pre-council-vote period Northland was an applicant negotiating with the city and the community at large, after the vote Northland became one of the many proponents of the project. In the first organizing meeting hosted by a Newton resident, the Northland team and their communication consultant took the stage. The well-attended meeting attracted baby boomers who exhibited the type of determination I imagine them displaying in their 20s as idealistic social reformers.

In no time a large number of volunteers on both sides became mobilized: they rang doorbells, made phone calls, provided and dropped off lawn signs and hosted house parties, and submitted letters to editor of the Newton Tab. Northland’s consultant, who specialized in political campaigns, provided materials, training, and organizational capacity for the citizen volunteers who supported the project. It maintained maps with anticipated leanings in various neighborhoods, surveyed public opinion on an ongoing basis, and flooded Newton mailboxes with high quality, glossy, mailers. Altogether, Northland outspent the opposition by 10 to 1.

The pro-Northland coalition comprised 16 local organizations, including business (The Newton-Needham Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Newton Economic Development Commission), faith-based (Newton Interfaith Clergy), conservation (Newton Conservators, 350Mass), municipal commissions (Newton Urban Design Commission), and housing (Uniting Citizens for Housing Affordability in Newton, Newton Housing Partnership, Engine 6, Can Do), Green Newton, and other groups. The mayor and Gov. Charlie Baker publicly supported the project, and so did the Boston Globe. Right before the voting day, Baker approved a $400,000 grant to support an extension of the Upper Falls Greenway bike path. The discourse also changed at that stage. In the pre-City Council vote period the discussion had focused on the technical and aesthetic aspects of the project, its impacts on the neighborhood, and the developer’s response to various identified problems. During the post-City Council vote stage, the confrontation shifted to larger issues. The ethos of the proponents was about the future vision of Newton as a community responsive to larger societal needs, diversity and inclusion, affordable housing, and sustainability. One resident wrote: “As a Newton resident and homeowner, I wholeheartedly agree that we can no longer treat our city as an island, leaving solutions to our most pressing problems — climate change, lack of housing, transportation, affordability — to other communities. We don’t need 800 new housing units in Newton — we need 8,000, or more.”

The opposition drew its energy from the idea that neighborhoods have a right to protect themselves from unfair burdens imposed by the larger community, from the lack of trust in the developer and the city government, and the rage for not having its voice heard. Wrote one citizen: “I’m NOT anti-development. I just want reasonable development that doesn’t erode our quality of life and increase our taxes…. Developer profits shouldn’t trump community needs.”

The stakes were high. If the project were to fail, Newton would not aim for a project of that magnitude in the foreseeable future; and the opportunity would be lost to advance Passive House construction in Massachusetts and to create pockets of more sustainable lifestyles in suburbs. The anti-development groups in Newton and other Massachusetts communities would become bolder in their resistance to change, and both the state and the city would lose a significant opportunity to alleviate the housing crisis. Other developers would probably not even try to advance proposals such as this for Boston suburbs.

A no vote also created a 40B threat for opponents. Chapter 40B of the Massachusetts General Laws addresses communities, including Newton, which have less than 10 percent of their housing classified as affordable. 40B provides developers who set aside at least 25 percent of their project as affordable a streamlined permit process and more flexible zoning rules. The fear was that if Northland went the 40B route it could propose a project of 1,500 units and Newton would have very little control over its design. Although there was no formal talk about 40B, and Northland was silent on the issue, the informal conversations among the population were increasingly focusing on that possibility.

In the end, the project did not fail. On March 3, with 51 percent of registered voters participating, 58 percent voted in favor and 42 percent against. This large margin suggests that it was more than a victory for the party with much deeper pockets. Rather, it appears that Newton citizens truly believed that this project, while imperfect, was the best use of the 22.7 acres of post-industrial land in Newton Upper Falls.

The day after the vote an eerie silence fell upon the city. There was nothing to fight about anymore, and celebrations by the winners did not feel right in the painfully divided community. It will take some time to heal the wounds.

A Newton resident can easily forget about the growing social problems in the society at large. We are in a bubble of sorts, which the Northland project briefly burst by bringing into our community the issues of wealth inequality, lack of opportunity for many children, lack of housing for the middle class and low-income working families, and the climate crisis.

The social forces giving rise to these problems are hard for individuals and local organizations to tackle; they have to do with the fundamental structure of the national economy and power relations. One area where citizens do have the agency to act is local land use and zoning. To Newton’s credit, a large segment of residents rose up to use these powerful tools. But the project also threatened the treasured way of life in the cozy community of Upper Falls, and it unsettled many other Newtonites. In this case the social reformers prevailed because they created a united, diverse coalition which included the developer, a player that does not have the best reputation as a progressive societal force. Green Newton took this opportunity even a step further by negotiating directly with the developer over adopting Passive House construction.

But the cost of the victory was high. The developer spent millions negotiating with the city and the community and redesigned the project several times to defuse opposition. A large national company, Northland, was able to absorb these costs, especially because they already owned a large part of the land. But not many developers would be able to do it. And the high cost does not bode well for the future pricing of the market units in the development. That means that Northland village may not, after all, accommodate young professional families and the children of current Newton residents.

And what of other housing ownership models, such as, for instance, non-profit cooperatives? It is highly unlikely that such enterprises would be able to afford this kind of a fight.

These concerns notwithstanding, the Northland village is a powerful beginning on the road toward what Newton was once: a place for the middle class to thrive.

To see the article, visit https://commonwealthmagazine.org/housing/how-newton-bridged-the-housing-divide/

The post How Newton bridged the housing divide appeared first on Northland.

The Boston Globe
March 8, 2020
By Katherine Levine Einstein and Maxwell Palmer

Last Tuesday, almost 60 percent of Newton voters supported the highly contentious Northland Newton Development. The mixed-use development — the largest in the city’s history — will provide 800 units of housing, 140 of which will be affordable. Housing advocates are celebrating the success of this referendum, and the infusion of housing it will provide in one of the region’s most advantaged suburbs.

The process of approving this much-needed housing, however, underscores the region’s broken housing policies. This project was supported by majorities of both residents and the City Council. It nonetheless had to go through an 18-month permitting process and survive a long sequence of hurdles.

Each public hearing empowered opponents to raise objections, slow down the project, and ultimately reduce the amount of housing that will be built. After the permit was granted by the city, the referendum election added an additional three month delay. While the process led to several greenspace and transit benefits for the area, it also increased the cost of development, and may make other housing developers wary of building affordable housing in Newton. This is a serious problem in a region that is facing a crushing housing shortage.

It should not require a well-organized campaign and the votes of 18,565 people to get one housing project approved. Representative government requires delegating responsibility to our elected officials. If we do not like how they have approached development decisions — or other matters — we can vote them out in the next election.

While being forced into a public referendum is somewhat unusual, the Northland development process is unfortunately all too typical in housing politics. Across the country, building new housing, both big and small, often requires multiple meetings across many months. Each of these meetings invites public comment, typically officially solicited from a proposed development’s neighbors.

On its face, public participation in development seems laudable, acting as an integral underpinning to local democracy. In practice, it does the opposite: Our research shows that public meetings empower an unrepresentative group of people who overwhelmingly oppose new housing. In our book “Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis,” coauthored with our colleague David Glick, we find that the people who participate in the permitting process are more likely to be white, male, older, and own a home than others in their community. Across Massachusetts towns, from 2015 to 2017, only 14 percent of those speaking at permitting meetings about multifamily housing were in favor of the development. As the Northland referendum shows, true public support is much higher.

Indeed, recent election results underscore an unfortunate liberal inconsistency on housing policy. On Super Tuesday, Democratic primary voters flocked to the polls to endorse candidates with robust plans to improve and increase the nation’s housing stock. The platforms of former vice president Joe Biden and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren all advocate for housing policies that would make it easier to build more housing. In Newton, more than 90 percent of voters cast a vote in the Democratic primary. A sizable portion of those voters opposed those same principles when it came to their own backyards: At least 35 percent of Newton Democratic voters opposed the Northland project.

Sanders’ positions illustrate this disjoint between national and local housing preferences. Sanders’ housing plan outlines regulatory and funding measures that would increase the supply of national housing for residents at a variety of income levels. Yet, he opposes local housing developments and endorses politicians in local races who fight critical zoning reform.

Facing a crippling housing crisis, our region needs to make it easier to build dense, multifamily homes. Newton’s support for new housing is commendable, but the process needs substantial reforms, such as Governor Baker’s proposal that allows local communities to grow flexibly and meet housing needs. It is imperative that local and state governments reduce the power of a vocal minority to hoard opportunity at the expense of homes for all.

Katherine Levine Einstein and Maxwell B. Palmer are assistant professors of political science at Boston University.

To view the full article, visit https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/08/opinion/newton-other-communities-must-reform-affordable-housing-process/

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Super Tuesday was full of surprises, both good and bad.  But one of the most intriguing was Newton’s decisive support for Northland’s large Upper Falls development.

Zoning changes to enable the 800-unit, 1.1 million-square-foot office-residential-retail project from Northland Investment Corp. were previously approved by a two-thirds majority of the City Council, but community groups used a quirk in the city’s charter to force a referendum on the council’s decision.

Voters backed the zoning change by a wide margin of 58 percent to 42 percent, defying fears that the city’s deep NIMBY streak would rear its head again.

It would likely be a mistake to read the vote as a full-throated endorsement of any and all new development.  Not only did the development team offer a tantalizing series of concessions and money to improve public infrastructure and mitigate traffic, but their supporters made it clear that Northland – which already owns the land – could well build a Chapter 40B multifamily project on the site if their project was not approved.  In addition, the team was able to form alliances with local YIMBY groups and affordable housing advocates, helping amplify the reality that this project would help chip away at the city’s decades of exclusionary behavior.

This combination of incentives certainly swayed some voters, buttressing a well-capitalized education and get-out-the-vote campaign to ensure the defeat of angry community groups whose sole agenda seems to be preserving the existing order, regardless of manifest problems both large and small.

As unique as the circumstances of any political situation are, however, Northland’s win last week could point the way towards a better type of development in Massachusetts’ suburbs as land use decisions get more and more political.

First, the project took neighbors’ traffic concerns seriously.  From the complicated and expensive, like a shuttle bus system, to the more prosaic and cheap, like shared car seats for kids residents can use when renting a Zipcar, Northland offered a range of mitigation measure designed to reduce its residents’ and visitors’ needs for cars.

Second, the project will be designed at a pedestrian scale, making the place hospitable and encouraging residents to stay on-site for as many of their daily needs as possible.

Third, and most importantly, the project will be located in the middle of a major employment area. Most people in the real estate business already know these areas, with their larger parcels, are much more easy to develop, but many are also ruled by out-of-date, single-use zoning. One of the reasons Massachusetts has some of the country’s worst traffic is because suburbs have made a virtue of excluding even modest densification, driving many workers far away from job centers in order to find homes they can afford to buy or rent.  

Northland’s project need not be suis generis.  let’s hope planners and politicians everywhere take its lesson to heart.

To view full article, visit https://www.bankerandtradesman.com/could-newton-lead-the-way-in-the-suburbs/

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NEWTON — After weeks of bitter debate, the city’s voters gave the go-ahead Tuesday to a plan to build hundreds of apartments and new commercial space in Newton Upper Falls.

The special municipal election, timed for Super Tuesday, asked voters whether they approved of Northland Investment Corp.’s mixed-use project at the corner of Needham and Oak streets.

According to the city clerk’s office, 18,565 voters backed a zoning change needed for the plan to move forward, while 13,449 cast ballots against the project.

Larry Gottesdiener, Northland’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement to the Globe that the company worked with volunteers, community activists, and city officials to form a coalition that championed “the twin existential threats of our times” — the lack of affordable housing and climate change.

“This is the future, a new paradigm, thoughtful developers, communities, and city leaders partnering to create a 21st century built environment that solves these and other pressing issues,” Gottesdiener said. “Developers don’t win referendums, communities win referendums, and we are delighted that we could build this coalition together here in Newton.”

Northland is expected to begin demolition at the site later this year, with construction beginning in early 2021, according to a company spokeswoman.

In a statement, the Committee for Responsible Development, which worked to rally a “no” campaign against the development, attributed the vote’s outcome to misinformation funded by “Northland and its PR machine” and aided by many city councilors and Mayor Ruthanne Fuller.

The committee said “voters chose to allow a developer to reap huge profits from a massive development that could result in a traffic and parking nightmare, overwhelm local schools and cost the city millions of dollars a year more than new tax revenues.”

City Clerk David Olson said that turnout among Newton’s 61,083 registered voters appeared to be steady all day.

“Every place I visited today, the turnout was steady,” Olson said Tuesday afternoon. “It will be a better-than-usual” primary turnout.
The special election capped weeks of debate over development in Newton. Backers praised the Northland project for offering affordable housing and commercial opportunities that would increase the city’s tax base. Critics argued the development was too large and would only unleash more vehicles on streets that, at times, are already jammed with traffic.

That was one of the concerns Max Poritzky, 42, had about the project when he voted at the Waban Library Tuesday afternoon.
“I voted no. The traffic in that area is already awful, so I didn’t see any real proof as I read up on it that they gave it much thought,” Poritzky said.

Terrence Lyons, 60, said he supported Northland’s project after reading a lot about the development.

“I voted yes. I’m a believer in good solid development of land and cities in places like Newton, and I thought that they had a decent proposal,” Lyons said.

The Northland project will consist of 14 buildings on about 22 acres in proximity to Route 128 and the MBTA’s Newton Highlands Station. It will include 180,000 square feet of office space, 115,000 square feet of retail and community space, about 10 acres of open space, and 800 apartments, including 120 affordable units, according to the developer.
In December, the City Council approved Northland’s plan with a pair of 17-7 votes: one vote to approve a special permit, and the other to change the zoning so the development could be built. But debate over the project continued.

After the votes, opponents gathered thousands of signatures to put the project on the ballot as a voter referendum. The ballot question asked voters whether they approve the zoning change.
Supporters of the development — among them the city’s mayor and advocates for housing, business, and the environment — pointed to what they said are the economic benefits and the affordable apartments.

Northland also agreed to provide money for local projects, including funding to help improve an elementary school and pay for a shuttle service to the MBTA station and a traffic management plan.
“Northland meets so many of our needs, and matches so many of our values,” the mayor said.

But opponents said those measures would be inadequate, arguing that Northland’s project was too large, would create too much traffic, and didn’t include enough affordable housing.

Across the street from City Hall, Michelle Ocana, 47, said she voted “no” on Northland when she cast a ballot at the Newton Free Library.
The Newton Highlands resident said she often travels through the area of the project, and is concerned that Northland’s project could make traffic worse. She thinks that measures like a shuttle service aren’t enough, she said.

“There just needs to be more neighborhood input,” Ocana said. “No one is going to take a shuttle to sit in traffic.”

Donald Wright, 61, said he voted in favor of the Northland project because it includes affordable housing and open space. As housing costs increase in Newton, it’s important that the city has more housing that is affordable, he said. The project also combines a variety of uses in one place, he said.

“It creates a real, new hub of activity in the city,” Wright said.
At the Hyde Community Center Tuesday morning, voters who spoke to the Globe said they were aware of the Northland project before they headed to the polls.

Brandon Fong said he voted for the project, after almost voting against it.

“I think it’s unrealistic for people to think there won’t be growth in the city living so close to Boston,” Fong said. “It’s going to be more congestion but that’s what Newton is now, times change and the alternative would be a worsely vetted and planned development.”
Later in the day, Mike Hartman, 71, cast his vote against the project.
“I don’t think they provided enough information on what they were doing as far as traffic. I travel Needham Street quite a bit, and it’s a mess,” Hartman said.

Since the referendum effort began, the sides in the Northland debate organized around two ballot committees: Yes for Newton’s Future, which supports the project and has been funded by the developer, and the Committee for Responsible Development.

The opposition committee has also received assistance from a nonprofit critical of the scope of development in the city, RightSize Newton.

Allison Sharma, the chairwoman of Yes for Newton’s Future, thanked voters for supporting the project in a statement.

“The Northland Newton project is a huge win both for current residents and for future neighbors who will now have the opportunity to join our community,” Sharma said.

To view full article, visit: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/03/metro/newton-residents-vote-tuesday-northland-mixed-use-development/?s_campaign=newtonreport:newsletter

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It’s a sad reality that an anti-development group in Newton has forced a city-wide referendum on a well-vetted project. The only democratic way forward is for city leaders to ensure the largest number of people take part.

Northland Investment Corp. worked diligently with city staff and neighborhood groups for three years to craft a valuable plan for a 23-acre site that features a large, 19th century mill building and the vacant former home of Clarks shoe company. The project will bring 800 units of much-needed housing, 140 of them affordable, and dramatically increase the land’s taxable value – but its public benefits go far beyond this. The project will also make $10 million in contributions to the city for new parks, utility infrastructure, road upgrades and school upgrades.

Most importantly, Northland is stepping in where Newton and the MBTA have been unwilling or unable to deal with traffic on the congested Needham Street corridor by building a free, seven-days-a-week bus shuttle to the Newton Highlands Green Line station, attempting to lure as many people as possible out of their cars and onto transit.

RightSize Newton, the anti-development group that chose to force this referendum after the Newton City Council OK’d the project in December, claims it wants to force Northland to “compromise” by shrinking the project, as Mark Development did in a modest way with its Riverside project a few months ago. Those claims gloss over Northland’s concession to cut the project in half, to 1.1 million square feet, over the course of the 18-month approval process.

Now, RightSize Newton is pushing the City Council to abandon council President Susan Albright’s proposal to hold the referendum on the same day as the state presidential primary on March 3. Negotiations with Northland need more time, they claim. More believably, they realize the higher the turnout for a referendum, the less likely they are to win.

The most recent city elections showed a significant number of city residents support pro-housing, pro-development policies. But it’s a well-known and well-studied fact that only fired-up opponents are incentivized to show up to one-off meetings and votes about specific projects. It’s clear RightSize Newton’s efforts are nothing but the latest in a decades-long pattern of attempts by well-heeled residents to choke off any new construction in the city.
These efforts have hurt the entire region. Newton is one of the biggest cities in Greater Boston by land area, and one of the most desirable. Building more housing there, where high demand already exists, will be a help in moderating out-of-control home prices that many say threaten the state’s prosperity. But if voters shoot down Northland’s project after the enormous amount of effort and money the developer has already invested, it could cool building in Newton for the years.

With equities like this at stake, it’s vital the referendum is scheduled in conjunction with a large, attention-grabbing national issue to ensure maximum turnout, to keep a minority from dictating the majority’s future.

To read the full article, visit https://www.bankerandtradesman.com/newton-must-maximize-turnout-in-northland-referendum/

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