State House bill threatens life of Gutierrez project
Published on June 20th, 2001
STONEHAM, MA - Stoneham will lose $600,000 for public safety and close to $2 million in annual property taxes if House Bill 4180 passes.
No one from Stoneham spoke in opposition to the bill at a State Senate Housing and Urban Development Commit-tee hearing last week.
Maybe this is because the leadership of Stoneham government is in flux, maybe it’s because people in the community don’t like what they must trade for the big bucks.
The Gutierrez Company of Burlington plans to build an office park on the 41-acre campus of the former Boston Regional Medical Center on Woodland Road. Bill 4180, introduced by Representative Paul Donato (D-Medford) would prohibit widening Woodland Road or adding traffic signals, essential steps in building an office park of the scope proposed by Gutierrez.
Stoneham officials approved the project after striking a deal for the $600,000 with Gutierrez. Stoneham Community Development Director Steve Sadwick estimates property taxes from the completed development at $1.8 million. (Sadwick leaves Friday for a job in Tewksbury. Selectmen are still looking for a new Town Administrator to replace Jeff Nutting. Both men worked many hours monitoring the Gutierrez project, as did retired Selectman Al Conti.)
“If the bill passes, we can’t build at that site... that amounts to a taking of the property,” said Gutierrez attorney Charles Houghton of Stoneham.
Under the law if the government takes land, which it can do under the doctrine of eminent domain — taking land for the public good — then the government must pay the land owner the fair market value of the land.
How the value is determined is where such cases get tricky, but looking at past caselaw, value is sometimes determined by how much the land owner could have made over time using the land in the most profitable way. For the proposed Stoneham Executive Park, the figure would be in the tens of millions of dollars range, Houghton said. Massachusetts, not Stoneham would have to foot this bill.
But Stoneham loses the taxes.
“We have to rev up the town about this,” Houghton said.
But some local folks are already revved up and rolling full speed ahead in the opposite direction. The Communities for Fells Preservation (CFFP) has been working for months “to raise awareness about the negative and irreparable damage that will be caused by the proposed development of the former BRMC site in Stoneham,” in the words of member Miriam Regan-Fiore of Ravine Road.
The Middlesex Fells State Reservation surrounds the Gutierrez property and stretches into Melrose and Medford.
The Planning Boards of Melrose and Medford have sued in Middlesex Superior Court to halt the project. Members claim that they should have been consulted during hearings in Stoneham because the project will affect their communities.
Opponents of the project list the following areas of concern: traffic and public safety, water and drainage, environmental impact, diminishment of open space, effect on wildlife, effect on the Spot Pond water supply, reduction of property values, and fears of further and different, unknown uses of the Fells area.
Representative Mike Festa (D-Melrose) represents the Stoneham and Melrose residents living near the proposed project.
“I think negotiation, not legislation, is the best approach,” Festa said.
“I think it is not unreasonable that the project be scaled back, but it is bad public policy to target individuals or entities,” Festa added.
Festa said that all parties involved should get together to find common ground. For example, a smaller project could bring less traffic to the area but still bring substantial property tax dollars to Stoneham.
The parties have been talking for months, but so far neighboring cities have sued this town, Gutierrez is threatening to sue the state, and CFFP member Fiore says her group doesn’t know what an ideal solution would look like, but the CFFP is behind Bill 4180.
Due to the almost whimsical nature of the State Legislature, the bill could stagnate for months, or forever, or speed through to a vote in a week.
One way or the other, people in Stoneham may want to pay attention.
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