Making peace with growth
by Kate BavelockAs A.D. Makepeace, the world’s largest cranberry grower, begins to turn thousands of acres into subdivisions, the regional impact is taking shape.
Town planners, conservationists and developers have been thinking about this eventuality for years. Now, with some construction on the ground and towns hammering out development deals, it’s time to get ready for a rapidly changing demographic.
Thousands of new homes will reshape Plymouth, Carver, Wareham and Middleborough. New roads will mean new traffic patterns. And it will have a significant impact on Cape Cod.
“We own 17 percent of the land in Wareham. This presents opportunities and challenges for us and for the town,” said CEO Michael Hogan. Makepeace owns a whopping 12,000 acres.
It is still too early to tell how many homes will be built. Right now, large parts of the project are under Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act review, and then the towns’ permitting processes will proceed. Some small neighborhoods already have been built.
The most significant regional economic change could come with the proposed Business Development Overlay District. Over a thousand acres near Exit 1 off of Route 495 are envisioned as an office park and a hotel within walking distance of shops and restaurants.
“We are looking to take advantage of the highway infrastructure to bring knowledge-based businesses to the region, such as Homeland Security, medical and marine sciences, agricultural and environmental sciences as anchors,” said Hogan. He plans for 10,000- to 60,000-square-foot spaces with flexible configurations. Architects and engineers who specialize in low-impact green design already have been part of the planning.
Makepeace makes no secret about competing with Cape Cod.
Its Web site promotes a high quality of life surrounded by nature, but more accessible to metropolitan areas. Hogan points out that the business district will be attractive to companies that struggle to grow under the regulatory hand of the Cape Cod Commission. “Already there are small businesses in the Upper Cape region and not a lot of places they can grow,” he said.
That could divert business from the Cape and steal both jobs and sales from peninsula companies.
Bourne-bred developer Len Cubellis watches neighboring Wareham with a combination of envy and dread. His own proposed mixed-use development at the Bourne Rotary, CanalSide Commons, has repeatedly been downsized in an effort to pass Cape Cod Commission muster. He contends that if he had been allowed to build his original plan, it would have kept more tax dollars on the Cape, brought more jobs here and actually reduced traffic over the bridge because Cape Cod consumers would not be so inclined to shop in Plymouth County.
“The original CanalSide Commons is a lost opportunity,” he said. “A lot of people cited traffic as a major issue because people would come from the mainland to use the Commons. But now development in Plymouth and Wareham has caught up. Now you’ll get traffic to get off the Cape for jobs and shopping but without the tax benefit,” he warned.
Wendy Northcross, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, is more sanguine about the Wareham developments. “Unless we really mess up, the Cape will always be beautiful and attract second-home owners and retirees. I’m not giving up on tourism and I’m not giving up on retirement,” she said.
Cubellis doesn’t buy that argument. He sees the Cape’s emphasis on the environment and second-home owners as putting the economy seriously out of balance.
“Development over the bridge is drawing dollars and, long term, it could be a problem. There seems to be just a focus on the aquifer and open space – which are both very important. But it needs to be balanced with business growth to be a healthy economy,” he said. “The second-home population are not people who live in town day-in and day-out and are the fabric of the community: the teachers, the firemen, the policemen. In the long term, the Cape is going to pay a price for it,” he said.
“Like anything else, too much of anything is a bad thing: too much retail, too much business, even too much open space. People making the decisions on the Cape’s growth are not looking at the balance.”
Adding to Wareham’s changing face – and competitive edge – is the mall being built by W/S Development Associates nearby, a 700,000-square-foot project also in the permitting stages. They are the same developers who recently completed the Derby Street Shoppes in Hingham. Stores slated to go in include Lowes, Target, Old Navy, Stapes and Petco.
A blueprint for affordable housing
Hogan and the Makepeace management team are strongly committed to building homes that are affordable to middle-class families and others who are being driven out of the region in search of affordable housing.
Hogan’s background as mayor of Marlborough and head of MassDevelopment, the state’s economic development authority, has shaped his understanding of how the state is losing people, particularly young and educated ones, because of the high cost of housing.
It’s not altruism alone. For Makepeace’s new business districts to be healthy, they must have houses for workers of all salary ranges.
Great jobs, small village centers and homes for all income levels around picturesque bogs would create communities that look like traditional New England villages, said Hogan. It is the best way to counteract sprawl, he added.
However, if the new business district doesn’t fill up with solid tenants, then the towns are left with more of the same problems they already have – miles of suburbs, not enough revenues for the school systems and retail jobs that don’t pay enough to keep residents from making long commutes on crowded roads.
Makepeace started as a family-owned cranberry company founded by Abel Makepeace in the 1800s. Abel aggressively built the business. When he needed packing crates for the berries, he bought pine forests and set up sawmills to make his own. When he needed nails, he built an iron forge. A village grew up around these buildings on Tihonet Pond. What remains of the bustling village is the Makepeace corporate headquarters. In the master plan, Tihonet will again become a true village with mixed residential and commercial use.
The Makepeace management team hopes to build affordable higher-density condominiums and apartments on this site. The village concept includes being able to walk to work, the post office and the coffee shop. Common land will be used for parks and trails.
Makepeace leadership already is positioning Tihonet Village to be a positive part of the community. The company hosted a children’s summer camp last year when it needed a temporary facility due to remodeling. It hosted an outdoor Pops concert and a fishing derby. It also opened the Farmstand to sell local produce, which reinforces its image as an agricultural company first and a real estate developer second.
Makepeace officials are adamant about the company’s commitment to continue cranberry farming.
All 1,750 acres of bogs plus their irrigation ponds will be kept working. Purchase and sale agreements for buying a home in a Makepeace community include restrictions on a Cranberry Bog Buffer Zone extending 75 feet into the lot and another 75 feet from the lot line to the bogs.
Prospective homeowners are educated on the activity associated with cranberry farming that includes commercial trucks, fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide applications (sometimes by helicopter) and extensive use of bees for pollination. Makepeace pursues environmentally responsible farming, but must reserve their right to care for the crops as needed.
For Tihonet Village to be a reality, Wareham has to use a zoning law called transfer of development rights (TDRs) whereby developers set aside as conservation land acres with strategic environmental importance in exchange for developing other areas more intensely. This enables a developer to realize their financial stake in property while protecting environmentally vulnerable land.
Another planned village would be just across the border in Plymouth on a 1,300-acre parcel near the Agawam River. Plymouth officials already have approved and utilized TDRs and are in the process of working out a master plan with Makepeace.
Other company land on Halfway Pond was particularly contentious in the past. An environmentally sensitive area, the parcel bordered land owned by the Wildlands Trust. Conservation groups fought for years to purchase the land. Makepeace wouldn’t sell and relations were acrimonious.
“We were prepared to fight in court, we had standing. It would have wasted a lot of time and a lot of money,” said Mark Primack, director of the Wildlands Trust.
Lee Hartmann, Plymouth’s director of planning and development, broke the deadlock by ushering through a zoning law on value-based TDRs. Conventional TDRs give developers an ability to swap one acre for one acre. Value-based transfers take into account the value of the land allowing for one acre of crucial land, such as on Halfway Pond, to be swapped for more than one acre more appropriate for building.
“This appears to be not merely a win-win for business and for conservation, but a broader win-win for the town and the community,” said Primack.
Primack credits Hogan for the resolution. “We were able to break the impasse because of new leadership that is politically savvy and creative, which will be to the financial benefit of the company. Before Hogan, it was a cranberry company, not a real estate development company.” Primack cautions that there is still work to do on mitigating the environmental impact of the developments.
Hogan came on board two years ago as the first CEO in the company’s history who is not a member of the Makepeace family. His consensus-building style has moved the project forward and shined up the image of Makepeace as a company that cares about the community and the environment.
Setting aside land for new schools will probably be part of any final deals. However, Hogan is very proactive on this issue.
He commissioned an independent study that found that in comparable states, the state bears about 70 percent of the cost of education and the towns about 30 percent. In this area it is almost reversed. He’ll use the findings to attack the roots of development opposition, the need to limit school-age population, which in turn drives up housing costs. “We’re at a tipping point in the state. Unless we fix this, our continued economic expansion will be in jeopardy.”
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