Above: This fall, Town Meeting voters may be asked to allow the Select Board to follow through on an offer made by the Affordable Housing Trust for a 1.8 acre parcel on Atwood Street. (image from Google maps)
At last night’s Select Board Meeting, the board heard the broad outlines of an offer made by the Town’s Affordable Housing Trust to purchase a Town-owned parcel on Atwood Street. The Trust is seeking to enter an agreement to acquire the property after the Town has successfully cleaned up lead discovered on the site.
The offer raised questions from some board members, and more questions from an abutter who was already concerned about how the Town has been handling the contaminated parcel.
The topic came up during the Select Board’s discussion of Articles planned for the October 27th Special Town Meeting. One of the Articles is an $85,000 funding request for the engineering and planning steps needed to put remediation of the site out to bid.
Abutter Sara Warden asked the board if the funding would also cover a “temporary safety measure” that the Town’s consultant (Pare) had recommended in its report on testing results last fall. Warden told the board that she worried that the public may still be at risk from contamination on the open parcel, since (to her knowledge) the safety measures hadn’t been implemented yet.
Looking at page 11 of the November 18th report, it states:
In the short term and prior to initiating any remedial action, it would be prudent to take steps that reduce the spread of lead across the Site and limit exposure to the highest concentrations of lead. Pare recommends that the Town place a temporary covering over parts of the Site with the highest concentrations and in areas where vehicles travel. This covering should include a geotextile barrier (i.e., non-woven filter fabric) overlain with at least 6 inches of crushed stone, clean soil, or mulch.
Select Board members said they didn’t think the Article was written to cover that. Members Kathy Cook and Marguerite Landry noted that Warden had a good point that the board should look into. They promised to have more answers at their next planned meeting on September 16th.
At their August 18th meeting, member Al Hamilton said that he couldn’t answer in public session why he was interested in having the cleanup engineering Article on the Fall Town Meeting Warrant rather than pushing it to the Annual Town meeting in the spring. The (unsurprising) reason was made public last night.
Hamilton is also a member of the Affordable Housing Trust. He was also a member of its predecessor committees SHOPC (Southborough Housing Opportunity Partnership Committee) and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Committee, when those groups began exploring a potential housing project on the Atwood parcel in 2023. It was that interest that initially prompted the Town’s study of the possible contamination of the soil from lead paint on the former water tower.
During the Atwood Warrant Article discussion last night, Chair Andrew Dennington game Hamilton permission to inform the board and public about the “Trust’s offer” on the parcel. (For the purposes of that discussion, Hamilton recused himself as a Select Board member and only spoke as a member of the Trust.)
Hamilton revealed that in the Trust’s Executive Session meeting last Thursday, they voted to approve offering the Town $200,000 to be used towards remediation costs for the Atwood Parcel. The Trust would seek to have an Article on the Warrant that would ask 2/3 of Fall Town Meeting voters to authorize the Select Board to make the property transfer.
The Trust’s offer would cover the $85K engineering costs, and “defray” the cleanup costs, which Hamilton projected will exceed $115K. In exchange, the Town would transfer ownership of the parcel to the Trust after the remediation is complete. The Trust would then use the property for an affordable housing project.
As an additional financial incentive, Hamilton told the board that there are grants for remediating contamination on properties when the purpose is to build affordable housing.
During a back in forth with Hamilton over the details, Cook wondered why a property transfer Article couldn’t wait for a future Town Meeting since the cleanup wouldn’t occur until later next year. Hamilton obliquely replied that the Trust had “other reasons” for wanting it on this fall’s Warrant.
Warden pointed out that remediating a site enough for residential use is more expensive than other levels of remediation like simply capping it.
Hamilton confirmed that but followed that capping comes with additional long term costs for “forever” monitoring and maintenance of the cap. He said the costs may be higher than you would expect. He indicated those kinds of details would be figured out during the engineering phase.
Warden countered that if voters were going to be asked to approve the Trust’s offer, they would want to know what the cost difference is.
Hamilton also couldn’t answer Cook’s question as to whether remediation grants he referred to could apply before the property is transferred to the Trust. But he noted that Trust Chair Doug Manz is knowledgeable about that world and was looking into the details. Landry volunteered to represent the Select Board in discussions with Manz.
The board’s plan was to have language for two Articles related to Atwood ready for their September 16th meeting. At the meeting they’ll discuss whether to include both or choose one of them on the Warrant.
Warden wasn’t the only abutter with questions about the Atwood cleanup plan.
Carl Alvitti asked if the $85K request for the remediation engineering was just for the Town-owned parcel or also covered cleanup on a neighboring homeowners’ site that had also been studied.
Hamilton replied that his understanding was that it wouldn’t. Pare’s study of both sites only found lead that exceeded “appropriate” levels in the “dripline” area around the old water tower on the Town’s parcel.
As for the housing project planned by the Trust, no details were publicly discussed for what what kind of building(s) they were planning for the 1.8 acre parcel.
Back in 2023, when Town officials publicly discussed the possibility of a project, Atwood residents expressed concerned about the possibility of a large project on their street.
The majority of members at that time seemed to support pursuing very small project that fit with the neighborhood. But I haven’t found any public discussion of the new Trust board’s concept for a project. So stay tuned for more on that.
The Trust has a few upcoming meetings scheduled, but no public sessions that specify discussion of Atwood. The first opportunity for the public to potentially hear more or ask questions appears to be their meeting on Thursday, September 11th. That agenda includes:
- Discussions of potential strategies for affordable housing
- Discussion of potential parcels for acquisition
Updated (9/3/25 1:13 pm): I inserted the cover photo and added an additional line about the temporary cleanup recommendation from Pare’s report.
