A Case Study of What Happens When Community Leaders Turn Their Backs on Promoting Equitable Development

[Anthony D'Isidoro]

Wellesley’s race to build less

At a fiery Wellesley Select Board meeting this week, a year-long process to reform Wellesley’s RIO bylaw might have just fallen apart.

The history of Wellesley’s RIO bylaw is complex and lengthy, but in short, it is a mechanism for developers to request rezoning to permit higher-density residential projects.

After two thoughtful condo projects failed to pass town meeting under the RIO process two years ago, and an attempt to virtually repeal the bylaw narrowly failed last year, a 15-member task force was formed to chart a path forward.

This week, that path hit a wall. At a Tuesday meeting, the Select Planning Boards traded accusations and pointed fingers over the task force’s proposed reforms, leaving little clarity about whether any proposal will make it to Town Meeting this spring.

But the specifics of a proposal that may be rejected are not the issue. The real problem, beyond the inherent challenges of a 15-person working group reaching consensus, is that this entire exercise has felt like a race to determine how a town that already builds very little can build even less.

While the town is squabbling over the right approach to building fewer homes, its population is aging at a blistering rate.

Public school enrollment is plummeting. The town has lost 3,100 young professionals over the past decade and Wellesley’s own Strategic Housing Plan projects a 9% decline in residents under 20 by 2050.

[Anthony D'Isidoro]

The state wants to build housing on a parking lot in Wellesley. Residents are up in arms. (Andrew Brinker, Boston Globe: February 15, 2026)

Plan to build on five acres of state-owned land sparks worry about the 40-acre forest next door.

Wellesley fighting state plan for housing by Mass Bay

On the vast parking lot across Oakland Street from his school’s leafy Wellesley campus, MassBay Community College’s president, David Podell, believed he had found something rare: a place where everyone could agree to build some desperately needed housing.

It is, after all, just a parking lot.

And by designating the five-acre site as state-owned “surplus” land and offering it to developers to build up to 180 apartments there, MassBay would pull in a decent profit to help fund new campus facilities.

“The idea is that we can meet the needs of MassBay students and help address the state’s urgent need for housing,” said Podell.

But this is Wellesley, one of the state’s wealthiest suburbs, where large single-family homes are abundant and new development is rare. And, perhaps predictably, Podell said, “some people do not see this as the benefit to the community that we think it will be.”

The controversy partially stems from the fact that the parking lot abuts a 40-acre forest, which is technically part of the same parcel. The forest has trails that connect to the abutting and much-loved Centennial Reservation, and residents and local conservation groups worry the state plans to raze the forest and build on it.

State officials have said they have no such plans, but the town appears to be preparing for a fight: In December, Wellesley’s Select Board hired a law firm that sent the state a long list of questions and hinted that a lawsuit could come next.

“This land has been used by the public for decades,” said Michael Tobin, president of the Wellesley Conservation Land Trust. “It’s been maintained by the town. There are trails that have been maintained by the town. And its intention has always been to be maintained as open space available to the public. There are places where it is appropriate to build housing, and I don’t believe this is one of them.”

The standoff is another illustration of why building out of a deep housing shortage has proved immensely complicated in Massachusetts. There’s broad agreement the state needs new homes, and lots of them. That agreement often ends when someone proposes a specific project to actually build those homes.

Podell has been contemplating expanding MassBay’s single-building Wellesley campus for years, as interest in the school’s cybersecurity and health sciences programs has soared. The school’s recreation center is also so small that its basketball team has to go to an offsite location in Newton to play its home games. But a new building, Podell projects, would cost around $75 million.

So when Governor Maura Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act into law in 2024, a provision to allow multifamily housing development on “surplus” state land, that looked, to Podell, like an opportunity.

The state has owned the 45-acre lot since 1971, when it purchased the parcel from the Catholic Church, as well as the land for the campus.

In September, MassBay’s board of trustees voted to designate the whole 45-acre parcel — parking lot and forest — as surplus, and the state’s housing office and Division of Capital Asset Maintenance and Management began meeting with local officials about plans for the site.

For technical reasons, the state had to designate the whole parcel as surplus, not just the corner they intend to build on. The formula established for development of state land in the Affordable Homes Act says projects that would add four or fewer units per acre don’t need special permission from a municipality. Without the forest land, a housing project on the parking lot would have to be just 20 units, and would generate far less return for MassBay.

The backlash started swiftly, especially from residents and local conservation groups who took the surplus designation to mean that the state was planning to tear down the forest for a housing development.

Concerned residents flooded public meetings, and have since circulated a petition, started a website, and distributed lawn signs to “Save MassBay Forest.” They’ve also hosted walks through the forest, inviting residents to stand “on the land designated as surplus to be sold to a private developer.“ In December, the town Select Board met in executive session to “discuss strategy with respect to potential litigation.”

State housing secretary Ed Augustus said there is no plan to build on the forestland, and that officials would be willing to place the wooded portion of the site under a long-term conservation restriction.

“To us, that’s a win-win-win proposition,” Augustus said. “We get the housing that we need as a state and they as a community need. They get to protect this forested area which … is not protected now. And the college gets the revenue that comes from the sale of the property that helps advance some of their goals and strategic plans.”

Even that, Tobin said, would not alleviate concerns about the development. He and other groups want the state to remove the whole 45-acre parcel, including the parking lot, from the state surplus.

Ultimately, many residents simply don’t want a big housing development there. Some residents have said the project would only worsen traffic around MassBay. And that a large apartment complex would be out of character in a suburban neighborhood known for larger single-family homes.

“When people buy into a town, often investing their life’s savings, there is an implied contract, where that family is saying, ‘I’m buying your services,’” said Tobin. “They’re buying into the school system, and the feel of the town. And when the town or the state decides they’re going to change the rules, people get upset.”

There have been a few notable apartment projects built in Wellesley, including The Nines, a 350-unit development in an office park off Route 9 that was completed in 2022. But the town of 30,000 has historically built very few multifamily homes, adding fewer than 100 units between 2010 and 2020.

Meanwhile, home prices there have soared, with the median single-family house last year selling for $2.2 million, according to real estate analytics company The Warren Group.

There are, of course, some residents who argue more development is a good thing, and want to see the MassBay project become reality.

“I haven’t talked to anyone in town who is advocating for the forest to be developed,” said Andrew Mikula, a member of the local pro-housing group Building A Better Wellesley. “What we are advocating for is building homes on an underused parking lot. It’s hard to imagine a better place for it.”

Getting communities like Wellesley to build more is a challenge for the state as officials seek to dig out of the housing shortage.

To avoid local permitting fights and lawsuits over state housing rules, the Healey administration has pushed to take advantage of land it owns. The state already has 1,000 units in the pipeline under its State Land for Homes Initiative, with more sites on deck, including the MassBay land and the massive old state prison in Concord, which closed in 2024.

The state is willing to hear out Wellesley’s concerns, Augustus said. But they will not budge on the number of units on the site — a number that’s closely tied to the price any developer would pay to buy it.

And they plan to move soon.

“This is not an open ended process,” said Augustus. “This is a process that at some point needs to stop, and then we need to move forward.”

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From: Anthony D'Isidoro <anthony...@msn.com>
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2026 9:35 AM
To: cleveland-cir...@googlegroups.com <cleveland-cir...@googlegroups.com>; AllstonBrighton2006 <allstonbr...@googlegroups.com>; Brighton Allston Community Coalition <bacommunit...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: A Case Study of What Happens When Community Leaders Turn Their Backs on Promoting Equitable Development