Globe article on MBTA housing

[Steven Kaufman]

In Lexington, the state’s housing law is on track to produce nearly 1,000 new homes

The suburb is perhaps an early sign that, at least in some communities, the law to make it easier to build apartments and condos is working as intended.

Andrew Brinker December 3rd, 2024, 5:55 AM

On Lexington’s Bedford Street, where big single- and two-family homes dot a streetscape framed by leafy trees, the newest addition to the neighborhood is a construction zone.

Soon, the parcel that these days is filled with construction equipment and workers laying a foundation will hold 30 new condos.

It’s the kind of mid-sized multifamily property that dots the Boston suburbs. But what makes this one unusual is how easily it sailed through town approvals. Unlike new development of its kind around the town, it didn’t need special permission from Lexington’s zoning board, rather, it’s one of eight new projects so far in the pipeline under new zoning rules that Lexington passed last year to make it easier to build apartments and condos.

Those rules were spurred by the state’s MBTA Communities law, and made Lexington the first town to pass zoning to comply with the law when Town Meeting voted to approve them in April 2023. Nearly 1,000 new apartments and condos are in the pipeline to be built under those new rules in this affluent northwest suburb. And more could be on the way, perhaps an early sign that — at least in some communities — the law is working as planned.

“It is a lot of development fairly quickly, so there are some challenges associated with that,” said Abby McCabe, the town’s planning director. “But this is the zoning working how it was intended to work. We wanted to see more housing in town because there is a significant need for it, and now we’re getting it.”

If all of those units are eventually built, they would be enough to house nearly 3,000 more people in this town of 35,000,and would represent Lexington’s largest spurt of multifamily housing development since at least the 1980s. Although most of the apartments would be market-rate, nearly 150 will be set aside at affordable rents, because Lexington’s new zoning rules require 15 percent of the units in most new construction to be priced for lower- and middle-income families.

They represent a hopeful sign for state housing officials and Governor Maura Healey’s administration, who are banking on MBTA Communities — which requires cities and towns served by the T to make it easier to build multifamily housing — to spur significant housing production in Eastern Massachusetts. In Lexington, they see evidence that the law is working as they hoped it would.

The 30-unit project on Bedford Street was permitted earlier this year by a pair of developers, Finnegan Development and Katz Development Corp., after roughly six months of meetings with the Planning Board and abutters. The permitting process was robust but simple, said Ben Finnegan, a partner at Finnegan Development.

Despite construction complexities on the property, such as a historic house that the developers needed to move to the front of the site, the simplified permitting process — which guarantees permits so long as a project meets zoning, environmental, historical, and code parameters — shortened the timeline considerably. It is a sharp contrast from building rules in many communities that have historically been so arduous that they drive smaller developers away. Indeed, it’s what attracted Finnegan and his partners to begin with.

“This project is a direct result of the new zoning,” he said. “Without that, it’s unlikely we would have considered building here.”

It is not just smaller projects like Finnegan’s that have benefited. A major feature of the town’s rezoning was allowing multifamily housing at underutilized office parks and commercial areas, some of which are struggling for relevance post-pandemic.

One developer has filed plans to transform low-slung office buildings on Militia Drive into a 319-unit mixed-use development, with a six-level parking garage. Office giant Boston Properties wants to replace a single-story biotech office building on Hartwell Avenue with a 5-story, 312 unit apartment complex with a separate 2,100 square-foot retail building. And Cabot, Cabot, and Forbes will redevelop a group of parcels on Concord Avenue into a four-story, 200-unit apartment complex.

Cabot CEO Jay Doherty has been searching the region for potential development sites ever since MBTA Communities took effect. The Lexington site, he said, was the most viable one he has found. He won approval from the Planning Board last month.

“They deserve a lot of credit,” said Doherty. “They’ve been a leader on this, and they’re seeing real results. I wish there were 40 more Lexingtons out there.”

Town officials are not surprised they are seeing some major developments under the new zoning rules, though they have been caught off guard by how many have been proposed so quickly.

Some observers say it’s a sign of just how significant the demand for new housing is in the area, and how hard-pressed developers are to find places they can build on without encountering stifling neighborhood and town opposition.

That is why state officials have high hopes for MBTA Communities, which was passed in 2021 and set clear mandates for towns to make room for, cumulatively, tens of thousands of new units across Eastern Massachusetts.

So far, returns have been mixed.

As of last month, more than 100 communities have passed MBTA Communities plans. Some, such as Lexington, amount to major rezonings that could unlock significant new housing and help revitalize important neighborhoods. But some towns remain in a state of outright resistance to the law, unhappy that the state has mandated changes to their longstanding zoning rules, or with the prospect of adding new housing at all. Others have written zoning rules that technically comply but practically speaking enable little new housing.

Pedestrians strolled through downtown Lexington in November. ERIN CLARK/GLOBE STAFF

Indeed, Lexington is an outlier. Of the at least 2,800 units statewide that are in the pipeline under the law so far, about 1,000 are in Lexington. But the big boost of development in a town that traditionally has seen little is at least one sign that the law can generate significant new housing in communities that use it intentionally.

It’s also symbolic that the town leading the way is Lexington, with its median household income topping $200,000 and a single-family home price of around $1.6 million. It’s the sort of place where zoning rules have long been used to block new development, which has made the town more and more exclusive over time. Indeed, until recently, it had been at least 12 years since a building with more than five units had been built there, according to Census data.

The town has done studies in recent years that revealed growing demand for apartments for younger and less affluent residents. With the new zoning rules, city leaders are hoping to provide some, and change Lexington’s exclusive image in the process.

“We’re a tad surprised at how many projects came off the shelf so quickly,” said Robert Peters, a member of the Planning Board. “But… we hadn’t seen any redevelopment over the last 25, 30, 40 years. In a way, this is the demand that built up over the years being realized.”

Some residents have been concerned by the pace of the new development broadly, or had specific concerns about a few of the bigger projects, said Peters. But really, he said, the new building is only happening on a tiny fraction of the town’s land.

“Those concerns are fair,” said Peters. “But Lexington has quite a few properties that are underutilized and ripe for development. This is the low-hanging fruit.”

Soon, this parcel will sprout 30 new condos. The project was permitted under Lexington’s MBTA Communities zoning. ERIN CLARK/GLOBE STAFF