Reversing course, the city of Concord will consider a potential zoning change that would make a Penacook housing development possible, after the project vastly downsized, dropped a request for public assistance with infrastructure and proposed a new partnership with a local non-profit.

New England Family Housing initially proposed to build more than 900 units of housing as well as shops and restaurants on a more than 135-acre stretch of property along the Merrimack River in Penacook currently zoned for industrial use. The project, dubbed “Monitor Way,” stalled because the city manager’s office said in June that it would not consider a request to rezone the land until Concord’s master plan was updated, a process expected to take several years and wrap up no sooner than 2028.

In August, New England Family Housing CEO Kevin Lacasse and the development team countered by offering to downscale their plans to less than 200 units, all of them condominiums. At that time, several city councilors said they were open to the zoning change, especially if the project would include more affordable housing. This was in stark contrast to the firm denial by the city manager’s office and Mayor Byron Champlin, who said he wanted to keep the land earmarked for industrial purposes such as office space.

Since then, potential designs for the development have evolved again: plans are now for 100 units of workforce rental units and 94 market-rate townhomes that would go up for sale, according to a letter from the developer to the city earlier in October.  This development would be limited to the northernmost 40 acres of land, the section currently owned by Concord Regional Solid Waste and Resource Recovery, which runs the Wheelabrator trash-t0-energy incineration plant.

The apartments would be “garden-style” and built through a partnership with CATCH Neighborhood Housing, a Concord-based non-profit that New England Family Housing has worked with before.

Lacasse and his development team have agreements to buy two connecting tracts of land. One parcel includes 95 acres of land owned by Newspapers of New England, the parent company that owns the Concord Monitor and five other newspapers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The agreement does not include the Monitor’s building and the newspaper has no role in the sale. This land gave the project its name.

The second parcel is 40 acres of land closest to the retail development at Merchant’s Way and near the Wheelabrator plant. 

When it was proposed, it represented the largest bloc of new housing planned for the city. The number of units has now been scaled back by 75%.

New England Family Housing’s newest plans do not include the 95-acre parcel along the Merrimack River that was central to the mixed-use aspect of the plans. After previously asking the city to help build the road that would serve as the central artery through that phase of the project, the developer has also dropped its request for any public-private partnership.

The developer’s letter to the city stated that traffic studies on the scaled-down proposal showed that no offsite traffic improvements would be needed to accommodate it. The public-private partnership had been another sticking point, with Deputy City Manager Matt Walsh saying the cost of traffic and other improvements was far higher than the developers’ calculation.

New England Family Housing declined to comment on the updates to its plans.

With these changes, a new letter from the city to Lacasse last week struck a different tone.

Instead of saying the city will no longer “entertain” any zoning change requests until the master plan is complete in 2028, the most recent letter from Walsh lays out the process by which the developer may request a rezone from the City Council.

In response to multiple requests for an interview with Walsh or City Manager Tom Aspell, a spokesperson for the City Manager’s office noted in an email that the details of the project had changed. Public Information Officer Stefanie Breton did not give a reason why the master plan process was no longer a barrier.

The city has also denied records requests for correspondence between the developer and the city, saying that they are “confidential” because the project has been discussed by the City Council in non-public session.

When asked about whether he remained opposed to a zoning change, Champlin said he was willing to hear out this new pitch.

“Am I more open to this project? Not necessarily. Am I completely opposed to it? Not necessarily,” Champlin said. The council would have to weigh the benefits of bringing needed housing to the city with the “investment” of rezoning the land as residential. “I am trying to be as flexible as possible, understanding the need for housing.”

For context, “affordable” and “workforce” housing aren’t interchangeable terms: unlike affordable housing, where the total rental cost is legally capped at 30% of an individual’s income, workforce housing isn’t a designation with a legal standard and doesn’t flex to the financial needs of each qualifying applicant. “Workforce housing” often is used to describe places accessible to households making between 60% and 120% of the local median household income. In Concord, the median is around $78,000, which would mean units with total monthly costs of between roughly $1,200 and $2,300 are considered “workforce housing.”

City Council must approve requests to rezone land, per city rules, but the body would refer a request to the planning board first for its recommendation. The developer has not said when it would submit this request or how it might impact the timeline of the project.

 

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com