It Takes a Cushing Village: Belmont Planning Board Gives Development Final OK

In "The Odyssey," it took Odysseus ten years to complete his journey back to Ithaca. While his own epic venture officially took a mere five-and-a-half years, developer Chris Starr can relate to the end of a seemingly incessant quest as this morning, Saturday, July 27, the Belmont Planning Board gave final approval to a special permit and a design and site plan review for the $80 million Cushing Village development.

"I want to thank you very, very much for all the hard work that you've done," said Starr after the Board voted unanimously to accept a 25-page agreement (authored by the the town's Planning Coordinator Jeffrey Wheeler) between the town and Starr's company, Smith Legacy Partners of Acton to build the largest commercial/residential development in Belmont's history outside of McLean Hospital at roughly 160,000 gross square feet. 

"It's a give and take effort and it takes both parties to make this a successful project and approval," said Sam Baghdady, the Planning Board's chair after the vote which came a year-and-a-half after the board accepted Starr's initial proposal.

A complete vision of the agreement will be on the Planning Department's website on Monday.

While the more than half decade venture (Starr presented his first ideas for the property to town officials in February 2008) from initial proposal to final approval included several incidents of emotionally-charged rancor – Starr threatened to sue the Belmont Board of Selectmen in October 2010 over it voted to end negotiations on the project and a call last August that Starr would build a "40B" affordable housing project which would not require Planning Board approval when negotiations on the development's mass and size bogged down – both sides praised the process and the end result. 

"We can all be proud of the end result that is in front of us," Starr told the board after the vote was taken, acknowledging his supporters, the business community and the abutters "for their persistent support and dedication to the process" which included 18 public meetings and countless reviews with the board's technical consultants.

"Together we collaboratively created a stronger project ... one that will revitalize Cushing Square and will become a source of pride for all of Belmont," said Starr. 

"I always felt the board had the same vision we both wanted to rejuvenated Cushing Square ... I was confident that from the start that we all were going to prevail in the end so I didn't have any doubt about this process," Starr told Belmont Patch after the meeting.

Horne Road's Devon Brown, a member of the Cushing Square Neighborhood Association which pressed the development team on several aspects of the project including its height – successfully forcing the project to lower the number of floors from four to three in most of the project – mass and step backs, said that with the end of the review process "it's time to move on" and now work with Starr on keeping the development within the project's envelop to spare the surrounding neighborhood from its activity and noise.

The vote today will begin the transformation of Cushing Square, at the corner of Common Street and Trapelo Road, with the creation of a three-building complex that will bring retail, residential housing and parking to one of Belmont's business hubs.

The approval of the special permit begins a 20-day appeals process then the Town Clerk will certify the vote and it will be presented to the South Middlesex Registry of Deeds which will allow the developer to seek a building permit.

The vote will also result in a financial windfall for the town; the first year will result in a one-time payment to the town of approximately $1.3 million with the sale of the municipal parking lot for $850,000 and $450,000 in building permits fees.

In addition, a recalculation of the net annual financial impact to the Belmont budget  by the Planning Board's Elizabeth Allison demonstrates the project will generate an additional $55,000 to town coffers above the $11,000 to $70,000 she initially calculated.

Construction should begin in next few months

Starr told Belmont Patch that he expects to begin construction in the fall with the first building – the Winslow which will be built on the current municipal parking lot along Trapelo and Williston Road – open for businesses and resident housing by the late fall/early winter of 2014. 

The development is anticipated to increase business activity in the square which a century ago was the commercial rival of Belmont Center and Waverley Square. 

But local merchants and residents will be required to meet the challenges of not only the construction of Cushing Square which will take about 18 months but also the reconstruction of Trapelo Street as part of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation's Belmont/Trapelo Corridor project that will occur at the same time. 

The Planning Board approved three buildings, each with street-level stores and restaurants with residential units on the floors above, all connected by underground parking. 

The development – comprising the Winslow, the centerpiece Pomona at Common and Trapelo  and the Hyland along Common and Belmont streets – will house 115 residential homes made up of no more than 60 two-bedrooms with the balance being one-bedroom and studio units.

Ten percent of each type of unit will be set aside as affordable for households with a total annual income not to exceed 80 percent of the Boston-area median income or approximately $66,150 for a family of four.

There will be 38,340 square feet of commercial space in the three buildings – only one tenant, Starbucks, has been named to be a future tenant – along with a total of 225 parking spaces (including some surface spaces) with 50 reserved for municipal parking. That was reduced from 269 spaces when the Planning Board approved a 20 percent reduction due to its location to other parking and public transportation.

The buildings will range in height from three stories and 36 feet for the Winslow, four stories and 48 feet for the Pomona and an average of approximately 45 feet and three stories for the Hyland. 

Baghdady, the Planning Board's chair during the review, told Belmont Patch after the meeting that criticism of the review process that took nearly year-and-a-half to complete is unwarranted as the end product 

"This was a first for Belmont of such as size so we had to move deliberatively. And in the end we had smiles on the faces of the residents, the neighbors, the Planning Board and the developer. We did our job," said Baghdady.

The chairman said the process it undertook tells developers that Belmont is willing to accept "what appear to be a difficult" project but only if the development team come knowing any review process "is to be a collaborative one."

"And I think the Planning Board learned from this process. We've established a check list that is to be used in future cases. And it will be a smoother process," he told Belmont Patch.

After the handshakes and congratulations, the development team sailed into their own Ithaca, Bruegger's Bagel Bakery in Belmont Center, for a celebratory breakfast.