The Memorandum of Agreement HURTS Lancaster!

MoA Section 9.3 states that the DEVELOPER HAS NO OBLIGATION TO BUILD, and doesn't require them to build either design in the Concept Plan submitted to the Planning Board. So IF we rezone the residential land, we don't know what we're going to get.  We could get more solar or soccer fields, yielding low/no tax revenues, or we could get more detrimental uses, like energy- and water-intensive refrigerated warehouses that would pollute even more than a typical warehouse. 

We could also end up with no build out at all due to land use restrictions in the Central Nashua River Valley Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). This a state-level land protection designation that requires higher standards for environmental review and protections. 

The MoA states that "DEP approval of the wastewater treatment plant shall be final prior to the issuance of the first building permit for either of the Owner’s projects”. Entire site is required to undergo MEPA review for any portion of development and the project failed MEPA last time. It could fail again, and yield no build out, and no taxes for the Town.

Water service was obtained through Leominster and developers told Leominster officials there would be no significant housing component. 

New 40R district could contain >300 units by law. Unclear if Leominster is aware of this change and will still permit water usage. Water agreement doesn’t permit big box stores or hotels, which would yield higher tax revenues than current proposed uses, and locks us in to less lucrative uses.

It is unclear if water volume will be sufficient for fire protection systems and to put out fires at such large buildings. 

The SB agreed to GIVE UP Lancaster's right to go to court, against legal advice. The MoA binds the town to arbitration and restricts Lancaster's ability to pursue legal action except in cases involving cash payments,  including DEFAULT! 

If we do go to arbitration, and we lose, the Town is on the hook to pay. Limits the Town’s ability to withhold permits for any matters in arbitration.

These developers have already failed to deliver on a 2017 Land Settlement Agreement. They owe the Town 86 acres of conservation land that they promised to deliver after Lancaster sold them TOWN LAND to help them in developing their larger parcel. 

They reneged on that agreement, and the MoA releases them from that legal obligation, and conditions the transfer of land already owed to the town on the developer receiving permits to develop this new project. This is a shockingly bad deal for the town.

The MoA binds the town to providing a single point of contact and special services. This project is enormous, comprising 471 acres, and 19 proposed buildings totaling over 2.4 MILLION sf. It is hard to imagine that the town is sufficiently staffed to cover this requirement, and new staff costs were not included in the flawed and incomplete FinCom analysis. Will this short staffing cause other projects to be permitted more slowly, causing costly slowdowns for other town development?

MoA Section 5 conditions any financial contributions upon expedited permit timelines that will never be met: 120 days for board review and 30 days for building inspector.
Immense size of project and permits involved may require additional personnel. 

Recent board decisions have exceeded 120 days for even rather simple projects (Transfer of Jones Crossing permit with insubstantial changes took ZBA 5 months, ConsCom has been delayed by 2 months from even holding Jones Crossing hearing due to multiple posting errors).

Seven other parcels are not governed by MoA. This could result in industrial development through the use of underlying zoning. One parcel already has a solar battery storage currently under review. This could result in an industrial use with a high fire risk across the street from planned affordable housing. 

The MoA requires all property owners that front on or use the Common Roadway to be part of Common Roadway Association (CRA) (Section 1.5), but not all owners in 40R are signatories on the agreement (6 lots under other ownership). The MoA binds the CRA to costly responsibilities (care and plowing of roads, maintenance of bus shelters, quarterly water quality testing, funding MART bus extension, and 5 years of traffic monitoring), what if they don’t want to assume these responsibilities? Will the Town be responsible for enforcing this? Recent examples of developer's failing to set up homeowner's associations have cost the Town and frustrated residents, is this going to go a similar way? Will the town be left footing the bill?

Multiple sections of the MoA committee the town to actions that will have costs attached to them such as putting up signage on roads, maintaining trails and parking lots on private land, as well as personnel commitments such as the single point of contact and special notification requirements, not to mention the police, fire, and DPW costs not included in the FinCom "analysis". SB and FinCom should have worked to identify and include all the real costs before this agreement was signed.

Traffic mitigations outlined in MoA are almost exclusively related to entry/access to developer's site. Some mitigations proposed are cited by MA DOT in MEPA report as requiring further study before implementation, as they are possibly insufficient. The lights that will be installed at Woods Lane/Fort Pond Rd/Lunenburg Rd are of particular concern, as they will cause queuing that exceeds capacity and will back up traffic onto Rt2. 

It is unclear if the MoA prohibits the developer from building additional 40B housing on the northeast parcel they own that will remain residentially zoned. They could use this land to threaten the town with another large-scale 40B like they did this time.

It is unclear if current land uses are frozen for 8 years (as stated in MoA section 1.4) OR if there are some prohibited land uses (as section 7 outlines).