Landmark Properties has agreed to "save the salamanders"
By NICK GRABBE
Where you stand on the Retreat depends
on where you sit.
Jack Hirsch, whose
column appears in this week's
Amherst Bulletin, lives in Cushman, so it makes sense that he doesn't
want to see open space near his house turned into a student housing
development.
I live near the Regional Middle School,
and have three student houses within 200 feet of me (the closest
house to the Retreat will be more than 300 feet away). I think it
makes sense for student housing to be clustered together, under close
supervision, rather than spread out on residential streets, in houses
owned by absentee landlords.
In my Bulletin
column of Aug. 16, I
gave three reasons why I think this development is in the interest of
the town as a whole. In this week's Bulletin, Hirsch responds to two
of my reasons – and ignores the third.
First, I argued that the Retreat will
bring in $395,000 a year, as estimated by the town assessor, in
desperately needed tax revenue. Hirsch maintains that Landmark
Properties, the owners of the Retreat, may not pay their taxes.
There's no evidence that Landmark has
been a tax evader in other towns where it has built student housing.
And even if it didn't pay its taxes, Town Hall could easily put a
lien on the property until payments were made.
Jack Hirsch ill-fated presentation to Amherst Town Meeting
I thought Hirsch was going to say that
the $395,000 would be offset by increased costs for police and roads,
as some Cushman residents have maintained. Maybe he's realized the
absurdity of that argument. Some of the $395,000 might be offset by
increased costs, but it's well established that the biggest loser for
the town in the tax-vs.-expense calculus is single-family houses
(like the ones in Cushman).
That's because of the cost of educating
children (the Amherst elementary schools spend $17,000 per student).
The Retreat will not have many tenants with children in the schools.
Second, I argued that if Amherst
continues to resist new student housing, speculators will have even
more incentive to buy up single-family houses when they come on the
market and convert them to student rentals. That's because the demand
for rentals will far exceed the supply.
First-time home-buyers will
have a harder time competing with speculators, and there will be more
conflict between students and longtime residents.
Hirsch responds that there are 14,000
UMass students living in the Amherst area, so the 700 beds in the
Retreat wouldn't make a difference. UMass plans to expand its student
population, so any contribution to the housing stock will reduce the
flow of students onto residential streets. Those extra students won't
go away if the Retreat isn't built; they'll just live in
neighborhoods like mine.
Hirsch did not respond to my
information that many of the houses northeast of the Retreat site
have had septic system failures, and are close to tributaries of the
Atkins Reservoir, a major source of Amherst's drinking water.
When
the Retreat is built, the developer will pay to extend the sewer line
to Flat Hills Road, making it much less expensive for the town to
extend it to the streets with failing septic systems.
This was not speculation; it was the
opinion of the superintendent of public works. The Cushman people
like to present their cause as being environmentally virtuous,
defending the spotted salamanders that live on part of the Retreat
site and decrying the cars the students would have (but why would
they drive them to campus, where there's little parking, rather than
take the bus?)
I'm not surprised that Hirsch ignores the news that
the Retreat would help clean up an environmental hazard caused by his
neighbors.
Stop The Retreat: Campaign is starting to list
The letters written by Cushman
residents, and the red-and-white signs they've convinced friends in
other parts of town to put on their lawns, may lead some people to
believe that Amherst will be voting on whether to allow the Retreat.
No such vote will take place, because Landmark Properties has a
legal right to built student housing on this land.
The plan will be
reviewed by the Planning Board and Conservation Commission, but they
don't have the power to reject it. These two panels and the Select
Board voted nearly unanimously not to have the town buy the land to
prevent the development.
It isn't clear to me how “Save
Historic Cushman” plans to stop the Retreat. Will the opponents lie
down in front of the bulldozers? The organization has hired an
expensive Concord attorney, who has filed an appeal in Land Court
maintaining that the Retreat is a dormitory, which is prohibited in
this zoning district.
More appeals will probably follow, in an
attempt to delay the Retreat. But in San Marcos, Texas, it took
Landmark 20 years before before it got approval to build the student
development. Are the Cushman residents willing to keep paying their
attorney that long?
For now, they are willing to have the town spend
public money on their appeals.
I think they should use their time and
energy lobbying Sen. Stan Rosenberg, soon to be the Senate president,
to get a law change that would allow a public-private partnership to
build taxable housing on property owned by UMass.
That would provide
clustered student housing near the campus, but allow Amherst to reap
the tax benefits.
The Retreat may have some negative
consequences on Cushman, chiefly weekend traffic, but the
neighborhood will still be “historic.” For Amherst as a whole,
the Retreat has substantial benefits.
Nick Grabbe is a former Amherst Bulletin editor/reporter and a long time Amherst resident.
