With summer winding down, and the possibility of a fall town meeting looming, we’re long overdue for an update. We’ll do our best to keep providing information to the residents of Andover as it becomes available.
Sal Lupoli, CEO and president of Lupoli Companies, presented the latest iteration of The Dascomb Road Project to the Board of Selectmen as part of the meeting on August 28, 2017. According to Lupoli, there are two significant changes to the scope of the project since Town Meeting:
- The proposed residential component will now be exclusively 55+ senior living.
- The developer will no longer be pursuing a new ID3 zone, but instead will ask for a Planned Unit Development (PUD) that will limit the proposed residential component to the 146 Dascomb Road parcel.
Lupoli informed the Board that he will be moving forward with an approximately 700,000 square foot development on the property, following the current ID2 zoning parameters, and will be pursuing the senior living housing component on a parallel process through Town Meeting. He confirmed that he will be seeking a special Andover Town Meeting “before Thanksgiving,” planning to garner the 200 signatures required to submit a private warrant article in support of the PUD. If he does not receive the 2/3 majority approval at Town Meeting, he claims he simply convert the two residential buildings to office buildings.
Board Chairman Paul Salafia requested a review of both project tracks from Lupoli, in order for the proposed task force to validate and compare options with a focus on traffic and economic impact to determine what is best for Andover.
In regards to traffic, Lupoli claims that a housing component will bring less traffic than a project that does not include housing, citing a traffic study that Lupoli Companies commissioned and completed. With housing, he claims the intersection will move from an FF rating to a CC rating, but without, it will be a DD. Lupoli offered to fund a peer review of the traffic study with a consultant to be hired independently by the Town of Andover.
He also touched on the MassWorks grant, stating that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts confirmed to him that the grant is still active, and that any overruns related to infrastructure costs would be covered by the developer. Massachusetts Senator Barbara L’Italien was also in attendance, and confirmed she continues to be in contact with the Secretary of Housing & Economic Development Jay Ash, and informed the Board that while the Commonwealth has been patient and there are no indications of pulling the grant, coming to a consensus “sooner rather than later” is important due to the competitive, “shovel-ready” nature of the grant.
Lupoli shared a video rendering of his latest vision for The Dascomb Road Project. While he indicated that the video would be made available at the project website, as of this posting the site is under construction. We will make a copy of the traffic study available if and when it is made public.
You can watch Lupoli’s one-hour presentation to the Board, including questions from residents on the traffic study, task force makeup, and parking capacity, on the Andover TV stream, beginning at the 112:35 mark. (The project rendering video begins at 134:08.)
At the September 18 Board of Selectmen meeting, the Board will vote on an updated Dascomb Road Task Force charter that will enable the Town Manager to move forward staffing the group.