Three New Residential Developments In the Works for Tewksbury

Over the last couple of years, as the real estate market became stagnant, once-thriving residential growth in Tewksbury hit a lull.

But 2011 has seen three residential projects gather momentum -- one on East Street, one at Main Street and Victor Street just across the street from Mahoney’s, and a third on Woburn Street. Do these projects represent a thaw in the ice-cold  regional housing market or are they an aberration.

Steve Sadwick, director of the Tewksbury Community Development Office said the projects might be a sign of a positive turn in the market.

“Possibly…we are seeing some activity on sites where we haven’t seen housing proposed before, this (speaking of the Woburn Street site) being one of them," he said.

Sadwick also said that the East Street and Main Street projects have been around for more than a decade and they are just now starting to gain some momentum toward eventual completion, though there is still a complicated process that they need to go through. The estimated time of completion for all three projects is the end of the summer of 2012.

Sadwick said Woburn Street development owner Carl Cruppi had originally planned to put an industrial development there, but could not drum up enough commercial interest to go through with it. When he decided that he would put in a community housing project, instead, the interest began to build again.

Mark Ginsberg, one of the co-owners of the East Street and Main Street projects thinks that it may not be that the housing market is on the rise, but rather the condo market.

“People who live in a condo know they’re getting their grass cut," he said "They don’t have to worry about parking. It’s just a lot easier.”

The Woburn Street project has been proposed as a 40B development, which helps streamline the approval process for the developer in exchange for a certain number of "affordable" units.

Under the terms of 40B, in any given multi-unit project 15 percent of the units must be affordable housing. As such, of the 64 proposed units of the Woburn Street development, at least 10 must be affordable.

The Main Street project also the potential to be built under 40B.

“As for the Main Street project as it is currently permitted, it needs to provide 14 affordable units or a fee in lieu of the provision of those units," said Sadwick. "This fee would go into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund for the Town to utilize in creating affordable housing.

"The East Street project has not been before any town board for a preliminary concept discussion. The affordable housing requirement for a multi-family development in a MFD District is 15 percent of the total units."

Sadwick said Tewksbury is close to the 10 percent affordable housing threshold, as required by state law but more than 100 units are still needed.

“The Town of Tewksbury is currently listed at 9.6 percent with 967 affordable units on the State’s Subsidized Housing Inventory,” Sadwick said. “This is using 10,125 for the year-round housing unit figure from the 2000 Census. The 2010 Census data has Tewksbury at 10,803 year-round household units. This would be a drop to 8.95 percent. In order to make up the deficit, Tewksbury needs 113 units of affordable housing.”