As he attempts to gain support for his company's plan to turn the former military housing at Vicksburg Square in Devens into 246 rental apartments, 80 percent of which would be income-restricted affordable housing, Trinity Financial president Jim Keefe met with the Press for an interview on Friday, Dec. 2.
In part I of the interview, published last week, Keefe discussed the difficulty his company has faced getting the Harvard community on board with the project. In part II, this week, he discusses what he thinks are the merits of the proposal and his response to some criticism it has received from Harvard residents and officials.
At a meeting Nov. 8 with Harvard's Selectmen, School Committee, Planning Board, and the Devens Economic Analysis Team, Selectman Chair Marie Sobalvarro told Trinity, "This is a project where the numbers work for you, not for us." In his interview Dec. 2, Keefe responded to that.
"We've heard that line before: It's good for the developer; it's not good for us," Keefe said. "It's good for veterans. It's good for elderly. It's good for historic preservationists. It's good for people who've been promoting the [Fort Devens Museum] for years. It's good for the construction workers who are going to be employed. It's good for the downtown businesses in Ayer...The list of who is going to benefit from this goes on and on and on."
Specifically to Harvard, Keefe said, a "significant number of town employees" would qualify for affordable housing there.
"Here we have, in the town itself, people who are working for this town who might very well want to take advantage of this opportunity," he said.
Some critics have said the Vicksburg Square proposal is too dense a concentration of affordable housing in too remote an area. Harvard Planning Board Chair Kara Minar told the Press earlier this month, "This project, with 80 percent affordable, is isolating and not creating a realistic scenario of people who would live there without public transportation. It's sort of like dropping a city block in the middle of Devens."
The density issue is a "red herring," Keefe said.
"You want to talk density, we are so far away from Manhattan it's not even worth talking about," Keefe said during his interview. "...It's on 20 acres and it's in Devens itself, which has 100 some-odd housing units on it, and how many thousands of acres is Devens?"
The Vicksburg Square proposal could even be considered sustainable, Keefe said.
"We're not using up a lot of open space. It's going to be very efficient to heat these buildings. It's going to be very efficient to organize activities in these buildings, as opposed to having 250 units spread all over the place, which is very unsustainable," he said.
On the isolation of Vicksburg Square, Keefe said that Devens Green and downtown Ayer are both within a mile of the complex and both have empty storefronts.
"There are 2,700 jobs on the Devens campus, and that number is expected to grow," he said. "I don't know where this isolation thing comes in. Everybody out here has cars. I wish it were otherwise, but everybody out here has cars."
Trinity has said it is willing to work with MassDevelopment, the quasi-state agency with authority over the Devens zone, to develop a shuttle bus system from Devens to commuter rail stations.
"We would contribute financially to that," he said. "We think that's a sound, sensible, sustainable approach."