Plans for Sudbury Station ignore the expressed intentions of Sudbury residents as voted during Town Meeting.
- The 2011 Annual Town Meeting approved a land swap, giving the parcel’s owners frontage access in exchange for two acres of land to be used by the Town for cemetery purposes. Subsequent to the land swap, the Planning Board granted subdivision approval for the extension of Peter’s Way to serve one single family lot.
- The intent was clear from the Town Meeting warrant article and discussion that the intended development potential was one house. The current proposal for Sudbury Station is a 13-building, 250 unit housing development.
The scale, massing, density, and design isn’t right for Sudbury’s Historic Town Center.
- The plans call for 13 buildings, some as tall as 50 feet and four stories high, 250 residential units and town homes, and 3000 feet of new roadway.
- The developer is requesting over 30 waivers from town zoning regulations and bylaws — including building heights, setbacks, parking requirements, conformance with environmental protection standards, erosion control, vegetation removal, screening and landscaping, and historic district guidelines.
- The proposed density of the site is 18.59 units per acre, in a one-home per acre residential zone. This far exceeds any other 40B development in Sudbury (average is six units per acre).
- Development will be visible from points throughout the historic Town Center, permanently altering historic view sheds and erasing large swaths of forested land.
An additional 500 cars will be introduced into one of the most congested traffic areas in Sudbury. Traffic flow onto Concord and Hudson Roads will be significantly impaired.
- The site requires two roadway access points — one along Hudson Road and one along Concord Road — creating two new hazardous intersections.
- Both access points will be located within 500 feet of the newly reconfigured Town Center intersection, reversing and negatively impacting recent traffic improvements.
- Additional traffic could jeopardize public safety response time as the new Police and Fire Department headquarters are located within 600 feet of the proposed Hudson Road driveway.
- Gridlocked traffic will divert on to local neighborhood streets, as drivers try to avoid the traffic light at Concord and Hudson Roads.
- The development is close to a number of schools, churches, and childcare facilities — Noyes Elementary, Nixon Elementary, Sudbury Lincoln Highschool, Sudbury Extended Day at First Parish, and Sunny Hill Preschool.
The integrity and sense-of-place of Sudbury’s beloved Historic Town Center would be irreparably damaged
- Sudbury Station abuts multiple sites listed on Local, State, and National Register of Historic Places, including the Town Center Historic District, First Parish Church, and New and Mount Pleasant Cemeteries (behind First Parish).
- Established in 1963, the Sudbury Town Center Historic District is a collection of well preserved buildings and public spaces that chronicle the 18th and 19th century development of Sudbury.
- The development will be highly visible from the historic Town cemeteries, side roads, second floors of the historic structures making up Town Center, throughout the local historic district, and the planned Bruce Freeman rail trail.
- Despite being an abutter to (and having two entrances within) the Town Center Historic District, they are requesting exemption from Historic District regulation which would have jurisdiction on architectural and landscape elements visible from the public right-of-way.
- It is believed by the Town Historian and others that the site contains archaeologically important material predating the modern settlement of Sudbury.
- The developer has not submitted or announced plans to study the impacts to historic view sheds/sightlines, archeological resources, or light and noise pollution within Town Center.
The development would irreparably destroy the balance between historic fabric and open space in the Town Center Historic District.
- The site is almost exclusively undeveloped forested land; the entire site is on a property identified by the Town for future preservation as part of Sudbury’s Open Space and Recreation Plan.
- All mature forests and historic stone walls will be removed for construction — obliterating the relationship of the property to its history and the surrounding Historic District.
- The density of the development requires the removal of vegetation to the edges of the property line, leaving little to no landscape buffer.
The development is in an environmentally rich and sensitive area.
- Nearly half of the development area falls within a Priority Habitat Area under the jurisdiction of the Natural Heritage Endangered Species Program.
- The land surrounding the development contains streams, wildlife corridors, endangered species and little human intrusion.
- An excellent writeup on the environmental impact by the Sudbury Conservation Commission.
Upcoming Zoning Board of Appeals hearings
- April 25 – Building Massing/Density; Architectural Design/Landscaping
- May 23 – Physical Constraints of the sSite – Stormwater, Wastewater, Clearing & Grading
- June 25 – Other site impacts – Visual, Fiscal, Historic Impacts; Mitigation/Community Needs
- July 25 – Additional Information
Submit Comments & Concerns
- Zoning Board of Appeals: appeals@sudbury.ma.us
- Board of Selectmen: boardofselectmen@sudbury.ma.us
- Town Manager: townmanager@sudbury.ma.us