Developers and councilors discuss plans for potential mixed-use overlay districts

The City Council’s Ordinances and Rules Committee at its Monday night meeting heard developers’ responses to last week’s hours-long public hearing on three proposed mixed-use zoning overlay districts.

All three potential overlay districts lie on private property. The proposed zoning changes would allow the developers to seek special permits to create housing as well as commercial development on property that currently holds vacant office buildings.

At the committee meeting Kier Evans — vice president of development at BXP, formerly known as Boston Properties, which owns the land on which two of the overlay districts would sit — suggested changes to the language of the original proposals for the first Mixed Innovation and Residential Redevelopment Overlay District to address abutter concerns. 

These changes included requiring a larger setback of 75 feet between any development and the back line of the property, as well as limiting the size of any commercial developments in the district.

Evans also agreed to work with the city to draft a Community Development Agreement, which would bind the scope of BXP’s final project on both MIRROD 1 and MIRROD 2, and submitted draft language for the agreement to send to the city’s Law Department. He said the company is looking to create approximately 1,500 housing units distributed between the two districts, although he also noted BXP’s designs are still preliminary.

The state’s Department of Transportation is currently working on highway and roadway improvements around Jones Road. Ward 9 Councilor Robert G. Logan asked Evans if these improvements are contingent on the housing development proposed for MIRROD 1 and whether the City Council is therefore working on a deadline to discuss the proposal. 

Evans said the state had awarded Waltham a grant for those transit improvements but added that he expected the state to send a memorandum of understanding in the immediate future, which might end up imposing a deadline on the city’s decision.

The committee requested for all three proposals that developers had submitted current preliminary designs for the properties, that they work with the Law Department to draft community agreements, and that they arrange site visits for city councilors. A copy of the proposal for the Jones Road transit improvement grant was also requested.