‘The public interest’: City and developer at odds over industrial versus residential use of Penacook land

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

By Catherine McLaughlin, Concord Monitor

A proposal to build nearly 200 housing units along the Merrimack River near the Wheelabrator power plant in Penacook is not in the “public interest” for multiple reasons, according to Concord’s city planner.

The city has ample housing in the works, and the proposal from New England Family Housing would occupy land with far more value as a commercial development, AnneMarie Skinner wrote to members of the city’s zoning board, urging them to reject a request for a variance from the developer to build 94 condominiums and 100 affordable apartments through a partnership with CATCH Neighborhood Housing.

“Allowing residential use of this property is inappropriate, and creates land use conflicts which will thwart future industrial development in the area, thus undermining the city’s economic development goals,” her memo states.

Kevin Lacasse, the CEO of New England Family Housing, maintains his proposal will provide badly needed affordable housing options.

“With vacancy rates at all-time lows, rents at all-time highs, sales inventory at all-time lows and increasing sale prices, people of all ages, backgrounds and income levels struggle to find housing,” Lacasse wrote to the city in October. “The challenge doesn’t only affect our children who would like to stay here, or our seniors getting priced out of their homes. It affects all of us, because a lack of housing means our current workforce shortage will continue to worsen and the city will continue to be depleted of its young labor and talent. Businesses and municipalities alike are struggling to find and retain a workforce.”

Lacasse’s initial plans introduced in 2022 included more than 900 units of housing — a mix of townhomes, condominiums and apartments, both market-rate and “workforce housing” — alongside retail, restaurants and storage units.

It was called Monitor Way because it initially included 95 acres of land to be purchased from Newspapers of New England, the parent company of the Concord Monitor. The newspaper had no role in the proposed sale and the plans did not include the newspaper’s office building on Monitor Drive.

The current scaled-back proposal going before the zoning board Wednesday night asks the city to approve a variance allowing residential construction on 40 acres in an industrial zone called the “North 40,” which does not include any Newspapers of New England property.

Back and forth

When first introduced, Deputy City Manager Matt Walsh emailed Lacasse and told him that city staff “felt your concept plans were generally consistent with the community’s goals and aspirations for the site.”

On several occasions in 2022, 2023 and 2024, the City Council met in nonpublic sessions to discuss the project — citing a section of the Right to Know law that allows for closed-door meetings to discuss real-estate negotiations. While city staff and councilors maintained an email dialogue with Lacasse and his team, the council did not meet with them directly beyond public presentations, according to the minutes.

Behind closed doors, some city councilors had reservations about losing industrially zoned property, but it was the developer’s request for a public-private partnership, including city help in building a road on the property and improvements to culverts in the area, that became primary sticking points, according to unsealed minutes from those meetings and emails obtained through a public records request. The city’s minutes of these nonpublic meetings don’t detail who said what.

By January 2023, Walsh communicated to Lacasse that “some in the community are concerned the property is not being maximized to its fullest potential.”

In a June 2024 nonpublic session, the city council directed the city manager’s office to inform Lacasse that any rezoning request was now off the table until the city updated its master plan update, which was years down the road. The letter sent by Walsh to Lacasse cited both an estimated $38 million cost to the taxpayer due to the proposed partnership and the project’s impact on city infrastructure. It also expressed the city’s longstanding desire for the land to be maintained as industrial.

In response, Lacasse said that those costs were “grossly overestimated,” and that the position seemed like a reversal.

After this exchange, some city councilors, including Brent Todd and Michelle Horne who represent Penacook, expressed an openness to a zoning change, especially for a project that included affordable housing.

In October, New England Family Housing gave the city a downsized proposal that included the CATCH partnership and no financial contribution from the city.

CATCH signed on because it “believes the project is consistent with its mission to create communities where every person is confident of a safe and affordable home,” according to the project application.

In a non-public meeting discussing this proposal, city councilors “took no position” on rezoning the land for the new plan. But instead of asking the council and planning board to rezone the land, New England Family Housing decided to go to the zoning board and seek a variance for the 40-acre property because that was “the preferred and expedient path.”

“Consistent with what the city originally told us they envisioned and what former Planning Director Heather Shank noted publicly, this land along the river was long assumed to be a built out as a residential, mixed-use development,” Lacasse said in a statement Monday, referencing comments made by Shank when the project got informal planning board review in 2023. “Considering that, and the myriad ways we can show that an industrial use doesn’t work here, we believe demonstrating the hardship at this site and seeking a variance from the Zoning Board of Adjustment provides the fastest avenue to addressing Concord’s desperate need for affordable housing.”

The developer has a purchase and sale agreement to buy the land from the Concord Regional Solid Waste/Resource Recovery Cooperative, of which the city is a member.

‘Public interest’

To receive a variance, applicants must prove to the zoning board that, among other criteria, granting an exemption “will not be contrary to the public interest.”

In documents sent to the zoning board, the city and the developer make contrasting arguments about where the public’s interest lies.

The application underscores that the project would provide “desperately-needed” housing in the city, and argues that an industrial development that close to the Merrimack River would run counter to the city’s environmental goals.

Conversely, the city notes that putting housing that close to the Wheelabrator incineration facility would be similarly undesirable.

City staff stated that the public’s best interest in the property lies in its potential for economic development. Skinner’s memo to the zoning board notes that the current master plan from 2008 eyes this area for an office park or similar use.

“The City’s remaining undeveloped industrial land needs to be preserved for future industrial development to protect and support the city’s future economic development interests,” the memo states.

Concord’s zoning ordinance states that industrial land is for “the development of manufacturing, research and development facilities, wholesaling, warehousing, distribution, and offices,” meaning those uses are allowed by right on such land.

City staff also dismissed the developer’s characterization of Concord’s need for housing, citing more than 2,000 units of housing that are either planned or in process.

“It is unnecessary to grant a zoning variance to allow for residential development at this industrially-zoned property as ample housing development is currently in production, and sufficient opportunities exist for housing development at other non-industrially zoned properties throughout the city,” Skinner wrote.