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Acton boards direct staff to pursue tiered inclusionary-zoning option for MBTA overlay
Summary
MAPC presented an economic feasibility analysis of inclusionary zoning for Acton's MBTA overlay districts; the Select Board, Planning Board and ACHC provided guidance favoring a tiered policy (higher depth for larger projects; 10% at 80% AMI for small projects) and asked staff to refine options for hearings and town-meeting consideration.
MAPC planner Emma Udellovich presented an economic feasibility analysis to the Select Board, Planning Board and Acton Community Housing Corporation on Dec. 1 showing that the current baseline (10% of units at 80% area median income) is viable across project scales while deeper affordability targets tend to pencil out only for larger projects.
Kayla Sauer, Acton's planning director, said the analysis was funded by a state planning grant and designed to help the town decide whether to raise the affordability requirement in MBTA overlay districts beyond the 10% baseline adopted previously. MAPC's presentation explained development-feasibility metrics used by the state (an internal rate of return around 15% and a return on cost near 5.5%), and described hypothetical project sizes ranging from 3 to 100 units to show how set-asides and income-targets affect viability.
Board members and committee participants debated several policy choices: raise the percentage of set-aside units, deepen affordability by lowering AMI thresholds (for example 60% or 65% AMI), create a unit-size threshold to distinguish small versus large projects, and adopt payment-in-lieu or fractional fees to avoid forcing unaffordable onsite units on very small developments. Several speakers urged pairing deeper requirements with financial offsets such as density or height bonuses, land acquisition, or cash subsidies.
A number of Select Board members and ACHC participants voiced support for a tiered approach that applies one standard for small-scale projects (15 units or fewer) and a deeper standard for larger projects. After discussion the boards gave staff and the MAPC consultant guidance to refine a combined/tiered option (for example: 10% at 80% AMI for small projects and deeper targets for larger projects), return with clarified rounding and payment-in-lieu language, and bring a draft for public hearings and town-meeting consideration.
Next steps: planning staff will recalculate feasibility under alternative rounding and fractional-fee assumptions, prepare a reduced set of options for the boards to consider, and schedule public hearings prior to any change to the zoning bylaw. No zoning changes were adopted at the Dec. 1 meeting.
