NORTHFIELD — Northfield Mount Hermon School intends to sell just under 1,300 acres of its forest land in Northfield and Warwick to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation for use as a state park.
All parties want to finalize the sale for June 30, when the fiscal year ends and allotted state grant funds will expire. This leaves little time for negotiation, said J.T. Horn, a project manager for the Trust for Public Land who has been personally working to negotiate the sale for the past year.
The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization that facilitates and funds the creation of parks and protected lands, has been tasked with selling the land for four years.
Horn spoke before the Northfield Open Space Committee Tuesday night about the sale’s progress.
“We are turning around what would be six months of work in six weeks,” Horn said.
Originally, the Trust for Public Land had originally wanted to negotiate the sale of the 1,300 acres of forest land and an additional 300 acres of watershed land all in one transaction. However, finding a buyer for both types of properties proved too difficult.
“We realized that we couldn’t meet the original agreement,” Horn said. “The project was honestly headed toward a complete failure a couple of weeks ago.”
But, when the Department of Conservation and Recreation proposed to purchase the forest land, Horn decided that splitting the transaction in two could salvage the Trust for Public Land’s work.
“Now we’re looking to redo all of the documents (to reflect the split transaction),” Horn explained. He added that he is eager to see the sale completed for the benefit of the public.
“The benefit to the community to have all of that open space is well worth (our) time and effort,” Horn said.
The complex process has involved Northfield Mount Hermon submitting an application to the Northfield Planning Board to split the property into 13 parcels as opposed to the original 62.
“We need to arrange all of the lot lines,” Horn said, adding that it has been expensive for the Trust for Public Land to hire surveyors. By the end of the sale, he anticipates the project costing the organization more than $400,000 in surveying, land appraisal, legal fees, staff time, travel and research conducted on the parcels.
Four or five abutters, who have been leasing land from Northfield Mount Hermon for the purpose of keeping things like gardens or wood piles, are allowed to purchase slices of land. It is in part because of these sales and because Northfield Mount Hermon is retaining some property that the land needs to be redivided.
“We were told that it was the state’s preference to resolve these issues with individual abutters,” Horn explained. Some slices, he said, are so small that they will be purchased for as little as $10. Other, larger slices will be purchased for fair market value.
In Warwick, two parcels comprising a total of 71 acres of forest land are part of the sale, according to Administrative Coordinator David Young’s report delivered to the Warwick Selectboard Monday. Young said the sale is financially beneficial for the town.
“What the town receives (in taxes) for state-owned land is slightly more than we would get for private land,” he said.
The outer portion of the Northfield watershed, which makes up an additional 300 acres, is another facet of the deal that needs to be finalized. Horn said because the land is in a protection zone regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection, they must approve the sale.
The watershed surrounds the Grandin Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to 300 customers in Northfield through the East Northfield Water Company.
However, even after the sale, Horn said 330 acres will be left in the watershed. Those acres will continue to be maintained by Northfield Mount Hermon, which still operates the East Northfield Water Company.
In a future phase, Horn said he hopes to finding a buyer for the water company. The hope, he said, is for the remaining 330 acres to be split between the town of Northfield and the water company’s new owners. The town’s portion of the property would be conservation land that could be used for recreational use or harvesting timber.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the Open Space Committee expressed its support of the sale. For the original 1,300-acre sale to be completed on schedule, Horn has a lot of work to finish in the remaining week of June, including nailing down the final sale price.