SOUTH DEERFIELD — The Deerfield Selectboard is beginning negotiations with Rural Development Inc. (RDI) on a proposed housing senior development slated for the former St. James Church property at 83 and 85 North Main St., representing the latest move forward in the decades-long process to expand senior housing in town.
“We’ve never come this close before. It’s really exciting,” Lili Dwight, chair of the Ad Hoc Senior Housing Committee, said in a phone interview on Thursday. “I can’t wait for this to come to life. It’s going to be an amazing project that’s going to bring such energy to that municipal campus.”
RDI’s proposal captures the “early conceptual stage” of the project and entails the removal of the existing church, according to Alyssa Larose, real estate project manager and housing development director at the Franklin County Regional Housing & Redevelopment Authority, the organization that launched the RDI nonprofit to address the county’s housing needs. She said the difficulty and expenses of converting the former church into a housing development that would be accessible for seniors and that has enough space for multiple residences made the church “not compatible with senior housing.”
Instead of converting the existing church, RDI hopes to construct a three-story building with 34 units for seniors ages 62 and older, 32 of which would be one-bedroom units and two of which would be two-bedroom units. The building and its 29 parking spaces would be located closer to North Main Street than the existing church to distance the building from Bloody Brook and create buffers between the site and its abutters.
“That really informed our layout for the building and the parking,” Larose said in a phone interview on Thursday. “It’s a good balance of both trying our best to protect those resource areas while also keeping the historic building pattern along North Main Street.”
The building will be in the “Greek Revival style,” according to the proposal, incorporating features of the St. James Church and the 1821 Meeting House.
To address the emphasis on affordability in the request for proposals (RFP), RDI designated the units as suitable for senior households at or below 30% and up to 80% of the area’s median income. Larose compared the project to Sanderson Place in Sunderland, another project RDI carried out with the similar goal of providing affordable homes for seniors.
“Especially among seniors, but across the population, there’s a huge need at these affordability levels,” Larose said. “We know that Deerfield’s been working on trying to do senior housing in South Deerfield for many, many years, so we’re happy to hopefully partner with them to try to bring that to reality.”
To fund the project, the town plans to cover about $750,000 using Community Preservation Act (CPA) money, an allocation that residents would later vote on at a Town Meeting. For the remainder of the roughly $21.7 million project, based on early cost estimates, RDI would seek out permanent debt with local banks, along with state subsidies, tax credits for low-income housing and grant programs such as the Housing Choice Initiative and Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program.
If the project moves forward, RDI hopes to start construction in the winter of 2030.
According to Dwight, members of the evaluation committee that was created by the Ad Hoc Senior Housing Committee ranked RDI’s proposal as either “advantageous” or “highly advantageous” across several categories, including the building and site’s design, capacity, affordability, amenities, financial feasibility, and the developer’s track record, site visits and presentations.
Along with those categories, Dwight said RDI addressed her qualms with Sanderson Place, including its “narrow” hallways, adjusting the measurements in the North Main Street proposal’s corridors to accommodate a wheelchair and one other person.
“They’re an incredibly responsive organization,” Dwight said. “They’re doing this to do good in the world. They’re not developers trying to make a million bucks — these folks are really doing it to bring affordable housing to the valley.”
Despite the evaluation committee’s verdict, a few residents urged the Selectboard to not move forward with the proposal.
Holly Lankowski listed several aspects of the project she described as expenses for taxpayers, including the projected $560,000 to $749,000 to abate and demolish the existing structures on the property. This expense is not included in RDI’s budget, but the proposal states that the nonprofit plans to assist the town with securing funding for this phase.
“If they do not get these grants, will they look to Deerfield to cover the balance?” Lankowski asked.
The number of parking spaces also worried Lankowski, who said no guests and not every resident would get a parking spot. In a phone interview, Larose explained the developable area on the property only allows for 29 parking spots and the parking should be “adequate” based on what RDI has observed at Sanderson Place.
“We are totally in favor of senior housing, but RDI’s proposal is not the path to take,” Lankowski said, reading a letter she and her husband Peter Lankowski wrote.
Jason and Melody Clark, abutters of the 83 and 85 North Main St. property, called for a meeting between RDI representatives, town officials and abutters at the site before the Selectboard moves forward with the proposal. Jason Clark described the meeting as a “site visit” that would allow RDI to clear up their concerns, including the property boundaries of the site, parking and its plans for stormwater drainage.
“We’re not asking the Selectboard to reject senior housing or to prevent RDI from presenting this proposal,” Jason Clark said. “Rather, we’re asking that the town take the necessary time to fully understand the proposal and the potential impact on the surrounding neighborhood before actually making a decision.”
Dwight urged the Selectboard to agree to start negotiations with RDI, adding that a professional surveyor surveyed the site, the committee evaluating the proposal shares the concern about the development’s impacts on Bloody Brook and the conversation around parking spaces will continue.
“I do not see the need to delay, and I would prefer not to delay since we’ve been working on this for 25 years,” Dwight said. “Absolutely we need to include neighbors and the neighborhood in the conversations when it comes time to working with RDI to develop the real plan — this is a preliminary concept of the scope.”
While Town Counsel Lisa Mead said RDI could meet with the abutters at the site after the Selectboard’s vote, she said she “[doesn’t] want to put unrealistic expectations out to those abutters, because [RDI] just [doesn’t] have the details yet and they’re not going to have the details for a long time.”
Selectboard members clarified with Mead that the vote would not authorize RDI to carry out the project, but simply would start the process of the town negotiating a land disposition agreement. The Zoning Board of Appeals and Community Preservation Committee have yet to review the project. According to Mead, these next steps will flesh out the details of the project, including the concerns residents raised, and the town or RDI can back out of the project during these negotiations.
Selectboard member Trevor McDaniel added that residents will have a chance to weigh in on the project when they vote on whether to approve the use of CPA funding at a future Town Meeting.
“I don’t think we’re going to learn anything more by delaying this than we already know,” said Selectboard member Tim Hilchey. “There’s a process in place. The abutters are definitely going to be a big part of the process moving forward.”
Although McDaniel said the project is “a lot of money,” he described the investment as worth doing to “provide housing to our seniors that we’ve been looking for for a quarter of a century.”
Hilchey said the site is not perfect, but he highlighted its location in South Deerfield.
“It’s walkable. You can walk to the library, you can walk to Ciesluk’s Market, you can walk to Bueno Y Sano, you can walk to church,” Hilchey said. “It’s centrally located in the most densely populated area of town, which is really where you want it.”
“The first step is to move it down the field,” McDaniel added.
