Newtown Officials Invited To See Foxborough State Hospital Conversion

By John Voket

Vice Chair Mary Ann Jacob sought and received the Legislative Council’s approval of a resolution January 19 requesting the Fairfield Hills Authority hold a public information session with a developer who is proposing a residential conversion at the abandoned Cochran House dormitory. (See separate story.)

While the authority considers the council’s resolution, Ms Jacob said after Wednesday’s meeting that Newtowners who want to see a working model of a state hospital conversion can look to a project in Foxborough, Mass., which has already mingled public safety, municipal, recreational, commercial, and residential cohabitation.

Kevin Weinfeld, the current Foxborough Planning Board chairman and a former selectman, said he would welcome interested Newtown officials to tour his community’s Chestnut Green complex (http://chestnutgreen.com), on the grounds of the former Foxborough State Hospital.

“I would encourage them to come and look at it to see what is possible,” Mr Weinfeld told The Bee a few hours before Wednesday’s council meeting. “While it took some time to get to where we are today, it’s just like we envisioned it.”

(Links to the Chestnut Green site and reuse plans are available online at www.newtownbee.com.)

Chestnut Green is not very different in its layout from Fairfield Hills. Some of the differences are that the core buildings that have already been developed and occupied as part of the reuse initiative — with 20 percent of the cost underwritten by federal historic preservation credits — were built in the late 1800s.

Another key difference came as the state and town negotiated for the local acquisition, according to Foxborough Town Planner Marc Resnick. He said that after the hospital closed in the mid-1980s, there was a period of inactivity before the State of Massachusetts and the community began working together to achieve what the campus has become today.

Zoning Changed First

Unlike the situation with Fairfield Hills in Newtown, Massachusetts strongly suggested, and received, official local zoning changes to permit a broad variety of uses, with added flexibility balanced between the commercial and residential components, before the town’s acquisition of the property was completed.

The existing Chestnut Green residential complex also publishes its guidelines for the apartments deemed as “affordable,” with rental rates including estimated monthly utility costs estimated at under $1,300 for single-bedroom units to about $1,500 for the two-bedroom units.

“The state worked with the town and a local reuse committee on reuse plans,” Mr Resnick explained. “And in this case, the state wanted the community to adopt its zoning for the complex before the community began redevelopment.”

The Chestnut Green complex today represents an attractively marketed project that both Mr Resnick and Mr Weinfeld said could sustain individuals from the moment they wanted to become independent, through various stages of their adulthood, and even into their senior years.

When joking about the possibility of a Foxborough resident being born, living his or her entire life, and even being buried at Chestnut Green, Mr Resnick noted that the former hospital grounds still includes two cemeteries, but currently they only contain the remains of former patients — and there is no plan to expand their use at this time.

As it stands today, the former Bay State hospital conversion encompasses a lot of the aspects that have been studied or hinted about in Newtown.

According to the Foxborough town planner, the 55 apartments that have been finished in the Chestnut Green hospital dorm conversions are all leased, with a waiting list. And that a number of other residential options in the plan, including townhouses and small to medium single-family homes, are slowly being added as interested buyers or tenants come to the table.

The public/recreational components of the Massachusetts conversion include completed or planned full-sized football fields, a baseball diamond, a multiuse field, a softball diamond, a playground, and trails network.

“It was really envisioned to be a mixed-use neighborhood,” Mr Resnick said, adding that about half of the existing buildings had been demolished, in part to make room for a centralized 55,000-square-foot service plaza that he said attracts residents from the entire region.

That plaza incorporates two restaurants, a hair salon, a bank branch, a Walgreens retail store, a nail salon, a health club, a dry cleaning service, and a takeout pizza place.

No Negative Outcomes

Mr Resnick and Mr Weinfeld both said all parties involved knew the full implications of relocating to such a unique, mixed-use facility, and all have embraced it willingly and with no negative outcomes.

“Part of the state agreement in providing the property to Foxborough was the requirement to rezone for housing,” Mr Resnick said. Mr Weinfeld added that there was absolutely no local opposition to the mixed-use concept, or the inclusion of clustering housing among the commercial and recreational components on site.

“We took a long, hard look at the best way to utilize this property for the good of the entire community. We looked at municipal use, college use, medical arts use, and even social service use,” Mr Weinfeld said.

“But we settled on developing a place where someone could access a starter residence as an apartment renter, then move to a townhouse, then upgrade to a small or medium single-family house, then downsize back down as they go from empty nester to retiree.”

Mr Weinstein pointed out that an initial medical arts development that had stalled — similar to a use proposed at Fairfield Hills by Danbury Hospital — was reactivated after the residential component was occupied. Today, Mr Weinfeld said, a local hospital occupies a substantial amount of the upscale office space on the campus.

“You know your community has the power to control the uses, and to ensure that any residential occupants on site are completely aware and even support the concept of living in such a mixed-use setting,” Mr Weinfeld said. “Today we’ve got a really nice mix of upscale young professionals, young families, and seniors all living together on site. All the people who live there really seem to love it.”