Opinion: Mitchell Farm -The Wrong Site for the Right Goal
Mitchell Family Farm property is outlined in yellow. Photo: amherstma.gov
I’ve lived in North Amherst for nearly thirty years, on land that abuts the Mitchell property. Over that time, I’ve seen our community grapple with questions of growth, affordability, and preservation. I support the creation of truly affordable housing, especially for seniors and working families, and I welcome the Ball Lane affordable housing development as a positive step in the right direction.
But supporting affordable housing does not mean supporting every proposal, in every place. Calling something “affordable” should not become a justification for placing new costs on taxpayers or for sacrificing the very open space, greenways, and wetlands that make this corner of town livable. The Mitchell property, with its zoning restrictions and sensitive wetlands, is one of the least suitable places in Amherst to site two massive projects totaling nearly 200–210 apartments.
Zoning Reality, Not Wishful Thinking
If I am reading the zoning maps properly and understand the zoning laws, much of the Mitchell property sits in Outlying Residence (RO), Amherst’s lowest-density district intended for large-lot housing, and part of it falls within Professional Research Park (PRP), which was designed for research and employment uses, not multifamily housing. To build dense apartments here, the developer would need significant rezoning or a special overlay district. And in the PRP portion, they’d be asking the town to abandon a long-standing economic-development zone for private housing.
Abandoning PRP zoning for housing wouldn’t be a neutral shift, it would mean giving up land long reserved for job creation and a stronger commercial tax base. According to Cost of Community Services studies by the American Farmland Trust and Massachusetts towns, residential development almost always costs more in services than it pays in taxes, while commercial and research uses typically generate a surplus.
By contrast, large residential projects, even when labeled “affordable,” shift expenses to Amherst because state support usually stops at helping developers finance and operate the buildings. The state does not cover the ongoing local costs for schools, police, fire, roads, parks, or sewer, those fall squarely on town taxpayers. In effect, Amherst would be trading long-term economic potential for a development that increases local expenses year after year.
The Wetlands Constraints Aren’t Going Away
This site has documented wetlands and buffers. We’ve been here before. In 2021, during review of “The Eruptor” proposal on this very property, the Conservation Commission’s peer review identified more extensive wetlands than the applicant first showed; the proponent withdrew after concluding there wasn’t enough developable acreage left to make the project work. That wasn’t politics, it was hydrology.
As someone who walks the adjoining fields on an almost daily basis, I can confirm, as can the farmers who avoid those fields with their tractors, that it is indeed wetland for many months out of the year.
Under Amherst’s current standards, disturbance is prohibited in the 0–50-foot buffer and capped in the 50–100-foot buffer. Whether a project is popular or not doesn’t change how water moves, how soils drain, or how flood storage works. Weakening those protections on this farm field would be a mistake that outlasts any single project.
Affordable Housing Should Be Real, Not a Pretext
I want more affordable homes, built where our zoning and infrastructure can reasonably support them. Amherst already meets the state’s 10 percent affordable housing threshold on the Subsidized Housing Inventory, which means Chapter 40B can’t be used to steamroll local rules here. That gives us the breathing room to make thoughtful siting choices.
Reading Between the Lines of Beacon’s Strategy
The scale of Beacon’s proposal, 85–90 senior apartments near Sunderland Road and 110–120 family apartments near Montague Road, seems less like a realistic expectation and more like a negotiating anchor. Developers know how to play this game: they start high, knowing the number cannot survive zoning or wetlands review, and then later present scaled-down versions as though they’re making a concession.
It’s a familiar playbook: anchor the conversation at an extreme number, then trade density reductions in exchange for rezoning, overlays, or other concessions. Even a “reduced” version can leave the community with a project far larger than zoning and wetlands rules were designed to accommodate.
The most plausible outcome, and one we’ve already seen at other sites in Amherst, is that the project will be redesigned, reduced in size, and clustered more tightly on upland areas. But the price of getting to that “reasonable” number is often pressure on the town to grant rezoning, coupled with long months of political tension. That’s why we must keep our focus on the real issues: protecting wetlands, respecting zoning, and ensuring that what is labeled “affordable housing” truly meets Amherst’s needs without sacrificing our community values.
North Amherst is Already Absorbing the Strain
Before we add hundreds of new residents to this corner of town, Amherst should demonstrate it can manage the pressures we already feel, and will see increase once the Ball Lane project is completed: heavier traffic, the need for safer sidewalks and crosswalks, road maintenance, sewer capacity, increases in police and fire coverage, upkeep of our parks and fields, and the stabilization of cherished but crumbling historic buildings like the church in the heart of North Amherst. Promising to fix these after another large project breaks ground is not realistic planning, it’s how communities fall behind.
The Right Projects in the Right Places
Amherst has better sites for larger, mixed-income or senior housing: in village centers and business districts, near shops and transit, and away from mapped wetlands and farmland. These are the locations our Master Plan has long pointed to, and for good reason, they balance housing needs with environmental protection, infrastructure, and neighborhood character.
A Community Promise, Not a Moving Target
Zoning isn’t a speed bump to be nudged aside for whoever arrives with the biggest concept drawing. It’s a social contract we make with each other when we invest in homes and neighborhoods. Changing it parcel by parcel to suit a developer’s needs undermines that trust and invites future exceptions.
I support affordable housing, and I support the Ball Lane project as a step in the right direction. What I cannot support is this site for this scale of project. If Amherst wants more homes that regular residents can truly afford, let’s do it the right way: keep wetlands protections intact, direct density to the districts designed for it, and commit to strengthening the basics in North Amherst first. That’s how we build housing without losing the place we call home.
Robin Jaffin is a long-time resident of North Amherst and -founder and managing partner of the digital media partnership Shift Works Partners, LLC.
Extremely well-explained and thoughtful reasoned response to a difficult issue. I agree, and also hope the author and Amherst will strongly support building more affordable housing in suitable areas. . . but also the many smaller ways that are possible to keep housing costs from rising.
We have had multiple petitions and bills to put a percentage cap on rents for everyone. One of these petitions is being circulated right now that needs all of Massachusetts registered voters to get behind. We also need pressure our representatives at the urgency of appropriate means to increase affordable housing that remains affordable housing.
Many people assume the all affordable housing units are priced the same [they are not] and set at fixed rates [they are not]. It is easy to get confused because there has been less than transparent formulas for the listed affordable projects from different programs and different funding for different populations. Also that some housing originally intended for those struggling but not at the lowest poverty levels is being filled with more at the poverty levels because of waiting lists that are many years long.
I’m speaking from personal experience as a resident in a senior LIHTC [Low Income Housing Tax Credit] building [tax credit to the owners]. While still below the extremely inflated market rates for similar rentals, we’ve seen our rents raised astronomically over the past few years.
We need more creative solutions, such as creating a better state system to help people stay where they already reside, perhaps to offer tax credits or grants for housing improvements to even individual house landlords to keep the rents under a threshold or limit annual increases to a low percentage below or at cost of living increases, are just some of the ways I can think in a few minutes time to address this housing problem that is across our entire state.
As for this housing development proposal – we’ve seen the many of these “affordable” developments be way above reach for those at standard jobs for tiny studios, with no cap on increases, or only applied for a few years. We need to be in control of what developers are expected to provide, and how they benefit. Not negotiated down to allow desperate people to live in a flood zone.