Now we can breathe a sigh of relief. The Reflecting Pool fiasco down in Washington is out of the news. We can relax. This is not to say that we can’t be excited for the checkered flag to drop to start the Freedom 250 Grand Prix auto race through the streets of our nation’s capital, or the completion of the grand ballroom, or the president’s Triumphal Arch, or the new championship golf course along the Potomac River or the… well, you know.
There is more pressing (or maybe I should say depressing) news to focus on right back here at home. A proposal for a new housing development in the heart of the village is already raising the hackles of long-time residents and environmentalists as well.
A well-known local developer is proposing to tear down seven small rental houses on Mahoney’s Lane, a small enclave across the street from the Town Hall. The area is surrounded by marsh lands and was once… before time began… the town dump (It was later moved to where the Dunkin’ Donuts now resides and then to a patch of land on Industrial Drive and finally to the current transfer station near Rochester).
According to published reports, each of the 750 square-foot rentals will be torn down and replaced by seven 2400 square-foot homes. Because they would be in a flood plain, they may rise up on stilts as high as twenty feet. If approved, they would become the first high-rise buildings in the village.
Crescent Beach, Pico Beach, and Angelica Point, with their many houses that rest on stilts, are desirable neighborhoods. Bringing that model into the historic village, in this former design educator’s opinion, would be a new high-water mark of poor judgement.
Our village is one of stately homes built by whaling captions, master shipwrights and other craftsmen, not to mention butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. (Well, maybe not candlestick makers.) The character of the village has remained true by subsequent owners who have maintained the look and feel of what keeps Mattapoisett special.
Some years back there was another proposal by a developer that would have changed the character of the village. Back around 2000 a plan was presented to the town to construct a massive three-story apartment building that would have stretched from where the current funeral home is to land where that new fire station rests. It was serpentine structure with over one hundred apartments with a faux colonial style balconies facing route six (The architect said he “roamed the village” to find features he could incorporate into the design). The building was gigantic in scale and out of proportion to the nearby housing.
Hearings were held with fancy, colored renderings and traffic studies and all the rest. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and the project was cancelled. Instead, the developer built what is now The Village at Mattapoisett, an attractive properly scaled community of condominiums that augment, not detract from the village “vibe”.
Ironically, this proposal comes on the heels of a recent town meeting article that would have allowed small “cottage-like” communities on small lots. The article was defeated because the houses would not be required to be partially “affordable”. The destruction of the current rentals would lower the Town’s percentage of affordable housing, which is now 2.59%. The State’s requirement is 10%.
On second thought, maybe this change to the village might be a good thing. If approved, it could open the doors to the erection of our own triumphal arc, or pave over Shipyard Park and call it the Shipyard Café, or cut down all the trees along Water Street and replace them with a grand promenade.
Whoops. Best I go now.
Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
By Dick Morgado