Cushing Village 2.0: Toll Brothers Project’s New Owner As Starr Falls

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 Photo: Toll Brother’s Bill Lovett.

After more than two-and-a-half years of delays and broken promises, the long-troubled Cushing Village multiuse development entered a new chapter Tuesday, March 22 as national real estate firm Toll Brothers announced its purchase of the project’s development rights and two land parcels from original owner Smith Legacy Partners completed on March 14.

With Smith Legacy’s lead partner Chris Starr sitting quietly in the front row, Toll Brother’s Bill Lovett was introduced to the Board of Selectmen during a joint meeting of the Planning Board held at Town Hall.

“We’re very excited as we see this as a perfect location in a perfect community,” said Lovett, a senior development manager at Toll’s Apartment Living, a relatively new whole-owned subsidiary within the Horsham, Penn.-based firm.

With the sale, the project and town moves from an “endless loop of uncertainty” that prevented any work from commencing at the site for 969 days under the previous owner’s stewardship, said Selectmen Chair Sami Baghdady.

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Lovett said Toll Brothers was initially interested in Cushing Village about a year ago when Smith Legacy was actively seeking a deep-pocket investor to partner with but did not pursue the offer then.

“So we actually selfishly very excited when it came back around [at the beginning of the year] because it is such a terrific asset,” said Lovett, saying Cushing Village “checks many, many boxes” of a project it is seeking such as retail on the location, walkability, and a lifestyle community.

“[Cushing Village] really fits the bill,” said Lovett.

The price Tolls Brothers paid for the rights and the parcels was not revealed.

As part of the agreement, Toll will pay the town $1 million for the parking lot and an additional $150,000 in fees to complete the transfer.

After the announcement, the selectmen voted unanimously to approve a one-time only extension of the purchase and sale agreement to August 26 for the sale of the municipal parking lot at the corner of Williston and Trapelo roads to Toll Brothers.

Lovett said this will allow the firm to do its due diligence of the property – which once housed a dry cleaning store – before committing to its development of a property Smith Legacy’s attorney Mark Donahue called “extremely complicated.”

Lovett told the board it is taking the project “as is” with no plans to ask for changes to the massing and basic design that the Planning Board took 18 months to create in July 2013.

“There will be no refiguring of the project,” said Lovett.

As for financing the project which bedeviled the previous owner, Lovett said Toll Brothers “is fortunate that we have a very large balance sheet” with $1.5 billion in cash on hand which will allow the project to be self-financed with available liquidity. 

Founded in 1967, the firm is the country’s largest luxury housing “brand” said Lovett, known for its upscale communities in 19 states – mostly on the coasts – and ability for clients to “build” their house. It was also named one of the most admired companies worldwide, according to a survey by Fortune magazine in 2016. It is also known as the company that in 2005 rescued the weekly Metropolitan Opera broadcasts (now in its 85th year) after longtime sponsor Texaco dropped out a year earlier. 

The Apartment Living division was created after the 2008 economic crash, said Lovett. With ownership in upscale apartments nationwide, Toll Brothers receive a consistent cash flow as a hedge to protect its financial position if the core business of residential housing construction falters. As of March 2016, Toll has just a few apartment buildings under profile, but several are in the pipeline including a few in Massachusetts. 

Lovett reassured Baghdady that the firm is not looking to “flip” the project – place it on the market – once it is completed.

“We are long-term holders of our assets, and we also manage [them],” said Lovett, calling Cushing Village “a core asset.”

Lovett said once its due diligence is complete, the firm will hire a general contractor and begin to move the development “cautiously but quickly.”

“Our business model is to move people in, to start construction and move them in as quickly as possible,” said Lovett, describing it as putting “heads into bed.” 

Pressed on a timeframe in which the project would be completed, Lovett said due to some difficulty in the underground parking; he expects the project to be completed “in less than 30 months.” 

The purchase of the site and the special permit was the inevitable finale of a nearly 1,000 days of grand designs that could not match the business reality of a small-time developer in Starr – his previous real estate experience was as a partner in a modified strip mall in his hometown of Bedford.

Like Sisyphus, Starr’s dream of leaving a lasting monument in the town from where his family hailed led to frustrating and futile labor that in the end all his work and effort was all in vain.

With the sale, Starr leaves the scene as a cautionary tale for developers and town officials to take care before committing to a builder’s dream. 

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Belmont Man Murdered Outside Mt. Auburn Hospital Tuesday Night

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Photo: The location where a Belmont man was murdered Tuesday night.

A Belmont resident was murdered after being shot outside Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge late Tuesday night, March 22, according to Meghan Kelly, communications director of the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.

Armando Hernandez, Jr., 30, was one of two men who were hit by rounds fired by an unknown suspect at 9:57 p.m. last night on the 300 block of Mt. Auburn St. near the Lowell School Playground which is across the street from the hospital. Hernandez was transported to the Mt. Auburn Hospital emergency room where he was pronounced dead, according to Kelly.

The Belmont Town Clerk’s office said Hernandez is not in the town’s census. 

The other victim is in a Boston hospital with serious injuries, said Kelly in a communication. 

Cambridge Police Department spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said an investigation is ongoing.

Reportedly Belmont Signing On To Proposal to Start HS A Little Later in Day

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Photo: A little more sleep for high school students is being proposed by superintendents whose schools participate in the Middlesex League.

Belmont High students shouldn’t just yet set forward the time their alarms go off in the morning, but it appears the Belmont School District will join a growing number of districts who participate in the Middlesex League athletic conference to study a proposal to allow high schools to start later in the day to accommodate the needs of teens for greater sleep.

Sources say Belmont Superintendent John Phelan will announce at tonight’s School Committee meeting, Tuesday, March 22, that he supports a proposal written by Burlington Superintendent Dr. Eric Conti that would begin the propose of possibly allowing each high school to start the school day up to an hour later than their current schedule. 

A Belmont High student’s day runs from 7:35 a.m. to 2:25 p.m. 

In his proposal, Conti echos calls by the growing number of later-start-time activists who cite studies showing many high school students are sleep deprived which effects their social and emotional behavior and their ability to learn. 

Under the proposal, data would be compiled in the fall of 2016, senerios set up and studied before community forums are conducted in each town. Currently, the earliest the proposal would go into effect is the fall of 2018.

 

The schools in the Middlesex League include:

  • Arlington
  • Belmont 
  • Burlington
  • Lexington
  • Melrose
  • Reading
  • Stoneham 
  • Wakefield
  • Watertown
  • Wilmington
  • Winchester
  • Woburn

Future of Cushing Village On Boards’ Agenda Tuesday Night, 969 Days After Town’s OK

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Photo: After 969 days, still nothing built at the proposed Cushing Village development.

In his 1953 groundbreaking book on sending men to Mars, German/American rocket scientist Werner von Braun estimated it would take 969 days for a spaceship to venture between the two planets, a time span von Braun dubbed “at the breaking point of [human] endurance.”

And it appears Belmont has reached its “breaking point” as tonight, Tuesday, March 22, the Board of Selectmen and Planning Board in joint session will decide whether to extend a purchase and sales arrangement for a municipal parking lot to the Cushing Village’s development team.

The long-troubled residential/retail/parking project headed by developer, Chris Starr’s Smith Legacy Partners, has yet to show any progress towards building the 115 units of housing, 38,000 sq.-ft. of stores and approximately 200 parking spaces since the town approved a special permit and a design and site plan review for the $80 million development on July 27, 2013, 969 days ago.

With no indication that Starr has been able to put together a fairly standard financial package by meeting minimal project requirements from lenders since the selectmen last met two weeks ago, it’s likely the two boards will follow the sentiment of the boards expressed over the past six weeks the status quo is unlikely to change.

“It would be very difficult for us to approve an extension … unless the developer comes back with … something that gives us absolute security that [the] project will proceed and go forward and not lag for years and months,” said Selectmen Chair Sami Baghdady at the board’s Monday, March 14 meeting.

While Starr did announce early in February a new mid-level “mezzanine” lender and that he was close to securing in a large, national retail tenant to fill the majority of the store footage, no announcements have been forthcoming from the Bedford-based company in the last month, as he has cancelled his latest appearances before the boards this month.                                                                                                                              

Representatives of the two boards with direct involvement with the project – the Selectmen must approve a sale of town-owned property and the Planning Board with oversight over design and massing – met a month earlier along with the Town Counsel, George Hall, Town Treasurer Floyd Carman and Town Administrator David Kale, to prepare a shared game plan on the fast approaching late March deadline when the two-year purchase and sale agreement with Starr for the parking lot adjacent Trapelo Road and Starbuck expires.

While no announcement was made at the time, subsequent statements by both boards expressed a lack of patience with three months of missed “drop dead” milestones the development team said they would meet, which included buying the lot, demolishing the site and the beginning of laying foundations, all promised by mid-January. 

The small lot is the lynchpin parcel for the entire project as it will be the easiest to construct and open. The two parcels Starr currently owns – the former CVS building at Common and Belmont and the building at the intersection of Trapelo and Common that once housed the S.S. Pierce store – will require a considerable amount of excavation for the underground parking facilities and a costly buildout.

While Starr could likely come up with the long-agreed to $850,000 asking price for the lot, it doesn’t appear he was able to demonstrate to the selectmen he had construction financing in place which the board has demanded as part of the public parking deal. 

In the past two years, the selectmen have required Starr to pay what was first a $20,000 and now is a $30,000 “fine” for each month he could not close on the lot. The penalty has reached more than $650,000 (although half of the amount will go back to Starr as part of the closing cost).

Baghdady said if Starr does come to the board with a positive development such as a check for $850,000, it is likely the boards will no extend purchase and sale agreement and retain ownership of the parcel.

Then it would be back to square one for the town in redeveloping the parcels since it is unlikely the expired P&S agreement could be revived for a new development team unless the town issues a new request for proposal for the municipal parking lot. That would trigger a reopening of the Special Permit process which took 18 months to craft for Smith Legacy.

Starr will still hold the rights to the two parcels with an option on the parking lot but if was unable to find financing for a simple commercial deal, it’s highly unlikely he could convince a bank or financing company to invest in a smaller building with less of an upside. 

But Starr does hold the development rights to the sites, which likely has value to a developer wishing to skip the grind of shaping a new Special Permit and just build. 

If there is a developer waiting in the wings, the next week in Town Hall could be a whirl of agreements, payments and meetings as the town and a “white knight” secure a new deal before the P&S expires.

Obituary: Retired Fire Capt. David Frizzell [Updated]

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Photo: Retired Belmont Fire Department Capt. David M. Frizzell

[This article was updated on March 22 at 6 a.m.]

Belmont Fire Fighters Local 1637 on Monday, March 21, 2016, announced the passing of retired Belmont Fire Department Capt. David M. Frizzell.

Frizzell, who lived for many years with his wife, Linda, on Thayer Road, served as the Shift Commander of Group 1. 

Frizzell was appointed to the Belmont Fire Department as a firefighter on April 7, 1963. He was promoted to Lieutenant. on January 5, 1969, and to the rank of Captain on July 15, 1979.

He retired from the Belmont Fire Department with nearly 29 years of service on December 28, 1992.

Frizzell was also a state licenced master electrician since 1965 and a general contractor in Belmont. He was also a US Army veteran who served in Korea.

Frizzell is survived by his wife, Linda Frizzell (Sawtell) and children; Richard Frizzell, Belmont Fire Chief David L. Frizzell and his wife Kristina, Mark Frizzell, Laura Frizzell Grace and her husband Robert and the late Michael Frizzell. He is the grandfather to Michael, Erin, Matthew, Daniel and Christopher Frizzell, Jessica Brennick and Joshua and Eddie Grace and cherished his three great-grandchildren. He was a brother to Jane Carey, Louise Ambrose and the late Charles Frizzell. He is survived by many nieces and nephews. 

Visiting hours at Brown & Hickey Funeral Home, 36 Trapelo Road, will be held on Wednesday, March 23 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

A funeral service will be held at Grace Chapel, 59 Worthen Rd., Lexington on Thursday, March 24 at 11 a.m. Burial will be private. 

Instead of flowers, donations may be made in his memory to the Belmont Fireman’s Relief Association, P. O. Box 79222, Waverley, MA. 02479.

Appreciation: Belmont Girls’, Boys’ Basketball Did Themselves Proud.

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Photo: Girls’ Basketball after semifinal win over Arlington Catholic.

Dear Belmontonian:

I write to congratulate the members and coaches of Belmont High’s Varsity Boys’ and Girls’ Basketball teams for their fine seasons and appearances in the MIAA basketball tournament.

The boys’ finished a triumphant regular season as Middlesex League’s Liberty Division champions earning a first-round tournament bye before dropping a hard-fought game to Brighton High before a raucous home crowd. 

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The girls’, seeded 10th, advanced deep into the tournament, besting tough #7 Marblehead, #2 Newburyport and #3 Arlington Catholic teams along the way.

Last Saturday evening, a huge Belmont crowd attended the Girls Division 2 North finals against archrival Watertown. Belmontians from all walks of life, young, old, “townies,” “newbies,” liberal and conservative alike were there in unison supporting and cheering for our Belmont team.  Events like this can galvanize a community, bringing everyone together in a common spirit regardless of cultural, ethnic or political differences, if only for a few hours. Disappointingly, Belmont’s girls’ lost the game decided in the final seconds but it was not from lack of effort. 

Although our Marauder teams did not win the tournament, Belmont’s young men and women played hard to the end, played to the best of their ability and displayed good sportsmanship throughout.

While academics are high school’s primary purpose, the lessons displayed by our young men and women student-athletes are just as important. I witnessed discipline, selfless team play, perseverance, sacrifice, pride, integrity and sportsmanship played out on the courts. I watched them revel in victory and be humble and gracious in defeat. These valuable life lessons cannot be taught from a textbook, but must be experienced to be learned. From my perspective, they learned their lessons well. 

Congratulations again to Belmont’s Varsity Basketball teams. They did their town, their school, their families, their friends and, most of all, themselves proud.

Stephen B. Rosales  

Farnham Street

Letter to the Editor: Rickter Brings Commitment, Passion to Authority

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Photo: Paul Rickter
To the editor:
I know Paul Rickter as a vocal, engaged Town Meeting Member and a supporter of and volunteer for a number of campaigns here in Belmont. These include hands’ on contributions to the building of Joey’s Park, work on last year’s override which provided essential funding to meet town and school needs, as well as support for a range of environmental initiatives and social justice causes.
I also have come to know him as someone with years of experience as a member and chair of non-profit boards similar to that of the BHA. Paul has the planning and budgetary expertise needed to provide fiduciary oversight of the many units of rental housing managed by the BHA. He has experience working with board members and other agencies to come up with innovative solutions to meet the needs of those they serve.
Even more importantly I know, that along with these professional skills and his experience, Paul will bring commitment and passion to ensure that current tenants of properties managed by the BHA are not only living in safe and secure housing but that the future housing needs of the most vulnerable in our community are met with fairness, equity and dignity.
I urge you to join me in supporting Paul Rickter for the three-year seat on the Belmont Housing Authority.
Laurie Graham
Warwick Road

Coffeehouse Hits Right Chord Helping Stock Youth Homeless Shelter

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Photo: Acts at “Coffeehouse for a Cause”

It was great music for a good cause as Belmont High School’s Working to Help the Homeless Club – WTHH – brought together talented classmates with a large audience on Thursday, March 10 at its annual “Coffeehouse for a Cause” fundraiser as it worked towards the goal of stocking the food pantry at a new youth shelter in Cambridge, Y2Y Harvard Square.

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Approximately $1,700 was raised at the end of the night which was added to nearly $2,000 of food and $300 in cash collected by WTHH at Belmont’s Star Market on Saturday, Feb. 28. Twenty-nine boxes and twenty-five bags were filled to help create meals for the 22 homeless young adults who sleep at the shelter every night. 

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Working to Help the Homeless Officers (from left) John Mahon and Barry Eom, along with WTHH members Sophia Windemuth and Ann Pan, as well as Star Market Manager Janet Cunningham (at right) at Star Market on Feb. 28.

Last year, WTHH donated nearly $1,600 to the shelter while it was still in the planning phase. The shelter opened in December 2015 and is only the second (and largest) shelter for young adults in the Boston area. The good news is that there is now a total of 34 beds between the two shelters; the bad news is that the area needs them.

“Over the past year, our club has gotten much more active in our affiliation with Y2Y. I hope that Y2Y and WTHH can continue building a good relationship, growing together as we all help tackle homelessness in the greater Boston area,” said Barry Eom, WTHH co-president.

If you would like to donate to Y2K through BHS, please send a check, payable to Y2Y Harvard Square, to Alice Melnikoff, Belmont High School, 221 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA  02478.

Why Wait? Vote Now for Town Election Via Absentee Ballot

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Photo: Absentee voting starts … now!

Don’t miss out voting in the annual Town Election – just 15 days away! – since Tuesday’s are “date” night or because you can’t find a sitter for your pet beagle.

Absentee voting for the April 5 election is now available in the Town Clerk’s Office, located on the ground floor of Town Hall. Anyone wishing to vote absentee should visit the Clerk’s office during regular business hours (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) up until noon on Monday, April 4.

Questions? Contact the Town Clerk at 617-993-2600 or e-mail townclerk@belmont-ma.gov

Marathon Challenge Champ Pizzi Speaking at Library at 7 PM Monday

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Photo: Becca Pizzi, champion.

You’ve heard about her, seen photos of her running and cheered at her homecoming parade.

Now you can hear Belmont’s own Becca Pizzi share stories from her amazing journey to become the first American woman to complete and win the World Marathon Challenge, running seven marathons, in seven continents, in seven days averaging less than four hours for each 26.2 mile distance.

Pizzi will give insight on the races and what it took for a single mom with two jobs to succeed in achieving her around-the-world adventure tonight, Monday, March 21 at 7 p.m. in the Assembly Room of the Belmont Public Library. Stick around until the end when Becca will answer questions and sign autographs.

belmontsavingsbankSponsored by the Belmont Savings Bank.