A new three-story condo complex is being constructed at 89 Bedford St., the site of the historical John Davis/Hosea Holt House, in adherence with the state’s MBTA Communities Act.
The act requires Massachusetts’ 177 municipalities served by — or bordering municipalities served by — the MBTA to encourage the development of multi-family housing near transit corridors such as Commuter Rail, T, and bus stops. Former Gov. Charlie Baker signed the act into law in Jan. 2021 to address the housing crisis and strengthen the state’s economy. As an added benefit, it also works to reduce dependency on cars.
Lexington, which hosts many MBTA bus stops, became the first town in the state to pass a new zoning bill in compliance with the law in April 2023.
Approved on Aug. 14, the project at 89 Bedford St. is the first MBTA Communities Act project Lexington’s Planning Board has authorized. The board is also considering eight other condo and apartment complexes.
The new property will host 32 condos, an indoor garage, indoor bike storage, a patio with a shared electric grill, and a new bus shelter, all on the 1.59-acre lot. The historical house, which is currently a multi-family home owned by lifelong Lexington resident Lester Savage, is being relocated to the southwest corner of the lot and renovated into two condos.
Ben Finnegan from FK Partners Lexington, the project’s developer and builder, told LexObserver his team expects the project will be completed around the end of 2025.
“We are excited to deliver high-quality, single-level floorplan, maintenance free living within walking distance to Lexington Center,” Finnegan said. “These 32 condo ownership opportunities will advance the Town toward its goal of having a well-balanced supply of housing.”
The John Davis/Hosea Holt House was first built by John Davis, a merchant who moved to Lexington from Charlestown. After Davis, Hosea Holt, a music teacher in Boston, moved into the property’s historical home in 1878. In 1884, Holt established a music school in the house. Later, an owner in the 1930s had a small riding school on the property, according to the Lexington Historical Commission’s Inventory of Historic Structures.
Many Lexington residents voiced their concerns about the project during a July 17 Planning Board meeting. Mainly, those residents were worried about potential flooding and traffic.
During that meeting, Rudy Landry, a Lexington resident who lives next to 89 Bedford St. on Lois Lane, told the board he’s concerned the close proximity of the new building’s entrance to his neighborhood will cause unsafe traffic.
“In my view it seems all but inevitable that an accident is going to happen,” he said. “The entrances are too close together and you can’t see one from the other.”
Many of Landry’s neighbors on Lois Lane worry the new building will exacerbate their neighborhood’s existing flooding problems. Tom Diaz, a Lexington resident who lives on Lois Lane, told the board multiple homes in the neighborhood flooded during a “major storm” in 2010 during the July meeting.
“It’s a disgrace that we’re not looking at the surrounding community — this project is a cement block being dropped into a bucket of water,” Cerise Jalelian, a Lexington resident who lives on Lois Lane, said at the meeting. “I really would challenge every one of you to put on your big boy boots and come down here when it’s raining.”
“I’ve had two floods…all over our country were seeing floods where they’re saying they’ve never had that much water and we have no protection against that,” Marcia Streere, Lexington resident who lives on Lois Lane, said during the meeting. “It’s quite frightening all of this.”
Finnegan and his team listened to residents’ concerns during the Lexington Planning Board’s meetings, he told LexObserver, and have addressed many of them as the site’s plan has developed.
“Drainage was the primary concern of the immediate neighbors, and we feel that our civil engineering firm was mindful of those concerns,” he said. “Other adjustments we made during the public process included modifying the building design, increasing landscape buffering, committing to an all-electric building, prohibiting smoking, and enhancing lighting control.”
Lexington’s planning board also approved a project to build a 46-unit residential building on 5, 6, and 7 Piper Road on Oct. 9. The board is also discussing the construction of new condo complexes at 231 Bedford St., 331 Concord Ave., 17 Hartwell Ave., 217 through 241 Massachusetts Ave., 3, 4, and 5 Militia Drive, and 185 and 187 through 189 Bedford St.
Love how the article makes it seem like the project is somehow respectful of the Davis/Holt house.
This MBTA forced zoning upheaval was passed hastily because a misleading “affordable housing” carrot was dangled in front of town meeting.
The idea that these projects will reduce car traffic is laughable.
Would you rather have had the historic home torn down? Why is it disrespectful to have saved the home from demolition as most of the developers who bid on this project wanted to do? Thank goodness Ben Finnegan and his team guaranteed to keep the home. What would you have preferred to see happen since we are somehow being disrespectful to the house?
There is a great need for housing in the Metro Boston region. Home prices and rents are way too high, and we’ve gotten to the point where our own children will be priced out of the region.
So it makes a lot of sense to build along Bedford St and the major other routes.
There are eight other projects in the pipeline – I appreciate the LexObsever publicizing this, so no one is surprised by the scale of changes that are coming.
At the same time, other things need to happen for this project & the others to be successful:
1. Other towns need to accept the MBTA Communities Act, and open up for similar construtions. We can’t be the only town doing it.
2. Roads need to be widened. Cities around Boston need to stop choking off traffic inbound to Boston, where people commute for jobs. Recently, Cambridge, Belmont and Somerville closed off many two-lane roadways. effectively curtailing traffic for job commuters.
3. Lexington needs to be more realistic with its large construction projects. They have become too expensive, and people will be priced out of town by the high taxes. I specifically have in mind the Lexington high school project – I am very concerned with the high cost projected.
4. MSBA needs to chip in way more than the approx 15% expected for the high school. And the state needs to have policies that drastically increase competition between builders in school construction projects – because right now government construction in Massachusetts is way too expensive compared to private construction.
I believe we need more and better public transportation, not necessarily wider roads.