In 2019, Town Meeting voted to approve the Downtown/Park Street Form-Based Code zoning district. Now, the Planning Board has approved what could be the first major project: a four-story mixed-use building, with commercial space and parking on the first floor and 12 residential units on the higher levels.
The Planning Board voted on Jan. 27th to grant the site plan approval and a special permit for 3-5 Park Street. This is a .12 acre lot, which runs along the Nashua River Rail Trail and sits between the MART parking garage and the former Santander Bank building. The MBTA stop is a short walk past the former bank across Main Street.
Here is a link to the full set of revised architect plans (PDF).
This follows another application a few years ago, one that went before the Planning Board but was never built. Currently, there is an older building that looks like a white house on the site. This has been vacant for years and will now be razed.
As for the floor layout, there will be commercial space on the first floor and 4 parking spaces, including 1 handicap-accessible space.
The 12 residential units will be spread out across the upper floors. Based on the revised architectural plans we linked to above, it appears some units have one bedroom and others have two.
The Town of Ayer’s inclusionary housing bylaw requires developers to include at least 10 percent of new units as affordable housing. Here, there will be 1 residential unit that will comply as affordable and this will be deed-restricted. We don’t have any information on what qualifies as “affordable” immediately available as we write this story.
As for parking, the developer is required to have a total of 6 parking spaces on or off-site under the town’s zoning. They have 4 spaces on-site. Through a parking agreement with a nearby property owner, there will be a total of 10 parking spaces associated with the project (Source: we asked the town’s planning office).
You can read the 3-5 Park Street site plan approval and special permit document on the town’s website. The approval was stamped by the town clerk on Jan. 29th. The 20-day appeal period ends on Feb. 19th.