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Three months after Town Meeting turned down a $3 million borrowing to buy Forest Ridge, the Conservation Commission returned to the Select Board on Aug. 24 with a lower appraisal, state money in hand and word that a private developer already has the land under agreement.
Conservation Commission Chair Tracy Olson said a June appraisal valued the 13.7 acres at $2.85 million, about $780,000 below the October 2025 appraisal the town was working from in the spring. When the commission contacted the landowner in June to negotiate, Olson said, it learned the property was under agreement with Bell Point LLC.
Olson told the board the Winchester portion could still be acquired through eminent domain, which would require a two-thirds Town Meeting vote to authorize both the taking and the borrowing.
The Select Board took no action Aug. 24.
The presentation was an informational update while the request moves through the Winchester Committee on Community Preservation (WCCP), which was scheduled to deliberate on this fall’s applications on Aug. 26.
What sank it in the spring
Town Meeting defeated Article 35 on May 4, 59-105, short of the two-thirds required. It would have authorized borrowing up to $3 million to buy land off Forest Circle abutting the Middlesex Fells Reservation, along with a quarter-acre parcel in Stoneham. The owner is the Shannon Investment Trust.
Select Board Chair Anthea Brady said at the time that voting a $3 million ceiling handed the seller the price. The Finance Committee opposed the article, estimating the town would forgo $3 million to $4 million in property tax revenue.
WCCP Chair Christina Marshall told Town Meeting she was the one committee member who voted against the plan — not because she opposed buying the land, she said, but because the request came outside the fall cycle in which Community Preservation Act (CPA) projects are weighed against one another.
The revised application, submitted June 15, is in that cycle.
The Conservation Commission is urging the town to purchase the Forest Ridge property. COURTESY PHOTOS/TRACY OLSON
A developer enters the picture
Olson said Bell Point works in eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire and is permitting a 36-lot single-family development in Essex, Massachusetts.
She showed the board a map marking two nearby properties, on Forest Street and Forest Circle, whose owners she said the developer has approached — lots that could supply road access and the emergency-vehicle turning radius that had been an obstacle in earlier development concepts.
Olson described no filed plan for Forest Ridge itself. The June appraisal, she said, identified the property's highest and best use as sale to an investor or developer for residential subdivision at the highest density allowed.
On a taking, Olson said CPA money may be used to pay an owner fair market value, and that 10 projects in the statewide CPA database used eminent domain to acquire land. State grant money could be applied to a taking; federal money could be used only with the owner’s agreement.
The Stoneham parcel sits outside Winchester and cannot be taken by the town, she said, but could be purchased directly with earmark money.
A look at the Forest Ridge area from different views. COURTESY PHOTOS/MARK S. REENSTIERNA
Money in hand, and money that isn’t
Two pieces of funding are secured: a $250,000 earmark obtained by state Rep. Michael Day and approved in the state budget, and $27,900 awarded for acquisition-related costs.
Two larger ones are not. The commission has applied for a state land-acquisition grant of up to $425,000 and a federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant of up to $1 million.
Olson said grant managers have signaled that both awards are likely.
The debt figures presented Aug. 24 assume those grants arrive. With the state grant alone, the long-term bond would be about $2.23 million and annual debt service about $135,000, at 4.25% over 29 years.
With both grants, the bond drops to about $1.23 million and the payment to about $75,000. Because Winchester would borrow the full price before any reimbursement, the first-year cost charged to the committee would run up to $209,000.
The spring application had projected debt service between $100,000 and $240,000.
Trails, a small parking lot and a forest management plan would come later, paid for with grants or volunteers rather than town funds, the application says.
Before Olson spoke, Prassede Calabi, an ecologist and Town Meeting member, asked the board to value the woods for the work they already do — taking up water, holding habitat, filtering pollutants.
“We’re talking about it as though it’s a pretty little add-on, and it’s not,” she said.
Brady asked board members to send questions to Olson directly and said the board would get an update on the committee's decision from Town Manager Christopher Senior or from Town Clerk MaryEllen Marshall.
If the committee recommends the request, Forest Ridge goes back to Town Meeting, which opens Nov. 5 and would again need to clear two-thirds.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
