Framingham Planning Board Unanimously Approves Long-Overdue Loring Arena ADA Upgrades

FRAMINGHAM -- March 23, 2017, Framingham Planning Board unanimously approved ADA and gender-separation upgrades to Loring Arena and advanced three other development proposals to April hearings. The board voted 5-0 twice on the town-initiated project at 110 Dudley Road, approving plan waivers and then the full two-story entrance addition that director of capital projects Jim Paley said is "85 percent" driven by ADA compliance and locker-room gender separation. The most contentious item of the evening was the opening hearing on Wood Partners' proposed five-story, 197-unit residential building at 75 Concord Street, where every board member pressed the developer over its approximately 2,587-square-foot ground-floor retail component, a fraction of what members said the Central Business District zoning they helped craft in 2015 was intended to require. "No one goes down there for a reason because there's nothing to go there for," said the board chair. Wood Partners Director Jim Lambert countered that retail rents in downtown Framingham do not support speculative commercial construction and that 800 to 1,000 new residents from two pending projects would organically revitalize existing retail; units are planned to start at $1,800 per month. The 75 Concord Street hearing and a separate valet-parking modification request at 100 Pennsylvania Avenue were both continued to April 6; a 10-lot Meadow Street subdivision by Ellingwood Realty Trust was continued to April 13.