Opinion: Monitor Way’s industrial use

Monitor Way development conceptual plan, October 2023 Community Power
Published: 10-22-2024 6:01 AM |
Roy Schweiker lives in Concord.
Count me as someone who sees an industrial future for the land on Monitor Way. While housing can be built almost anywhere, I can see at least two ways why this land is particularly suited to non-residential use.
Green energy farm: If this property was used for turbines to capture wind along the river or for solar energy panels, it would require a driveway onto one end and essentially no city infrastructure. New power lines are difficult to permit and build, but this project could tie into the nearby distribution system for the former Sewells Falls dam.
Transportation/warehousing hub: Concord for the first time is served by one of the largest railroads in the country which brings advanced rail technology. Positive Trail Control means that the location of every train on the system is known in real-time, while Precision Scheduled Railroading means that train routes are configured in advance. If you have seen the scary videos of convoys of driverless trucks on test tracks, it’s easy to see that it would be better instead to use a fleet of battery-powered individual flatcars to haul semi-trailers or containers to their destinations or nearby. It takes less energy to haul goods by rail, and the extra battery weight is not a problem on train tracks. New train tracks are essentially impossible to build in New Hampshire, so property with existing rail service is especially valuable for this purpose.
But what about all the housing we supposedly need? Demographic studies at UNH show that every year more people die in New Hampshire than are born, so the additional housing is for people moving in, about half of whom come from Massachusetts. I’m not quite sure why Concord residents are supposed to subsidize housing for everybody who wants to move here. Make the developers and the new residents pay for any needed infrastructure.
While NH Housing says that 60,000 new units are needed by 2030, surely that number is affected by price . We might have a million new residents if single-family homes cost $50,000 and a two-bedroom apartment rented for $500 per month, but only 1,000 new residents if homes were $1 million and apartments $10,000 per month. And what is Concord’s “fair” share? Based on Concord’s 3.2 percent of the state’s population, that’s about 1,900 units but based on Concord’s .7 percent of the state’s land area it’s only 400 units. Or if you were to distribute all residents equally based on land area, state population would need to grow by over 5 million people before Concord added any units at all.
In the early years of this country, workers often lived with their small-business employers and later companies often built worker housing close to the job. When Blue Cross-Blue Shield built an office tower in the South End instead of downtown, it meant many people could walk or bike to work from their houses. Concord’s attempt to emulate this by allowing residential development on commercial property has unfortunately been a big failure.
In one South End development, the non-residential structures have been postponed to a later phase and may never be built, while a development near Rte.106 is 100 percent housing. And the housing is typically too expensive for the workers: what would the Steeplegate redevelopers say if the city required half of the new units to be rented to Whole Foods and Costco employees at no more than 30 percent of their income?
Article continues after...
Yesterday's Most Read Articles
One reason new housing is so expensive is homes are much larger than before with more amenities even though families are smaller. A Levittown tract house for young families in 1947 was only 25’x32’ with no basement. One way to get developers to build smaller (hence cheaper) units would be to limit the square footage to be built on a lot instead of the number of units. Before you howl about the number of market-rate units that won’t be built until the master plan is updated, note that the city used the same excuse to nix a tiny house development that might actually have been affordable. Don’t remember that? It was buried in the consent agenda with no public comment allowed.
The government guidelines for so-called workforce housing put it out of the reach of most workers in one direction or the other, as there is both a maximum income based on family size and a minimum based on what portion of your income is needed for rent. At the Railyards project in Concord, for example, the minimum annual income for a one-bedroom apartment is $40,500. That is about $19.50 per hour for a 40-hour workweek, which is more than a typical low-end full-timer and most part-timers get.
Meanwhile, the maximum allowable income for one person is $46,560, so if you are a teacher for instance a couple of step raises will put you over the limit and you’re out. If you work in sales on commission or as a tradesperson with highly variable overtime, how do you stay within the limits? A retiree with just enough Social Security income to not qualify for senior housing might be the best fit, so long as they don’t cash an IRA for medical bills or a car down payment. Want a two-bedroom apartment for a home office? Sorry, but the minimum income for a two-bedroom is $48,600 which is more than your allowable maximum income for one person.
The Monitor Way developer is trying to just build an ordinary subdivision street and stick the city with the cost of upgrades. There will be over 10,000 cars per day which will make it among the busiest streets in the city if you exclude numbered highways. Two lanes may be enough if turning lanes are provided, but there need to be bike lanes and sidewalks with all that traffic. A signalized intersection will be required at the South End, and maybe a couple more along the way if the residents want to get out.
As for all the taxes the developer will pay, less than half will go to the city with the majority going to the state, county, and school district, with a possible negative effect on the school district depending on how many students are added. Surely a new master plan is needed for this development. And notice that the developer hasn’t offered to pay a share to expedite it because they know what it will show.