Second Community Engagement Forum for Affordable and Attainable Housing Wednesday February 15 at 5:00 pm
This hybrid meeting will take place in the large meeting room at the Town Hall Annex
The Town of Chatham, along with Consultants Barrett Planning Group and Dodson & Flinker, have scheduled the second of three community engagement meetings to look at possible affordable and attainable housing development scenarios on the recently purchased properties on Main Street, West Chatham (the former Buckley Property) and Meetinghouse Road, South Chatham (the former Diocese of Fall River property). This hybrid meeting will take place on Wednesday, February 15th, at 5:00 pm, in the Town Offices Annex on George Ryder Road.
Meeting Purpose
This meeting will continue an inclusive community visioning process launched in December 2022 to guide the direction future development on each Town-owned property. The Meetinghouse Road site, was purchased exclusively with Affordable Housing Trust funds and will have affordable housing, while the Main Street site will likely have a combination of both affordable and attainable housing.
During the meeting, Barrett Planning Group will provide project background information, including an overview of the longer-term timeline that will follow this visioning process. Landscape architects Dodson & Flinker will present several design concepts to illustrate the development potential of each site. The concepts presented will not represent official plans for either property; they are solely for discussion purposes to allow the community to respond to a range of options for housing types and overall site configuration.
Online Survey
Following the December community meeting, the project team determined that the online survey included in the project scope would be best utilized to allow the Chatham community to provide feedback directly on the concept designs. Thus, the visual preference survey originally slated to occur in January will now launch immediately following the second meeting. The survey will now include questions about each concept design, in addition to more nuanced visual preference questions relating to architecture, landscaping, building type, and more. This will allow Dodson & Flinker to refine preferred concepts based upon community feedback received from the February meeting as well as the online survey.
Next Steps
Following the February meeting and online survey, the Select Board/Affordable Housing Trust/Town Staff will determine preferred concepts for Dodson & Flinker to refine, incorporating input from both community meetings and the online survey. Revised preferred sketches will be shared at the third and final meeting of this process this spring, date to be announced. The design concepts for each site will ultimately inform Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for future development in keeping with a grounded, feasible community vision for each site. This visioning exercise is the beginning of a longer-term development process; following this engagement effort, the Town will begin to focus on the development of each parcel.