Smart growth setback in Kingston

A housing developer has thrown in the towel on a 100-acre project in a "smart growth" district in Kingston, saying that the cost of litigation (particularly lawsuits filed by property abutters) is too high to justify going forward.  The Kingston Reporter's Casey Reserve has the details on the demise of the project, which CommonWealth magazine described three years ago as a major coup for smart-growth forces.

Yesterday, Kingston selectman Paul Gallagher told the Reporter that he was "extremely, extremely disappointed" in Thorndike Development's pull-out:

“Every other community has development except Kingston,” he said, “because we keep saying we don’t want this or that. We’re either forever going to have a sandpit or we’ll get something we don’t want. I believe in my heart this was the best opportunity for Kingston.”

In Summer 2007, CW's Robert Preer reported on the project's potential as one of the state's biggest smart-growth success stories:

...this spring, the South Shore community of Kingston embraced a 109-acre development with more than 700 new homes. Four years earlier, the town had killed a similar proposal for the same property, dealing a setback to the smart-growth movement, then in its formative stages in Massachusetts. (See “Growth Smarts,” CW, Winter ’03.) Backers say that smart growth prevailed this time because the benefits were clearly laid out—as were the consequences if it failed.

The new project, known as 1021 Kingston’s Place, would be the largest development in the town’s history by far, and its residents would be within walking distance of the Kingston commuter rail station. “This is an opportunity to locate affordable housing in a place that makes sense,” says Thomas J. O’Brien, a former Kingston state representative who became Plymouth County treasurer last year.