As Winthrop confronts still-growing legal and financial drama over the state’s 3A housing law, the town leadership has confirmed it’s pursuing a new avenue for sidestepping the mandatory zoning expansion requirement by using its golf course.

In a move similar to the mocked but still active effort in Marblehead, town officials are considering granting a 99-year private lease for the Winthrop Golf Club, making the site technically eligible for housing construction that town leaders hope will never be built.

Yet as Winthrop contemplates the possibility, the details suggest a strategy ultimately aimed more at building consensus toward conventional 3A options than carrying any genuine expectation that the town’s century-old fairways somehow would become the solution to the long-divisive law.

Alternative sought

Proponents of exploring a golf course option include the Town Council president, Jim Letterie, who spent more than a year leading Winthrop in fighting compliance with the 3A law, before agreeing this summer that prolonged opposition looks unrelentingly costly and futile.

The 3A law, also known as the MBTA Communities Act, requires 177 communities – covering most of eastern Massachusetts – to expand the areas where they allow multifamily housing. The state legislature passed it nearly unanimously in 2021 in a bid to ease severe housing shortages by legalizing new housing construction somewhat near public transit service.

Winthrop’s original compliance plan, drafted by the town’s Planning Board about two years ago, would have met the terms of 3A by designating as multifamily some areas in town where multifamily housing complexes already exist. The Town Council led by Mr Letterie repeatedly refused to accept that idea, on grounds of self-determination, even though Massachusetts law grants the state government ultimate control over zoning.

The state’s subsequent actions to enforce 3A include a lawsuit against the town and restrictions covering more than $2.5 million in potential state aid to Winthrop. Such cuts – especially those affecting funding for children, public safety and sea-level protection – drove Mr Letterie’s June declaration to join three other Town Council members willing to comply. The council currently appears to lack a fifth vote in support of 3A compliance on the nine-member council, though Mr Letterie has suggested he may call another vote on the matter within the coming two months.

Marblehead example

As part of the golf course idea, Mr Letterie said, Winthrop officials plan to ask their state counterparts for a formal opinion on it. “If this doesn’t pass the muster of the state,” he said, “I would pretty much immediately be willing to put the original plan back up to a vote of the council,” he said of the Planning Board’s version.

In the Marblehead case, town voters agreed in May to place their 3A-required multifamily housing zone over the land of the private Tedesco Country Club, after town leaders expressed confidence that its business use meant no new housing actually would be built there. During that debate, a Marblehead citizen, David Modica, drew national attention for denouncing the bid as an obvious loophole, suggesting that his fellow residents were “kinda being pricks” for preventing new residents as the 3A law envisioned.

Marblehead is one of the few towns along with Winthrop that still remain out of compliance with 3A. The Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell, expressed disappointment with Marblehead’s golf course idea and said her office is nearing the completion of a formal legal review of it.

In Winthrop’s case, the idea is further complicated by the fact that the Winthrop Golf Club, while privately managed, is located on public land, which the 3A law does not count toward compliance. Winthrop leaders are reasonably confident that granting a 99-year lease to a private party would give the golf course the effective status of private ownership for 3A-related purposes, Mr Letterie said.

Added complications

But the strategy of a long-term private lease for Winthrop’s public golf course property does bring other potential complications that would include the town’s desire for the private party to offer some kind of assurance that it never would allow housing to actually be built on the site. “You would think – one would think,” Mr Letterie said in acknowledging the possibility that a 99-year lease that specifically forbids any new housing might not be regarded by the state as a sincere act of 3A compliance.

Other potential complications of satisfying 3A by placing a multifamily housing zone at the Winthrop Golf Club, Mr Letterie conceded, are that Logan airport owner Massport likely would demand height restrictions on any apartment buildings at the course, and that the property itself largely consists of wetlands, where development typically is restricted.

Yet the golf-course idea is moving forward because political opposition to the initial 3A compliance plan remains strong, the Town Council president said, driven by such claims as the idea that granting multifamily status to Winthrop’s existing housing complexes somehow could generate pressure to significantly increase the number of residents in those locations.

Winthrop already has lost multiple rulings over its 3A position from Massachusetts courts and state officials. That includes a lawsuit challenging 3A filed by a private group that a state judge dismissed on various grounds including his assessment that the plaintiffs demonstrated no harm that Winthrop would face from meeting 3A’s guidelines. Shortly before that private case was dismissed, the Town Council voted to formally attach the town to it, and the judge is expected to rule shortly on how to handle that request.

Future ballot

And Winthrop’s state representative, Jeff Turco, also has put forth multiple legislative strategies to exempt the town from 3A’s requirements, although with no sign that those efforts are moving forward. The private opponents of 3A also have attempted, without success, to collect signatures aimed at forcing a voter referendum question on 3A, and at removing a member of the Town Council who stood in opposition to them.

Winthrop’s pursuit of a golf course plan, that demonstrates its own impracticalities, might ultimately pave the way for the Town Council to ask Winthrop voters to decide through a ballot question if they want to keep fighting the state over 3A, Mr Letterie said.

“The important thing is: When will we have a plan to present to the council for a vote,” the Town Council president said of the emerging golf course idea. “That’s the important question, not what the plan might be, because at this point it doesn’t matter.”

“If we brought whatever plan, and it didn’t pass the council, then I think it would be time to let the citizens decide,” he said.