Looking at Question 1: 386 new housing units is a lot, but in relative terms how does it compare?

At the Special Town Meeting on November 16th "Question 1" will ask voters to decide whether to approve new zoning bylaws for the old Industrial School property on Old Common Road.   DCAMMs model development for the property includes 386 housing units.  That's a lot, but how many units is it in relation to Lancaster and it's normal growth?

 

 

At the Special Town Meeting on November 16th "Question 1" will ask voters to decide whether to approve new zoning bylaws for the old Industrial School property on Old Common Road.    

The state Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) currently controls the site, and they hired design firm "Speck Dempsey" to design a model development for the property.    They prepared a bylaw that would allow a developer to build a project similar to that model;  the model includes 386 housing units: some in multi-family buildings, some in bungalows, some in larger homes.  

This is a lot of units of housing -- to get a scale, here are the total housing units reported for Lancaster in the 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020 federal decennial censuses:

Source:  federal Decennial Census for the listed years

There were 2,788 units of housing in Lancaster in 2020: this new development would increase the number of homes in town by 14% over that.

Over the past four decades Lancaster has seen an average of 195 new homes per decade: this development would add twice that average on it's own.

Lancaster added the most housing from 2000-2010 403 units:  this one development would almost match Lancaster's most productive decade on it's own.