Mipoints: Plotting Norwood’s land use

Over the last 50 years or so, the scarcity of land has changed the way it is valued. Before the building boom at the end of the last century, vacant land wasn’t as valuable as land improved with homes and businesses. Taxes on unimproved land were comparatively low and didn’t add much to a municipality’s tax rolls until a house or commercial structure was built upon it.

Today, the opposite is true. Land is so valuable that people will tear a building down and build a pricier property on a piece of land with a good location. In densely populated towns like Norwood, buildable land is even scarcer, making rare vacant tracts highly desirable and, therefore, even more valuable.

Not surprisingly, the scarcity of buildable land in Norwood has risen to the forefront of discussions relative to a number of issues. With the termination of the deal with the YMCA that would have leased 10 acres of town-owned land on University Avenue to the organization as part of their plan to build a $17 million recreation facility, the steep rocky plot once thought unusable has become sought after.  

A University Avenue abutter to the ten-acre tract has inquired about purchasing the property from the town, prompting the Board of Selectmen to authorize exploring the option further and to take steps toward determining the current value of the land.

Although town officials have dismissed the location as a possible home for a consolidated Department of Public Works facility, the lack of sites for that use closer to the center of town might make the University Avenue land worth considering for that use, especially now that the roads and intersections in that area are scheduled to be improved and made safer for all traffic.

Another interesting land issue in Norwood centers on the building of the new Norwood High School behind the current structure. Before the Massachusetts School Building Authority named Norwood one of two school systems selected for a pilot model schools program, the firm the town hired to design the new high school proposed various footprint options for the new structure on the land behind the old building.

When the Norwood Common Sense Committee raised the issue of the displacement of the school’s athletic fields, their inquiries fell on deaf ears. It seemed no one wanted to hear about it and chose to deflect the issue rather than address it.

Now that the state has offered Norwood the opportunity to take advantage of an existing high school design that could save the town millions of dollars in design and construction costs, the issue of displacement of the athletic fields has suddenly warranted attention.

Town Manager John Carroll last week said that a number of questions needed to be answered before the process of selecting an existing design for the school could proceed. In a report in this paper, Carroll said the town needed to determine what would happen with the high school athletic fields, since the state is proposing the new model school be built behind the existing Nichols Street structure, which would eliminate the football, baseball, and field hockey fields.

“Those will have to be relocated, and there are costs associated with that,” Carroll said.

With all due respect, this issue, first broached by the Common Sense Committee, has been in question for some time, since the custom designed school proposed by the town’s architect would be in the same location and pose the same problems. It is not a new problem created by the state’s model schools program, but a known concern to town and school officials, residents who live in the immediate high school neighborhood, students, parents, and taxpayers.

Finding an acceptable alternate location for the athletic fields is certain to be a hot-button issue as plans to design and build the new high school unfold.

When it comes to land in Norwood and its future uses, the plot continues to thicken as officials plot and plan.

Norwood resident Candace Leary’s Midpoints column appears Mondays in the Transcript.