The One Westfield Place Developers are "Listening"

The developers building One Westfield Place have come back to the Council with proposed changes to their initial project including the size/scope. 

I voted no on this ordinance. Although I appreciate their willingness to rescope the size of the buildings, this entire process lacked basic due diligence from the Town. Unfortunately, the vote passed 5-4 and was split down party lines. 

The final two votes on this ordinance will be at the 8 pm Town Council meeting on 11/12 and then on 12/3.

Before I get into the details, here is the full recording of the Town Council Meeting. If you have 3 minutes, I would love for you to listen to the full statement I made at the meeting and why I explained to the Council my reasonings for voting no. 

Also, many of you have asked how you can help provide transparency to the residents. I believe that this newsletter is powerful and my ask is for you to send this signup form and/or forward this email to as many residents as possible. With more voices comes more transparency and more ability to create change. 

Now let’s dive into why I voted against this ordinance. 

I believe that a rushed decision on OWP and the new amendment can jeopardize the future of Westfield.

My opposition to the project stems from a process that continues to be rushed and flawed. We can agree to disagree on how high the buildings should be, the regulations/zoning, the parking garages, the number of apartments, and the square footage of office space, but the entire process lacked due diligence and a competitive process. To this day I still don’t have answers to basic questions questions like:

• Why did we sell our parking lots in a no-bid RFP process to Streetworks for only $11M?

  • We’ve officially done more RFP bid processes for the Westfield Pool snack stand than we have for the massive OWP project, let that sink in. 

• How do we know the fair price of the town-owned lots if we don’t look for multiple bids?

• What does the traffic study look like? How can we handle more density/traffic and why haven’t the residents seen this study?

• Is there a full report/study on the holistic view of all the development happening around our town or do each of these just happen in a silo?

• Why couldn’t we negotiate more public improvements including a new firehouse or new fields which are customary in many of these types of agreements?

• Were other developers willing to build different types of buildings such as a performance arts center etc?

• Do we think it’s too risky for a large non-local developer to own the majority of our downtown?

But now, after hearing the amendment details and timeline last night, I really do believe the process is getting reckless.

Putting aside the complete lack of due diligence the Town did in approving this deal, we are now getting rushed into voting on a significantly different proposal, with different renderings, financials, building sizes, and considerations. 

I first learned about this new proposal less than a week ago and heard the full presentation from the developers last night, right before I was asked to vote on it.

• How can I make such a massive decision on behalf of the Ward 1 residents if I have no time to talk with them?

• I have seen no detailed financials or a traffic study, without that how can I make an informed decision?

• Why are we rushing to vote this completely changed proposal through? What’s the rush and why can’t we take some time to think it through/talk to residents?

• Can we get answers to our initial questions about this project and process before voting on a revised one?

We need months to talk to enough residents before feeling comfortable voting on something of this magnitude. This new proposal is being rushed, and it’s being spun into this false narrative that the developers “listened to our feedback”.  Where have developers been during the last 18 months when residents were asking them to reconsider the project size and scope?

Since the beginning of my Council tenure, I have had the opportunity to meet with the OWP developers only 1x, ~6 months ago. The meeting was set up after we sent a letter to them expressing our concerns, and it was 90 minutes of them telling us why the size, scope, and everything about the project was great. The meeting was handwaving at its best. To date, there have been no follow-ups to our questions, concerns, or feedback from them.

This has nothing to do with the developers trying to make residents happy and positioning it like that is insulting. If they could build the maximum size and fill the tenants they would. Their job is to create revenue for themselves, not make Westfield residents happy. To pretend that this has to do with listening to residents is disingenuous. This is purely financial from a mega-corporate developer. 

They out-negotiated the Town and we agreed to a terrible deal. Just because the deal is now 25% “better”, doesn't mean it’s a good deal. If I offer to buy my neighbor’s house for $100,000, and I then go up 50%, will they applaud me for offering them a better deal that we should take? No, the deal was bad to begin with, just like with OWP.

As you consider your position on OWP, the largest and most expensive project in Westfield’s history, I want you to ask yourself a few things

1. Would you feel comfortable voting on a significantly changed proposal after just hearing from the developers on the same night?

2. Do you think we should have sold our parking lots in a no-bid RFP process? How about for only $11M?

3. Do you think 15 minutes between the presentation and the vote is enough time to digest the new amended information and represent residents fairly? 

4. Are you okay with a single mega-developer owning the majority of our town?

5. Do you think it's responsible to build 100,000+ sqft of office space downtown during a time of record office vacancies and bankruptcies? 

6. Based on how much has changed over the years including our affordable housing requirements, are we sure we shouldn’t rethink the usage of our largest plot of land?

7. Do you know what other developers were willing to do in terms of public improvements if they won the bid?

8. Should the OWP developers be allowed to circumvent the zoning board or should they have to abide by the same building height restrictions that local downtown building owners have to?

Regardless of political affiliation or how we feel about the size/scope of the OWP buildings, for me this will always be about the process and diligence.

As Westfield residents, we deserve better. 

And because of the process and lack of transparency/diligence, I voted no on this ordinance. 

—-------- Ok, you got this far! Thank you for reading and I hope some of that insight helped. Feel free to drop off here if this email is getting too long. For those sticking around, here are the most common strawman arguments some on the Council made for approving OWP, and why they say my POV is wrong. 

1. You are against redevelopment - This is just incorrect. I am 100% for redevelopment as long as it is done in an iterative, smart, and transparent way. I believe that Westfield has to continually re-image itself to stay relevant, but we need to do it in partnership with our residents and in a way that protects our future. In fact, since being on the Council I have voted for resolutions/ordinances related to redevelopment such as the:

• Maize Restaurant

• Mr. Good Lube gateway project

• American Legion housing 

Just because I do not agree with the proposed One Westfield Place project, and the process and diligence the former Council took to approve it, does not mean I am against redevelopment. I am even more some redevelopment of our parking lots, but that doesn’t mean it has to be this proposed deal. 

2. You aren’t listening to the experts -  The experts such as the lawyers, redevelopment consultants, and traffic consultants are paid for by the town. These consultants are not “independently thinking” if this project is a good idea. They are instead helping the town, who pays their bills, try to show that it is a good idea. Our job is to question the experts, not be chastised when we don’t blindly follow them. 

Our consultants negotiated a bad deal to start, and during this re-negotiation period are starting out with a bad baseline. They aren’t looking back at square one. They are negotiating an altered version of an already bad deal.  

3. If we don’t do this deal, we have no control over what Streetworks builds at Lord & Taylor -  This is completely not true. We have a zoning and planning board for a reason. We should not be doing this giant deal with Streetworks just for a little bit more control over how they develop their property. 

4. This plan comes with so many traffic improvements and it will be better for the Town -  This may be true, but would love to see any unbiased traffic study that can support how adding this many people to town actually reduces traffic. I have yet to personally see any traffic study. 

5. If we don’t do this deal, this puts us at risk of our affordable housing requirements - This is also not true.  With the new affordable housing guidelines just coming out, I believe we should re-evaluate this project while now while considering what to do with these new mandated numbers. 

6. We need to follow the Town’s master plan -  The master plan is heavily influenced by the Mayor and is politically driven. There are inconsistencies and double standards throughout it. It is written as a precursor to projects and developments they want to push forward. It is not independently written without bias. 

6. If we don’t do this deal we will have the eye sore parking lots forever -  Again, not true. Why can’t we simply put this out to a RFP like we do everything else, and make sure we get the best redevelopment plan possible? We can still redevelop it, just in a smarter, more iterative way.

7. If we don’t do this deal, they will build the initial massive proposal - Anything could happen I guess, but OWP came to us to change the proposal because they couldn’t fill the office space. I would find it hard to believe that if we do not agree with this amendment they go ahead with an extremely risky plan to spite us. Instead, the more realistic thing that will happen is they come back with another amendment closer to what residents are looking for. 

Thank you again for reading this long email. Your support, feedback, and voices mean a lot to me. 

As always, feel free to reach out to discuss any of this.