Tamara Race © The Patriot Ledger PLYMOUTH - Original Article PINEHILLS PACE, POPULARITY SURPRISE: Pinehills is only 20 percent built and already bigger than many towns. It has private roads, water and sewer systems and its own cable company. There's a bank, post office and fire station, and a supermarket is on the way. Faster than anyone ever imagined, Plymouth's newest village is rising out of the woods, luring residents and commercial development at a record pace and selling homes at what would have seemed astonishing prices a few years ago. Four years after developers broke ground at the Pinehills, 550 houses have been sold at prices ranging from $400,000 to $1.7 million. Two dozen homes were sold for more than $1 million, and the average price is about $500,000. In addition, there are neighborhood fees ranging from $225 to $375 a month to pay for pool, tennis court and other upkeep. Pinehills as a whole paid $1.3 million in taxes last year, ranking the development as the town's third largest taxpayer behind Boston Edison and Entergy, who pay taxes on the Pilgrim nuclear power station. And Pinehills is only 20 percent complete. And so far at least, the development has attracted exactly the population mix the planners said would live there - retirees, empty nesters and mature, active people with well paying jobs. About 370 of the homes that have been sold are not yet occupied and nearly 700 people live there. Among them are fewer than a dozen school-aged children and only a handful that attend Plymouth schools. The Pine Hills - the geographic location not the development - is an area of scrub oak and pine on the sandy, hilly terrain spread through the center of Plymouth. It is now gaining national recognition as a posh golf course community on 3,000 acres of what was long considered beautiful but useless land that early settlers used to burn off to prevent forest fires. "There were a lot of people who didn't believe we could sell million dollar homes in the middle of the woods," said Tony Green, a partner in the development company, Pinehills LLC. At 3,000 acres, Pine Hills is a little less than five square miles in size and is bigger than several Massachusetts towns, including Hull. It constitutes about 5 percent of the total land area of Plymouth, which at 103 square miles is the largest community in the state. Green likes to think his group has followed through on promises to the town to maintain 2,000 acres of open space including four golf courses, tennis courts and swimming pools, and about 600 acres of undisturbed wooded land. The project has won over early critics. Town resident William Abbott, who fought hard to prevent the development, says he's pleased and impressed with the project. "In retrospect, it's probably the best use of the land short of purchasing it for conservation," Abbott said. "It would have been nice to keep the whole thing as a vast forest, but that was not practicable. Selling it to Pinehills was better than a town purchase with no restrictions on its use." Green, of the Newton-based Green Cos., along with mall developers Stephen Karp and Steven Fischman of New England Development, and Tom Wallace, of Wallace Associates in Plymouth, joined forces and launched the project five years ago. After two tough years of getting through the permitting process, including forging a new innovative multiuse zoning district, the partners received a master plan permit allowing them to build 2,900 homes, a hotel and conference center, four golf courses, and one million square feet of commercial space. Since then, 440 homes have been built and the group is on track to build nearly 300 this year. That would account for about two-thirds of all the single-family building permits issued in town for the year. Nine home builders, all vetted by Pinehills LLC principals, are working in the development and selling an average of 25 homes each month. The plan for developing the land has won national recognition and awards because houses are woven into the landscape in neighborhood clusters and preserve open space. A commercial center is beginning to take shape with a post office, bank, dental office and a seasonal luncheon cafe that is open now. A new commercial building under construction will have a wine shop, furniture store, window blind shop, frame and art shop, insurance company, mortgage business, financial broker and yoga studio. A dermatologist is moving his practice to the Pinehills and developers will break ground this summer on another commercial building for a cleaning company, year-round cafe, doctors offices, and ice-cream shop. A small, but full-scale supermarket and restaurant are not far behind, said Pinehills president John Judge. A plan for a Marriott hotel fell through, but Judge said it's only a matter of time before Pinehills attracts an upscale hotel. The sheer success of the project has taken even Pinehills principals by surprise. "We anticipated building about 170 houses last year and ended up with 264," Green said. The project as a whole generated $1.3 million in taxes last year, making it the third largest taxpayer in town behind Boston Edison, at $13 million, and Entergy, at $1.5 million. Boston Edison formerly owned the nuclear power plant and sold it to Entergy. If the current pace continues, the project will be built out in nine rather than 12 years, and go a long way toward replacing the $13 million Boston Edison payment that will drop by $10 million in 2008. "I'd love to see them do it, but you can't predict the future," said the town's assessing director, Anne Dunn. "I don't know what the housing market is going to do." Planning board Chairman Loring Tripp says the project has performed well and exceeded every estimate, but affordable housing and traffic concerns are looming. The project was expected to put a greater demand on police and fire services so Pinehills LLC donated the land and utility site work for a new town fire station on the property. Traffic is a problem. Neighbors are already beginning to complain about traffic on side roads, especially historic Old Sandwich Road that runs through the heart of the Pinehills community. Tripp said traffic congestion was anticipated and that measures were already in place to address that and other concerns as the project progressed. The town has authority to post speed limits and police can ticket speeders. "We're going to begin with signage and move onto road improvements as traffic studies dictate," he said. "At any time, we can go to the state and say the traffic is outside the parameters and force mitigation." WHITMAN: 6.9 square miles Population: 13,869 Residences: 4,999 Tamara Race may be reached at trace@ledger.com. |
