This is FU

It seems there is a one person campaign to steal some property from a man named Tony Kwan. Tony is a successful developer and one of his methods is to buy low and develop high. He owns a lot of property, most of which stills seemingly unused. We host a property in Saxonville formally known as State Lumber. Tony has owned this for years and you may think it’s worth nothing, but the property is most likely leased by Stop & Shop to keep a competitor from being in the grocery business so close to S&S’s Connecticut Path store. The person advocating for stealing the property would like the city to invoke some Eminent Domain procedures. This person wants a river front park for all to use. Weird because she lives in walking distance to said property. Would that be a conflict of interest? We’ve seen things proposed there, from the public like a sports facility annex for the high school and it would make a the perfect overflow lot for FHS student parking. Just ask a FHS junior, or their parent/guardian with a car, but no parking permit.

But what might have been. Let’s take a trip…

Using the Wayback Machine. It’s the double naughts, maybe the 90’s, but it doesn’t matter. The City of Framingham is a Town and all the fun and power rests with a few boards and commissions. One of those boards was the Planning Board. We’re not sure it’s Planning Board or THE Planning Board but the ‘The’ does add to the importance. The Planning Board was charged with making sure development was done right. But right meant that a certain member of the commission, known as “the tree lady”, was always going to get the last say. And that say was going to cost the developer. If the developer thought they had done the plans right and up to town specifications, the tree lady would say “I don’t think there is enough trees or landscaping”. Back to the architect and $100k+ later in planning, material, and labor it might be worthy for sign off. We did here one such store owner say: she cost me another $150 in landscaping. That’s in 1990’s dollars. Famously the tree lady wanted landscape that would hide a new business from view. We cant make this crap up.

At some point Mr. Kwan read the market and thought a Health Center might work well at the lumber yard. Medical and Therapy offices as well as a fitness center was proposed. The property would even have a river walk for the public to enjoy strolling along the mighty Sudbury River. Maybe even a small boat launch too. My memory is fuzzy.

Well, that pesky board led by the tree lady put Mr. Kwan through the meat grinder so much that it was said he left the last meeting regarding the property with tears in his eyes as a select group of people decided that Mr. Kwan was going to pay a lot for all those years of the property looking like it did and does now. He would have to pay to redesign the intersection (years later the state did this without the prodding from the Planning Board). I don’t even know what the tree lady was demanding but it must have been so much that someone heard Mr. Kwan say he would never propose anything ever again.

Since then, the property could be called a Spite Site. And Mr Kwan continues to generate income from that ghost lease.

The good news is that the tree lady was finally voted out of office and serves currently on a little known board called The Jonathan Maynard Historical District Commission. Not surprisingly that board is always looking for things to meddle in outside their purview of the Jonathan Maynard District.

This person wanting the city to legally steal the property is advocating taking an Asian person’s assets while he is reportedly in China. That seems kind of racist to us. The buzz words today are Restorative Justice and if that really exists, the city will allow Mr. Kwan to develop the site as he sees fit. Since apartments are all the rage. We want to see twin mini high rises with a top floor penthouse that has a spectacular water view of the Sudbury River. A river walk and small boat launch for residents only and if one FHS student parks their car their it will be towed, stripped and sold for spare parts.