By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
6/9/11
Selectmen plan to take a vote next week on the future of Town Farm property on Gov. Stoughton Lane.
The public meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, June 15, at 7 p.m. at the senior center, 10 Walnut St.

The board, which acts as a trust board for the donated land, will announce which of five bid proposals for purchase or lease of the property it will endorse.

The 34-acre parcel was left to the town by Colonial-era Gov. William Stoughton, who in his 1701 will wrote that the land must be used to benefit the poor of Milton with the Selectmen acting as trustees.

The debate over potential usage of the land goes back at lease three years, and has drawn opinions from those advocating for affordable housing, and others who want to see the site protected with a historical designation.

In March, the town received five responses to a Request for Proposals it issued for the property. The five bidders were Frank Mulligan, as manager of the Governor Stoughton Land Preservation, LLC; Boston-based Weston Associates; Milton’s Copeland Family Foundation; Westborough-based Pulte Homes of New England, LLC; and Boston-based The Community Builders, Inc.

The proposals ranged from the Copeland Foundation’s plan for full-on preservation to Weston Associates’ plan calling for a large-scale assisting living complex. The Community Builders plan was for mixed-income housing, while Mulligan’s was for preservation mixed with limited housing.