Town Farm Sale Nearly Complete
By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
10/13/11
The Selectmen were scheduled to meet in executive session this week to put the finishing touches on a purchase-and-sale agreement with Pulte Homes, America’s largest homebuilder, selling 30 of the 34-acre Gov. Stoughton property to the developer.

While the town will maintain about four acres, the rest will be sold to Pulte as part of a deal the Selectmen approved as trustees of the property back in June.

Pulte proposed placing a cluster of 24 high-end single-family homes on the land known as Town Farm.

Following a bid process, the Selectmen received five proposals for lease or sale of the land. Pulte’s baid for a $5 million purchase was the highest offer.

Selectmen John Shields and Tom Hurley favored the Pulte proposal while Chair Bob Sweeney supported a $1.5 million offer by the Copeland Family Foundation, a Milton-based charity, to buy the land and preserve it as open space. The Copeland offer also included funding to rebuild the Animal League shelter and another building.

Colonial-era Gov. William Stoughton, who left his property to the town, stated in his 1701 will that it must be used to benefit the poor of Milton.

Town Administrator Kevin Mearn said last week that he has been working with Town Planner Bill Clark and Town Counsel John Flynn on the final language for the purchase-and-sale agreement. He said an executive session was scheduled for Oct. 11, with the hope that the document can be finished and signed by Selectmen during their next public meeting Oct. 20.

Because the land was restricted by a will, the development requires approval from the attorney general’s office and a Probate Court judge. According to Mearn, the town should know soon after the agreement is signed whether it’s acceptable to the attorney general. It will take more time, he said, getting a court hearing scheduled.

“It’s hard to gauge how long that process will be,” he told the Selectmen on Oct. 6.

If the court approves the development, it will then go before the Planning Board for a public site-plan review process, he said.

Some have questioned Pulte’s ability to go forward with the project given the current state of the housing market. During the Selectmen’s “Citizens Speak” session on Oct. 4, Peter Culhane, of Central Avenue, said he did some digging into the company and found that a number of top executives had been dumping their Pulte stock.

“That company is in severe financial trouble,” Culhane said. “I think you have an obligation to start asking Pulte some serious questions and get some answers.”

Culhane said he’s concerned the company could buy the land and not do what they’ve promised, or sell it to another entity. Sweeney said he felt the purchase and sale should make those outcomes impossible.

“I will certainly keep those thoughts in mind,” he said Oct. 6.

During the same meeting, Mearn said the Pulte executives in question were leaving the company and exercising their right to unload the stock.

Hurley described Pulte’s financials as “reasonably healthy.”