PLYMOUTH — September 29, 2026 — The Plymouth Select Board voted 4-1 Tuesday to approve a memorandum of agreement and a letter of support for a 392-unit friendly 40B at 120 Carver Road, a project town staff said would lift Plymouth’s subsidized housing inventory to 10.5% and past the threshold for permanent safe harbor under the 2020 census count.
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The vote makes the town a partner on the developer’s state application, the approach the board endorsed this summer to get ahead of hostile comprehensive permits. The memorandum of agreement sets out a $2.5 million mitigation package negotiated with town staff. The project still goes through Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals review.
Updating the board on the town’s affordable housing strategy, Lauren Lind, Assistant Town Manager for Economic Development and Planning, said Plymouth stands at 8.42% on the state inventory and needs 406 more units to reach 10%. Counting 168 units already in the pipeline, the gap is 238. Adding the Carver Road units brings the eligible total to 2,723, or 10.5%. The target moves after the 2030 census: Lind projected Plymouth would slip to 7.59% if its inventory stayed flat, and said the Carver Road project cuts the projected 2030 shortfall from just over 500 units to about 350.
The proposal, listed on the agenda under Rick Vayo of 120 Carver LLC, calls for one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments in three buildings on a 32-acre former farm, with 25% of the units affordable and all of them counting toward the inventory. The presentation promised 67% open space, no gravel removal and an entrance that leads into the Market Basket complex. The mitigation includes $600,000 to match a federal SAFER grant for fire staffing, $200,000 for recreation space in West Plymouth, $500,000 for the Cranberry Crescent sewer pump station and $1.2 million for West Plymouth water system improvements. An affordable one-bedroom would rent in the $2,200 range, according to the developer.
We would be irresponsible if we turned the other way and did not act on this immediately, because I do feel a sense of urgency around solving this problem.
— Chair Deborah Iaquinto 5:03:36
Debate centered on traffic. Member Kevin Canty grew up near the site said the planned intersection work would handle access and that the SAFER money would raise firefighter staffing across town. Dick Quintal was not convinced, estimated as many as a thousand more cars a day through an intersection that works now, asked about school enrollment and water use, and said conservation would be the member’s choice for the land. Lind told the board the Planning Board has not weighed in on the specific proposal, though its chair spoke in favor of the strategy on June 30.
Earlier, the board declined to recommend two citizen petitions headed to the Oct. 17 Town Meeting.
Article 24 would require a special permit for unified complexes, a response to excavation at 71 Hedges Pond Road that petitioners called a desecration. Iaquinto said the petitioners had drafted a motion to amend the article, the town moderator ruled it out of order as beyond the article’s scope, and town counsel advised the board not to hear it. Staff said the Planning Board voted unanimously against the article as submitted, and offered to help write a version for spring Town Meeting. A motion to recommend approval failed 1-4, with Bill Keohan supporting. Iaquinto said every member supported the article’s intent but the board could not go against the advice of its legal counsel.
