Affordable or Not, the City isn’t Ready for New Housing in Kmart Site

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I don’t often disagree with Shakespeare, but when he says, “things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing,” I believe he’s mistaken. Sometimes, winning means doing nothing. It means leaving well enough alone. That’s how I feel about the Kmart redevelopment, and the prospect of Port Landing – a housing megastructure of 212 rental units in Port Plaza.

The Kmart lot obviously can’t sit empty in perpetuity. But that doesn’t mean any plan for development is better than no plan. Whenever we talk about housing, the conventional wisdom seems to be that more is always better, especially when it results in high property tax revenue. In my view, though, when it comes to housing, joy’s soul lies in the standing still.

Let’s talk about the reasons Newburyport is an expensive, desirable place to live in the first place: we have reasonably good infrastructure, a quality school system, and accessible resources.

Enter 212 new rental units, which could translate into as many as 800 new residents. That’s almost a 5% increase in our city’s population.

What will it mean for already scarce parking, and sidewalks already bearing the brunt of too many feet and strollers? My husband’s heart is in fine shape, but I worry he might develop a cardiac condition when we’re backed up to the bridge in traffic on Water Street and his temper flares. What will hundreds of new cars mean for traffic at the intersections of Green and Water, Low and Storey, and State and High? Well, if you hear an older gentleman honking frenziedly, don’t worry, Mr. Longfellow isn’t honking at you, but rather at the decision-makers who thought adding more cars to this city was a good idea.

And what happens when dozens of new students pour into our schools, enlarging class sizes? Newburyport is blessed with exceptional faculty and staff, but a strain this heavy on the school system threatens to crowd classrooms and overburden teachers.

A few years ago, my husband needed to switch primary care doctors and couldn’t find anyone in town with openings. He ended up with a physician in Haverhill. There are simply too many people for too few doctors, and that goes for other health services too, like dentists and mental health professionals. God forbid you want to see a therapist without driving 30 minutes to do it, or without sitting on a waitlist for nine months.

In theory, more housing sounds great. It means more options for people wanting to rent here, and maybe even more housing affordability citywide (though the jury’s still out on that). But what about the strain it’ll put on our schools, resources, and infrastructure? That’s harder to quantify in a city planning report.

And before anyone calls me an uppity old lady with a prejudice against affordable housing, let me be clear: 1. This is barely affordable (residents must earn no more than 80% of the area’s median income, which is $127,000). And 2. My problem isn’t with affordable housing, it’s with any new housing. The borders of our town aren’t growing. New plots of land aren’t appearing out of nowhere for development. We’re bursting at the seams with people (understandably) wanting to live here, and we’re cramming them into every square acre we can find. Before offering housing, we need to figure out how to educate them, take care of them when they’re sick, make recreational resources available, and ensure our roads can support them. Doing otherwise is like inviting someone to a dinner party when there’s not enough seats, or food to go around. It’s not fair to the guest or to the people already at the table.

I get it. $700,000 in new property tax revenue is tantalizing. But I’m reminded of another Shakespeare adage I actually agree with: “though her father be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be married to hell.” We’re fortunate to live in a town whose natural beauty and quality of life is truly unparalleled, but if we’re not careful, we could develop ourselves out of the very quality of life we moved here for in the first place. We’ll be a Shakespearean husband rolling in wealth, but trapped in a hellish marriage to a housing complex.

Daphne Longfellow
Newburyport resident

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