Low Impact Development implemented at Legacy Farms, Hopkinton

1. Low Impact Development

2. 733 acres of former Weston Nurseries
property
Partnership with developer
Agreement on the type and style of
development
Agreement on open space – 500 acres
Sensitive site - culturally and environmentally
Design guidelines and low impact
development

3. Host Community Agreement item #1:
“The project shall be based on low impact design
principles, a set of strategies that seek to maintain
natural systems during the development process by
creating a development that, to the extent feasible,
is integrated into the landscape and not imposed
on it.”
Signed May 1, 2008

4. Zoning Bylaw Amendment – Open Space Mixed
Use Development (OSMUD) Overlay District –
adopted May 8, 2008
OSMUD established two-step approval process:
1. Master Plan Special Permit for entire 733 acres –
including Design Guidelines
2. Site Plan Review for Development Projects
Maximum 940 dwelling units; 450,000 sq. ft.
commercial space

5. Dated May 13, 2010
Adopted Design Guidelines – attached to
MPSP
Design Guidelines require LID – two
principles:
 Design with topography and land forms in mind;
 Incorporate stormwater practices consistent with
LID techniques, in addition to DEP Stormwater Best
Management Practices

6. Street and Driveway Design:
 Street design and layout shall complement the character of the
District and its land uses by following existing topography,
limiting site disturbance, avoiding environmentally sensitive
locations and minimizing cuts and fills as much as possible. The
Planning Board may consider flexibility in the street design and
layout in order to accomplish the design intent of the District, the
MPSP and these Guidelines. Flexibility in street design which is
consistent with the intent of the District could result in differences
to standards utilized elsewhere in Hopkinton with regard to street
width, length, maximum grades, curbing and shoulder widths…
 It is the intent that the Major Street be designed in accordance
with the standards contained in the Subdivision Rules and
Regulations, with the exception that it is the intent that waivers
will be granted by the Planning Board in order to utilize the
standards contained in these Guidelines instead.

7. Public Way
Minor Residential Drive
(10-50 units)

8. Site Plan Criteria includes:
1. Site Plan must comply with Design
Guidelines (LID)
2. Site Plan must comply with the MPSP (DG &
HCA)

9. Waivers granted from Subdivision Regulation
provisions to comply with LID principles:
 Curbing
 Maximum grade
 Construction of road & infrastructure on 25% or
greater slopes, to locate road in previously
disturbed areas
 Catch basin & manhole locations
 Drainage system – swales and other LID techniques
to be used
 Boardwalk sidewalk instead of paved sidewalk in
one area

10. Alta Legacy Farms – 240 apartment units –
nearly complete
Pulte Homes – 275 duplex and simplex units
– under construction
Retirement Residence – construction begins
summer 2014
282.80 acres open space

12. Minimized grade changes

18. Series of three infiltration basins between apartment buildings and
wetland/pond
Infiltration basins