Company spokesperson Kevin O'Reilly says that Makepeace has met with Plymouth's planning board to talk about concepts, but he says the Cranberry Country Coalition, the group formed to oppose Makepeace's development plans for the 6,000 acres it owns here and in Wareham and Carver, "doesn't want to hear about concepts. It's interesting that they are opposed to a project that hasn't been presented. They want us to give them the land."
O'Reilly is referring to an offer made to Makepeace by a group of federal and state conservation groups to purchase a large portion of its property in this area. O'Reilly says that because of the "form and substance and timing and amount," the offer was rejected. The amount of the offer was not disclosed. "They think a strong PR push by the conservation groups will force Makepeace back to the table to accept the offer that was rejected," he says. "They keep saying there was a second offer. If a new offer came up, we would look at it. But there was no second offer."
Susan Peterson, spokesperson for the Coalition, concedes that there has not yet been a formal second offer. "Technically he's right," she says, referring to O'Reilly. "There has not yet been a formal offer but the Conservation Partnership has been meeting with Makepeace. There are ongoing discussions."
Makepeace had originally tried to develop its entire 6,000-acre parcel at once by creating a master plan and developing new zoning bylaws but working with three towns at once proved to be too difficult. O'Reilly points out that it was not the Coalition that prevented the company from implementing its master plan for the region but we "saw that the bylaw we had written was too much for the towns to handle. We thought the regional plan was an opportunity but these are three towns and three diverse communities."
The company chose to develop its land here first because, notes O'Reilly, they have "a professional planning staff here and the zoning regulations in place." In its meeting with the planning board here, Makepeace discussed what the company could do with its parcel under the current zoning regulations, which is building 400 homes on three-acre lots. Under the town's recreational development district and rural densities, Makepeace can cluster homes and build a golf course. "We want to work with the town and come up with some ideas," says O'Reilly. "We want to start a discussion."
O'Reilly contends that the Coalition doesn't want to hear about ideas. "They don't want to see anything done on the land," he says. "That's their goal."
But Peterson insists that the Coalition's objection is to developing the land that has special resources and special characteristics. "The Makepeace company owns a lot of land," she says. "Some of it is appropriate to development and there is no objection to developing that land. The objection is to developing the land that has pristine rivers, coastal plain ponds and rare and endangered species. We want to pay them for the land so we can preserve this."
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