PEABODY — Mayor Edward A. Bettencourt, Jr. is set to seek nearly $8 million in funding from the City Council on Thursday to purchase two parcels of land on Sherwood Avenue and Spring Pond Road that comprise roughly 80 acres of open space. The purchase would prevent a developer from constructing housing on the site.
In a surprising move, Bettencourt announced during his State of the City address in January that the city had reached an agreement in principle to purchase the land, which sits adjacent to Spring Pond, Cedar Grove Cemetery, and the Meadow at Peabody Golf Course. Bettencourt released a video statement Monday detailing the intention behind the purchase. He essentially said he did so to prevent a developer from building hundreds of units of housing on the site, which is on the Peabody-Salem and Peabody-Lynn lines.
“While development creates new homes, businesses, jobs, and revenue, it also brings traffic, congestion, a strain on our city services, and depletion of our open space,” Bettencourt said in the video. “It’s just something I did not feel comfortable doing.”
“We believe this is the right move for the city to purchase this property, for the quality of life of our South Peabody residents, and really for the whole city of Peabody,” he added.
He noted that the purchase represents the single biggest land acquisition by the city since the purchase of the land that is now home to Brooksby Farm.
The proposed development would have connected to existing housing being constructed on Marlborough Road in Salem, Bettencourt said, potentially disrupting what he described as a “quiet, dead-end” neighborhood on Sherwood Avenue and Glen Drive.
Bettencourt said he would not seek funding from the city’s operating budget to finance the purchase, instead utilizing a combination of community preservation funds, state grants, and proceeds from the city’s recreation enterprise fund.
What is not included in the video, however, is any plan for what the city intends to do with the open space. Bettencourt said he would present additional details before the council on Thursday, but did not specify what those might be.
Bettencourt may simply seek to keep the property as undeveloped open space, as he repeatedly cited the city’s open space as one of its defining and most important features.
