Instead of smart growth and conservation as promised in 2008, Makepeace is doing industrial sand mining and large solar
Our state “Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act” (MEPA) law is supposed to help minimize and mitigate “Damage to the Environment” from big development projects.
In the early 2000s, seeking a more profitable business model AD Makepeace, the largest landowner in Eastern Massachusetts, announced it would develop its approximately 6,500 acres of land it owns in Southeastern Mass, primarily Plymouth, Carver and Wareham.
Makepeace called this its “Tihonet Mixed Use Development” or “TMUD” project.
In 2007, under MEPA Makepeace negotiated a “Special Review Procedure” for the TMUD project — environmental review “light”. In exchange, Makepeace promised to put land in conservation, develop the rest of the land as a model of “smart growth and open space” and include the public in the process with quarterly meetings. It has reneged on it all. The plan is for a 20 to 30 year “build out” of the 6,500 acres.
The TMUD area is shown on the map below:
Source: Google Earth Pro, Oct. 2021
Fifteen years later, in 2022, the TMUD is a blighted, strip mined industrial landscape of mining operations and industrial ground mounted solar projects — not “smart growth” and “open space.”
Makepeace hasn’t donated all the required land to conservation. It sold some to the state and is claiming this is a donation that meets the company’s requirements. Makepeace is double-dipping and using the same conservation acres for different projects – Plymouth’s 200-acre strip mine, the Red Brook Development, and projects in Carver.