MONTAGUE — In a meeting to garner community feedback on redevelopment of the former Farren Care Center property, the Planning Board and its zoning consultant presented three potential designs while weighing housing, open space and commercial space for retail or service businesses as key development factors.

Innes Associates, the town’s consultant funded through a $62,000 award from the Community Planning Grant Program, is working with Montague officials and residents to rezone the 8-acre lot on Montague City Road, which the town acquired in June 2024 after the long-term care facility’s April 2021 closure.

After community members expressed interest in the site’s use for housing and retail spaces at the last engagement session in April, Innes Associates Chief Resilience Officer Paula Ramos Martinez presented three proposed plans for the area — each varying in their ratio of affordable housing to open and retail spaces. She said that given the lot’s location near a rail trail and a Franklin Regional Transit Authority (FRTA) bus stop, she planned to design the multi-use area in a way that’s easily accessible by bicycle or bus.

“From the Farren site to Turners Falls, it can be 10 minutes biking, or obviously walking it’s a little bit more difficult, but in 40 minutes we can walk there,” she noted. “We also wanted to bring the possibility of a diverse set of residence types.”

Outlining the first design scenario, Ramos Martinez explained the plan would include mainly residential structures containing one to three apartments per building, with no community center and only one retail space in an existing development that faces Montague City Road. She said this design option’s open space would consist of a small green buffer zone between the site’s back end and the rail trail.

The second scenario, Ramos Martinez said, would include mixed housing with four to six apartments located in smaller buildings, some medium-size buildings containing more than six units each, and one or two mixed commercial-residential structures alongside Montague City Road. The second design would also feature affordable housing and one central community green space.

“This came from the idea of having one green space in the center that is shared with the community,” Ramos Martinez explained. “When we have that green area in the middle, the parking gets scattered all around, so it gets harder to fit all the residential units in an efficient way.”

The third scenario, Ramos Martinez added, includes some “extra small” residential buildings containing one to three apartments, along with smaller buildings containing four to six units each, and medium-size residential structures with more than six units each. The third option also contains three large mixed-use commercial-residential buildings with multiple green spaces scattered around the property.

“The plan is to divide that public space into pocket parks that are distributed along the main streets,” Ramos Martinez explained. “The middle streets will be shared and mostly pedestrian.”

After presenting the three scenarios, Ramos Martinez explained the criteria Innes Associates representatives will use to decide between the options. Before a poll was shared with those attending Tuesday’s virtual meeting, she said the designs will be analyzed according to their housing affordability, public spaces and benefits, community spaces, neighborhood services and businesses, economic value to the town and neighborhood character.

Reading the results of the polls, Innes Associates President Emily Innes said the majority of respondents selected affordable housing as the most important criterion, with public benefits taking second place and economic value being third most important to community members.

Fifty-six percent of survey respondents chose the third design scenario as being most reflective of the development goals, while 38% chose the second design option and 6% chose the first one.

“Obviously not everybody from the town of Montague is on this call, so we use this as a snapshot of what people in the room were thinking. We use it as a guide to say, ‘Oh, maybe we should explore this while we’re doing the zoning,’” Innes said, explaining how the poll results are used for planning. “It’s very helpful for us to understand what people are thinking when they join these meetings.”

Designs for the former Farren lot are expected to go before the Planning Board and Selectboard in September, with the goal of finalizing plans by October.

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.