Lexington’s postcard-perfect center and leafy neighborhoods are suddenly sprouting construction fencing and steel framing, and a lot of longtime residents are wondering how it all happened so fast. What was sold as a forward-looking push for more housing has turned into a bare-knuckle fight over whether the town signed up for more growth than it can handle, and whether local character is getting traded in for six-story buildings and packed parking lots.
As reported by The Boston Globe, Lexington is on track to add roughly 1,600 apartments and condominiums that are under construction, approved, or somewhere in the approval pipeline after a sweeping 2023 rezoning under the state’s MBTA Communities law. The Globe notes that the original plan rezoned about 227 acres for buildings up to six stories and was expected to yield hundreds of units over a decade. Residents later voted to shrink the rezoned area and tighten the rules, and that rollback, approved at a special Town Meeting, has kicked off a wave of legal, political and planning fallout across town.
The first real jolt came with hearings over the 89 Bedford Street condo project, where neighbors warned that shoehorning a new complex into the site would aggravate flooding problems and funnel dangerous traffic onto small residential streets. Local reporting by the Lexington Observer documented residents’ testimony about repeat basement floods and tight sightlines at the site’s driveways. Those planning-board showdowns helped crystallize a broader fear that uses allowed “by right” under the new zoning left abutters with almost no leverage to push back.
Where the new units are being built
Town records show that the action is not confined to one corner of Lexington. A 312-unit complex on Hartwell Avenue already has a building permit, a 30-unit condominium building at 89 Bedford Street has been permitted, and developers have filed for hundreds more units along Concord Avenue and Militia Drive. According to the Town of Lexington development page, several of these projects now carry building permits or formal approvals and include inclusionary-unit commitments written into their plans. Taken together, the pipeline has yanked Lexington from building almost no multifamily housing in the prior decade to juggling dozens of multifamily proposals at once.
A Split In Town
The building boom has opened a clear fault line among residents and local officials. Some argue that rapid growth is a necessary response to the region’s housing crunch, while others see an oversized experiment that could strain schools, roads, and municipal services, not to mention the town’s carefully curated look and feel. “Of course we want to be measured about our approach to growth,” a Town Meeting member told The Boston Globe, as younger residents and would-be buyers countered that building more homes is the only realistic way they can afford to stay in Lexington. That tension helped fuel a citizen petition and the subsequent Town Meeting vote to shrink the MBTA overlay zone and layer in more local review.
Regional Context And Legal Stakes
Lexington’s busy construction calendar has not gone unnoticed across Greater Boston. An analysis by Boston Indicators found that the town is at the front of the MBTA Communities pack, with 1,286 units spread across 12 projects, a tally that helps explain why the political backlash has been so sharp. The analysis appears in a January report by Boston Indicators. At the same time, the state has been ramping up enforcement of the MBTA Communities law, and the Attorney General filed suits this winter against several municipalities that have not come into compliance, according to a release from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.
What's Next
For now, Lexington is trying to walk a narrow line: keep projects moving through the usual permitting channels, respond to neighbors’ detailed concerns about traffic and stormwater, and still meet the letter of the state law without overwhelming local services. The town’s Planning Board is posting agendas, packets, and project updates on the municipal website as hearings roll on, according to the Town of Lexington. Residents can expect a steady diet of site-plan revisions, traffic and drainage fixes, and, inevitably, more political skirmishes that will decide whether this era is remembered as a careful model of compliance or a cautionary tale other towns study from a safe distance.
