Toll Brothers is pressing ahead with a plan to turn Plainville’s Heather Hill Country Club into a 384-unit, 55-plus housing community, swapping fairways and tee boxes for a dense senior neighborhood. The long-running 27-hole course could soon rank among the town’s largest recent housing projects, after the proposal cleared an infrastructure snag that had kept it in the rough for years.
As reported by Boston Business Journal, Toll Brothers is driving the redevelopment and has updated site and permitting documents this spring as it steers the project back toward construction. The company has other communities in Massachusetts in its pipeline as well.
Permits Clear a Major Hurdle
The Plainville Select Board signed off on the project’s water and sewer connection application at an April 27 meeting, a step both town officials and the developer said was critical before any large-scale building could move forward. As reported by North TV, that approval takes a key infrastructure constraint off the table; separate town records show the Planning Board extended earlier site-plan and special-permit decisions for a senior village at Heather Hill.
What the Plan Would Look Like
The current design calls for roughly 217 buildings holding a total of 384 units, centered on a clubhouse with a pool, outdoor courts, and a web of walking trails and open space. Local coverage following the project’s comeback notes that the proposal first won approval in 2019 but stayed stuck until the town began confronting its water and sewer capacity issues, according to GolfNewsRI.
Local Reaction and Town Finances
Neighbors and open-space advocates are not exactly cheering from the gallery. They have circulated a petition and raised alarms about traffic, environmental impacts, and the loss of green space. On the other side of the ledger, the town expects water and sewer connection fees from the project to bring in more than $3 million in revenue, according to North TV, even as opponents continue to gather signatures on a Change.org petition.
What Comes Next
Toll Brothers still has to secure final site-plan approval, Conservation Commission sign-offs, and building permits before any ground is broken. Those hearings will keep showing up on the Plainville Planning Board and Select Board agendas as the developer advances its engineering work and mitigation plans, according to town records. With nearby streams and wetland areas in the mix, state riverfront and wetlands rules are expected to play a notable role in the review process, consistent with prior DEP dockets for nearby parcels and stream crossings.
