LRCD Files Complaint Against the Town of Ashland

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LRCD Files Complaint Against the Town of Ashland Over Denial of Mill Pond Applications
Lakes Region Community Developers (LRCD) filed an appeal in Grafton County Superior Court, seeking to reverse the recent denial by the Ashland Planning Board of LRCD’s subdivision and site plan applications for the Village at Mill Pond housing development. In the same complaint, LRCD filed claims for damages based on the Town’s violations of LRCD’s right to substantive due process under State and Federal law and based on the Town’s violations of the Federal Fair Housing Act.
The Village at Mill Pond, proposed at 35 Mill Pond Lane in Ashland, is designed to offer 76 units of affordable rental housing, as well as four single-family lots to be developed in partnership with Pemi Valley Habitat for Humanity.
“There are news stories almost every week about how average people can no longer afford to live in New Hampshire,” said LRCD Executive Director Carmen Lorentz. “We need 3,000 more units of affordable housing in the Lakes Region by 2040 to achieve a more balanced housing market. The Mill Pond project is part of the solution, and we remain focused on our mission to create affordable housing opportunities for people who live and work in the Lakes Region.”
The 86-page complaint details the Planning Board’s improper conduct during a 12-month long review of LRCD’s applications, including:

1. Forcing LRCD to follow an ever-shifting, extremely cumbersome process to obtain commentary from Town Department heads.
2. Failing to timely notice the applications following their formal submission, and refusing to schedule a special meeting in order to comply with the statutory timeframe within which the Planning Board was required to render a completeness determination.
3. Inaccurately accusing LRCD of failing to provide information and of hiding information.
4. Refusing to open the public hearing on the applications following the Board’s completeness determination, and refusing to allow LRCD to make a presentation on the applications until nearly three months after it submitted them.
5. Repeatedly discussing the applications at meetings during which no public hearing was noticed, including on one occasion engaging in an in-depth discussion with a third-party engineer regarding the applications without notice to LRCD and despite LRCD having asked the Board to refrain from engaging in this practice.
6. Allowing a member of the Selectboard to make presentations advocating against the project, including at one meeting where LRCD was not present because the project was not scheduled to be discussed.
7. Asserting the property was not zoned Commercial, which allows for multi-family use by right, when the property is, in fact, zoned Commercial.
8. Denying a waiver that LRCD requested despite the Town’s own third-party engineer opining that the waiver request was reasonable.
9. Withholding documentation relative to the project from LRCD.
10. Allowing the Town Manager to speak against the project during a public hearing on the applications.
11. After a 12-month review, suddenly identifying a provision of the Town’s Site Plan Regulations which LRCD had indisputably complied with, and inaccurately using that provision to deny the applications.
12. Including inaccurate information in both the meeting minutes and the Notice of Decision in relation to the denial. 

 The complaint was assigned case number 215-2025-CV-00347 and was transferred to the Hillsborough County Superior Court, Northern District Land Use Review Docket.