Regis College made plans to extend its campus by adding a facility for senior citizens which was claimed to further the College’s goal of intergenerational and life-long learning. The planned facility, dubbed the Regis East Project, was to include eight buildings, four of which contained classrooms, three libraries, faculty and administrative offices, dining areas, physical facility center, child care facility, adult care and training/educational facility and a woodworking shop. The remaining four buildings were to house the residents of the Project. The residents of the Project would average 75 years of age and would be accepted into the program after an application and interview. Residency would require taking two academic courses per semester and a one-time entrance fee of approximately $700,000 to $1 million, ninety percent of which would be returned to the resident upon their leaving the Project.
Regis College sought to have the Project determined exempt from the dimensional provisions of the Town of Weston Zoning By-Law by claiming it fell under the “educational use” exemption, and therefore subject only to reasonable regulations. After reviewing case law defining “educational” use, the Massachusetts Land Court determined that the primary purpose of the Project was not educational, and therefore did not fall under the exemption. The court reasoned that, although educational use can involve non-traditional education and residential accommodations, the question centers on whether the dominant purpose of the Project is educational. When the components of the Project were viewed as a whole, since the cost of monthly service were much higher than similar classes for the elderly, the size of the residential units far exceeded that of traditional dormitory housing, and two-thirds of the Project would be dedicated to housing, the court determined that the educational component seemed subordinate to Regis’s desire to provide elderly housing as a source of revenue for the college.
Regis College v. Town of Weston, 2010 WL 10010 (Mass.Land Ct. 1/04/2010)
