1000 Achers

For months, the Town of Plymouth has been agog at the prospect of a major film studio setting up shop in Town. The vote on a non-binding referendum, included on the recent municipal ballot, showed voters heavily in favor of the project. And why not. Nearly 1,000 acres of un-used Town-owned land would be added to the tax rolls after being developed for an environmentally friendly purpose with minimal needs for town services. What's wrong with this picture?

As outlined in an article in this morning's Boston Globe, there was indeed something wrong. While the Town was actively marketing the land for development, it was apparently well known that the the land did not have clear title.

According to former long-time Planning Board member, Loring Tripp, "The Town knew the land had title issues for the better part of a decade."

Plymouth Planning Director Lee Hartmann said that officials were aware there were title problems, but didn't appreciate the severity. He went on to say, however, "We never felt comfortable with spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money to deal with the title issues."

The 1,000 acre site is made up of about 7,000 individual parcels, half of which need expensive legal work to clear their legal titles. It is hard to believe that the Town was promoting the land for development knowing clear title could not be provided in a timely fashion. This makes the Town look inept, at best, and perhaps devious in believing that a developer would abide by the cost and delay of the title-clearing process. This puts egg on the Town's face and adds more fuel to the fire for demands for changes to Town government.

But if the average Plymouthean is peeved, imagine how the people at Plymouth Rock Studios feel having already spent a reported $3 million on a site that they now find out is unavailable, at least in a timely and cost-effective manner. On Tuesday night, Studio representatives essentially pulled the plug on the 1,000 acres site, telling the Selectmen that there are still several sites within the Town that might end up with the studio development. After being lead down this path by the Town, the Selectmen might not want to be too quick to pencil in any expected tax revenues from the studio project. Hollywood will probably still establish an East coast beach head, but the "Hollywood East" sign seems unlikely to stay on the Plymouth waterfront.