Wareham, MA-based Makepeace is the state's largest private landowner, with 12,000 acres in southeastern Massachusetts. The company is also the largest cranberry developer, but over the last few years as the cranberry business has struggled and the value of the company's real estate has shot up the company has started to focus on large-scale land planning. A year ago, the firm proposed a massive residential complex for 6,000 acres in Plymouth, Carver and Wareham. But the plan met with fierce opposition and the company dropped the idea and returned a few months later with a scaled-back version for 1,800 acres.

That plan has yet to go through the state's environmental review process and the company has been working with the town's planning board, but in the meantime Makepeace has begun to sell 60 acres of the 1,800-acre site, an amount that would not normally trigger a state review process. The Conservation Law Foundation has appealed to the state's environmental affairs office, stating that it should "order the A.D. Makepeace Co. to present its development plans for a vast residential/golf community in Plymouth for environmental review before proceeding with development on a piecemeal basis the company."

According to Bennet Heart, a senior attorney with the Foundation, the sale of these individual lots is "improper segmentation. They are picking off smaller pieces that don't trigger an environmental review." Heart contends that even the smaller pieces should trigger a review because they have beachfront access rights to Halfway Pond, which is an important resource for a number of endangered species in the area. Further, Heart points out that it is appropriate for the state to review the whole site before it gets broken up because, he says, "if its concluded that some of the land is environmentally sensitive it will impact which sites get developed and which don't. If Makepeace starts developing here and there the state loses its ability to do that. It's a missed opportunity and damage could occur."

Calls to Makepeace were not returned by press time but the company has said that it wants to sell these lots to generate quick cash. Once it gets involved in a planning process for the whole site, the appeals process will be time consuming. The company has been negotiating with the Southeastern Massachusetts Conservation Partnership, which wants to acquire the company's 6,000 acres here, or at least buy the development rights to the site. Those talks have recently broken down but Makepeace says it is still open to working with the group, which is a coalition of public and private land conservation organizations.

The state has told Makepeace it has until Sept. 9 to respond to the petition.