Arlington’s Top Landowners By Zone

While Arlington is primarily a residential town, there are plenty of business and even industrial districts too. But who owns what kind of land - that is, in which zoning districts or areas?

Top Landowners In Arlington

We charted the top 10 landowners by size in each type of zone. For example, in zone B4 - Vehicular Oriented Business, the Mirak family’s various auto properties comprise 13% of all B4-zoned land in Arlington by size, with Noyes Realty LLLC coming in next with 9.8%, and so on. The percentage of All Others (51.1% in B4) is then shown in black for all other smaller holders combined in each zone’s chart.

See Business districts, Industrial or Other districts, Residential districts, or Data Sources. Not shown is the Transportation district (MBTA, mainly) or W/WATER areas (like Spy pond or the Res). Note that the MU - Multi-Use and PUD - Planned Unit Development zones are effectively only single owners. Note, unlike our earlier comparison of the top landowners in Arlington, these charts include the Town of Arlington itself in calculations.

Business Districts

B1 - Neighborhood Office

B2 - Neighborhood Business

B2A - Major Business

B3 - Village Business

B4 - Vehicular Oriented Business

B5 - Central Business

Industrial Or Other Districts

I - Industrial

MU - Multi-Use

OS - Open Space

PUD - Planned Unit Development

Residential Districts

R0 - Large Lot Single Family

R1 - Single Family

R2 - Two Family

R3 - Three Family

R4 - Town House

R5 - Apartments Low Density

R6 - Apartments Med Density

R7 - Apartments High Density

Data Sources

All figures are derived from official data sources from the Town’s GIS department using the lot size of all parcels. Using a simple Ruby programming script, we have analyzed the core ArlingtonMA_Assessor table of all owners of land in town to sum up overall ownership records. Since many commercial properties are owned by trusts or LLC corporations, we have also consolidated beneficial ownership in selected cases for some major property owners in town. Entries in UPPERCASE are exact parcel owners directly in Assessor rolls; entries In Mixed Case are beneficial owners of various companies or realty trusts that we have combined. Note that our beneficial owner research may be incomplete or inaccurate depending on actual ownership structures.

Property size percentage of a zone is calculated against a summing up of all property LOT_SIZE within a zone. Note that comparisons against the separate ArlingtonMA_Zoning file don’t work (not sure why; we’ve asked the GIS department for comment).