by David Dahlbacka in All Ages, Beat Reporter, Comprehensive Plan, Development and Zoning, Events, Housing, Neighborhoods and Squares
Posted on October 14, 2012 at 3:49 pm
| October 18, 2012 | ||
| 6:00 pm | to | 9:00 pm |
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Somerville Planning Board Meeting
Thu. Oct. 18 6:00 – 9:00 PM
Somerville City Hall
Aldermanic Chamber
93 Highland Ave.
Somerville MA (map)
Public Notice (PDF)
Agenda (PDF)
This is the regular meeting of the Somerville Planning Board.
Agenda includes the presentation to the Planning Board of the RA/RB Report, which recommends changes to make residential zoning more comprehensible and consistent with the Comprehensive Plan.
The Planning Board holds public hearings, provides recommendations to the Zoning Board of Appeals and Aldermanic committees, and grants permits for special districts, such as Planned Unit Developments. For more information, see:
- Somerville by Design
- The RA/RB Report
- Somerville Planning Board (Agendas and Minutes | Reports and Decisions)
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Beat Report: 10/18/12 Planning Board Meeting
Bottom Line on Top
The Planning Department presented to a joint session of the Planning Board and the BoA Land Use Committee a proposal outlining problems with the current residential RA and RB zoning. Issues included length, vagueness, and internal contradictions. Proposed solution: regulate by building type. Advantage is we can be very specific about what buildings and features are allowed. Less discretion given to ZBA, implying fewer appeals.
Rough Notes
BoA: White, LaFuente, O’Donovan, Taylor
PB: Maroney, Favaloro, Kirylo, Capuano
Proakis, Brad Rawson, planning staff
Intended as a joint session with the BoA Land Use Committee to present the RA and RB Zoning Report.
Land Use committee called by White.
Response to order to study of RA and RB zoning districts.
PB called by Maroney.
Proakis: Introduction to Brad and Dan.
RA and RB report came from before 2010. Impact on development. Zoning dating from 1980. Difficult to do logical things, easy to do not so logical things.
Did statistical analysis of zoning. Was set aside; BOA asked for it last summer, with Comprehensive Plan rollout. Somerville by Design dealing with station area plans and with zoning code overhaul. Meeting Nov. 28-29, feedback session in evening.
Zoning overhaul in response to four challenges:
1. Hard to navigate, vague and contradictory. Have to look in 7 chapters to do RA zoning.
2. RA/RB unpredictable and doesn’t protect character in many places.
3. Zoning near T stops not well suited to smart growth or transit oriented growth.
4. Issues are interdependent. Can’t fix 2 and 3 until 1 is fixed.
RA/RB Report issued in August 2012.
Want transparency in government, best practice, and statistics-based management strategy.
Dan: Only 10% related to solutions. Rest is challenges.
RA/RB covers 80% of lots, 60% of land.
First zoning passed 1925. Very simple. RA was detached one family, two family, four-plex.
RB double house, triple family, six plex.
RA was on the hills, RB on lowlands. RA was high class, RB working class. First ordinance 35 pages.
1960 study added lot of amendments (resulted in 24 pages). Had FAR, conversions to have more families in a house. Side and rear setbacks; off street parking.
1977 zoning update: 83 pages, 3 unit maximums, lot coverage maximums.
1988: 55 pages. Minimum lot size, lot frontage. Lot of density issues.
1990: 216 pages. Height limits, max units per lot, affordable housing.
As amended, now over 400 pages.
Statistical analysis.
High rates of nonconformance. Only 3.47% of lots are conforming. Lots of nonconformance in height, setback ground coverage, FAR, dwellings per lot. Only 22 lots are conforming. Over 99% residential lots are nonconforming.
Nonconforming is a useful tool if you don’t have a plan. Nonconforming is considered detrimental by state law.
Enhancements to nonconforming houses need special permits.
Regulatory tools for residential properties. Zoning can conflict, have procedural complications, and can make contextual building incongruous.
FAR started in 1950 in New York. Ratio of floor space to lot area. Developed for large buildings. Lots could buy and sell air rights.
Not such a good measure for housing. For instance basements and attics. Finishing basement changes FAR. Special permits allow arbitrary changes to FAR for nonconforming to nonconforming. If conforming at limit, can’t do anything.
Density metrics. People perceive crowding. Is influenced by design factors. Metrics are a poor measure of crowding perception.
Projects with same density can produce really different environments. Can have a higher density in smaller space by going up.
Housing demand. Want to preserve RA/RB, enhance around T-stops. If we don’t control this, get infill in RA/RB (shotgun development). If fix this, can push development to transformational districts.
Questions
White: Outside Union Square, the SIP implementation is 2019 or so. Don’t make major zoning changes based on T-stop when 6 years away.
Proakis: Development pressure picks up when construction starts. Value in having changes in place before that. Don’t have all answers now. Want to have more public discussion of solutions. Need not be a single package. Could start with things that are more concerning and more immediate. If organize by district, it’s easier to change it. May be better not to introduce changes all at once.
White: City was most densely populated city. Didn’t want to do that again. 140000 after WWII. Didn’t want to continue this. Things became nonconforming because they expected new developments to maybe be too dense. Didn’t have same pressures. Need to take history into account.
Proakis: Using nonconformity stops floodgates and does some protection. 15 years ago that was what one did. Should we change this? What about new infill development? We get infill at same or greater density. Comes in 8 and 12 unit buildings with affordable housing. Could still require special permits, but ask better questions.
White: Goldhertz decision by state makes it more difficult for Somerville homeowners to do simple things because all nonconforming. For a 2 family house, dormer on one side needs special permit, other side doesn’t.
Taylor: Lot of report makes sense. One issue I’m concerned with is density. Like RA districts, but whole report based on retaining character of neighborhood. What I wanted was to control density in RA and RB. Design and character are important. Use the design review board?
Proakis: Have documentation of neighborhood character. Say people may be adding to lots based on affordable housing. Comp plan wants to put more in transformation district and not in preservation, but have to figure out how to manage. Don’t like situation where we do numbers and the units won’t fit. Go back and forth in special permit discussion. Want better consistency.
Dan: Likely density metrics will be removed. We’ll be more specific about what we expect to see. “Somerville by Design” means “this is what I want”, not “this is unexpected”.
Taylor: Two more concerns. What’s time frame?
Proakis: US HUD gave us a grant on “preparing for transit.” Runs through end of 2013 (end of next year). Hope to spend next 15 months working on this, going to you, going to community. Not necessarily meetings on zoning, but on impacts of changes. May still have station area designs, but RA and RB changes come in first phase.
Taylor: I want to limit development into certain areas. A.S., Inner Belt, and curtail development in neighborhood residential areas. Have to deal with scary factor of Zoning Board of Appeals. We could have the best zoning in the state, but there are always variances. ZBA has to be educated in this, otherwise changes are futile. “Where did that decision come from???”
White: Can we proceed? One solution is less discretion.
Dan: Solutions for the RA/RB districts. Most important thing we can do is clean up definitions and organization. Lot of zoning pretty good.
Idea #1. Regulate by building type. Is built into state law. Must be uniform zoning for each class or kind of structures or uses. We emphasized uses, not structures. There are 297 lines in use table. In last 10 years, cities are adopting building type zoning.
Are different kinds. Mansion apartments, single family, Main Street building, etc. Create different metrics for different building types. Different FAR, density, lot sizes, etc. Regulate by building type in all districts. Can identify building types we want and don’t want. Addresses lack of commercial development. Office versus residential with commercial first floor. Have a lot of examples.
To create classification, need to go out and inventory.
Idea #2. Similar protections of similar building types. A lot of RA/RB buildings are similar. There are neighborhoods with specific character, but can unify districts by applying same metrics for building type. Looking at ways of identifying districts with particular building types. Don’t replace 2 families with 6-plexes.
White: Be concerned with unintended consequences. May have big houses in RA districts. Could convert to multiple condos in same building.
Dan: Not removing SPs for conversions. Can address number of units. House different from triple decker.
Proakis: Some places, we don’t regulate conversions. Can sometimes convert to condo as of right.
White: Lot of housing stock chopped up. We don’t want to make this an even more transient community. Want to make it friendlier for people who stay.
Proakis: Single family home a rare housing type here.
Dan: If planning and code support each other, can add to procedural requirements how the project supports the neighborhood plan
Idea #3. Pattern book of neighborhood character. Go out into neighborhoods and inventory what’s there. We have 20K photos of houses. There are multiple types, about 6 classes, 7 types of porches, etc. Can identify differences between residential and Main Street business building, etc. Certain house type may sit in setbacks in certain way. Can be referenced in review process.
We know which streets have cottages versus triple deckers. “Synoptic survey”. Want to continue this with commercial building types.
Idea #4. Learn from municipal best practices in New England. These things are already being done. Jamestown RI has a pattern book. Great Pond has form based code (Windsor CT). Have become better at writing zoning to protect neighborhoods. Before, suburban codes were applied to cities. Have looked at how to do this.
Proakis: Idea #5. Engage community in discussions about urban design, development, and zoning. Want zoning to be SomerVision approved, community approved. Is it Somerville by discretionary permit? By nonconformity? By what’s happening at the ZBA next week?
Taylor: Don’t intend to knock ZBA. It’s a hard job. We want more clarity.
Proakis: Findings for decision can be very broad. This approach can provide better guidance.
Taylor: Quorum not present.
Maroney: Quick comment. Obvious that you have a vision, very impressive. Will make PB and ZBA lives easier.
Capuano: If we do full overhaul, we need to look at where we came from. Goes back 80 years. Cities made changes based on situation at the time. Need to look at why they made those changes. Do we unify residential districts? Developed over time that RB was along more heavily traveled routes. Want to see concrete example of a pattern. Don’t want to throw out what we have.
Proakis: Don’t want to lose good work. We have existing code and explanatory files. Many things could be improved simply by putting them in the right place. CDD is put in a strange place. Regarding unification of residential, we’ll keep differences in mind. RC is a separate issue. RC appears more in enhancement areas. RA is 2-1/2 story, RB is 3 stories. Can build dormers on RB that you can’t build on an RA. Don’t have all the answers. Keep an open mind.
Favaloro: Involved with 1988 and 1990 changes. Intrigued, but “show me”. We’re used to doing things a certain way. Takes a while to change. Nonconforming use is a tool. What replaces it? I hope it will be good.
Proakis: We will show you more.
White: I’ll wrap up. It’s a novel approach. When I started, it would be rare to see an alderman at a PB or ZBA meeting. Now we’re there a lot. See the pressures. This approach may take away a lot of discretion. Main concern is expectations of neighbors. Can have changes in neighborhood. Do you have color code for each lot?
Rawson: Can color code in GIS.
White: Color code all places; give hash mark for residential exemptions. Keep in mind we don’t want to upset resident homeowners.
To Land Use committee: put this on file, you send us new communications with different item numbers.
Maroney: Adjourn PB.
@7:30 PM
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