By Adam Swift
The Planning Board unanimously voted to recommend a MBTA 3A Communities Act plan to the town council at a special meeting held at the senior center on Tuesday night.
The town council was scheduled to take up consideration of that recommendation at a special meeting of its own scheduled for Thursday night.
The compliance plan would establish 3A overlay districts at Seal Harbor Road and Governor’s Point. The town would also be able to count the town’s Central Business District as a mixed-use offset in order to meet the zoning for 882 housing units required by the state under 3A.
During Tuesday night’s meeting, several residents and town officials raised concerns about 3A in general, as well as the potential impact the plan would have on the Governor’s Point and Seal Harbor developments and the Central Business District.
Eric Halvorsen of RKG Consultants reviewed the compliance plan and Planning Board Chair Christopher Boyce reviewed the role and charge the planning board has had ro recommend a compliance plan to the town council.
“In terms of statistics, we have about 26 acres, 23.8 net acres, of unit capacity in those two districts of 669 units,” said Halvorsen. “That is zoning capacity, nothing to do with development, just what it would be zoned for, at a density of 28.2 dwelling units per acre. As we have talked about before, the 669 units is below the 882 that the town needs for the MBTA guidelines, so we’re able to use the Central Business District as a mixed-use offset to pick up the additional 221 units to a total of 890 units.”
Boyce noted that while 3A would require only 15 acres of zoning in the town, increasing the acreage reduces the unit count so it comes close to matching what is already in the districts.
“The 3A zoning that we are talking about and that we are putting before you really only covers Seal Harbor and Governor’s Park,” said Halversen. “The CBD continues to use the zoning the town adopted well before 3A was even a thing, and that will continue to be in place.”
Halvorsen noted that at a previous meeting, Boyce and the town manager had raised some concerns about the RPM Fitness not conforming to what people know as the Governor’s Park area.
“To address public comment about that, we removed the RPM Fitness parcel from the overlay district,” he said.
In terms of meeting the modeling and the guidelines of the 3A law, Halvorsen said he believed RKG was presenting a fully compliant scenario.
“We did work with the town manager’s office to submit a pre-application review from the Executive Office of Housing and Liveable Communities ,” he said. “That review came back a few weeks ago. I’ve been a part of seeing a number of these letters in the communities that we are working in; their comments were extremely minor, so I would say we have a compliance scenario here.”
Under the recommended compliance plan, Seal Harbor and Governor’s Point would be considered subdistricts underneath a multi-family overlay district (mfod), Halvorsen said.
“The MFOD is a multi-family housing overlay, housing would then be permitted as of right, but there would still be site plan review by the planning board so the applicants would still be before you with the site plan requirements, just as they would be today,” said Halvorsen. “The only thing you would not be able to do is that there would be no special permit provision here. If any new housing was to come before you in those two districts, they would need to provide at least 10 percent 10 percent of those units as deed-restricted affordable housing to households at 80 percent of the Area Median Income.”
Halvorsen said he believed the impact of the compliance plan would be extremely low to absolutely nothing because it would be put over existing housing.
“The zoning parameters that we are recommending for your consideration actually have a lower unit capacity number than the number of units that currently exist today,” he said. “If something were to happen to those buildings … under the overlay at least, they would be built back with fewer units than exist today.”
One change that was discussed pertaining to the town’s existing zoning bylaws pertains to the CBD.
Following the state pre-application review, Halvorsen said RKG was recommending that the planning board consider removing the special permit provision for payment in lieu of parking provision in the CBD and having it fall under the site plan review.
“You would still have oversight over that, it just wouldn’t be a discretionary permit, it would be through site plan review,” he said.
Boyce said the proposed compliance plan does address some issues, such as the RPM Fitness parcel, that have been raised in past meetings.
“We’re a recommending body in this case, the town council will have a vote on the plan itself, or on yes or no to 3A,” said Boyce. “Our mission is to recommend a plan, so we are not the body for yes or no to 3A, I think we made that clear. We have absolutely through this long process heard everybody’s comments, heard the concerns from the public, share those concerns, Winthrop is a very dense town.”
Boyce said there are already areas in town that meet the requirements of what the state is trying to outline for multi-family housing.
“Our zoning doesn’t reflect that, those projects were approved through special permit or otherwise,” said Boyce. “So while the zoning in that district may not be the housing density that exists there, those projects were permitted and allowed to go through.”
The recommended compliance plan is an opportunity to meet the zoning density requirements in an existing district, Boyce said.
With the CBD, Boyce said the town would get credit for zoning it has already done. The CBD calls for ground floor commercial space with residential units above.
“Ultimately, if this plan moves forward, it is codified in our zoning text,” said Boyce. “The only areas that you will see in offset outlined are Seal Harbor Road and Governor’s Park. There will not be a state offset for 3A in the CBD.”
Boyce said the town is getting credit for those CBD units, and the town will make some provisional changes to zoning in the parking in lieu of fee.
“Nothing that can’t be build today in town would be built or developed through this plan,” said Boyce. “CBD zoning has been in place, four stories, mixed use, residential over retail, has been in place for over a decade.”
Boyce noted that 3A and zoning is a complex issue throughout every municipality in the state.
“Zoning is not easy to understand,” he said. “Zoning overlays are a concern, state overreach as a separate issue is a concern. This is a plan that we feel we have learned the law, we have dug into the zoning requirement.
“We’ve presented a plan that we feel, if the town chooses, is a path to compliance to keep us eligible for grants that have no real impact on the town.”
While not an official public hearing, the planning board did allow public comment at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Several residents praised the planning board for its efforts in listening to the public and working on the plan over the past year. However, several said they still have concerns about how the plan could impact the Seal Harbor and Governor’s Point condominiums and potentially, the CBD.
While the planning board does not have oversight over whether the town moves forward with 3A compliance, several residents also spoke out in opposition to 3A in general.
“I want to begin by acknowledging the work that this board has done, it’s been a long task and you are doing your job,” said Seal Harbor resident Carol Facella. “However, it is a sad day for the Commonwealth when we are being forced to comply with the law that ultimately, I believe, will be found unconstitutional, depriving citizens and treating us differently because we live in a zone versus not in a zone, taking our rights of property away, taking our right to be treated equally and fairly under the law.”
As a Seal Harbor resident, Facella said she would be under state controlled, rather than locally controlled, zoning and would not be able to have a voice in the zoning.
Cassie Witthaus asked what would happen if the town council votes down the plan recommended by the planning board.
“Do you have a better plan that is less impactful in your back pocket?” Witthaus asked. “Would this process look the same and we magically have the density to show, or would there then be more impacts to other neighborhoods that might have less capacity than we have at these apartment and condominium buildings?”
Boyce said it has taken a long time for the planning board and the consultant to get to the current plan.
“I think this is the least impactful,” said Boyce. “We studied other areas, the waterfront district, we don’t have another plan waiting in the wings, we’d really have to begin again.”
Kathleen Cappuccio thanked the planning board for working hard on its charge to recommend a compliance plan, but said her biggest issue with 3A is that the law has changed without legislative due process a number of times since it was first introduced in 2021.
“That’s my biggest problem with 3A is we’re being asked to comply with the law, that literally we can sign on the dotted line today and it changes tomorrow,” she said. “Past behavior is the predictor of future behavior, so we don’t know what we are agreeing to.”