Those who fear Newton becoming the next Brookline can surely relate to the panic setting in at this nearby community. (Be sure and read the comments)
via: Universal Hub
by Greg Reibman | May 19, 2015 | Newton | 31 comments
Those who fear Newton becoming the next Brookline can surely relate to the panic setting in at this nearby community. (Be sure and read the comments)
via: Universal Hub
September 13, 2023
Men's Crib September 13, 2023 5:20 am
Greg, even Cambridge residents objected to a Dunkin’ Donuts opening in Harvard Square, because of concerns about, among other things, trash and the decor (orange and pink). I would note, however, that the only place you could get coffee on the regional “shelter in place” day after the Marathon bombing was DDs. Dover and Newton do not have a monopoly on snootiness.
Exhibit A.
@Ted: Thanks for that link. Interesting to note that they got them to use paper coffee cups back in 1996.
It seems that solid waste usually flows downhill, but in this case the Dover resident quoted in this article indicates an upriver flow when he states:
IALC! (I am laughing convulsively!)
@Sallee: That quote is priceless!
I know I’m looking forward to stopping in Dover on my way from the Highlands to Needham Street each morning.
Thirty years ago, my roommate in Newtonville spotted a letter in the Newton Tab (or maybe it was the Newton Graphic back then) about development on Needham St. The letter writer was warning about the ‘Framinghamification” of Newton.
This year I’ve heard a few worries about about Newton turning into Brookline.
Frankly, my biggest worry is the Atholification of Newton 🙂
Greg, I am surprised Cambridge wasn’t pushing Dunkin Donuts to buy Fair Trade Coffee, too.
Dover need not fear becoming like Needham or Newton as long as the horses outnumber humans there.
Sherborn is also concerned about an influx of refugees from Dover should this DD be allowed to open.
Despite having 4 DDs on my regular morning Newton -> Wellesley route, I too am looking forward to stopping in Dover because I feel the coffee would just be better there, somehow. BTW – where is Dover?
If I lived in Dover, I wouldn’t be concerned about the increase in traffic or parking I’d be concerned about the increase of sugar.
…as well as the Marbleheadization.
Greg, by inducing people to respond to this thread, you have succeeded in showing that MINBYism is not unique to Newton. There appears to be two types of residents in many cities / towns / villages: those who move and live there because they enjoy the way it is, and those who move to a place and want to change (evolve) it to what they would like it to be. As long as there is this split in mindsets, there will be disagreement, (which is good for increased blog visits and comments).
@Patrick – There are also two other kinds of people. Those that bristle whenever folks in other places make disparaging remarks about their town and those that shrug it off and ignore it.
There’s also two other kinds of people, those who like to look down on their neighboring towns and those that don’t.
There sure are a lot of two kinds of people out there.
OK, let’s look at the donut, instead of the hole! We have 40B to deal with as a response to “snob zoning” and that was, as I recall, based on something called “the Dover Amendment,” which I believe is 40A. I don’t know the evolution of the State regulations, but I fear that if Dover denies a Dunkin Donuts in its town center, then the State will respond with a regulation that donut purveyors be allowed to by-pass local zoning laws to establish their points of sale every 35 feet from human occupancy of any kind (including cars) and we may see them on the median strips of Route 9 or on our back lawns.(Sarcasm squared).
Patrick: you are right: It’s human nature to like what we have chosen and to resist change that is not of our choice. But, the image of a Dover resident bemoaning the fact that Dover would be impaired by becoming more like Needham or Newton with the addition of a Dunkin’ is still most amusing and that is irony. It’s all about scale and massing. Our City is bigger and so are our pressures and problems.
After further (read: any) research, it turns out that Sherborn already has a DD (and let us not speak of Medfield). They’re falling like dominoes out there.
Mr. Reilly, given that number of Athols in Newton already, I think the process is well underway.
Well, the merits of Dunkin’ Donuts aside, if urbanization means having somewhere in the neighborhood to eat other than my own kitchen, I say bring it on. I’m eagerly awaiting the opening “soon” of Bottega Toscana around the corner on Centre St. in Newton Centre, and in a few months Sycamore (fabulous) is expected to open an Asian restaurant on the same block. Liberation from the kitchen is at hand!
At least Newton isn’t vying for being the next “Boston’s Brooklyn” because it seems that spot’s been filled according the Boston Globe.
“Watertown is going to become a much cooler place. We look at it almost like it’s going to be Boston’s Brooklyn.”
@Sallee – Actually 40A is the overall enabling legislation for Zoning in Massachusetts. (PS – Section 9 is where we get a’talkin’ about special permits, which is an interesting read.)
@Chris Steele
Remind me not to get my book tips from you Chris.
@Chris: I Googled Dover Amendment, which I recalled as being the source or result of “snob zoning” before I mentioned 40A. This is what Wikipedia says: “The Dover Amendment is the common name for Massachusetts General Law (MGL) Chapter 40A, Section 3. This law exempts agricultural, religious, and educational corporations from certain zoning restrictions. It allows a structure that provides certain services to ignore local zoning laws and build the facility it needs to provide those services. The Dover Amendment allows many developers to build facilities that are substantially larger than zoning laws would ordinarily allow or which would be considered inappropriate, by some, for the neighborhood.
Considered by many to be overly broad, the exemption granted by the Dover Amendment has been narrowed somewhat by recent court decisions. While a corporation must merely be nonprofit and legally able to engage in educational activities to be considered a “nonprofit educational corporation,” the actual use of a particular facility must have education as the “primary or dominant purpose” to qualify for Dover protection. See Whitinsville Retirement Society, Inc. v. Northbridge, 394 Mass. 757, 760 (1985).”
since I have no legal background and still don’t know where Dover and its Amendments fit into this whole discussion, I referenced 40A cautiously in my blogging earlier.
Perhaps Dunkin donuts could offer its patrons a course in donut making to qualify under the educational component of the 40A Dover Amendment.
@Sallee – Yes you are correct. Dover Amendment is section 3 of 40A, but there’s a lot more (17 sections in total!) and – apologies to @Jerry – it’s riveting stuff!
Or at least the manufactured housing part was. Kind of zoned out on some of the rest.
(apologies to all on that last bit)
On a side note, and more seriously, just as the City of Newton is looking to reform zoning, there have been efforts to do the same at the state level. They appear to be dormant at the moment, but here’s the link to (what I believe is) the last in the line of house bills.
The mere mention of the Dover Amendment makes me cringe.
The mere mention of H4065/H1859, CLURPA and other bills promoting Agenda 21 make me cringe.
H4065 was a second draft of H1859 and many of its sponsors were endorsed by the socialists from Mass Alliance and or the Democratic Socialists of America.
http://dsaboston.org/yradical/yr2010-08.pdf
When a bill is promoted by left-wing socialists like Will Brownsberger, Jamie Eldridge, Pat Jehlen, Jason Lewis, Carl Sciortino, Cleon Turner, Jen Benson and Frank Smizik, I think the best place to be is in opposition to it.
@chris – this is state-level zoning reform legislation, slowing trying to work its way through the legislature, and has been through several iterations/bill numbers. I believe the current active legislation is Senate bill 122 https://malegislature.gov/Bills/189/Senate/S122/History as the last house version almost made it to a vote when the session ended and so did not make it out of committee. Currently something like 59 co-sponsors including our own Kay Khan. Historical timeline http://ma-smartgrowth.org/issues/placemaking-zoning/policy-agenda-2013/ but if anyone needs a clear and easy reason to support it, I could not ask for a better spokesman than Joshua Norman. With a new governor and the faffenstaff between House and Senate there will be some period of re-grouping to see what comes next, but my sense was that the proponents were hoping to renew the push to get it to a vote.
@Jane – we need Ted H/M to weigh in here with the technical details, but generally Dover Amendment situations are not related to affordable housing per se, or 40B, but rather to situations where (typically) an educational or religious institution wants to build something – be it a dormitory, chapel, sanctuary, mosque, chabad, synagogue, whatever, on a given piece of land, local zoning ordinances cannot be used to deny them. For example, a non-profit religious or educational institution recieves a donation of property from an alumnus or member of their congregation – let’s say it’s a house on a residential street in a community like Newton. They decide this would be a great site to build their new student center/classroom building/sanctuary/hostel/whatever. The neighbors try to object, “hey, wait a minute, this neighborhood isn’t set up for that, we can’t handle the traffic, the parking, etc.” If the non-profit meets the Dover Amendment criteria, the neighbors are SOL and the local municipal authorities are totally powerless to stop it. Has happened many times in Newton in the last 20 or 30 years. Religious freedom don’t ya know. Another example, perhaps, of something (as with 40B) that maybe could benefit from a little tweaking to provide at least a little bit of local input to the process.
Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.
Chapter 40B and the Dover Amendment share in common that they were legislative responses to exclusionary local zoning and land use regulations, but for very different purposes. In the case of Chapter 40B, it was zoning that deliberately excluded multi-family housing and required enormous minimum size lots, which all but prevented any affordable housing from being built and also led to sprawl. The Dover Amendment was a response to local land use laws that excluded primarily religious and educational uses. In other words, they are both anti-discrimination laws which serve a salutary purpose by furthering a compelling governmental interest in protecting certain groups of people from being excluded from a community.
These laws are legislative attempts at balancing competing rights, needs and interests. There are, of course, plenty of examples of good and not so good projects that have been built using both of these laws (as well as the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 [RLUIPA]). But both laws were made necessary by local zoning and land use laws that discriminated against low to moderate income households and minority religious and educational organizations, respectively. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but it is no coincidence that challenges to the Dover Amendment and RLUIPA quite frequently involve mosques and Mormon temples.)
That is not to say that these laws do not need to be modified as circumstances and other considerations change. They do. Without these laws, however, communities would be free to exclude people they just don’t like based on household income or religion. And that just wouldn’t be right.
@HL Dewey. Agreed – I also understand that the proponents are trying to bring it back, just couldn’t find a more updated version. Went to a pretty interesting debate that the Boston Bar Assn held on the topic about 2 yrs ago. Also know that some of our Newton folks have been to Beacon Hill to testify on the issue.