Even if you’ve never been to a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, and never thought you’d want to, you might want to be in the Aldermanic Chamber (tonight, December 4, 7pm start) for the opening night of the hearing on the 135-unit apartment project proposed by Dinosaur Capital Management for the commercially-zoned property at 70 Rowe Street.
Aside from the size of the project, which virtually, if not all, residents anywhere close think is way too big, and the fiscal impact to the city of converting more of our small percentage of commercial land to residential, the really big question is whether the city might tonight ask the ZBA to invoke the 1.5% defense for immunity to 40B projects.
It’s now an open secret among anyone who’s been paying attention to 40B and development issues, that an alternative to the well-known 10% of housing units standard, is the 1.5% Land Area Minimum standard, which if met, allows a municipality to reject 40B proposals it thinks are inappropriate. (See 56.03 Methods to Measure Progress Toward Local Affordable Housing Goals in the regulations here.)
A June 20, 2014 Planning Department memo on Court Street stated that the city had 110 acres of the required 118.17, or 1.4%. Since then, they have said this was an estimate, and they have been trying to determine the exact number. If you happened to be at the November 10 Land Use hearing on Wells Ave, you heard the city’s outside counsel, Dennis Murphy, say we may already be at 1.5%, and would likely know within the next week. (That would have been about two weeks ago.) At a November 13 public community meeting in Chestnut Hill, Mayor Warren said to an audience which included two aldermen, that if the city were at 1.5%, he would take steps to establish 40B immunity as soon as possible.
Under state law, the 1.5% defense must be invoked by the ZBA within 15 calendar days of the opening of a 40B hearing, to be valid for that project. So the question is whether the city will ask, and the ZBA will agree, to invoke the defense in time for Rowe Street, or whether this might be the last project to get through. (See (8) Procedure for Board Decision, in the regulations linked to above.)
The 65% of people who voted Yes on Question 6, asking for more local control over 40B projects, may be rather dismayed that the City failed to stay on top of exactly where we stood on the Land Area Minimum calculation. Rather, requests to develop a Housing Production Plan — such as Alderman Sangiolo’s docket item, were rebuffed as impractical by Planning, Dori Zaleznik (at a ZAP discussion of the HPP docket item), and Ted Hess-Mahan, because Planning was too busy, and the number of required units to get to 10% seemed out of reach. That now seems like a giant distraction from the method with may have already been achieved.
Julia,
I’m confused,.. is this a proposal for an extension of commercial office space or is this yet again another sterling example of the architecture we are fed to house the masses ? If it’s housing it is massive ! And it’s terribly out of character for the Garden City !
At least it has some trees! Though why do people always want to plant a monoculture? One bad beetle or fungus, and everything goes…
I think it’s housing. It looks like it came out of the same cookie or box-cutters that produced similar housing across from Russo’s, and elsewhere on the 500-600 block of Pleasant St. Watertown. It is out of character for Newton.
Trees.
Remember Frank Lloyd Wright’s maxim : ” Physicians can bury their mistakes, Architects can only plant ivy.”
He got it right here, just change out Developers for Architects and ivy for trees.
Wait a minute… There’s something missing from that drawing.
Hmmmm… what is it???
OH YEAH… it’s the red carpet Setti rolls out for all these big developers.
For the third time in a row, I attended last night’s meeting at City Hall but had to leave early to pick up son from his job. Any input of the outcome or overall discussion/public comments?
This proposed development is way, WAY out of proportion for the neighborhood.
Beyond the stress it will bring to the Burr school, the limited street access means that Webster and Wolcott Streets will become like Route 9 every single hour of the day. Commonwealth Avenue near the Star Market will be impossible to enter or drive on.
This is a classic attempt to put 10 pounds of “stuff” into a 1 pound can. The developer lives in another part of the city and will never have to deal with the consequences of this beyond counting the profits.
As my bestest friend in the world, who happens to be a developer, has said in the past, “Sometimes, no matter which way you turn the kaleidoscope, when you look through it it’s still a jumbled mess.”
Beyond Austin Street, this ‘project” for me is the ultimate test of the direction of the city and the leadership qualities of those in office.
After witnessing the hearing last night, I was extremely impressed with the quality of arguments presented by citizens against this 40B. In spite of the dog and pony show by Scott Oran’s Dinosaur group – a pretty good one too if you were not paying real close attention – the citizenry drove so many holes through the proposal that it should only qualify as expensive Swiss cheese. I’m with you ZBA Chair Brooke Lipsitt, let’s see the 3D model of that!
People are really starting to understand and speak up about the interconnectiveness of various issues impacted by these megabuilds : traffic, schools, walkability, water and sewage, green spaces, and much more. Newton is fully built out and no matter what one’s beliefs regarding density, we all agree that Newton is unprepared to accommodate these projects.
For example, when I first heard of the Zervas expansion, I did not comprehend that it represented far more than simply accommodating 150 more students. Digging deeper, I realized it signaled a philosophical change discarding walkability and tight community participation – long established tenets of Newton and key to its character and desirability – for more anonymous community and big city type busing. And this 350 to 500 conversion is planned for all the elementary schools. It’s the cheaper stopgap solution to building the 17th school – yes, I did say 17th because that’s truly where we are headed with the current growth. But if we want to preserve the kind of character and quality of schooling we’ve had for 100 years, we should just admit that now, leave Zervas alone, and get busy building more schools. Again, we need to be prepared, not play bad catch up.
Back to Wells, can we also ban the term “smart growth” from Newton? Examine the topic and you will find that this practice was conceived for the largest of cities, correctly codifying that humans need open spaces, accessibility, parks, transportation, and many elements to create a whole and sustainable lifestyle. But here in our suburb – a fragile blend of backyards, open spaces, winding streets, beautiful old homes, quiet ponds, little “downtowns,” and parks, with a very particular density of traffic, people in stores, students in schools, people biking and strolling, trees, birds, rabbits, coyotes, noise, etc. – this term gets bandied about because it powerfully suggests some great brainage came up with perfect improvements. But in every case I’ve seen so far including Wells, builders have cherry picked some of the elements of the concept while leaving out others. That’s like leaving tires and the steering wheel off a car – here ya go, a smart car!
I’ll stop now even though I was ready add 40B “affordable housing” isn’t and should also be retired. There are better ways and we need to plan more.
“And this 350 to 500 conversion is planned for all the elementary schools.” No one is planning to convert anything – the city is just trying to deal with the skyrocketing school enrollment in the last 8 years.
At this moment, we have 3 new schools in the pipeline, taking us out to 2020 or so. If you’re a parent of a six year old, you may not think waiting until the 2020’s to build 2 new schools that just maybe the community will vote to fund is such a great solution to your child’s presently overcrowded elementary school. We need a multi-pronged approach to adequately address the issue – school buildings with greater capacity, use of buffer zones, and redistricting.
@Christopher Pitts.
Thank you for that re-cap of the meeting Thursday night.
For more details from the meeting, check out Newton Village’s Twitter feed – they were live-tweeting: https://twitter.com/@NewtonVillages
Thanks Jane, I would be so very happy if what I’ve been hearing is wrong. Can you substantiate that in any way? Is there a memo or statement from the School Committee that they will NOT be increasing the enrollment of various elementary schools to 500? I know the new Angier is slated to be just short of 500, I’m not sure how you would count that but if you can assure us that the other schools are not headed for that 500 mark, I would be greatful.
Pardon the juxtaposition of Wells for Rowe, I’m sure readers will understand.
Jane,
And where is the skyrocketing school enrollment of the last 8 years coming from??? It couldn’t possibly be from 40b projects.
Hi Chris,
For 30 years Newton has had 15 elementary schools. After Angier, Cabot, and Zervas are finished we will still have 15 elementary schools. Maybe the City moved away from walkability 30 years ago but there has been no philosophical change since then.
And regarding bussing, if more kids are getting bussed it is because more kids are going to school and not because we have made schools farther from student’s homes. Distances are unchanged for 30 years.
I recognize that some residents wish we would increase the count of elementary schools to increase walkability and reduce bussing, but to be clear that would be the philosophical change; our present course is not.
Regarding school enrollment, Angier has a design enrollment of 465 and Zervas’s is 490. Cabot hasn’t been solidified yet but my guess is that it will fall someone in between.
The strategic plan guiding our school buildings is to bring our old schools up to modern standards of space organization, area/student, energy efficiency, and mechanical operation. At the same time we are looking to add capacity to every school building we touch, as a means of absorbing our growing enrollment and to provide flexibility for enrollment bubbles, special programs, etc. Increased capacity and flexibility will minimize the need for modulars that are part of so many of Newton’s school infrastructure today – so many of our citizens have requested this and we are responding to this request.
Since 2007 (perhaps even before, but that is when our Long Range Facilities Plan came out) the target design enrollment for new and renovated schools has been in the mid-400s, with a cap of 500 for any school in the district. In recent planning the target capacity has increased to range between the mid to upper 400s, with 500 still articulated as a ceiling. To date NPS has been clear about honoring this ceiling, by moving incoming students away from Countryside and Bowen as these populations approached 500 students.
Blueprintbill, FYI the student enrollment of NPS has increased by 1,235 students since 2005. The NPS enrollment associated with the 804 units of the four largest housing communities in Newton (Avalon Newton Highlands, Avalon Chestnut Hill, Arborpoint, and Woodland Park) is 275 students or 22% of our growth over the past 10 years. These projects have certainly contributed to our growing enrollment but much larger impacts are coming from Post WWII and baby-boomer move-outs along with multi-family-zoned neighborhoods being built out to capacity.
Regards, Steve
Thanks, Tricia, I was about to refer to the tweetathon for info until I can get the audio up on yourlisten.com.
I would add that several alderpersons (see how easy that is?) were present. The twitter feed includes 1-minute Tout videos of the ones who spoke: Cote, Brousal-Glaser, Harney, Sangiolo and Ciccone. Alderman Gentile was also present; I’m not sure if any others came, it was a full room so it was hard to see everyone.
During the public comment, it was really nice to see Polly Bryson! It sounds like she is very busy in her retirement from the Board of Aldermen.
Brooke Lipsett said at the beginning that they would not take comments on the 1.5% issue, that those comments should be directed to the Law Dept (and I think she mentioned Planning and the aldermen, too).
At the very end, Brooke Lipsett asked for a show of hands of people who were still there, whether they were generally disposed to be in favor of the project, or against. The only hand in favor was Scott Oran’s. I’m not sure why the people he paid to be there, the architectural, engineering, traffic consultant people, didn’t raise their hands but maybe they felt it was not their place. 😉
The hearing was adjourned to be continued December 18, which I think is a day to spare to invoke the 1.5% defense.
NewTV covered the full public hearing, watch it here:
http://www.newtv.org/video/newton-city-events/Rowe-Street-Public-Hearing/
Thanks, Steve for that thorough explanation. One other point that seems too obvious to mention: the School Committee cannot stop people from moving to Newton. If families with school-age children move to Newton, they have every right to register them in the public school system.
@Steve Seigel, that’s just a tiny bit disingenuous. It is true that Newton has had the same number of elementary schools for 30 years. The reason the other elementary schools were closed was that the student population dropped to well below where it is now. And the student population continues to climb. But with respect to Zervas, at least, the decision to increase the size of the district, which raises the school size to a projected 490 students, makes that school much less “walkable.” If the School Committee had decided to create a 16th school that, for instance, students from Upper Falls could walk to, it would not only have made the 16th school more walkable, but also would not have adversely affected the current walkability of Zervas.
For a 3D model, go to the Intersection of Beech St. and Washington Street in Roslindale. There it is, trees and all. https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2782834,-71.1370227,3a,75y,218.9h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sRgAVK782H9198-RZjfHpaw!2e0
Marie, thank you for posting that. Eye-opening.
Sorry for hijacking the thread but indeed these issues are very connected. Thanks for affirming my numbers Steve. As for walkability and traffic, I was told that the new 150 students coming to Zervas will be bused in because they are from an increased radius – that doesn’t align with what you just explained. Where are they coming from?
At the Nov 24 meeting, the School Committee gave a presentation on this subject citing that new students were coming from condos http://www.newtv.org/video/sc/112414/ at around 77 minutes. Bonus: I would recommend watching for at least 10 minutes because the mayor quells any notion that teardowns are a reason for increased enrollment.
One last question, in this report http://www3.newton.k12.ma.us/sites/default/files/users/44/Enrollment%20Analysis%20Report%20-%2011-24-14.pdf , your student enrollment projections are slated to go down for 2 years, why?
I just think people need to look around and examine why Newton is the number 1 place to live, perhaps if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I think that is the message I’m hearing pretty loudly.
This issue has been talked about to death. Newton has to increase capacity in its elementary schools throughout the city in order to prevent any one section of the city from absorbing the effects of increased enrollment. Zervas is just one school that has had an increase of capacity, but it is one of three schools that will do so with a facility that can provide a 21st century education. Other schools have added modulars that relieves classroom overcrowding but not school overcrowding, which is a substantially different issue.
Thank you NewTV for turning around the video so fast!
This audio won’t have the visuals, but it does have tracks:
http://yourlisten.com/NewtonVillagesAlliance/zoning-board-of-appeals-rowe-street-dec-4-2014
(Note: these audios don’t play on mobile phones or tablets.)
Chris and Ted, not disingenuous at all — we are playing a zero-sum game. The new kids coming to Zervas will be coming from areas that are at the fringes of other adjacent school districts. To oversimplify, they are as far from one school as from the next. We are just sending them one way instead of the other, from an overcrowded school to one with room.
So we will no longer be held hostage to 40B? Thats amazing!
Does this mean the Philip Neri, or Wells Ave etc. needs to be compliant with Zoning laws?
Julia – Thank you.
PS – Christopher Pitts – The boat on Zervas has sailed. I strongly opposed the current plans, but lets focus on other issues at this point.
@Ssm S, are you new? I don’t recall seeing your name/nom de plume.
‘Hostage’ is indeed appropriate. One thing that really bothers me is hearing from people how a developer or developer’s attorney told them if they don’t get the Special Permit they’re asking for multiple units of something, they’ll go 40B. They don’t even have to threaten it explicitly, since everyone knows it’s a possibility. I think having the ability to say no to 40B projects would also make it easier to say no to the kind of oversized luxury townhouse projects we are seeing in my area of West Newton, around Elm, Cherry, Oak, Webster and River Streets.
The 1.5% defense has to be invoked by the Zoning Board of Appeals as grounds for rejecting a 40B proposal within 15 days of the opening of the hearing. It can be appealed to the state by the applicant, and the state would look at the numbers and determine if the city has in fact met the 1.5%. In theory, that could happen over and over again with different projects, but in practice, once it was established that a city or town is at 1.5%, if nothing changes — i.e. no expiring units and their corresponding land area have dropped off the Subsidized Housing Inventory, there wouldn’t be much point to a developer proposing a grossly out-of-scale project. It would be in their interest to submit a more attractive-to-the city-or-town proposal.
In Newton, we would still want to consider 40B projects. New ones would be helpful in maintaining the 1.5% — the defense is only good as long as we maintain the ratio, and affordable units done in the past without perpetuity will expire. The difference would be that they would be on the city’s terms, not the developer’s. There would be no throwing up of hands, saying we can’t even ask for financials to prove that a reduction in units would make a project uneconomical. We could tell a developer how many units and how big a building would be acceptable on a site, and if they didn’t want to do it, they’d have to go elsewhere.
Julia wrote: “In Newton, we would still want to consider 40B projects….The difference would be that they would be on the city’s terms, not the developer’s.”
That is my understanding too. One of the things I’m proud of is that I believe none of us are talking about pulling up the ladder from this point forward. Instead, we’re looking to get IN FRONT of the process in the best and most intelligent manner.
135 units bringing at least 200 more cars and 350 more people onto a narrow one-way street is an example of neither.
I think folks who think that large developments will happen in Newton without 40B are largely fooling themselves. Newton is a very difficult place to develop anything. Just witness Austin Street, which is NOT 40B, and in other communities, even Boston, would have been constructed at this point.
As for Zervas, I think that topic is done now, right? Any other chance to challenge?
@Julia – I have been on 14/Tab for last couple of years, just not as engaged or contributing as you, Jerry others are 🙂
I was at the June 19 meeting on the Rowe Street development, where our city employees gave an extremely condescending, paternalistic, and developer-friendly opening presentation (a fair summary would be “this is a formality, there’s nothing you can do, this nice developer is doing this voluntarily and if you don’t like it, he’ll go forward with an unfriendly 40B”). They had an opportunity to hear overwhelming community opposition. It was a missed opportunity, because they literally spent the entire meeting giggling and chatting between themselves, and heard virtually none of the comments, many of which were informed and relevant. My question for those of you who know far more than I do is why is the close relationship between the mayor and the developer not in the forefront of this discussion? Does it not suggest, at the least, a conflict of interest? I’m asking; I don’t know that much about city politics. But I Google Scott Oran and it says “…he has served on the Mayor’s Mixed Use Tax Force, was Co-Chair of the Finance Transition Committee for Mayor Setti Warren, and has served on the Citizen Advisory Group.” I haven’t seen this stated in print and blog discussions of this project in the last 6 months. Are our city employees not interested in citizen opposition to a development because their boss is friends with the developer? Or is this par for the course? I have a strong sense that if everyone disclosed their interests, a lot would become clear. Correct me if I’m wrong.
APC,
All valid questions and concerns. Draw your own conclusions.
The aptly named “Dinosaur” group live in another part of the city. They will not have to deal with the back-breaking, neighborhood-ruining, absolute game-changer this project is. 300 more cars into one small block. I know the Auburndale Star Market is probably positively drooling at the thought at the chance of the increased business but it won’t come about when there’s no parking spaces and people avoid driving anywhere near that area.
This will ruin Auburndale but good. Thanks for the update. The arrogance doesn’t surprise me. And our Mayor continues to run silent and run deep.
I think Sam and Jane may be missing my point. Even if the boat has sailed on the Zervas project, the issue is not about that one school or surface logistics to “solve” that problem, but rather it’s about density and maintaining the major characteristics of the ecosystem that have given Newton its reputation. That includes walkability, and all the other elements I cited in my original comment for losing smart growth as a buzzword – and that’s a deeper understanding of the real threat.
In this fully built out city, the only way for more people to move here is to remove some element, be it even a parking lot, and put up another home, condo, or apt complex. Supporting rhetoric for this is how it will “revitalize” our dying business centers. But if we are in such poor shape, why are we the number 1 destination? Again, regardless of your position on this, we are unprepared to accommodate this unbridled growth.