Globe West published a story Sunday about proposed changes to the zoning code that would allow property owners to develop a vacant lot sitting next to their home even if it is smaller than the 10,000-square-foot minimum generally required in Newton’s single-family neighborhoods. Good idea? Bad idea?
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I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about what the minimum buildable lot size should be, though I think I’d lean towards allowing smaller lots, especially considering that my very old house is on a 4100 foot lot.
From my reading of the article though it sounds like the city zoning rules were set for a 10’000 foot minimum and that this is a case of someone exploiting some fuzzy language to subvert that. Whatever the city agrees for a minimum lot size, it seems like it would apply to everyone and that there wouldn’t be a different minimum depending on who owned the lot (adjacent property owner or someone else).
I’m surprised that there is one minimum lot size for the whole city. There are some neighborhoods with lots of houses on small lots (e.g. Upper Falls, Nonantum). I would of thought that the zoning laws would be geared towards encouraging houses that fit in with the existing housing stock – i.e. some neighborhoods would have bigger minimums than others.
Particularly in an officially designated historic district, I’d think that we’d want to encourage new housing that was similar in scale to the historic housing.
How many such lots exist in Newton? Just asking, because this may be much ado about nothing.