The draft of the Phase 2 Pattern Book for Newton’s Comprehensive Zoning Reform Initiative Is available. It’s an interesting read with a timeline of development growth in Newton over centuries, some great photos, lots of maps and a comprehensive analysis of the city’s historic architecture.
Exerps:
Newton commenced a three-phase zoning reform process in 2011. Phase 1 consisted of a cleanup and reorganization of the existing ordinance.
Phase 2 includes an audit of the zoning ordinance to identify areas that are inconsistent with the community’s goals, the development of this pattern book to catalog the city’s existing development patterns, and a comprehensive redesign of the zoning ordinance to produce development results that are more in keeping with Newton’s character and aspirations.
Today, the city is a rich tapestry of buildings, institutions, and places simultaneously representing the past, present, and future of Newton—all working in concert to create a high quality, twenty-first century place to live, work, learn, play, and create. Newton’s various neighborhoods and village centers in the city comprise a great diversity of development patterns.
This pattern book—one of the primary components of Phase 2—is primarily a retrospective document. It is intended to be a close examination of the patterns that have developed over time to shape the Newton we know today.
Thanks for posting this, Marti.
Everyone, please join us on Thursday, May 11th from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. for a public Zoning Redesign Workshop at Wilson Chapel at Andover Newton, 234 Herrick Rd. At that event we will engage with the draft Pattern Book, conduct a visual preference survey, and look ahead to the next phase of the project: drafting the new zoning ordinance.
Be there or be square.
I’m square but I’ll be there!
I’ll do my best to be there; I’ve only made it 1/2 way through though thepattern book but it seems to do a good job of documenting where we are.
It would have made sense to avoid scheduling this workshop opposite the meetings of the Newtonville and Waban Neighborhood Area Councils on Thursday. Area Councilors are among the citizens most knowledgeable about Zoning, and it’s not reasonable to have them conflicted between the second half of the workshops and the first half of their meetings
The workshop was interesting but raised several questions for me. The boundaries between CBA (Context Based Areas) for one. The boundary between CBA 13 and 14 is the Upper Falls Greenway, not the center of Needham Street. This separates the entire residential neighborhood off of upper Oak Street from the rest of Upper Falls. I went to school with kids from this neighborhood at the former Upper Falls village school. The Stewards of the Charles River Pathway live here now. This choice of boundaries makes no sense and should be changed.particularly since it separates the area of the main Northland Project from Upper Falls where the impact will be the greatest. Data that’s incorrectly accumulated is distorted by the error. Garbage in, garbage out
At the northern end of CBA 13, there’s another inexplicable discrepancy with reality. Rather than use State Highway Route 9 as the boundary, the Green Line is used. The Amherst-Stanley Road area is thus thrown in with Upper Falls despite decades of separation by the Post Office and most other government agencies since the demise of Benjamin Franklin. This section clearly is part of Waban and its mis-assignment distorts the data for Upper Falls and Waban. I don’t know how many other lines in the Pattern Book are wrong.
I didn’t notice if there were examples given in the Pattern Book of the types of land use structures. There should be.
The breakdown of village centers is also problematic. The use of this general heading for commercial area confuses things enormously. The use of “Town Centers” as a subgroup of village centers is particularly egregious since it conflicts with the legal status of the CITY! The larger areas are also distorted by this term
I haven’t had a chance to read the whole report so far, but the problems noted at the workshop worry me.as do the choices of issues at the workshop. Why was “public art” chosen as one of the topics. To put it mildly, it’s irrelevant to Zoning and the examples of Cambridge and Palo Alto did not persuade me otherwise. “Inclusionary Zoning”, “Environment” “Economic Development” and “Design Review” seemed legiimate topics, but where were “Density” and “Overdevelopment” and “Historic Preservation” ? The Charleston Principles of Historic Preservation are cited in the Comprehensive Plan. Why aren’t they featured in the Pattern Book.
The Needham Town Meeting just adopted new restrictions on “McMansions.” The Banner headline in the current May 11, 2017 edition of the describes them. This might be of interest to our consultants.