Candidates in last spring’s highly contested election for Manchester Planning Board heard an interesting question from voters: What is the Planning Board doing to help us get affordable housing in town? Well, the outcome of that election was decisive, amounting to a mandate for our current Planning Board, and now perhaps the
better question is: What planning initiatives should we be considering to encourage housing and land uses of all types?
We believe that we should start by acting to address Manchester’s need for truly affordable housing, for senior housing, for commercial space generating needed tax revenue, for varied housing types at varied price ranges, and for design controls to secure our town character.
The fact is, currently we do not provide any incentives for the development of affordable housing and, as a result, it can only be done through the 40B process. There is no other realistic way to produce it. As things stand today, we have little control over our own destiny, and we are concerned nothing will change until Manchester considers real zoning incentives to secure the kind of affordable housing we want to see, by partnering with a friendly developer or by allowing homeowners to do more with their dwellings.
Unfortunately, and for many years now, meaningful planning progress has been unnecessarily distracted from these issues by the concerted efforts of a minority group in town who, seemingly driven by fear and a lack of understanding of the planning process, have hindered progress in general. Instead of helping guide future growth, our town’s position has been to remain passive, and negotiate whatever growth comes our way. This has not been effective or helpful.
Now is the time to start a real conversation about how we can implement the recommendations of our Master Plan and what we want our town to become in the future. The following ideas may not offer the best answers for our town, but they are starting points for the discussion and the weighing of possibilities and benefits for our Town.
Affordable Housing: How to get what we want?
Through our experience with the recent 40B project on Shingle Hill, many of us have developed a dislike for the State’s definition of affordable housing. This is because it produces housing that is barely affordable at all, and in our case, a poorly designed project we were forced to reckon with.
The State’s criteria, setting rents at 80 percent of the area mean income (AMI), or about $2,200 for a 2-bedroom apartment, doesn’t really help those who truly need affordable housing options such as teachers or town employees, seniors, young families or recent graduates. To reach those people we need to target rents substantially more affordable than the State’s criteria.
One way to achieve a better alternative would be for the town to partner with a sympathetic developer where we could get affordable housing produced through a cooperative design process. We should encourage its development in tandem with putting careful design guidelines in place, in addition to the normal site plan review process, and targeting rents that are truly more affordable than the State’s standards.
Multifamily Housing:
We address multifamily housing in a very limited way in our town by allowing homes to be converted to 3-family buildings in our downtown, although our law is unnecessarily confusing and restricted. We should consider rules that encourage apartments that are smaller in size, and therefore renting at lower rates, and include the development of in-law apartments. These have been shown to be effective in producing lower rental price options.
We also need smaller, mid and higher priced housing, be they apartments, condos, small clustered homes, townhouses, etc…, so people who have raised their families here can downsize and still remain in the town they love. We should consider extending this multifamily housing approach to limited portions of adjacent zoning districts to our downtown. With design guidelines in place, we could negotiate with developers to produce projects as attractive as the award-winning 12 Summer Street complex, the condos at 50 Brook St. or the development at the harbor end of Pine Street, all of which fit quite well into the residential village atmosphere we all enjoy. These were the products of friendly 40B developers providing sympathetically designed projects in Town.
Non-conforming Properties:
Almost three-quarters of the properties in town have some sort of defect that makes them not comply with zoning regulations. They therefore need costly and time-consuming special permission to make changes to their buildings. Most of these properties became non-conforming as changes were made to zoning districts over the years and through no fault of their own.
Why should we make it so difficult for existing homeowners to modify their homes as long as they do so in ways that comply with the dimensional requirements we have in place?
As an example: if a person builds an addition to their house in conformance with zoning regulations, at the required distance from their property boundaries, and no more 2-1/2 stories tall, shouldn’t they be able to expand their house just like anyone else in town? We should allow building additions as long as the project conforms to our land use rules. That would be a big, and very reasonable relief to many of us.
A Downtown Overlay District:
There is a large, underutilized area behind town hall which is hidden from view as you walk through our village. The Legion, the Masonic Hall and Town Hall are all willing to consider a comprehensive reuse of their land
with one strategy being that individual lots would be merged together for a common purpose.
Multiple groups in town would benefit from a big-picture rethinking of this important land rather than taking no action and sitting back as individual properties are inefficiently reused for single purposes only.
Our whole town could greatly benefit from having a complex of multiple uses hidden from view and in the heart of downtown: mixed income housing, a senior center with elderly housing close to stores and transit, more municipal offices, a performance hall, retail and commercial spaces. Structured parking could be built beneath these buildings to raise them higher and avoid sea level rise issues.
All of this could interface well with new facilities for the Masonic Hall and the American Legion meeting their goals while benefiting the town in general. Creating a well thought out overlay district for this portion of downtown, where the rules are clear for developers, could set the stage for a successful redevelopment of this important area in the heart of town.
Our current policy allows the continuation of the low-density sprawl of higher and higher priced homes. That's not a formula for a healthy town. Smaller, more affordable homes, being replaced by high-priced homes does not support a healthy and diverse community. We are witnessing fewer and fewer young families moving into town, bringing children to contribute to our shrinking school population.
Our town is aging and like so many other suburban towns, is no longer the vibrant community it once was. Now is the time to rethink our laws to encourage the kind of development we want to see including housing, as well as revenue-producing commercial uses. We are not advocating these ideas as being the definitive answers for our town’s future. We are only encouraging fair consideration be given to them and other ideas.
Now is the time for public discussion of these and other possibilities.
Gary Gilbert and Matthew Genta are both architects and residents of Manchester. Gilbert most recently served as a member of the Planning Board. Genta served on a citizen’s study group on housing issues. He is also current President of the Manchester Historical Museum. Axel Magnuson is a lifelong resident of town and has served on various boards, including the Master Plan Committee. Want to submit an OpEd piece to the Cricket? Please write us at news@thecricket.com. Do not submit finished manuscripts.
