Manchester-By-The-Sea residents will have a chance to learn about and ask questions about the proposed MBTA Zoning districts at a forum on Saturday, March 2.
The forum, held jointly by the MBTA Zoning Task Force and the Planning Board, will be at Manchester High School’s media center from 10 a.m. to 12 Noon.
The event will begin with a short presentation followed by a Q&A period. Participants will be invited to visit zoning district stations to learn more bout their current zoning.
The event will be open to noon so residents can also drop in when they can during that time. The Planning Board also talked about having zoning maps and videos to help explain the MBTA Zoning.
Chris Olney, a member of the Planning Board and chairman of the MBTA Zoning Task Force, said the purpose of the forum is to help spread the word about the MBTA Zoning – what it is, what it means to the town and what it doesn’t mean.
“We are trying to minimize the effect on the town,” said Olney at last week’s Planning Board
meeting, “on the character of the town, and on a number of new residences in the town.”
The MBTA Zoning is a state mandate that requires the town to create zoning districts allowing “by right” an average of 15 units per acre for 37 acres in town. Of those 37 acres, 40 percent (or 14.8 acres) must be within a half mile of the MBTA train station on Summer Street. The rest may be outside the half-mile station area.
The MBTA Zoning does not require that the town build any new units in the new zones.
Olney said that at the forum Saturday, the Planning Board and Task Force members will explain the state’s new zoning rules, what the current zoning in the different sections of town is now and what the new zoning rules may mean to residents. They will also try to answer residents’ questions about the proposed zoning.
“There are going to be several options but there is also going to be a preferred option,” said Town Planner Marc Resnick.
The Task Force has been looking at about 17 acres in downtown, avoiding commercial areas and the Historic District. They avoided commercial areas so that businesses were not replaced by apartment buildings.
“We are excluding (the Historic District) because we don’t want to run the risk of having historic houses torn down and replaced with three-family homes,” said Olney.
Olney explained that the advantage of selecting downtown areas made up of numerous small lots was the less likelihood that a developer could build a large project.
If a developer acquired a half-acre lot in downtown, the most that could be built on it is seven or eight units. However, if four-acre lots were included in the new zoning, then a developer might be able to build 60 units on one lot.
In addition, the Task Force has been looking at two larger lots in the Limited Commercial District that now houses the medical center on School Street and the Manchester Athletic Club on Atwater Avenue. Together the two lots are about 23 acres.
While the new zoning will be an overlay district on top of the current zoning, they will still have design controls, including height limitations, setback requirements, etc.
Olney said that while the Task Force has a preferred plan, there are other options of where to locate the new zoning. In addition to larger lots, some areas were rejected because they didn’t have sewers, were prone to flooding, or other constraints.
The town needs to submit its proposed zoning plan to the state by June and is hoping to have a final version of it on the warrant of a special fall Town Meeting.
Task Force member and Planning Board member Susan Philbrick stressed the importance of that last point. The goal of the Task Force was to come up with a plan that can, “get passed at Town Meeting,” said Philbrick.
