Great Barrington — A public hearing for multiple zoning amendments proposed by the Planning Board will be held at Town Hall on Thursday, March 13, at 6 p.m. The board developed the amendments over a series of meetings, and they are proposed to be put up for a vote by residents at the annual town meeting scheduled for Saturday, May 2, at 2 p.m., in the Monument Mountain Regional High School auditorium.
As proposed by the Planning Board, one of the amendments would create a Campus Overlay District to Section 9.0 (Special Districts) of the town’s zoning regulations.
In November, the Bard College Board of Trustees and Board of Overseers announced that the college would close its Great Barrington campus by the end of this academic year. According to Peter Most, a contributing columnist for The Berkshire Edge and a member of a group looking at potentially purchasing the campus, the property contains 46 buildings.
“In concept, [the proposed zoning amendment] would provide a [zoning] overlay on the campus which might give flexibility to the redevelopment of the site,” Planning Board Chair Brandee Nelson said at the board’s meeting on January 23. “The campus is an educational use, which is not subject to [town zoning regulations].”
Nelson said that the parcels on the campus are technically located in an R2 Acreage Residential Zone, which does not allow for mixed uses, and that many of the buildings on the property are currently mixed use. “There will be challenges on [the property] it may face if it’s redeveloped for use other than education,” Nelson said.
While the Planning Board could have waited until a potential purchaser submitted a use proposal for the campus, at its meeting on Thursday, February 6, the board approved the proposed zoning modifications for review by the Selectboard. The Selectboard subsequently reviewed the zoning modifications its meeting on Monday, February 10, and scheduled the March 13 public hearing.
The proposed zoning overlay includes various conditions of use for the property, including permitted and prohibited uses. The following uses for the Simon’s Rock property would be allowed by the town under the proposed zoning amendment:
- Multi-unit dwellings of four to eight units;
- Multi-unit dwellings of nine units or more;
- Assisted-living residences;
- “Live/work” units;
- Coliving developments;
- Community, educational, or recreational uses, including museums, playgrounds, health clubs, fitness centers, and performing arts centers;
- Bakers, artisan food, or beverage producers; and
- Professional and medical offices.
The following uses for the Simon’s Rock property would be prohibited under the proposed zoning amendment:
- Cemeteries;
- Golf or country clubs;
- Marijuana establishment, cultivation, or manufacturing;
- Public parking garages;
- Lumber yards;
- Large-scale commercial development;
- Motor vehicle fuel stations;
- Motor vehicle sales rooms;
- Aviation fields; and
- Gravel, loam, sand, and stone removal for commercial purposes.
As per the proposed zoning amendment, the town would allow the following uses via a special permit:
- Hotels, motels, or overnight cabins, whether in existing or new structures;
- Camping facilities;
- Commercial amusement parks;
- Restaurants and fast-food eating establishments;
- Contractors’ and landscapers’ yards; and
- Light manufacturing in existing or new structures.
Another proposed amendment would modify the Planned Unit Residential Development (PURD) bylaw in Section 8.5. As per the proposed zoning amendment documentation issued by the Planning Board:
PURD regulations of the zoning bylaw were first adopted in the mid-1970s, and only modestly updated over the decades since. The PURD has been used very infrequently over the years: the only PURDs that this Department is aware of are the condos at Forest Row, the rental housing at Christian Hill Commons, the condos on Copper Beach Lane, and, most recently, the homes to be constructed by Habitat for Humanity at the development now underway.
During that most recent PURD application process, the Planning Board discovered the following faults in the PURD bylaw: 1. The regulations do not require clustering of units or parking to achieve stated purpose. 2. Tying the regulations and the process to the subdivision regulations does not facilitate the construction of infrastructure in an efficient manner in accordance with stated purpose. Because the process requires many steps and multiple hearings, and the subdivision rules require larger than necessary roads, rights-of-way and other features.
Furthermore, a PURD and other residential quasi-subdivision development does not incentivize or make feasible the construction of smaller sized homes to reflect the declining household size we are witnessing here in Great Barrington and across New England). Rather than a new PURD with several large homes, today, our regulations should promote the development of smaller homes, which are therefore less expensive to construct, and more of them.
A new regulatory model termed “Cottage development” is emerging in Massachusetts and elsewhere. This model requires homes to be modest in size and clustered, infrastructure to be developed efficiently, and open space to be provided. In some cases, it requires some of the new units to be affordable for some period of time.
The Planning Board proposes to strike the current PURD zoning bylaw and replace it with a new Residential Cluster Development bylaw.
The purpose of the proposed Residential Cluster Development bylaw is “to provide dimensional standards, open space, and parking requirements, and design guidelines that will foster the development of smaller, modestly-sized [sic] residential units clustered around or near common open space.”
A third zoning amendment proposal would amend Section 8.3 Multi-Unit Dwellings.
As per the proposed amendment:
This proposal would reduce the additional amount of permeable open space required for a multi-unit dwelling projects and would reduce the amount of parking required. The project would still be required to provide 25 percent permeable open space, abide by all yard setbacks, and provide a minimum of one parking space per unit.
Click here for the full text of the proposed zoning amendments.
