The proposed village-center rezoning reflects thoughtful compromise and tradeoffs. A core tradeoff: balancing intensity of multi-family residential development in existing commercial areas against a broad desire to minimize multi-family redevelopment, aka teardowns.
City councilors Pam Wright and John Oliver (and others, including like-minded candidates in contested races) have recently and repeatedly championed reductions in the intensity of residential development in commercial areas – lower building heights, parking minimums, and making more development subject to the special permit process. If the council adopted those changes, the direct consequence would be greater residential redevelopment, particularly in areas that Newton will submit to the state in satisfaction of our obligations under the MBTA Communities Act.
Per the MBTA Communities Act, the city is required to pass – in 2023 – a zoning ordinance that creates opportunity for a certain amount of multi-family housing around MBTA stations, as calculated by a state compliance model. Under the proposed zoning, we will meet our obligation with new zoning around West Newton, Waban, Newtonville, Newton Highlands, Newton Centre, and Eliot stations. According to state rules, half of the compliant zoning – by area – must be in a single contiguous district. The city’s proposal for that district is a corridor connecting Newton Centre, Newton Highlands, and Eliot stations.
The compliance model factors include building heights and parking minimums, and only counts new development that would not require a special permit. Each of the Wright/Oliver changes would reduce the yield from the state’s calculation and require multi-family zoning to extend farther into the residential areas around the village centers.
It’s basically hydraulics – if you constrain development in commercial areas, it has to flow into surrounding residential areas. This hydraulic effect would be particularly acute in the Newton Centre/Newton Highlands/Eliot corridor.
The current tradeoffs are the right tradeoffs.
Sean Roche
Newton Centre