By MARK SARDELLA
WAKEFIELD – Despite acknowledging that most of the residents they heard from opposed it, the MBTA Communities Working Group will recommend a by-right multifamily zoning district that significantly exceeds what is required by the state in terms of both size and residential density allowed.
At last week’s meeting, Planning Board member and Working Group Chairman Jim Hogan summarized the public feedback that the Planning Board received at three public forums on Oct. 25, Nov. 14 and Dec. 12. Residents weighed-in at those forums on the Working Group’s proposed multi-family district. Many objected that the proposed district exceeds in size and density the requirements of a state mandate.
Hogan conceded that many residents favored doing the bare minimum required to comply with the state mandate. Others had expressed support for the larger district, he said, but admitted that it was “by no means the majority.”
Still, the Working Group vote was 6-0 to recommend the larger district. The recommendation will go to the Town Council, which is expected to refer it to the Planning Board for a public hearing. The plan will ultimately go before the Annual Town Meeting in the spring. The town has until Dec. 31, 2024 to come up with a compliance plan acceptable to the state.
In 2020, the Massachusetts Zoning Act (Section 3A of Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40A) was amended to promote the production of multi-family housing within walking distance of public transportation to address a “severe regional housing shortage.” The state claims that there is a shortage of up to 200,000 housing units.
“Multi-family housing near transit creates walkable neighborhoods with climate and transportation benefits,” according to the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, “including better access to work/services, increased utilization of public transit and reduced reliance on single-occupancy vehicles.”
The new Zoning Act requires all MBTA communities, including Wakefield, to create at least one multi-family zoning district of reasonable size near public transit in which multi-family housing is permitted as of right. “As of right” means that a developer may proceed without obtaining a Special Permit, variance, zoning amendment, waiver, or other zoning approval. In the proposed district, the plan would allow up to four units in a three-story building with a height of up to 35 feet on a minimum lot size of 4,000 square feet.
The penalties for noncompliance include loss of state grant opportunities.
But the compliance plan devised by Wakefield’s “MBTA Communities Working Group” has been criticized for allowing even more new multifamily housing density than what is required by the state. The district created by the Working Group is centered around the North Avenue commuter rail station, extending about a half-mile to the west, and east of downtown to Pleasant Street.
For Wakefield, the minimum size required for this new multi-family zoning district would be 114 acres, but the Working Group is proposing a multi-family zoning district of 145.5 acres – far exceeding state requirements. The Working Group’s plan would also allow considerably more housing units to be created than what is being required by the state.
At the Dec. 19 Working Group meeting, Matt Lowry (also a member of the Planning Board) expressed an interpretation of the state mandate that seemed to surprise even members of the Working Group.
Far from being an onerous mandate, Lowry insisted that the state was actually “giving homeowners more use of their land and more options. The state is forcing us to cede more control to homeowners.”
Before deciding to recommend their original compliance model, the Working Group looked at a series of maps showing potential alternative districts, some of which met the state requirements and some of which did not. There was also further discussion of the area around the Greenwood commuter rail station as a potential way to reduce the impacted area around the North Avenue commuter rail station/downtown.
Greenwood resident Matt Lowry opposed including Greenwood in the multifamily zoning plan. He said that the goal of the plan should be to centralize the district around amenities in order to achieve the goal of reduced automobile use. Greenwood lacks the amenities of the downtown, he argued, so people would still have to use their cars to reach shopping and restaurants.
The members of the Working Group who voted to recommend the larger compliance model were Jim Hogan, Erin Kokinda, Matthew Lowry, Robin Greenberg, Julie Smith-Galvin and Matthew Brown. The Working Group will convene one more time on Jan. 3 to finalize the bylaw text before forwarding the bylaw and the map to the Town Council which is expected to send it on to the Planning Board for a public hearing.
Either the Planning Board or the Working Group will be the sponsor of the Town Meeting article that will go before voters in the spring.