The Planning Board signaled its intention to make revisions to the town’s MBTA Communities Act compliance plans after discussing the issue for nearly two hours at its Sept. 17 meeting.
The discussion was alternately lively and numbingly technical, with the board focused mainly on issues related to the zoning for the property at 100-110 West St. and crafting a more robust site plan review process.
Although the board appeared to reach consensus on a number of changes, it opted to defer a vote to its next meeting Sept. 24.
The board was reacting to testimony at the Sept. 5 final public hearing on the plans where Needham Heights residents expressed concern that the proposed zoning changes for the long-vacant former Carter building could produce a development that threatened to overwhelm the immediate neighborhood.
Other residents at the hearing asked the Planning Board to strengthen the criteria the town uses in its site plan review process. They felt the town needed more tools to push back against proposed projects that, due to the MBTA law, would no longer be required to be reviewed under the town’s rigorous special permit process.
The Planning Board faces a Sept. 24 deadline to complete the plan that will be voted on at Special Town Meeting Oct. 21. The early work on the plan was overseen by the ad hoc Housing Needham Advisory Group, which completed a first draft in late April.
That HONE-driven draft was sent to the state for a preliminary review which was completed Aug. 1. The state’s review suggested only a few minor technical changes, and the Planning Board then took over the job of completing the plan that would go before Town Meeting.
The August handoff from HONE to the Planning Board was long planned, and the Planning Board had actually discussed making revisions in meetings prior to August. Some of those revisions, including changes at 100-110 West St., were recommended to the Planning Board by HONE in its April final report to the community.
Planning Board Chair Natasha Espada began the Sept. 17 meeting with an attempt to clarify the process, which had drawn some criticism. “People thought that we were not going to make any changes once we submitted in April. But the reality is that we had to make changes because the state gave us things to change,” said Espada, who co-chaired the HONE committee along with Select Board member Heidi Frail.
“So I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that this is a process that has been transparent and we’re not trying to hide anything from anyone,” she said, a reference to several comments on social media and in a Town Meeting email listserv that the Planning Board’s changes at West Street were “deceitful” and had been “sprung” on the town.
The board then spent nearly two hours debating the merits of making a number of specific changes suggested at the Sept. 5 public hearing. During the week since that hearing, Town Counsel Chris Heep, Deputy Town Manager Katie King, Planning Director Lee Newman and other town staff had reviewed those suggestions. They then recommended supplemental language for the Planning Board to consider should it choose to further amend the town’s compliance plan.
The Planning Board seemed receptive to revising the site plan review language to add additional project elements that could be regulated. The MBTA law stipulates that zoning under the law cannot require a special permit, but projects can be subject to the less stringent site plan review.
In discussing how to beef up the site plan review process, the board suggested incorporating certain criteria from the special permit process into the site plan review language.
Heep advised the board to be careful to follow state guidelines regarding what distinguished a special permit review from a site plan review. Under the case law, he said, “All you can do is apply ‘reasonable conditions.’ And I know that, as a legal standard, that is not particularly specific or helpful.”
Heep noted town staff recommendations added a section requiring every project have “adequate water, sewer and utility service.”
“I think that that was likely going to be covered by code,” Heep said. “But there could be some benefit to include that specifically.”
The board also discussed ways to include consideration of traffic impacts and a requirement for a construction management plan. It also seemed to reach consensus that it needed to ensure the West Street project not be allowed to produce more than 200 new housing units, but could not agree on specific language around zoning and dimensional requirements.
The board will resume the conversation Sept. 24.
To be in compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, Needham must create a zoning district of at least 50 acres with a minimum zoning capacity of 1,784 units and an overall density of 15 units per acre. It does not require the actual construction of a single unit, merely that the town have a zoning district where that number of units is allowed “by right,” meaning with no special permitting processes required.
The Planning Board will not alter the overall strategy that calls for Town Meeting to consider two plans. The first is a “base compliance” plan that would create a district with 1,924 potential units. If Town Meeting approves that plan, it will take a second vote on the “neighborhood plan,” which would allow for 3,350 units.
Both plans cover essentially the same geographic area — 100 acres along the town’s two-mile spine adjacent to the commuter rail tracks between the Needham Heights and Needham Junction stations, mainly on Highland Avenue and Chestnut Street. Neither plan changes the current underlying zoning, and none of the zoning changes occur in districts currently zoned for single-residence use.
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