Landowners don't want Route 1residential exclusion

The Norwood Planning Board met on April 14 and discussed Article 10 of the second Special Town Meeting planned for May 12.

Article 10 is focused on the Boston Providence Highway Zoning District (BPH) passed back in 2021. The article would remove language that, under the right lens, would allow multi-family buildings without any commercial or mixed-use component to be built with a special permit from the Norwood Planning Board. Town Planner Sarah Dixon said this was an oversight within the language of the bylaw and was not intended.

The BPH came about because Route 1 was historically a hodgepodge of zoning districts that, in some cases, did not allow retail as a use. It has been generally agreed that Route 1 is an economic driver for the Town of Norwood, allowing a large amount of commercial businesses in the Town to offset taxes for residents.

The BPH was designed with residential use in mind, allowing for mixed-use multi-family development in two dense intersections along Route 1, those being Everett Street and University Avenue. Dixon and members of the Planning Board have previously said these were the intended areas for development in the BPH.

Attorney representing Crosspoint Associates, David Hern, said his clients think this was a mistake. “I’ve heard the arguments that, ‘We don’t want Route 1 overrun with apartments,’” Hern said. “In the four years since this was voted, we haven’t seen it overrun with apartments. People are not knocking down the doors to build apartments even though it’s allowed as the bylaw currently stands. But if this very substantive change is made what you’re going to do is tie your own hands against possible uses for parcels on Route 1 forever, or at least until somebody figures out how to amend the bylaw again.”

Hern allowed that the whole point of the BPH was to create consistent zoning along Route 1. But he contends that most of the zones prior to BPH had multi-family as a use allowed by special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. “The Highway Business District allowed multi-family housing by special permit from the Zoning Board,” he said.

“Since when? When did we have that?” asked newly-minted Planning Board Chair Debbie Holmwood.

“I don’t know, but it’s probably been for years,” Hern said. “There hasn’t been a lot of amending to the Zoning Bylaw in the time I’ve been practicing in this Town in terms of what you could do on Route 1. That was the whole problem in that it was such a hodgepodge. In the manufacturing zone, I don’t think there was an allowance for housing, but General Business, Highway Business, Limited Manufacturing, there was some provisions for a special permit. No one could really do it as of right, as I recall, but I don’t have that bylaw with me.”

Hern also pointed out that housing was asked to be taken off the table by some Town Meeting members back in 2021. “There was an attempt during the voting on the bylaw to remove all residential uses from the BPH,” he said. “That motion failed. So Town Meeting, I would submit, was not interested in banning residential from Route 1. They rejected an attempt that was made to ban residential use from Route 1 when that was proposed.”

Planning Board member Ernie Paciorkowski was chair at the time the BPH passed through Town Meeting and agreed with Hern that Town Meeting didn’t want to remove all residential from the district. “But what I believe they were okay with was very limited residential, which was an important point at the major public hearings, engagements and deliberations of which we had many, on this,” he said. “This was a hot topic, but it’s my recollection that Town Meeting was okay with a very limited amount. We wanted to have some, but we didn’t want to open it up.”

Hern added that auto sales are moving more and more online, and car dealerships may not always be around to anchor the commercial district in Norwood to Route 1.

Crosswind Associates Director of Development Gerry McCormac spoke about his company’s property on Nahatan Street. The property sits just north of the Pendergast Rotary on Route 1 (which is just north of Newbury Comics) at 63 Nahatan Street. The site used to be a Tycho manufacturing building for electronics, but has since shut down. And though there were rough plans for development a few years ago, those have stopped. This site was also considered for mixed-use zoning for housing when the BPH was first being discussed, but was removed.

Advertisement

He said he recently met with Dixon and Norwood Economic Development Director Joe Collins to figure out what would be the best use there, and mixed-use development was discussed. “We do a lot of retail use, and we’d be able to mix retail and office, multi-family and assisted living and things like that, which would really revitalize that site,” he said, adding that they’re heating and lighting the building. “Right now it’s just a large vacant building that’s costing us a lot of money at this point in time.”

Sky Restaurant (now defunct) representative Brian Almeida also said his clients, 1369 Boston Providence Realty Trust, felt excluding residential was a bad idea, and though his client is not currently pursuing multi-family residential on the site, that doesn’t mean he won’t want to later.

“The Zoning Board approved a mixed-use development on the site which was going to maintain Sky Restaurant on the ground-floor and have mixed-use on the higher floor of the building that was going to be added,” he said. “The owner of the property sold the property to my client in 2021.”

David Spiegel is listed on the Norwood property records website as the owner of the property since 2020, along with co-owners 1369 Boston Providence Highway Realty Trust. He said removing residential from the equation would make using this property “even more challenging” than it is now.

The Planning Board voted unanimously to recommend Article 10 be passed by Town Meeting.