The Melrose Planning Board has submitted a package of proposed changes to the city’s zoning ordinance to the city council for approval. These changes come on the back of a series of public hearings held last year on proposed changes to zoning in the city’s transit-oriented (TOD) districts. The council’s Appropriations Committee will meet tonight in a joint public hearing with the Planning Board, after which the Planning Board will have an opportunity to make revisions to their proposals before the package is submitted to the Council for potential approval.
Taken together, these changes can help Melrose develop more housing units while providing greater immediate benefits external benefits for the city, such as contributions for streetscape improvements, enhanced walking and biking infrastructure, stormwater mitigation, and open space enhancements. While these changes do not represent a magic-bullet solution to the region’s housing crisis, nor do they comprehensively accomplish all of the PBC’s goals for encouraging vibrant, pedestrian-focused neighborhoods, we feel confident that they move Melrose in the right direction on our goals of creating more housing units, making the city more transit-focused, and more oriented toward mixed-use neighborhoods.
We thank the Planning Department for providing residents the opportunity for input into their proposed changes, and the Council for the opportunity to voice our feedback as advocates for safer, more vibrant, and more equitable streets and neighborhoods.
Dear members of the City Council,
This letter serves as an endorsement of the zoning changes discussed under Order 2021-96.
The Melrose Ped/Bike Committee (PBC) strongly advocates for an increased supply of housing in Melrose, with a focus on providing housing which is transit-oriented (TOD). Our members believe that housing is a human right and that we must create conditions which can help to attract a diverse array of housing types to Melrose, as this is necessary to serve the needs of an increasingly diverse population. Walkability and proximity to public transit are and will remain major assets for Melrose, and we must work to attract residents for whom convenient access to public transportation is critical. By allowing more people to live near public transit, and near our highly walkable central corridor, we will strengthen our city and region. The changes proposed in this package will continue to bring Melrose in the right direction on these goals.
Last year, when the Planning Board convened a series of public hearings on potential zoning amendments with a focus on TOD locations, we submitted numerous recommendations for achieving our community goals of creating more housing units while also strengthening our downtown economy, attracting a more diverse set of future residents, and creating a more sustainable, walkable city. People who choose to live near public transportation and other amenities are able to be less reliant on driving, own fewer cars, and take fewer vehicle trips overall. We are grateful that the Planning Board allowed residents a meaningful opportunity to contribute to their recommendations, and wish to highlight a few areas which specifically align with the PBC’s goals:
- Greater consistency in the handling of reduced parking provisions: Under the current system, developers must often navigate multiple sets of variance requests related to meeting the city’s parking requirements. PBC strongly believes that it should be easy to permit housing units in Melrose for residents who do not wish to have, or cannot afford, an automobile. By creating special permits under which the Planning Board has the ability to grant reduced parking requirements, we feel that the city will be better-prepared to accommodate proposals for these sorts of units going forward. The existence of these units can help attract a more diverse set of future residents of all ages and income levels to live, or remain, in Melrose.
- Density Incentives in TOD Zones: We have consistently seen that the city’s residents are often comfortable with the development of new housing units if the developer can answer the question: what’s in it for the neighborhood? As advocates for TOD housing — which is a sustainable model for housing in and of itself — we appreciate that this program has the potential to create more such housing where developers are able to bring salient “bonuses” to the community. We also appreciate that those “bonuses” are focused on sustainability, and that the provisions clearly acknowledge the importance of public transit and active transportation, such as bicycling, in making our community safer and more accommodating, which is critical to our TOD zones being successful.
- Expansion of the Streetscape Improvement Fund: The proposed amendments expand the circumstances under which developers will make contributions to the city’s Streetscape Improvement Fund. The PBC views municipal investments in safe walking and cycling infrastructure as absolutely critical. Melrose must measure its success as a walkable, bikeable city by assessing its ability to provide safe mobility conditions for women, people of color, families with small children, people with disabilities, and elderly residents aging in place. Succeeding on these measures requires purposeful, sustainable programs for investment in truly safe and dedicated infrastructure for walking and biking. We must also continue investing in our street tree program, as shade will be critical for counteracting the heat island effect which will be exacerbated by global warming and which will most directly impact our most vulnerable residents.
- More Purposeful Zoning of the Wyoming Hill Neighborhood: Wyoming Hill is the city’s most residentially dense transit-oriented neighborhood. Despite this, our Master Plan notes that it has “struggled more” than other neighborhood business districts. Our recommendations stressed the need to attract more mixed-use buildings to this neighborhood, and to encourage it to grow toward the downtown area. We are pleased to see that the Planning Board is permitting the Incentive Zoning program in a larger area around Wyoming Hill station, which could potentially bring both more residents, more businesses, and more local neighborhood benefits to Wyoming Hill.
We also wish to highlight two other recommendations which were made to the zoning subcommittee which we feel can help the community advance on many of the same goals targeted by the amendments being discussed under this order. The state has made clear through its recent Housing Choice Legislation that cities and towns like Melrose, who are actively working to put affordable and smart growth policies into place, are encouraged to keep expanding housing opportunities for people across income levels, so that everyone might have opportunities to live in communities like ours.
- Remove Parking Minimums from our TOD districts: The PBC recommends that Melrose’s zoning ordinances be updated to remove required parking minimums, or impose parking maximums, in our TOD districts. Our existing minimum parking requirements create outcomes which tend to push our businesses and homes farther apart, raise the cost of local housing, and create for less-walkable neighborhoods. They also inevitably draw more vehicles, and more traffic, exactly where we do not want them: in our walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented neighborhoods. Removing parking minimums does not mean that developers will never supply parking for their projects. It would simply mean that rather than automatically dedicating a portion of all parcels to vehicle storage, we could instead properly weigh the costs and benefits of parking against other potential uses, ultimately allowing better-informed choices about our very valuable, and very finite, land.
- Transfer of development rights for undeveloped parcels: The PBC continues to urge greater protections for our increasingly endangered open space, which is generally located in rugged areas far away from transit. One potential way the community could use zoning to meet its goals on housing production and open space protection is through transfer of development rights zoning. Under such programs, communities can declare certain open space or natural resource areas as undesirable locations for housing. Development rights in these areas could then be purchased by developers in other locations in the city where housing development was encouraged. In one theoretical example, if this sort of program had existed locally, the housing units currently being built on the Colucci Estates could instead have been built as bonus units in the Smart Growth District.
We, as a city, must continue doing our part in addressing the regional housing crisis. Any approach to making housing more affordable in greater Boston will involve the creation of new housing units. At the same time, we must ensure our community remains walkable, and that our downtown areas and commercial districts are vibrant and diverse. We feel that the proposed changes to our zoning help continue moving us in the right direction on these goals, and will ensure that Melrose maintains its reputation as a community which is forward-thinking on smart growth. Melrose is blessed with a central commercial corridor which is proximate to transit, housing, and parks. We should consider it our obligation to keep demonstrating regional leadership on small-city smart growth, and we encourage the Council to share in the vision of a local zoning ordinance which is flexible, bold, and responsive to the present and future needs of the community.