News Flash

Good afternoon Subscribers

Please not the following updates regarding the Belmont Center Zoning Project:

1. Tomorrow evening is the scheduled joint meeting of the Planning Board, Select Board, and Transportation Advisory Committee regarding parking and traffic. It will be held at 7:00 pm at the Beech Street Center and also on Zoom. Please see the Planning Board's posted agenda for further information. Note that both consultants will be present at this meeting.
2. The parking consultant has recommended a series of edits to the parking section and these will be discussed at this meeting. If found acceptable by the Board, they will be incorporated into the zoning after Town Counsel review.
3. The traffic and parking studies have been uploaded to the project site on 10/17 and are located here.
4. On 10/24, the Planning Board voted to make some changes to the zoning program. This includes eliminating four parcels from the map, deleting the Phase 2 portion of the map, changing the zoning of the Concord Avenue parcels across from Town Hall from FB3 to FB4, eliminating Formula Business Restrictions, eliminating Public Benefits Incentives and calibrating building heights to the higher bonus number, and accepting the first half of Town Counsel recommended edits.
5. New maps and graphics have been added to the draft zoning Section 10 which will be uploaded to the project web site later this week. We will also upload the latest versions of Section 10A (Center Gateway Overlay District) and Section 6.15 (Hotels).
6. Other associated bylaws related to this program will be introduced after this Town Meeting in which the Center Zoning will be considered and will include a rewrite of Section 7.3 Design and Site Plan Review and proposed new sections 5.5 and 5.6 for Transportation Demand Management and Construction Management respectively. The Center Bylaw is intended not be be useable until after ATM.
7. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle are a new set of Planning Board Rules and Regulations that provide the process and application requirements for Design and Site Plan Review. These are expected to be voted on by the Planning Board along the same timeline as the Section 7.3 work.
8. The Planning Board is next meeting on Tuesday, October 28th to consider parking recommendations and the Section 10A and Section 6.15 By-Laws. The agenda for that meeting will be posted here later this week.

As always, please email me at BelmontCenterZoning@belmont-ma.gov or cryan@belmont-ma.gov anytime with any questions or comments or use the comment form here.