Living in Dryden

Many changes to the hamlet and commercial zoning

In an earlier post, I wrote that:

• The hamlet zoning density blasted up from a little over four to as much as ten units per acre, while still specifying, well, little vision for what a hamlet should look like. They also pulled the hamlet designation from Etna and McLean, leaving it only in Varna. Perhaps they knew the new version wouldn't make Etna or McLean residents excited supporters of either the zoning or future water and sewer infrastructure.

• The commercial zoning now supports residential densities cranked up much like those proposed for hamlets, and I'm not sure that's really what most people had in mind when commercial zones were discussed earlier. There's mixed use, and then there's apartment complexes. They're not the same thing.

The details of these are specified in a couple of tables. Originally, it was all in Section 600, which for Hamlet and Commercial zones looked like:

There are 43,560 square feet in an acre, so this meant about 4.356 units/acre as a limit for both of these zones. The way to get more density than that would be through the "Optional Traditional Neighborhood Development Overlay District (OTNDO)" described in Section 801, which allowed up to 6 units/acre. The configuration of those units was nicely specified:

Within the overall residential density figures in this overlay zone, new construction is to be predominantly single-family detached residential on a variety of compact village/hamlet-scale lot sizes, which should range in area from 6,000 sq. ft. to 12,000 sq. ft. with an average lot size of 10,000 sq. ft. Up to 40% of new units may be in two-family or multiple-family dwellings. When two-family or multi-family dwellings are proposed, they shall be integrated architecturally and in scale so that they can be physically incorporated within the same streetscape as single-family dwellings, and not isolated from each other in separate areas.(38)

That sounds to me like a good recipe for building hamlets. I actually thought six units too low for an overlay district, and wrote the board to reconsider how they use those, but instead they seem to have changed the hamlet and commercial zone rules to crank up the density without providing that kind of vision. The table in Section 600 of the new draft looks like:

Sections 605 and 606, which cover areas with water and sewer, are very similar tables, which I've combined below for easy comparison.

It's hard to know where to begin, because so much has changed from "4.35 units per acre". The limits "per building" don't seem likely to accomplish much, but I'm guessing it's a way of nodding in the direction of the "multiunit developments should be limited to a maximum of 20 units" of the Comprehensive Plan without actually doing anything about it. They also sometimes recommend the use of PUD - Planned Unit Development Districts, §1000 of the draft - without requiring them.

The rest of it pretty much creates open season for larger denser development than currently exists in most of the Town, even in places where water and sewer are available. Granting these uses by right Explicitly allowing these uses means that the only real fallback against gigantic poorly-planned projects comes from the Special Use Permit process:

§501 In the H District any use that includes a structure or structures larger than 10,000 sf requires a Special Use Permit. In the CC and LIO Districts, any use that includes a structure larger than 20,000 sf requires a Special Use Permit. Agricultural structures directly related to an agricultural use shall be exempt from such size limits.

Giant uses (update: and more generally multi-family dwellings) still need a special permit, but they start on much firmer ground than they would have if the Town had, say, reserved the OTNDO for rezoning requests to create denser areas. (I'm a little surprised, given the doubling in density allowed in the Hamlet and Commercial zones, that OTNDO has stayed at a mere six units.)

There are also lots of map changes, expanding the commercial zone and shrinking the hamlet zone to a smaller piece of Varna.

(Note that there is a separate zone for Light Industrial/Office, mostly along Route 13 from the 13/366 overlap and west.)

My cynical side wonders if the higher densities in the hamlet are an effort to negotiate with Stephen Lucente over his Varna project's density. He wants 16, existing zoning permits 14.5, and this would allow him 10, plus a much more leisurely application process. I'm guessing that's not it, though. Building such negotiations into the zoning code is a bad idea, and it doesn't sound like a density Lucente is interested in. It does feel, unfortunately, like the Planning Board felt prodded to crank up the density after that proposal arrived.

Overall, this draft offers developers lots of opportunities to build higher density in places where residents won't have a whole lot of activity immediately available, along roads that already feel congested. Though it may derive from "nodal development" ideas, it looks a lot more like "lumpy sprawl".