LETTER: AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN HORNIK

Dear John.

I am responding to your comment on my recent piece, “Dumb Growth,” with this open letter both because it will allow me more space to talk about the issues you raise but also because it gives me an opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate your tireless efforts for affordable housing over many years.  I think that we may not agree about some important issues, but you have been an important force for good in the town and I know that it hasn’t always been easy.

I also agree with you about Ginny Hamilton and Kathy Appy.  In fact, there are many members of Amherst Forward whom I have known for up to five decades.  Many of them I think, or at least I thought, have been friends and over the years we have been together more often than apart on issues of social and economic justice and other progressive concerns.  That is why I find the developments with Amherst Forward both bewildering and saddening.  But as you suggest, I will put all that aside in this response..

Here are my commercial concerns.  First, I do not believe more housing downtown is in the interest of the town as a whole.  For a number of years in the nineties I was on the Town-Commercial Relations Committee (and briefly its chair).  I have always believed that a thriving commercial establishment of small businesses, varied eating places, and cultural attractions with a streetscape that invited an active street life was the appropriate mix for downtown.  Some important strides in that direction were taken in the nineties, with a public transportation service that made access easy from most parts of town and the installation of benches along North Pleasant Street, thanks to the merchants and property owners along that strip.  I love the residential streets that abut downtown.  I love the distinctive architecture of the homes and the neighborliness they encourage.  I love, most pertinently, the scale that they create and preserve.  I also love mixed-use buildings, as we always have had in Amherst, which are in keeping with that scale.

But I mostly love that downtown has been a magnet attracting all sorts of residents and visitors.  Students, of course, but also a homeowner who needed a bit of hardware, a man or woman who needed a new piece of clothing or new shoes, those seeking toys for their children or unusual gifts for all occasions.  And books.  It seems like only yesterday that downtown Amherst, with nine bookshops, was a magnet for book lovers.  It is easy to blame Amazon or the malls or the big box stores for the decline of downtown, and they have had a major impact, to be sure.  But I think an important part of the blame must be borne by the Business Improvement District (BID), the Chamber of Commerce, and the Planning Department for lacking the imagination or desire to preserve that downtown — and to replace it with what has repeatedly been described as an “urban corridor.”  The building of more housing downtown, particularly student housing, is more a depressant than an incentive.  It depresses the need or desire of residents and visitors to come downtown, and if they do, to linger to window shop, browse and have a coffee.  

I have always supported the tradeoff between greater density in downtown and village centers in return for land conservation and open space elsewhere.  But to my knowledge there has not been a serious public discussion of the limits to growth and density.  (I may be mistaken, since I have been less involved in town affairs recently.)  I think that discussion needs to happen as part of the consideration of a 40R overlay, especially downtown.

I think I could become a supporter of this idea if it was implemented elsewhere in town, and the discussion of the limits of density and growth was built into the plan.  But most important, I would want   to be assured that there were clear protections against variance from —  and abuse of —  the “by right” provisions.  I have heard frequently that the big buildings both you and I object to could not have been built under the form-based provisions of the Chapter 40R overlay.  Perhaps, but they could not have been built under the existing Zoning Bylaw either.  And they were built.  So I have become more of a skeptic than I expected.

I suppose in essence I don’t really believe in “by right” ability to build in the downtown that belongs to all of us and where the buildings shape the streetscape for all of us.  Downtown, in short,  belongs to all of us.

Thank you again for your comments, John.  I think there is lots of room for common ground if the Town Council and Planning Board will seek it.

Michael

Michael Greenebaum was principal of Mark’s Meadow School from 1970-1991 and from 1974 taught Organization Studies in the Higher Education Center at the UMass School of Education.  He served in Town Meeting from 1992, was on the first Charter Commission in 1993 and served on several town committees, including Town Commercial Relations Committee and the Long Range Planning Committee.