Issues & Analyses: Candidates In Contested Races Weigh In On Downtown Development

By Art and Maura Keene

While listening to the LWVA forum for at-large candidates for Town Council last week, it struck us that the candidates had substantial thoughts in response to the questions that were posed, but did not have sufficient time to develop those ideas.  And for us listeners, we were left with more ambiguity than clarity on the policy positions of the various candidates. So this week we have begun to offer some space in the Indy for the candidates for Town Council to lay out their positions on a few key issues facing the town and to allow the voters to see precisely where the candidates stand and how they differ from or agree with each other. (See also candidates’ responses on housing policy here.)

We sent these questions to candidates in contested races only.  We suspect that those who are running unopposed would like to weigh in as well and while our space and time were constrained this week, we welcome policy papers on specific issues from the unopposed. We recognize that candidates have been asked to fill out a lot of questionnaires going into this election and we suspect the voters are grateful that they were able to find the time to respond to this question.  

We sent this invitation to all 12 candidates in contested races for Town Council and 7 responded.  Candidates were asked to limit their responses to no more than 500 words but were encouraged to provide hyperlinks to supplemental materials. There will be two more opportunities to respond to policy questions from the Indy over the next two weeks as follows:

The week of October 23: Social Justice
What do you think are the greatest social justice challenges facing our community and what can/should the Town Council do to address them?

The Week of October 30: Budget Priorities 
What are the most significant budget challenges facing the town in both the long run and the short run, and what do you think the Town Council needs to do to address them and to do so equitably?

This Week’s Question Is Downtown Development.  Much has been said about the flagging downtown economy. What is your vision for a revitalized and prospering downtown and what specifically would you like to see the Town Council do to move us in that direction?  

The Candidates’ Responses

Candidates For At-Large Seats

Robert Greeney
First and foremost the Town Council must ensure that a wide diversity of voice are included in all our planning processes, but especially our treasured Town Center.  A small number of people with similar ideas on the CRC and the Planning Board are promoting policy priorities and zoning strategies that do not include the broad spectrum of ideas that are needed.  The result is clear.  Recent development downtown is a monoculture of large buildings that the vast majority of people agree do not enhance the appearance, ambiance or character of our downtown.  If it were not for the added tax revenue, I doubt anyone would say “Wow, I like the way these buildings enhance the attractiveness of our downtown”.  Consider, if such buildings were placed outside the Town Center they would bring us the same tax revenue.  As a Town Councilor, I would not try to stop the building of such complexes, but I would advocate that they be built elsewhere.

So, what kind of policies, incentives and zoning changes would encourage development that does enhance the appearance, ambiance and character of our Town Center?  There is no simple or easy solution.  We need to think broadly and develop a wide matrix of strategies that encourage and incentivize a diversity of creative infill styles over a much wider range of sizes.  We need to encourage and incentivize small scale incremental infill.  

However, it is not the job for a handful of Councilors to figure out.  It is the job of the Town Council to set priorities that reflect the collective will and wishes of the town.  The Town Council then directs the Town Manager through his professional planners to do research on what has worked in other communities.  Public forums are held, not to fulfill some legal obligation of public outreach, but to genuinely solicit a broad spectrum of ideas and invite active participation of a wide network of people. 

 Further the Town Council must ensure that the Planning Board is populated by a representative cross section of our town.  The membership of the Planning Board should be increased to its former size of nine members.  The Planning Board needs to make time for planning and visioning, not just the clerical work of approving building projects.  

The Planning Board also needs to frequently invite public input in its meeting and its subcommittees.  Two years ago when I was trying to become a Planning Board member, I would attend Planning Board Zoning Sub-committee meetings.  These meetings were informal and members of the public sat at the same table as the board members and the professional planners.  Frequently there was a rich exchange of ideas on a variety of subjects.  Everyone participated and was heard.  

The Town Council should do its part to encourage the expansion of such practices that tap the collective wisdom of our town.  It is in this manner that we might begin to solve what otherwise might seem to be intractable problems.

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Mandi Jo Hanneke
My vision for Amherst’s downtown and village centers are places that are walkable and vibrant where people want to live and visit. Much of what creates a vibrant area that attracts residents and visitors is not directly within the purview of the Town Council – for example, scheduling live performances, both in businesses and outdoors or providing outdoor seating for dining.

However, there are some actions the Council can take to help foster an environment that promotes vibrancy and encourages residents and visitors to venture to the downtown and village centers to eat, play, socialize, and be entertained. The Council must ensure that public ways reservation requests for items such as festivals, concerts, and outdoor seating are granted. On a more permanent basis, the Council should be encouraging the creation of gathering and seating areas in parks and on the Common. A permanent structure on the Common for performances will permit many more organizations to hold gatherings and performances in a professional manner without much added cost (like the local dance studios holding recitals without needing to rent risers). 

The Council must work with the Manager to find ways to eliminate the perception that parking is scarce in our business districts and to ensure that people venturing into the business districts in cars can easily find parking. 

At the same time, the Council must work towards ensuring that the downtown and village centers are pedestrian friendly. This could include ensuring sidewalks are wide enough for pedestrian traffic, guaranteeing the sidewalk-facing portions of the ground levels of buildings are occupied by non-residential uses, and creating spaces in the public way for resting and chatting. In addition, these spaces should have trees and greenery that help make the area welcoming and also serve to limit rainwater run-off into our sewers.

I also believe that in order to be vibrant areas of Town, our downtown and village centers need residents living in them and living in the surrounding neighborhoods that are walkable to them. And that requires addressing our housing crisis and modifying zoning to more easily allow appropriate types of housing in these areas. Areas in the downtown and village centers should be our densest built-up areas, and that density should decrease the further away from the centers a person goes. Our zoning should match this goal, and it doesn’t yet. For example, townhomes require special permits in the residential zoning districts that are intended to be the densest and closest to the village centers. We should ease that requirement, in order to make it easier to build more transitional types of housing in the transition zones (this is sometimes referred to as “the missing middle” – housing between very dense apartment buildings and low-density single-family homes). Doing so will add needed housing in a variety of types, help our village centers and downtown become more vibrant, and provide a built-in customer base for small local businesses.

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Vincent O’Connor
My concern is, where is the downtown headed now, and because I don’t agree with its direction, what would I have the Council do to change it.

This is where downtown is headed: 

1) completion of a five-story, no-parking provided, no 21st-century-energy-use features, UMass dorm behind the Episcopal Church on Spring Street; 

2) permitting of local-business-destroying One East Pleasant Street’s twin – which will eliminate 25 private parking spaces, has already displaced five small local businesses, with no positive energy features; 

3) demolition and expansion of the Jones Library, resulting in a two-year closure of what used to be downtown’s largest single draw; 

4) the likely permanent loss of CVS, one of downtown’s top three draws, due to delivery and customer vehicle access disruptions because of work on the Jones Library Project and the proposed parking garage; 

5) departure of the Fire Department from the Central Fire Station and sale of the site to another 5-story UMass dorm builder; etc.

If we reach that point, Amherst Center will have fully become another UMass dorm area of little day-to-day interest to the community’s year-round residents. The UMass Chancellor and the Amherst College President will then be able to meet in front of the Bank of America building with their city hall accomplices, and, in a paroxysm of mutual self-congratulations, declare that their institutions have finally put a dagger in the heart of their only significant foe, the city in which they are located.

What steps would I recommend the Council take to bring about an alternate scenario:

• Vote No! November 2nd on the Library Project;
• Thereafter designate the Fort River School renovation/replacement as the top capital project;
• Vote to inform the Planning Board of the Council’s intent to sue the Board should it permit under current zoning another mixed-use building on East Pleasant Street and its reason for intending to do so;
• Vote to amend the Zoning Bylaw to 1) shrink the Municipal Parking District back to its previous boundaries; 2) require that 40% of the floor area of mixed-use buildings be devoted to retail or office uses; 3) limit the number of floors of housing allowed in mixed-use buildings to two;
• Vote sufficient funds for the acquisition of land for a South Amherst Fire/EMS station – not a departmental headquarters;
• Fund a proposal to engage an architectural firm to prepare plans to fully renovate and modernize the Central Fire Station;
• Be prepared to acquire the unfinished site of the UMass dorm now under construction on Spring Street should it become available;
• Seek economic development or other funding to: 1) acquire and dismantle One East Pleasant Street and replace it with a zero-net-energy-operational-use, 3-story, pedestrian-friendly, small local business/professional office building with one floor of residential condos; and, 2) acquire by purchase or eminent domain 79 South Pleasant Street, an Amherst College administrative building, and return it to use as taxable retail and professional offices, which were its recently former uses.
  
  

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Andrew Steinberg
For reasons I explain on my website, www.AndyforAmherst.org, we need new development, and downtown is an area that will attract investors.  But [I] do not want to destroy what makes Amherst special.  Our Master Plan, adopted in 2010, guides the Planning Board and Council to develop and enact zoning that creates new development that is consistent with community values.

We need a downtown that serves people who live in downtown or within walking distance and draws other residents, people from neighboring communities and visitors to it.  Many of us miss a downtown that is a retail center.  Shopping malls and the convenience of ordering what we need and having it delivered to our homes have changed retail.  We want stores that can thrive in Amherst.  Our downtown also needs to provide what people cannot order and have delivered – a movie projected on a large screen, music, art, and quality and varied restaurants.  Downtown is included in a Cultural District.  We can expand it to an arts and entertainment area.  The proposed bandstand would contribute to fulfilling that vision.  The Drake music entertainment center will provide a year-around venue.

We need to plan for the downtown we want and develop zoning that will fulfil our plans.  The plan and the zoning must be realistic so that we attract the investors and businesses that will make it happen.  Some of us are unhappy with the appearance of existing and new buildings in our downtown.  Zoning can regulate the design of buildings, form-based zoning.  This is a challenge for the Planning Board and the next Council.

The Amherst Cinema and many business owners continuously say that to draw people to Amherst downtown, we need parking that is near to where they want to be and easy to find.  Parking was an issue 25 years ago when I was first elected to Town Meeting.  There was disagreement on the need for a garage in the Boltwood area near the Bangs Community Center and its size.  The result was a decision to build a two-level garage that barely increased available parking.  We have used various rates, time limits, and enforcement periods to achieve the goal of discouraging long-time parking where it needs to be available to serve patrons of downtown businesses.  There are benefits and downsides to every proposal and advocates on both sides of the issue.  In addition, there has been no consensus on the parking needs for residents in the Town Center who have better access to bus service than in most other areas of town and the parking plans for new residential buildings.  Many years ago, Town Meeting created a zoning overlay that exempts much of the development that has occurred in downtown from the requirement to provide on-site parking.  It needs to be reviewed and possibly revised. 

These problems may not be resolved in the next two years, but the next Council needs to address them.

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Candidates for District 3

George Ryan
I support responsible development in our downtown for a number of reasons.  

• It will provide badly needed tax revenues.  70% of Town revenues come from property taxes and 90% of those property taxes are residential.  Since 2010, new multi-unit construction has added nearly $1.6 million dollars in yearly revenue, money vital to supporting Town services and preventing unpopular overrides.  Projected new multi-unit construction over the next few years is poised to bring similar or even greater revenues to the Town.  
• It will lessen the attraction to speculators of converting single-family and two-family homes to rentals by helping meet the enormous demand for housing. You can’t tackle the other housing issues in Amherst (such as workforce housing, affordable housing, senior/retirement housing) without addressing the student market – it is student rental demand which drives our housing market.  It will also increase pressure on landlords to up their game – when student renters have more options it will force them to make their properties more attractive.   
• It will help support our downtown businesses by increasing housing opportunity downtown.  A reliable customer base is vital to their flourishing.  In addition a proposed mixed-use bylaw may soon come to the Council which will require that any new housing built downtown have some retail space on the first floor. The lack of destination parking has been a persistent obstacle to the success of downtown business which must compete with the Hadley malls and e-commerce.  Destination parking is the kind of parking one finds in places like Northampton and Greenfield: the first hour is free, you pay when you leave, and the parking is centrally located to the many attractions of the downtown.  Councilor Ross and I have brought forward a zoning proposal with the help of the Planning Department which would make it possible for the Town to enter into a public/private partnership where such a garage could be built – at no cost to the taxpayer and with numerous conditions governing its height, setbacks, and look.  At the moment this is just a possibility – but the first step is a zoning change that could make this a reality.    
• It will help us realize the goals of the Inclusionary Zoning Bylaw.  If the Inclusionary Zoning Bylaw is to produce affordable units it will require substantial multi-unit construction.  The proposed development at 11 East Pleasant (which was approved by the Design Review Board in a vote of 6-0) will have to provide 7 affordable units.  Going forward the requirement to provide affordable units will apply to all multi-unit construction of 10 units or more townwide, helping make Amherst a more equitable and diverse community.     
• It is good for the planet.  As planners everywhere will tell you, encouraging density over sprawl is a key component of our plan to address global warming – as well as an important part of the Town’s Master Plan.  
• We have a highly professional Planning Department and a strong and active Planning Board which oversee all development.  We need to trust the process.

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Jennifer Taub
Keep Amherst unique: Downtown Amherst’s small-town New England vibe lends our town its sense of place. This doesn’t mean new buildings shouldn’t be built – of course they should. But what gets built can look like it belongs here. Afterall, apartments whose proportions and appearance are contextually appropriate with the surrounding streetscape will also generate welcome tax revenue – as well as provide housing for students and others choosing to live downtown. 

Lately we’re hearing a lot of talk about “vision,” which seems to be permitting whatever comes our way and hoping the tax revenue generated will underwrite our capital projects. Based on the $1.3 million in revenue (roughly 1.5% of our current budget), which the six dormitory-style apartments already built produce, we’d have to construct dozens more to make a sizable dent in our budgetary needs. In the meantime, our downtown’s character could be irreparably damaged, and its retail base hollowed out.

If we want others, beside students, to reside in our downtown – as we say we do – we must provide amenities, a reason for them to want to live there.

Mixed-use buildings should be just that — mixed-use: Northampton requires that 100% of the ground floor in downtown buildings be commercial. Many of us advocated for 60% retail on the ground floor of mixed-use apartment buildings downtown. Instead, the Planning Board approved 40% of the ground floor for “non-residential” activity. Non-residential can include the rental office and storage space (as examples) –- not exactly the retail establishments we need to draw people downtown. In the recently permitted 11-13 East Pleasant, approximately 14% of the ground floor facing the street will be retail. It’s not nearly enough. 

Steps the Council can take: Councilors could incorporate form-based zoning to ensure designs are contextually appropriate. Requiring wider sidewalks for new construction; set-back provisions for the upper floors of 5-story buildings (so they don’t appear monolithic, with sheer walls rising up from the sidewalk); and making design review approval mandatory, are steps that can be taken to assure an attractive, pedestrian friendly downtown.

Maintaining the Limited Business (BL) district as a buffer between residential and General Business districts is essential. Building heights should be limited to three stories in the BL and continue providing small shops, bakeries, coffee houses, hair salons, and more. The BL blocks on N. Pleasant between Cowles Lane and Hallock Street are among the liveliest in Amherst.

We need a 12 -month economy: Amherst needs a 12-month economy, not a 6-8 month one. Easthampton has a comparable year-round population, yet their downtown is thriving. So should ours. As we emerge from a challenging few years, together, as a community, we have a rare opportunity for a “fresh start.” We must attract new, and support existing, downtown businesses. Something as simple as approaching proprietors of popular establishments in surrounding towns, and enticing them with incentives to come to Amherst, is a good place to start. 

We can keep Amherst unique and special even as we grow. 

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Candidate for District 4

Pamela Rooney

Yes, there is a changing retail environment, but let’s start with basics. A College town wants to be a fun place – young adults can explore new surroundings, parents recognize in a quick visit that it is a safe and welcoming place, and residents go for relaxing and browsing. Scale and character play a big role – large scale, intimidating buildings today, with heavy plain columns, are non-exciting and heavy handed. Compare that with funky storefronts and back alleys! Recent construction offers no enticement to explore inside, sidewalks are pinched, and no seating or colorful planting areas slow pedestrians to gather and shop. Our zoning allows for Boards to push for more interactivity, more public spaces – Let’s ask for that from developers! We will get residential construction – there is demand for it  –  but why not generate more positives for Amherst in the process. Many 1970s start-up businesses utilized the inexpensive 1970’s buildings such as motels, or adaptively re-configured 1800 and 1900’s stately homes along the main streets for their foundation. This created a funkiness and character worth exploring by college students, their families, and even the town residents. See my article: https://www.amherstindy.org/2021/07/02/letter-lets-build-in-a-way-thats-good-for-amherst/

So, what can the Town Council do to maintain and support a vibrant town center?

• Plan first and zone second. Instead of Councilors promoting numerous zoning changes that affect Town Centers, ask for Design Guidelines to describe what character and texture and liveliness factors people enjoy, and build zoning to create or allow that to happen.
• Create such zoning that supports adaptive re-use of quality building stock, good architectural examples, and historic structures with many years of life left – as the basis for adding onto, behind the main street scene. Not strip overlays that encourage demolition of old and push new construction to the sidewalk edge. 
• Adopt zoning that acknowledges the role of B-L limited business districts – as those areas buffering close-in neighborhoods from the 5-story new construction. Old neighborhoods are densely filled, efficiently situated homes, many of which house multiple dwelling units and offer an array of housing sizes and types. These people walk into town and shop – often for food since the nearest grocery is over a mile away. 
• Require that zoning mandates more of the ground floor to be for commercial uses!  Our District 4 Councilor supports only 40% of the floor area being required for business. I say, if you don’t build commercial space, you have nothing to offer future start-ups. 
• Start-ups can’t afford rents in Amherst, so many leave for cheaper locations.  Use vacant spaces for pop-ups with minimal profit margins to share, let them spill out onto those nice wide sidewalks.
• Subsidize rents for people-facing businesses – draw us back into Town!
  
  

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