JUDY JENKINS
Supports suburban density

With just a month before a new administration takes over the corner office, smart-growth advocates have compiled a wish list of priorities on which they hope the new governor will focus – including zoning reform and more funding for public transportation and infrastructure improvements.

The Smart Growth Alliance, a coalition of seven groups, wants Gov.-elect Deval Patrick to work with lawmakers to eliminate provisions of the state’s zoning act that they say undermine good planning and encourage sprawl, including one that allows property owners to subdivide parcels of land along public roads without going through the public approval process, according to Kristina Egan, executive director of the alliance. The group also wants the administration to focus on finding new revenue streams to pay for public transportation expansion and improvements and to increase the bond cap by $250 million.

“While municipalities desperately try to cut costs and lobby for more local aid and local land-use control, developers are trying to roll back local regulations, streamline permitting and override local zoning. Neither side Â… is getting what it wants because the power of one counterbalances the other, almost perfectly, at the State House. We need all the key stakeholders to get in one room and stay at the table, compromising with each other until they agree to a binding package of reforms,” Egan said at a recent meeting organized by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

Smart-growth supporters say the Patrick administration must also prioritize spending on transportation projects and how it invests in other infrastructure improvements.

“Oftentimes when planning and growth are talked about the immediate instinct is to rush to the regulatory side. But I think another important realization that is getting more sunlight is how you spend public dollars has a significant effect on how you grow going forward,” said Timothy Brennan, executive director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, a planning agency for communities in Hampden and Hampshire counties. “You can’t have smart growth if you have dumb infrastructure.”

Smart growth has been a focus of Gov. Mitt Romney’s administration. Early in his administration, the governor created the Office for Commonwealth Development to coordinate state spending and policy decisions on housing, transportation and the environment. The state received a national award for smart-growth achievement last month from the U.S. Environment Protection Agency for creating the office. Many smart-growth advocates hope that the office will continue to exist under the Patrick administration.

Brennan said the coordination of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, Executive Office of Transportation and Executive Office of Environmental Affairs has made a positive impact and suggested that the economic development office should be melded under the same umbrella as well.

Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a planning agency for Greater Boston, echoed Brennan. “It’s critical to have someone coordinating the activities of those departments in a way that’s consistent with the governor’s priorities,” Draisen said.

Jerome L. Rappaport Jr., president of the real estate investment firm New Boston Fund and one of several speakers on smart-growth trends at a brownfields conference held in Boston last month, said he hopes that the Patrick administration ensures that state spending supports communities that are creating affordable housing.

Rappaport also said he wants Patrick to support community development corporations across the state, many of which have worked on revitalizing urban downtowns, as well as continue promoting development near public transportation, including the redevelopment of state-owned transit parking lots.

The Romney administration has heavily endorsed transit-oriented development – housing constructed near public transportation – and created a bond program to encourage such development. Millions of state dollars have been poured into pedestrian improvements, housing, parking and bicycle facilities within one-quarter mile of transit stations. Patrick has stated his support of transit-based development as part of his housing agenda.

Smart-growth measures known as Chapters 40R and 40S were also passed under the Romney administration. Those laws provide financial incentives to communities that create special districts where housing can be built near town centers, public transportation and in underutilized and abandoned properties.

The incentive money available through Chapter 40R is supposed to come through the sale of surplus state-owned land. But the sale of surplus state land has been stalled largely because a measure that allowed for the expedited sale of such land expired at the end of June. Supporters of Chapter 40R said it’s critical for Patrick and lawmakers to help bolster the law by allowing for quicker sales of state land.

“Here’s this incentive that had real potential, and still does, but once communities can see that the funding stream which they could rely upon is interrupted, that program will begin to lose potential quickly,” said the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission’s Brennan.

Some smart-growth advocates and the state’s homebuilders group have criticized the Romney administration for focusing excessively on housing that’s built around train stations.

“Higher-density projects near transportation make sense, but are very limiting. Everyone can’t, nor does everyone want to, live in a multifamily structure by a [transit] stop,” said Judy Jenkins, a Canton-based developer who is vice president of the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts. “We need to encourage greater density in suburban areas.”

The homebuilders’ organization has pushed cluster development as a way of preserving open space while allowing for the construction of smaller, more affordable homes. “A cluster-by-right statute is an important place to start. Builders should be able to have the right to choose to build a cluster development, rather than a traditional sprawl-inducing subdivision,” Jenkins said.

Environmentalists have charged that while the Romney administration has moved forward with smart-growth planning and housing creation, it has largely ignored preservation and protection of open space.

“The state made a good first effort in trying to do smart growth in encouraging development in certain places but they did not go far enough,” said Maggie Geist, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, an environmental advocacy organization.

Geist said the state once spent $50 million to $60 million on land protection. “It’s gone way down. I think that the state government needs to restore funding for open-space protection.”

Massachusetts has protected fewer acres at a great cost under Romney’s leadership, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national alliance of state and federal officials. Less than 6,900 acres were protected in 2006, compared to more than 33,000 acres in 2001, according to organization.

Geist said the state should consider creating a statewide planning agency like the one that exists in New Jersey. The state could develop a map and delineate areas where growth should be encouraged and introduce incentives to develop in those areas, she said, while also identifying areas where growth should be discouraged.

‘A Mighty Obstacle’
Geist and other smart-growth advocates also want Patrick to pursue zoning reform, namely a proposed measure called the Community Planning Act II, formerly known as the Land Use Reform Act.

Among other things, the act calls for the elimination of so-called approval-not-required lots. Under the state’s current zoning law, developers are allowed to subdivide land along any public road without going through a local approval process. Egan said while developers like the approval-not-required provision because it is one way to get housing built without “having to go through the onerous local approval process,” the provision can create sprawl and create public safety issues.

In addition, the act would require more consistency between planning and zoning in Bay State cities and towns and also would tighten provisions that enable property owners to file preliminary plans to subdivide a property that are good for up to eight years. Smart-growth advocates say eight years is too long, and that locking in proposals for so long hinders communities’ planning efforts.

But supporters acknowledge that zoning reform is a politically charged issue.

“Trying to get support for retooling land-use regulations has proven to be a mighty obstacle,” said Brennan of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, noting that legislation to overhaul the state Zoning Act has been pending for several years.

In fact, builders are sure to be vocal in opposition to measures that they think would make it tougher to develop across the Bay State.

“We are all for zoning reform, if reform means increasing the options for good design and conservation of resources. But not if it’s used as a tool to stop what gets built and increases the cost to build homes in Massachusetts,” said Jenkins, of the homebuilders’ association. “We have an affordable housing crisis in this state. Property rights have little by little been eroded. Removing the provision of [approval-not-required] lots is taking away the basic right for a landowner Â… to have an asset that they can count on for retirement or for their children.”

Draisen, of MAPC, acknowledged that zoning reform is a controversial issue given the different perspectives of developers, city officials and land conservationists.

“I think the most important thing the new governor can do around smart growth is to call [zoning reform] a priority and to establish some leadership around the issue,” he said.

Draisen said it’s critical to get all the parties with opposing views on zoning reform “to hammer out an agreement that would be beneficial for the state.”

“A governor is in a unique position to make that happen,” he said.