[F]ollowing a heated debate featuring residents, developers and affordable housing proponents, the South Burlington City Council voted Tuesday night to hit the brakes on development in much of the city.
The council voted 4-1 to implement interim zoning bylaws which will restrict the development of new buildings in most of the southeastern part of the city. The bylaws will not apply to the developing city center area, the areas surrounding Williston Road and Shelburne Road, the region near the airport and a couple of the industrial parks in the city.
The Tuesday night meeting was attended by around 40 people, many citizens in favor of the zoning regulations who expressed concern about the pace of development. A handful of developers, citizens and affordable housing proponents expressed concerns about the regulation, saying that it was unnecessary and would harm the city’s growth.
City Council Chair Helen Riehle said the interim bylaws will give the city a chance to take a step back and evaluate its zoning policies.
“There’s been so much growth and there’s a substantial number of the public who are concerned about that, and I think it’s important for us to have a small pause and really look at our open space policies and land use development policies around that,” Riehle said.
The bylaws focus on the city’s southeastern quadrant, which is a less developed and a more residential part of the city. The regulations will go into place for nine months, and the council has the opportunity to extend them for three-month periods up to two years.
During the development pause, the city will analyze undeveloped open spaces, update the prioritization of the lands for conservation and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of hypothetical development. With development paused, the city will undertake an analysis of the transfer of development rights program and its planning commission will have time to complete its study of planned developments.
South Burlington resident Janet Bellavance spoke in favor of the interim zoning regulations and said that change was inevitable, but that the city needed to take a break to determine what “thoughtful, limited growth” in the city looked like.
Resident Barb Sirvis also spoke in favor of the interim zoning regulations.
“I don’t want to have to drive to Richmond to take a walk in open space, I want to be able to do that in my own community,” she said.
A number of developers spoke against the new interim zoning regulation. Patrick O’Brien of S.D. Ireland opposed the regulation and said that the city is often studying housing and development.
“I don’t understand for the life of me why we need to put the skids on everything and divide the city again,” he said.
Charlie Baker, the executive director of the Chittenden County Planning Commission, also expressed concerns speaking as a representative of the region’s Building Homes Together Coalition.
He said that those working on affordable housing have prioritized building in areas that are part of the region’s “urban sprawl” and have access to transportation, wastewater systems and other key resources.
“For better or worse, South Burlington is part of that urban sprawl,” he said.
The city has been developing the area surrounding Market Street and Hinesburg Road in an attempt to establish a downtown area. Voters last week approved the construction of a community center that will feature a library, city hall and senior center on Market Street.
The new bylaws argue that the pace of development has “outstripped the planning tools and processes intended to ensure sustainability and encourage affordability.”
That pace has raised concerns that costs of emergency services and construction and maintenance of sewers and roads would lead to an increase in the tax burden for residents and businesses, the bylaws state.
In recent years, the city amended land development regulations to encourage commercial development and the development of affordable housing along the city center and Shelburne Road corridor.
Allard Square, a 39-apartment senior residential community on Market Street operated by Cathedral Square, is now open, and the Champlain Housing Trust is set to open a Garden Apartments facility on Market Street which will include space for 60 tenants in fall 2019.
Chris Donnelly, the director of community relations at the Champlain Housing Trust said before Tuesday’s meeting that the bylaws could give the South Burlington community a chance to have an important conversation about what they want their city to be moving forward.
“I’ve heard a lot of concern about development in that part of town, and I know there is a lot of housing pressure regionally, so I can understand wanting to have a community discussion about how to solve both of these goals of creating more housing while conserving land,” he said.
Donnelly said that South Burlington has taken important steps toward encouraging affordable housing, including creating an affordable housing trust fund.
He said that while he sees the adaptation of the temporary measure as “hitting a pause button” and allowing a discussion about how to move forward, he thinks any type of longer-term moratorium on housing development would be short-sighted.
