WILLISTON — The town’s planning commission advanced a proposal Tuesday to build 93 housing units on an undeveloped parcel off Mountainview Road, after a third public hearing drew yet more people to weigh in for and against the project.
On a 4-2 vote, commissioners decided that Jack and Caitlin Glaser’s plan — in which the couple would also donate much of their 97-acre parcel to the town, including 11 acres meant to protect views of Camel’s Hump — would provide “substantial public benefit.”
The Glasers’ plan will now go to a committee of residents, which is slated to meet for the first time early next year, after which it would need approval from the town’s selectboard and its Development Review Board.
According to a draft of the committee’s charge on the town website, members will determine whether the proposal conforms with the town’s bylaws, and will work to draft a formal plan — at the applicant’s expense — that they will present back to the planning commission on or before June 6, 2023.
“We’re pretty pleased,” said Ken Belliveau, a former Williston planning official advising the Glasers on their project, after the meeting Tuesday. Moving on to a committee, he added, “creates an opportunity to have continued discussions on all the details.”
To regulate new construction, Williston uses a system known as “growth management” that doles out a limited number of permits each year, with developers essentially competing for them. But the Glasers say that, to make their project attractive to a developer — while building fewer units in order to preserve some open space — they need to build more quickly than the town’s regular system would allow.
That’s why they’re trying a little-used zoning option, laid out in the town bylaws: In exchange for providing the town with a “substantial public benefit,” such as open space, development proposals can bypass the queue of other projects.
The parcel is already zoned for residential use and has access to town water and sewer lines. It’s located a short drive from Taft Corners, the area of Williston known for big box stores such as Best Buy and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
The Glasers have said that if their plan isn’t approved, they’ll sell the land to the highest bidder — likely a commercial developer who would build even more units on the parcel, perhaps hundreds. “What we’re looking to do,” Jack Glaser told commissioners over Zoom at the meeting Tuesday, “is something that I don’t think a standard developer would do.”
Debate over the project has forced one of Vermont’s fastest growing municipalities to reckon with the challenges of building new housing amid heightened demand and inadequate supply. The Glasers have faced pushback from some people in the community, who argued it would lead to overcrowding and traffic. Others were opposed to the approval process for the plan, saying it felt the town was being held hostage.
Speaking at the meeting Tuesday, planning commissioner Alex Daley — who voted in favor of the project — said housing will almost certainly be built on the Glasers’ parcel in the next decade, regardless of the commission’s decision, so it makes sense to move ahead with a project that also has provisions for protecting open space.
“This seems like a really interesting way to achieve a conservation goal, one that people note all the time,” Daley said. “And yes, maybe at the cost of putting a little bit more housing on the board a little bit faster. But it’s housing that was going to be on the board anyway, so I don’t see that necessarily as a negative.”
Meghan Cope, the commission’s chair, also voted in favor of the project, though said she was less certain about its public benefit — in part because it does not include any affordable housing units. Jack Glaser has said the couple didn’t include affordable housing in the plans because doing so would require building far more housing on the parcel than they want in order to make the project financially viable.
Cope initially said at the meeting that she’d vote against the project, appearing to set the body up for a tie. Under the commission’s rules of order, a tie would have amounted to voting the plan down. With the vote at 3 in favor and 2 against, though, she cast the final vote in favor of the project, giving it a 4-2 majority. She said she believed the public committee would help improve the plans and address some members’ concerns.
The two planning commissioners who voted against the project — Shayla Livingston and Chapin Kaynor — said they didn’t see a substantial enough public benefit in the project’s plans to warrant skipping over the town’s growth management system.
Livingston said she believed the project would provide a greater benefit to the town if it included affordable housing units. Kaynor suggested that waiting to develop the land until permits became available could result in a better project down the line.
“I think that (the project) we are imagining today is somewhat better than what we’ve done in the last 30 years, because it’s mostly duplexes,” Kaynor said. “But it’s not, to me, the next generation of what we want to do.”
The Glasers’ plan also includes setting aside some land for Windswept Farm, a horse farm that now leases part of the property for $1 a year. A commercial developer likely wouldn’t do the same, project advocates have said, which could put the farm under.
Many people who ride at Windswept, or have kids who ride there, have spoken at public hearings in support of the Glasers’ plan. The farm isn’t considered the project’s “public benefit” under town bylaws, though residents have argued that it is as much.
Mike Mauss, who owns the farm with his wife, Tina, said after the meeting Tuesday that, while he would prefer nothing new be built on the Glasers’ parcel at all, he is glad that the project is moving forward.
“I hate to see it turned into houses,” Mike Mauss said. “But at least this way, we have a voice in it — whereas if it were just turned over to a large developer, we’d have no voice.”
Editor’s note: Williston Planning Commission member Shayla Livingston is married to VTDigger editor-in-chief Paul Heintz. Heintz was not involved in the assigning, reporting or editing of this story.
