Stop! Residents Bring Tear-Down Moratorium to Belmont Special Town Meeting

It earned, unfortunately, a number of nicknames: the "Bunker," "Subterranean Suburban," and "Bomb Shelter." 

And anyone who had been inside the unique earth-sheltered house built in 1991 along Waverley Street can attest to the dark, underground feel of the surprisingly smallish (about 1,600 square feet with only two bedrooms) residence.

When the property was sold in December to Robert Pelletier for $634,000, it was expected that a new family would be moving into the building.

But by the end of the year, two families will occupy the former "Bunker" as Pelletier received permission from the town to demolish the single-family house and is currently building what appears to be two-family townhouse construction on the lot.

Pelletier's action of tearing down a house to replace it with new construction is not unusual in Belmont; since 2011, 33 demolition permits have been granted to developers and property owners who have or are building residential property on the site. 

In about a third of the properties, 12 in the past two-and-a-half years, a multifamily was constructed on the site where once a single-family residence stood.

For Town Meeting Representatives Judith Ananian Surno and Raffi Mangikian, it is the sudden increase in density in long-established neighborhood which led the pair and several other Town Meeting members to prepare a citizen's article that will place a temporary one-year moratorium on replacing single family homes with a multifamily structure. 

The group will present the article with the necessary 100 signatures to Belmont's Town Clerk so it will be included on the warrant that will be taken up at the town's Special Town Meeting on May 29.

The residents from precincts 3 and 4 who are spearheading the effort are taking advantage of the Special Town Meeting – called by the Board of Selectmen to deal with Town Meeting articles that were not completed by the established deadline to be included in the annual meeting – to add their Demolition Moratorium on the Special Town Meeting Warrant which will include the snow removal ordinance and library articles.

In the past, successful citizen articles included a bylaw prohibiting smoking in town parks and open spaces and combining town and school maintenance departments into a single entity. 

Citizens can submit articles to the Special Town Meeting from 8 a.m. on May 1 to 4 p.m. May 3 at the Town Clerk's office. Belmont Town Clerk Ellen Cushman said anyone interested in submitting an article will need 100 signatures (she advises collecting 130.)

Cushman said a few residents have come to pickup signature pages for possible Special Town Meeting articles.

The momentum pushing developers to pull down homes is due to supply and demand: there is so little land to build new construction in desirable Belmont – schools and location to Boston and Cambridge – that new housing is coming to the market at a premium price.

One need only look at the new construction that replaced the historic Thomas Clark House on Common Street. The single family houses, at 51 and 57 Common St., each sold for nearly $2 million on a lot the developer, Mark Barons, purchased for less than $1 million. (Despite receiving a demolition permit for the Clark House, Barons worked with the town, the Historic District Commission and the Architectural Heritage Foundation to save the residence.)

In the past year, an increasing number of  developers – 6 of the 20 who obtained demolition orders – have sited a two or more family structure where once a single-family stood. 

It is that trend that Sarno said was brought to her attention from residents in Precinct 3 which she represents at Town Meeting.

The article will place a one-year moratorium, ending June 30, 2014, on the demolition of detached single-family dwellings in a general residence zoned district if the building is not replaced with another single family on the lot. 

During that year, the town will engage in "planning studies to address the affects of such demolition and construction and recommends long-term regulations consistent with sound land use planning goals and objectives," reads the article. 

"We really don't know the effect of adding more people into a neighborhood. It's a question of finding an answer to what density does to our community of single-family homes," said Sarno.