Is Somerville getting too tall and bulky?
That was essentially the question a number of Somerville aldermen had at their recent meeting, held Thursday.
Four aldermen attached their names to proposed ordinances that would lead to smaller real estate development in parts of the city.
Ward 3 Alderman Thomas Taylor proposed an ordinance that would change all CCD 55 zoning districts in his ward to CCD 45 districts—CCD stands for "corridor commercial district" and the numbers, 55 and 45, refer to height restrictions, in feet.
Ward 3 includes much of Union Square.
Ward 4 Alderman Tony Lafuente went one step further. He proposed doing away with all CCD 55 and CCD 45 zoning in his ward and replacing them with RC zoning. "RC" stands for residence 3, which is the type of zoning along most of Highland Avenue. (You can see Somerville's zoning map here.)
At-large aldermen William White and Dennis Sullivan signed on to both the proposed ordinances.
Big development not fair to residents, says alderman
In short, these aldermen believe real estate developers are building projects that are too big and intrusive.
"It sure doesn't make sense to me that we expose our neighbors to this type of development," said Lafuente.
He talked about a development in his ward at the intersection of Temple Street and Broadway. The site was an empty lot for decades, but now it's getting redeveloped, and neighbors aren't happy, he said.
He said, "People that live in these neighborhoods for decades and have to put up with this stuff"—an empty lot—"and then a developer comes in, and because he's got a lot of money [he] absolutely destroys that area. I don't think that's fair."
Zoning leads to "young, affluent folks," not long-term residents
White said current zoning allowing for large developments are "creating a higher land value that people are charging for their land, and then when folks buy to develop it, they have to put in more units."
In one case, White said, there was an historic single-family home with a back yard. "The prices bid so high," he said, "that a person who wanted to live there themselves and just, say, have a nice back yard and raise a family, they get bid out."
White said the issue relates to what sort of city Somerville wants to be.
"If we say, great, we want to have five-story buildings everywhere, we want to have dense development, we want to have 600 square-foot development, we're going to be the hippest city in the United States," he said. "When the Green Line comes, we might he able to do that. We might be the hippest city. What we'll do is we'll have young, affluent folks coming in, living in the community for a few years, and then moving out. A constant flow, a constant transient community."
"It's good to have some sort of that development, but we don't want to force some of our long-term residents out," he said.
"We might as well throw a prison up"
Sullivan said zoning is creating "a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress we're causing long-time residents of the city."
"We have to hold these developers accountable," he said, "not just come in, produce shoehorn development, and cash out right away. It's wrong. We have to protect our neighborhoods and our long-time residents."
It's not fair to residents to "throw [up] a massive 55-foot building and block their sun, block their sight lines. We might as well throw a prison up," he said.
According to the zoning map, CCD 55 and CCD 45 districts exist along Broadway in Winter Hill and in East Somerville, and along Washington Street, Somerville Avenue and part of Prospect Street in Union Square. Most of Somerville is zoned as residential.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
