Councilor Kennedy Calls for Development Moratorium

City Councilor Esther Kennedy heard the calls made by residents to stop development in the city loud and clear at City Hall which is why she made a motion to impose a moratorium on all development projects for one year.

Kennedy called for an emergency moratorium on all commercial and residential development projects greater than 500,000 square feet for one year.

The motion did not get much support from her fellow councilors and instead the City Council voted to hold a joint work session with the Planning Board, Board of Appeals and Historic District Commission at a future Saturday to give residents a chance to voice their concerns about Portsmouth's building boom.

“While moratorium are permitted under state law, they are not encouraged under state law,” explained City Attorney Robert Sullivan. He said a moratorium would also have to be requested by the Planning Board and the request would have to be accompanied by a whole set of scientific facts to support it.

If a moratorium were imposed and it was not done carefully, Sullivan said it could also leave the city wide open to future law suits from developers.

The discussion about the proposed moratorium and the vote to hold the work session that followed came on the heels of comments made by nearly 30 city residents who called on the council to stop the city's current building boom.

Many of them argued there was simply too much development happening to the point where it threatens to encroach on their neighborhoods and change the character of the city they love.

Several members of the newly formed group, Portsmouth Now!, formed by Clare Kittredge, called for an immediate halt to building projects that are currently happening along Lafayette Road, State Street, the northern tier where the third phase of Portwalk is being constructed and also along Islington Street. Kittredge also told councilors that many people have signed an online petition posted on her new blog calling for development projects to stop.

Several other residents called on the City Council to abandon a proposal to build a two-level parking deck facility on the Parrott Avenue municipal lot and to never resurrect the Worth Lot parking garage proposal, which was rejected by the City Council in December by a 5-4 vote.

City Councilor Nancy Novelline Clayburgh also asked if the council should consider a moratorium on development projects until the city Planning Deparmtent's current form-based code study is completed this fall.

Novelline Clayburgh said other communities that switched over to form-based codes for the zoning ordinances took similar steps.