The Planning Board agreed to recommend to the City Council the new Multi-Family Overlay District be adopted, with a count of nine yes votes and one no vote.
Curt Bellavance, director of the Department of Community Development and Planning, presented the new districts to the board during a town hall meeting Thursday night.
Two parcels of land, one covering Brooksby Village and another Dearborn Road, were decided on in order to comply with the controversial MBTA Communities Act that passed through the state three years ago.
The act requires cities and towns that are serviced by or adjacent to one serviced by the MBTA to designate a certain number of residential units as multi-family. For Peabody, the number is 2,319 units that must be zoned for potential building.
Bellavance was keen to make it clear that defining this new district does not mean new housing will be built, especially as the two locations already have 2,198 units that fall under the multi-family designation.
“Peabody already has thousands of multi-family units within the city,” Bellavance said. “We’re looking at 138 new units if someone decided to build, which we don’t think is likely.”
To make sure towns and communities comply with the MBTA Communities Act, the state has put millions of dollars of grants on the line that would become unavailable if the deadline is not met.
For Peabody, this would be an enormous loss. Throughout the past 10 years, the Department of Community Development and Planning alone has received $9.6 million in grants that then led to an additional $16 million in further funding.
“We received a grant about a month ago from Mass Development for $65,000 to take a look at the zoning up at Centennial Park,” Bellavance said. “Within that letter that we were awarded the grant, they said, ‘If you don’t comply, we’re not giving you the grant.’”
Board members expressed their displeasure with what the MBTA Communities Act has entailed, but agreed Bellavance and his office has done good work to make the city comply while lowering impact as much as possible.
“I guess I’m prepared to vote in favor of the recommendation, but it’s very distasteful, the whole concept,” Board member Roy Simoes said.
With a public hearing scheduled by the city council for Thursday evening, Peabody is reaching the finish line for compliance with the contentious act. If that meeting ends in a majority vote by council members, it will then be up to the state to determine if the amended zoning laws meet the requirements.
