NORTHAMPTON — Building a duplex in Northampton could soon become significantly easier under a proposed zoning change that would allow larger two-family homes to be constructed by right without a Planning Board site plan review.
The City Council Committee on Legislative Matters voted Monday to recommend the proposed zoning amendment following a joint public hearing with the Planning Board, where officials and residents weighed the benefits of making dense housing production more convenient against concerns that removing site plan review from the process would leave abutters in the dark.
The proposed ordinance, if approved by the full City Council, would remove the 2,000-square-foot size cap that often triggers site plan review for those developing two-family homes.
Supporters of the proposal said the current rules place unnecessary costs and delays on small-scale housing projects because most duplexes exceed the threshold for site plan review. Critics, however, worried that removing that review process could reduce opportunities for abutters to weigh in on projects that may affect parking, traffic and neighborhood character.
“The motivation behind this ordinance change is not around the workload on the Planning Board members, but more about what private homeowners have to go through, even private developers, in terms of the application costs and the time for them,” Planning Board member George Kohout said. “[Site plan review] gives abutters an opportunity to talk about what’s going on around this shared common line … we will miss some of that by not having site plan review, but I think that historically, that’s been worked out between new homeowners and abutters.”
Carolyn Misch, director of Planning & Sustainability, explained at the joint hearing that the city has allowed two-family home construction by right in all residential districts since 2022. However, stringent design standards and size limitations brought the majority of duplex builders before the Planning Board for a site plan review, she said.
Misch explained that the median single-family home in Northampton is about 1,800 square feet, while the average two-family home is about a combined 2,500 square feet in size.
“What that means is most two-family construction is actually coming to the Planning Board anyway, just because of the size,” she said. “Site plan for these smaller-scale projects really creates a burden for property owners and builders; it’s time to go to the Planning Board, it takes two to three months, it’s costly, and then there’s also real cost for the actual application process.”
Under the proposed ordinance, two-family home construction — on par with single-family homes — will be exempted from the 2,000-square-foot size requirement and only require a site plan review if it fails to meet design guidelines. It would also increase the site plan review threshold for all other projects, including commercial uses.
Former Ward 5 City Councilor Alex Jarrett spoke in favor of the change during the public comment portion of the hearing, noting that he believes it will make strides toward lowering housing costs in the city.
“Two-families usually cost less per unit, they’re more efficient with shared walls, they contribute to a more walkable, cycleable and public transit-friendly neighborhoods by putting more houses next to each other,” Jarrett said. “Site plan review costs money and time, delays increase costs … you can build the largest single-family you want without a site plan at all, but with a two-family, that requires it so it incentivizes people to build single-families.”
In deliberations over the amendment, City Council President Rachel Maiore suggested that the new ordinance include a provision to notify abutters of a two-family home’s construction. She argued that with or without the site plan review process, she believes residents should be notified of a larger construction project in their neighborhood.
Ward 6 City Councilor Christopher Stratton raised concerns that the amendment might allow some compliant two-family projects that would negatively impact a neighborhood’s parking supply to slip through the cracks without public input.
“If these are going to be 1,800-square-foot units, those are going to be two employed adults, at some point there will probably be a teenager — that’s a lot of parking up the street, because you don’t really have the room off the street in that constraint,” Stratton said. “That is an example of where the ordinances on the books don’t necessarily actually fit people’s life needs or actually minimize life impact.”
Following Stratton’s remarks, Planning Board Chair Janna White echoed Kohout and Jarrett, noting that the current site plan review threshold for two-family homes is so low it actively disincentivizes housing development.
“What we’ve seen is that it’s just a really tough market out there for anybody to be trying to build housing. What we want to be doing is promoting the development of different kinds of housing,” White explained. “To create just a little bit of extra leeway here for developers to be building bigger units, different kinds of units, but still with the more major projects … in the threshold of 2,500 square feet or above achieves that wall still, so we still have that layer of checks and balances on projects that are more likely to have a major impact.”
This ordinance is expected to be brought before the full City Council at its next meeting on May 21.
