AMHERST — The Planning Board is examining residential parcels near the University of Massachusetts campus, on the east side of East Pleasant Street and the north side of Fearing Street, for potential denser housing development.
This campus-adjacent zone overlay district, which would require some form of rezoning, is being discussed as an option for increasing the town’s housing stock, as well as a form of encouraging more modern developments that might be similar to the UMass graduate student housing in the Fieldstone Artisan development.
Planning Board Chairman Doug Marshall brought the rezoning idea forward in September, and at the Nov. 4 meeting explained how the Fearing Street properties border Phillips Street, Allen Street and Nutting Avenue, where some houses are deteriorating.
Marshall suggested larger, newer and professionally managed multifamily buildings might be preferable to existing homes “that are slowly rotting away and have multiple local landlords, some of whom are more attentive than others.”
But Marshall said another option would be to focus only on the section of North Pleasant Street between Fearing and Phillips streets. That approach would be a little less aggressive and might be more palatable to those who live nearby, he said.
For the East Pleasant Street parcels, rezoning would run from Strong Street north to the UMass police station and North fire station. These are mostly single-family homes, some of which are located across the street from the water tanks and parking lots on the Orchard Hill section of the campus.
Board member Jesse Mager said despite their proximity to the campus, these parcels would be different from Fearing Street in terms of what they could handle for increased density.
Board member Bruce Coldham said that, with the size of these lots and their slope away from the road, larger buildings could go up that would still help to maintain a residential feel for the streetscape.
“The scale of adjacency along East Pleasant of established residential neighborhoods is less than it is” on Fearing Street, Coldham said.
None of the solutions are impact-free, Coldham said, though he acknowledged there could be some struggle. Another complication for the East Pleasant parcels is that Kestrel Land Trust owns some of the land, which is permanently protected.
Still, board member Jerah Smith said the board needs to continue focusing on the new overlay district.
“This feels too relevant to too many issues,” Smith said, pointing to the town’s need for more housing and revenue.
Smith said this would also come in the context of the work American Campus Communities will be doing with UMass to rehabilitate and replace on-campus housing as part of a 10-year modernization and campus planning project. That could upend the town’s housing market for several years, Smith said.
But board member Roy Johnson said he believes that pushback from Fearing Street residents, as well as people living on Sunset and Lincoln avenues, will be incredible and would prevent the board from making much progress. “It would be a lot of work for nothing,” Johnson said.
Still, Mager said doing something intentional is better than allowing erosion to happen, with other neighborhoods, like McClellan Street, going through major changes.
Mager said places near downtown and areas close to UMass can either have better density or do nothing and risk experiencing change without any control.
“Until we have a lot more housing stock, it’s not going to change,” Mager said.
Board member Angus McLeod said these are all good ideas on paper, and it’s a bigger proposal that makes sense. But he noted that the board couldn’t get an overlay district for North Amherst over the line, even though that proposal would have allowed denser developments where various apartment complexes, like Puffton Village and Townehouse Apartments, already exist.
McLeod suggested that board members speak to the Town Council to figure out what councilors want and if they’re interested in this project.
While Mager said he understands there could be opposition, even if this moves forward, bringing the matter to the Town Council for adoption doesn’t mean it will happen immediately or ever. He observed that the University Drive overlay district, which can accommodate mixed-use and apartment-style developments, was approved in April 2025 and so far has yielded only the under-construction Campus View project at the corner of Amity Street and University Drive.
