Residents wary of zone changes in South Hadley: Planning Board holds first forums focused on Route 202/33 corridor

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 in South Hadley looking over Granby Road. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor.

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 in South Hadley looking over Granby Road. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor. FOR THE GAZETTE/DAN LITTLE

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 looking toward Willimansett Street in South Hadley. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor.

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 looking toward Willimansett Street in South Hadley. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor. FOR THE GAZETTE/DAN LITTLE

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 in South Hadley looking over Granby Road. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor.

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 in South Hadley looking over Granby Road. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor. FOR THE GAZETTE/DAN LITTLE

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 looking toward Plains Elementary School and Lyman Street in South Hadley. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor.

The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 looking toward Plains Elementary School and Lyman Street in South Hadley. The town held the first of four public forums this week to discuss zone changes to this busy corridor. FOR THE GAZETTE/DAN LITTLE

By EMILEE KLEIN

Staff Writer

Published: 09-20-2024 2:57 PM

SOUTH HADLEY— Stewart Street is a quite, family-friendly neighborhood not far from Buttery Brook Park where residents watch their children play soccer in the street from the comfort of a home their grandparents built.

It’s this slice of Americana that keeps homeowners in the area for generations, but some residents are worried that future zoning changes under consideration for the Route 202/33 corridor will spoil the character of their street. The proposed changes, authored by consulting company Innes Associates Ltd. in January 2022, call for a new gateway district that allows single-family homes to become offices and invites retail, restaurants, professional and medical offices, personal services, and arts businesses to build up the corridor.

“On one side of us is the Sacred Heart Cemetery, and on the other side of us is Buttery Brook park,” said Michael Gwynn, who lives on Stewart Street. “There’s no reason for our little spot to suddenly be bait for corporate investors to come in and try to poach that property and ruin the family street.”

Gwynn attended the Planning Department’s first of four public forums on rezoning the Route 202/33 corridor earlier this week as the representative for the residents of Stewart Street, unveiling a petition signed by all 10 households asking to leave the street out of the gateway district.

The 1-mile section of roadway being discussed links South Hadley to Granby in the north and Chicopee in the south. The intersection of Routes 202 and 33 at the heart of the corridor is centered between the Plains Elementary School and the Big Y shopping Plaza.

Supriya Kelkar, a planner from Innes Associates, noted that the biggest misconception in the rezoning process is that zoning changes will happen tomorrow, when often zoning changes are the first of a series of steps in the development process.

“Zoning is always an option,” Kelkar said, “because right now, you don’t feel like building something on your plot, but you might after 30 years, and then you want that option. This is not happening tomorrow. There’s not going to be a wall next to you tomorrow.”

Kelkar and Emily Innes, founder of Innes Associates, provided an overview of the zoning process and helped residents visualize changes with a few exercises.

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But the nearly 55 attendees were preoccupied by the possible impacts of new commercial business coming into the busiest section of town.

The corridor rezoning process began in 2019 when South Hadley hired Innes Associates to make rezoning recommendations that benefit the goals outlines in the town’s Master Plan and Housing Production Plan, such as promoting mixed-use and commercial growth and outlining design standards to foster pedestrian safety.

Innes Associates and the Route 202/33 Rezoning Advisory Committee decided on three possible new zones — a gateway district at the two ends of the corridor leading to Chicopee and Granby; a low-density mixed-use district next to the unchanged Village Center; and an open space district to preserve green spaces and recreational areas.

According to the 2022 study, most of the built structures in the corridor do not meet the town’s current zoning laws. At least 55% of the parcels do not conform to lot size requirements, 50% of parcels do not include the correct amount frontage and 50% of buildings are set too far or too close to any property lines. Since many of the homes were constructed prior to the adoption of zoning bylaws in the 1950s and 1960s, the zoning rules put in place didn’t line up with the existing buildings.

“If you’ve ever been in the neighborhood and you see a lot of smaller houses, and then suddenly there’s a much larger house that takes up more of the parcel than the others do, frequently, it’s because the zoning allows that larger house but doesn’t actually allow the smaller houses around that that was already built,” Innes said.

While Innes stresses that zoning changes will not require residents to change their existing homes, noncomforming parcels have a more difficult time renovating their homes because any changes require approval from the Zoning Board of Appeals. Altering the zoning regulations to match what’s already built, Innes said, can eliminate that extra step. It also opens up new ways to invest in real estate.

“Let’s say your single-family home is in a single-family district,” Innes said. “Now we make it available for you to add a craft studio as a business on your property. You don’t have to do that. There’s no requirement to do that. You have the option of saying, ‘I’d like to do a craft business. I’ll do that.’”

But, as South Hadley resident Hector Otriz noted, residents expressed more concern on how abutters of new developments will be impacted.

MP Chevrette, who lives in the Hadley Village Condeminums, said he and his neighbors were displeased when Town Meeting passed an article to allow nearby package store Liquor Town to begin the process of adding apartment units to the back of the store prior to completing the corridor rezoning process.

The Route 202/33 Corridor rezoning process puts greater weight on abutter’s needs than what was approved in May. Chris Glenn, who lives off Willimansett Street next to Big Y, said she doesn’t want to see more business come into the corridor, as the traffic is already too heavy and dangerous for students walking to Plains Elementary School.

“There’s a big empty corner lot that people keep talking about putting in Starbucks or Walgreens or whatever,” Glenn said. “I think that the area itself is perfect the way it is now. It’s just much too busy an area.”

Residents also pointed out that affordable housing is a critical piece missing during the forum’s presentation. Neither Innes nor Kelkar mentioned requirements to add deed-restricted affordable housing despite town’s percentage of units remaining under the state-mandated minimum of 10%.

Resident Mark Adams, who lives in the corridor and grew up in South Hadley, said the “piecemeal approach” to development in town didn’t leave a lot of large, viable parcels left for affordable housing. The initial study published in 2022, Adams continued, probably didn’t weigh affordable housing as heavily as other factors, since the issue came into the spotlight in the following years.

“I think the challenge right now is we’ve got certain parcels where some parcels might allow for greater headway to meet some of these quotas,” Adams said “The issue becomes, to me, we start building out the corridor where you have those larger parcels, and we ignore that use (for affordable housing). If we don’t meet the number at some point, then it’s like the zoning becomes less of an obstacle and developers can build wherever the hell they want, then that might be totally contrary to what we would want to otherwise regulate.”

Planning Board member Joanna Brown added that the process also excludes any design requirements related to climate mitigation, such as geothermal heating or solar. Often, Brown said, residents don’t get involved in zoning regulations until it becomes a problem. Since, as Innes and Kelkar said, the zoning process is about opening up options for the future, getting involved in the public forums now can secure what residents want to see in their community and avoid unintended results in the future.

“I think people are going to be more than shocked if they don’t participate now, the zoning laws will change, and they might have a three-and-a-half story building getting built on the lot next to them, with a 20-foot or 30-foot side setback, and they’re going to be looking at nothing but a building,” Brown said.

This week’s forum will be followed

The remaining three forums are scheduled to take place on Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. over Zoom and Nov. 14 at 6 p.m. in the South Hadley Public Library. Each forum will touch on other zoning topics, culminating in a public presentation of the rezoning suggestions on Jan. 16.

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.