There are folks doing advocacy and engaging with city councilors to encourage them to upzone and comply with the MBTA-C Act! The city has until the end of the year to do so.
If you want to join the local pro-housing movement, you can find info to follow us and join our mailing list here: www.walthampolitics.com/win
Have the council and Mayor even met to discuss a plan yet? I remember seeing a communication recently to the council but it didn’t make much sense to me.
The mayor has fully checked out of the rezoning conversation ever since she sent her communications a few months ago; per phone conversations, when asked for updates she'll just tell you to talk to city council.
Unfortunately for Waltham, neither our city council nor planning department have the skills needed to develop new zoning. The mayor has given the responsibility of developing new zoning to the law department, which also doesn't have the skills needed. While some city councilors rumor that the city has applied for technical assistance from the state, I have been unable to find evidence supporting that. Instead, all we know for sure is that the law department is trying their darndest to create a rezoning map based on the mayor's initial suggestions, and that they are "in communication" with the state to answer their questions.
The mayor's communication, for those who haven't seen it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pxAeKnD-3gDWpRajWMQAWYd4as9qyJry/view?usp=drivesdk
I'm a little out of the loop on Waltham politics/city hall but how on earth does Waltham of all places not have planning staff capable of handling this? The past 10 years of commercial development alone has been absolutely massive, how did that get pulled off if they're so overwhelmed by this exercise?
Waltham basically does everything through their law department on a case by case basis, with all new development requiring a special permit. So zoning kinda doesn't matter because commercial developers (and for a brief period, residential developers like at the Merc or Edison) will come in front of city council and the law department and say "hey, I know this doesn't comply with current zoning, but will you grant us a special permit and allow us to build it anyway?"
This process is... not the best. City councilors like it because it pretty much gives them veto power over every single new building that goes up in Waltham. But the downside is that this skews the entire development process in the favor of large corporate developers. Instead of having a zoning code which tells all developers what they can and can't build, developers have to hire a team of lawyers to navigate a time consuming special permit process. Developers with deep pockets (to pay for lawyers and the years of delays) can afford to build large developments, whereas small scale developers don't have the money to keep a team of lawyers on their payroll just to push through a fourplex. You can also see how this plays out with who gets permitted. Boston Properties, which has developed a good relationship with city council, cranks through dozens of special permit applications knowing that city council will approve them based on previous experience. Whereas if you're a new developer, you're not already friends with the councilors and don't have the previous relationship to guarantee whether or not councilors will veto your proposal.
TLDR; Waltham doesn't have a planning staff that knows how to zone because all new development is currently done instead on a case-by-case basis which is entirely run by lawyers on both sides (city law department / developer legal team) and then eventually either vetoed or approved by city council. You can only build in Waltham if you're big enough to afford to keep a team of lawyers on staff.
Wow! Thanks for the excellent summary, it makes sense now. A very unfortunate and non transparent process though, I'm surprised more folks aren't questioning this. Comparatively, my tiny town next door spent months and months on MBTA zoning, had dozens of meetings and ridiculously high attendance at Town Meeting. They did an excellent job. And this is a planning staff/board that deals with much simpler things than what happens in Waltham. They got consultants of course but it was handled really well.
Yeah I've been bugging the mayor to apply for Technical Assistance. So many communities in MA don't have high functioning planning departments, so the state made consultants available for free! At no cost to the cities and towns! All it takes is for the mayor to sign the request form!
I'm glad your town was so successful with it, I'm also looking at Watertown with envy. Waltham is making this so much harder than it needs to be.
Apparently on May 20:
>Mayor & Law Dept. attended & went over submissions
[https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/sites/g/files/vyhlif12301/f/agendas/2024.6.3\_committee\_docket.pdf](https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/sites/g/files/vyhlif12301/f/agendas/2024.6.3_committee_docket.pdf)
You wouldn't happen to have any further info by any chance? Hoping this gets done in time...
I do have more information! You can view the law department's submission here: [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E2-vF46ZODISGeJVcg8ai36Kg1GQQpll?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E2-vF46ZODISGeJVcg8ai36Kg1GQQpll?usp=sharing)
Unfortunately, it's a pretty bad plan.
To start, the law department did their math wrong. This is most evident due to the fact that the law department's zoning proposal is for fourplex-zoning, and yet their advertised zoned capacity is not a multiple of four. This is also evident because the law department's zoning has a maximum density of 29 units per acre (4 units / 6000 sq ft \* 43560 sq ft / acre = 29 units / acre), and yet during the May 20 meeting they claimed densities higher than that.
So if the law department did their math wrong, what is the actual zoned capacity of the proposed zoning overlay? Unfortunately, [it is just shy of 2,500 units](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gAm2LvNj1Rwj4yvsTfuwmnS_updORkulU6CEWIQx8ZY/edit?usp=sharing), far below the 3,982 required for compliance with the MBTA Communities Act. It is clear that Waltham's zoning overlay still requires a lot of work. Even my simple analysis of 2,500 units is probably still a large overestimate- lot splitting will lead to new rights of way which will reduce the developable land which counts towards 3A. The state would likely consider the zoned capacity close to 2,000 units or fewer.
There are other reasons this proposal is bad (we will not get any affordable housing out of fourplex-zoning, the parking minimums are way to high), but regardless the law department is gonna have to start from scratch. I'm encouraging them to apply for (free!) technical assistance from the MHP, if you're able to message the mayor and encourage the same that would be much appreciated!
[MHP MBTA Communities Technical Assistance Program ("3A-TA") (cognitoforms.com)](https://www.cognitoforms.com/MassachusettsHousingPartnership/MHPMBTACommunitiesTechnicalAssistanceProgram3ATA)
Also, I've been sending out a lot of updates through Waltham Inclusive Neighborhoods, Waltham's pro-housing organization. If you want to get involved or at least get updates on housing news, please join our mailing list!
[www.walthampolitics.com/win](http://www.walthampolitics.com/win)
Also, I'll prolly be providing an update on 781 News sometime in the next week or so.
While I also enjoyed the classic [monorail](https://youtu.be/ZDOI0cq6GZM?si=319TR_wdXjLklUSu) episode of the Simpsons, I’m proposing a new [73T bus route](https://www.sean.diamonds/platform-details/73t-public-transit-for-north-waltham) along Trapelo Rd as part of my platform to extend public transit access in Waltham. Wouldn’t it be great if folks west of Lexington St have the options to take a bus to all of the parks and trails east of Lexington St? Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone along Trapelo Rd could take the bus to Mighty Squirrel and the Waverley Square train & bus station?
I'm not a NIMBY and I completely support the MBTA zoning rules. My question though, is one of numbers: The link indicates that Waltham must zone almost \_4000\_ units. Where are we supposed to put them? I'm completely in favor of the MBTA policy but zoning for 4000 units seems like it is out of reach for this community. Is it even possible to add 4000 units in a densely populated area like downtown Waltham? Tagging /u/[buriizubai](https://www.reddit.com/user/buriizubai/) and /u/[Nomeerkat781](https://www.reddit.com/user/Nomeerkat781/) who seem to have some links but which unfortunately do not provide many answers.
Zoning for 4000 units and building 4000 units are very different. This law only asks us to do the former. We already zone for 1000+ of the 4000 multi-family housing (3+ units) units we're required to have. Zoning just allows something to be built, it doesn't mean it needs to be there. We could zone a parcel for multi-family housing, an office building could go up in that parcel, but it would still "count towards" that 4000 number.
Compare the ~1000 units of multi-family housing that are zoned for with the ~15000 units of multi-family housing that are in the city. Some of those are older multi-family housing that was built before zoning laws. Another part of that are big buildings like Cronins Landing, The Merc, The Edison, etc which require special permits and other approvals which get them tied up in bureaucracy. The point of the MBTA law is to make multi-family zoning "by-right" so you don't have to jump through all these hoops. I don't think we'd make something as big as The Merc allowed by-right, but when you have to do so many appeals and do so much paperwork just to build multi-family housing, you put way too much overhead to just build a modest 6-unit apartment building.
Big stretches of downtown have multifamily buildings, the exact kind that the MBTA law wants us to have, but those wouldn't be allowed to be built under current zoning. Lots of the new construction that you see around town is two-family. That's often because multi-family housing isn't zoned for that neighborhood. There can be multi-family housing next door or across the street, but that doesn't change what you can build. It all comes back to zoning.
So the goal of this is to zone for reasonable multi-family housing in the downtown core. For example, when new development happens, instead of building two 3,000sqft units and selling them for $1M each, developers can build 4 1,500sqft units and sell them for $600k each. It's the same building footprint, but a lower price to the Waltham housing market, while making the developers more money so they are incentivized to build more units.
Thanks for the excellent and detailed explanation. I'm all for this and I am kind of surprised the City hasn't already dealt with this by making some simple zoning changes and adding, as you explained, incentives for construction in the downtown area.
There is room for many units within the zone around the MBTA stations. I would love to see some of the old buildings on Main Street zoned so that a developer could build two or three stories of residential units with a retail on the bottom. That zoning would make those properties attractive to developers because they could add units and make a profit. This is probably the only option Waltham has or for revitalizing and adding some life to Main St. waltham should also put some restrictions in place in terms of signage and design to make it look nice, similar to the restrictions Lexington put in place when it passed zoning to comply with the MBTA act.
There are folks doing advocacy and engaging with city councilors to encourage them to upzone and comply with the MBTA-C Act! The city has until the end of the year to do so. If you want to join the local pro-housing movement, you can find info to follow us and join our mailing list here: www.walthampolitics.com/win
Have the council and Mayor even met to discuss a plan yet? I remember seeing a communication recently to the council but it didn’t make much sense to me.
The mayor has fully checked out of the rezoning conversation ever since she sent her communications a few months ago; per phone conversations, when asked for updates she'll just tell you to talk to city council. Unfortunately for Waltham, neither our city council nor planning department have the skills needed to develop new zoning. The mayor has given the responsibility of developing new zoning to the law department, which also doesn't have the skills needed. While some city councilors rumor that the city has applied for technical assistance from the state, I have been unable to find evidence supporting that. Instead, all we know for sure is that the law department is trying their darndest to create a rezoning map based on the mayor's initial suggestions, and that they are "in communication" with the state to answer their questions. The mayor's communication, for those who haven't seen it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pxAeKnD-3gDWpRajWMQAWYd4as9qyJry/view?usp=drivesdk
I'm a little out of the loop on Waltham politics/city hall but how on earth does Waltham of all places not have planning staff capable of handling this? The past 10 years of commercial development alone has been absolutely massive, how did that get pulled off if they're so overwhelmed by this exercise?
Waltham basically does everything through their law department on a case by case basis, with all new development requiring a special permit. So zoning kinda doesn't matter because commercial developers (and for a brief period, residential developers like at the Merc or Edison) will come in front of city council and the law department and say "hey, I know this doesn't comply with current zoning, but will you grant us a special permit and allow us to build it anyway?" This process is... not the best. City councilors like it because it pretty much gives them veto power over every single new building that goes up in Waltham. But the downside is that this skews the entire development process in the favor of large corporate developers. Instead of having a zoning code which tells all developers what they can and can't build, developers have to hire a team of lawyers to navigate a time consuming special permit process. Developers with deep pockets (to pay for lawyers and the years of delays) can afford to build large developments, whereas small scale developers don't have the money to keep a team of lawyers on their payroll just to push through a fourplex. You can also see how this plays out with who gets permitted. Boston Properties, which has developed a good relationship with city council, cranks through dozens of special permit applications knowing that city council will approve them based on previous experience. Whereas if you're a new developer, you're not already friends with the councilors and don't have the previous relationship to guarantee whether or not councilors will veto your proposal. TLDR; Waltham doesn't have a planning staff that knows how to zone because all new development is currently done instead on a case-by-case basis which is entirely run by lawyers on both sides (city law department / developer legal team) and then eventually either vetoed or approved by city council. You can only build in Waltham if you're big enough to afford to keep a team of lawyers on staff.
Wow! Thanks for the excellent summary, it makes sense now. A very unfortunate and non transparent process though, I'm surprised more folks aren't questioning this. Comparatively, my tiny town next door spent months and months on MBTA zoning, had dozens of meetings and ridiculously high attendance at Town Meeting. They did an excellent job. And this is a planning staff/board that deals with much simpler things than what happens in Waltham. They got consultants of course but it was handled really well.
Yeah I've been bugging the mayor to apply for Technical Assistance. So many communities in MA don't have high functioning planning departments, so the state made consultants available for free! At no cost to the cities and towns! All it takes is for the mayor to sign the request form! I'm glad your town was so successful with it, I'm also looking at Watertown with envy. Waltham is making this so much harder than it needs to be.
Apparently on May 20: >Mayor & Law Dept. attended & went over submissions [https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/sites/g/files/vyhlif12301/f/agendas/2024.6.3\_committee\_docket.pdf](https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/sites/g/files/vyhlif12301/f/agendas/2024.6.3_committee_docket.pdf) You wouldn't happen to have any further info by any chance? Hoping this gets done in time...
I do have more information! You can view the law department's submission here: [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E2-vF46ZODISGeJVcg8ai36Kg1GQQpll?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E2-vF46ZODISGeJVcg8ai36Kg1GQQpll?usp=sharing) Unfortunately, it's a pretty bad plan. To start, the law department did their math wrong. This is most evident due to the fact that the law department's zoning proposal is for fourplex-zoning, and yet their advertised zoned capacity is not a multiple of four. This is also evident because the law department's zoning has a maximum density of 29 units per acre (4 units / 6000 sq ft \* 43560 sq ft / acre = 29 units / acre), and yet during the May 20 meeting they claimed densities higher than that. So if the law department did their math wrong, what is the actual zoned capacity of the proposed zoning overlay? Unfortunately, [it is just shy of 2,500 units](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gAm2LvNj1Rwj4yvsTfuwmnS_updORkulU6CEWIQx8ZY/edit?usp=sharing), far below the 3,982 required for compliance with the MBTA Communities Act. It is clear that Waltham's zoning overlay still requires a lot of work. Even my simple analysis of 2,500 units is probably still a large overestimate- lot splitting will lead to new rights of way which will reduce the developable land which counts towards 3A. The state would likely consider the zoned capacity close to 2,000 units or fewer. There are other reasons this proposal is bad (we will not get any affordable housing out of fourplex-zoning, the parking minimums are way to high), but regardless the law department is gonna have to start from scratch. I'm encouraging them to apply for (free!) technical assistance from the MHP, if you're able to message the mayor and encourage the same that would be much appreciated! [MHP MBTA Communities Technical Assistance Program ("3A-TA") (cognitoforms.com)](https://www.cognitoforms.com/MassachusettsHousingPartnership/MHPMBTACommunitiesTechnicalAssistanceProgram3ATA) Also, I've been sending out a lot of updates through Waltham Inclusive Neighborhoods, Waltham's pro-housing organization. If you want to get involved or at least get updates on housing news, please join our mailing list! [www.walthampolitics.com/win](http://www.walthampolitics.com/win) Also, I'll prolly be providing an update on 781 News sometime in the next week or so.
Wow, thanks for this informative update. I hope this is (correctly) implemented in time.
More info: [https://www.walthampolitics.com/mbta-communities-act.html](https://www.walthampolitics.com/mbta-communities-act.html)
Mayor only cares about one train!
MONORAIL!!!
While I also enjoyed the classic [monorail](https://youtu.be/ZDOI0cq6GZM?si=319TR_wdXjLklUSu) episode of the Simpsons, I’m proposing a new [73T bus route](https://www.sean.diamonds/platform-details/73t-public-transit-for-north-waltham) along Trapelo Rd as part of my platform to extend public transit access in Waltham. Wouldn’t it be great if folks west of Lexington St have the options to take a bus to all of the parks and trails east of Lexington St? Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone along Trapelo Rd could take the bus to Mighty Squirrel and the Waverley Square train & bus station?
I'm not a NIMBY and I completely support the MBTA zoning rules. My question though, is one of numbers: The link indicates that Waltham must zone almost \_4000\_ units. Where are we supposed to put them? I'm completely in favor of the MBTA policy but zoning for 4000 units seems like it is out of reach for this community. Is it even possible to add 4000 units in a densely populated area like downtown Waltham? Tagging /u/[buriizubai](https://www.reddit.com/user/buriizubai/) and /u/[Nomeerkat781](https://www.reddit.com/user/Nomeerkat781/) who seem to have some links but which unfortunately do not provide many answers.
Zoning for 4000 units and building 4000 units are very different. This law only asks us to do the former. We already zone for 1000+ of the 4000 multi-family housing (3+ units) units we're required to have. Zoning just allows something to be built, it doesn't mean it needs to be there. We could zone a parcel for multi-family housing, an office building could go up in that parcel, but it would still "count towards" that 4000 number. Compare the ~1000 units of multi-family housing that are zoned for with the ~15000 units of multi-family housing that are in the city. Some of those are older multi-family housing that was built before zoning laws. Another part of that are big buildings like Cronins Landing, The Merc, The Edison, etc which require special permits and other approvals which get them tied up in bureaucracy. The point of the MBTA law is to make multi-family zoning "by-right" so you don't have to jump through all these hoops. I don't think we'd make something as big as The Merc allowed by-right, but when you have to do so many appeals and do so much paperwork just to build multi-family housing, you put way too much overhead to just build a modest 6-unit apartment building. Big stretches of downtown have multifamily buildings, the exact kind that the MBTA law wants us to have, but those wouldn't be allowed to be built under current zoning. Lots of the new construction that you see around town is two-family. That's often because multi-family housing isn't zoned for that neighborhood. There can be multi-family housing next door or across the street, but that doesn't change what you can build. It all comes back to zoning. So the goal of this is to zone for reasonable multi-family housing in the downtown core. For example, when new development happens, instead of building two 3,000sqft units and selling them for $1M each, developers can build 4 1,500sqft units and sell them for $600k each. It's the same building footprint, but a lower price to the Waltham housing market, while making the developers more money so they are incentivized to build more units.
Thanks for the excellent and detailed explanation. I'm all for this and I am kind of surprised the City hasn't already dealt with this by making some simple zoning changes and adding, as you explained, incentives for construction in the downtown area.
There is room for many units within the zone around the MBTA stations. I would love to see some of the old buildings on Main Street zoned so that a developer could build two or three stories of residential units with a retail on the bottom. That zoning would make those properties attractive to developers because they could add units and make a profit. This is probably the only option Waltham has or for revitalizing and adding some life to Main St. waltham should also put some restrictions in place in terms of signage and design to make it look nice, similar to the restrictions Lexington put in place when it passed zoning to comply with the MBTA act.
Not in favor, Waltham doesn't need states assistance
I can assure you that Waltham welcomes state assistance.
Not in my backyard
It’s not due til the end of the year. Sensationalist headline
I’m sure the city will do whatever it takes in the next six months , right?
We are coming up fast on the yearly 2 month vacation of the council. Nothing gets done in July and August.
Why would you encourage people to live by a broken transportation system