Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 2/28/2023
AMHERST – At their Feb. 21 meeting, the Amherst Planning Board discussed opportunities for housing growth within Amherst. The meeting was for purely discussion purposes, no action was taken and no items were voted on. However, board members presented multiple options which may become realities for the town in the near future.
Board Chair Doug Marshall shared three different ideas on areas that could be utilized. The first was a neighborhood in North Amherst wherein he proposed rezoning existing apartment complexes for higher density, thus increasing the volume of units in each site.
“There were basically three areas that I was interested in. One was north of the university, not immediately north but west of North Pleasant Street…where Puffton Village and Brandywine are now. The reason I wondered about it was it’s fairly low-density housing now, and it’s all from, like, the 70s, so it’s one- and two-stories. It has a mix of undergraduate residents, it has graduate student residents with families. It probably has some low-income family occupants, but it seems like right now, it’s rental housing that has some students and not. Who would object, I suppose? Part of this was what could we do that wouldn’t arouse vociferous opposition to, because we seem to have a lot of that,” Marshall said.
His second idea was an area near the Hadley border along the University Drive corridor.
“The second one was down along University Drive, south of Amity Street. I know there’s been some housing built along there, i.e. One University Drive, and I think 70 University was the other one that was recently done just south of that new restaurant Savannah’s. That was an area where there weren’t a lot of residential abutters who might be objecting to allowing housing. Right now it’s basically commercial. Big Y is there, you’ve got all the medical stuff on the corner with Route 9, then there’s the post office and all the pot shops along there,” Marshall said.
This district was opportune in Marshall’s eyes due to its plentiful resources and transit access.
“I know if we wanted to, we could do, say, an overlay district along there that would allow to add housing as an opportunity. If it were relatively urban in its configuration, close to the street and four or five stories, you could have kind of a new downtown down there. It’s a pretty straight shot up University Drive to the university…There’s also pretty good bus service there and if you had an apartment there you could walk to Big Y and back. You could bicycle up University Drive to the university. That seemed like an area with reasonable amenities, such that you could probably operate without a car if you lived in that area,” Marshall said.
Marshall’s final idea was one that is very mixed in its reception; many support it, many do not. He suggested that the area next to Kendrick Park in downtown Amherst be redeveloped for luxury apartments.
“The third one is, I’m sure, the most controversial, so I’ll mention it but I expect a couple of you to object to it right off the bat, and that is the west side of Kendrick Park, that stretch of housing between, say, McClellan and Triangle Street. I realize that there is resistance to that in the adjacent neighborhood, but from a developer point of view, that is an area where, particularly with Kendrick Park becoming a park, it has the potential to be our Boston Common. It’s a place where if you had pretty nice apartments along that stretch, I think they’d be really desirable and could be a nice place for retirees to live or well-off families,” Marshall said.
Board Vice Chair Thom Long and board member Andrew MacDougal had an idea of their own which they presented together. MacDougal said the other board members supported their idea after visiting the site recently.
“I was only going to add the area that Thom [Long] and I talked about, actually several of us when we were doing a site visit, was Belchertown Road going out of town east towards Belchertown, since there’s lots of low-density [housing] around here and with East Amherst village center starting to develop…[On a recent site visit in the area], we recognized that there is a large stretch of Route 9 all the way down to the old maple farm that seemed like a great area for up zoning. I think this [is] also one of the areas that has been targeted for some residential growth,” MacDougal said.
Long felt that not only could the area be used for housing growth, but that it also represented an opportunity to get rid of the vast food desert which plagues this part of town through further commercial expansion.
“One of the things we also talked about in reference to that [area] was kind of expanding the village center further down that road to allow for maybe some nonresidential markets or other types of grocery-like stores that might populate that road as well. There is quite a big food desert there for people and it’s quite a distance for them to bring their groceries on the bus all the way over there. There’s lots of students, there’s lower-income housing there and there’s a lot of density. I think bringing that urban, village center further down Route 9 might allow for some development of markets for fresh produce or something that could alleviate this food desert,” Long said.
The board is still considering its options.