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Date: 8/12/2021
SOUTHWICK – If the Planning Board chooses to proceed with creating a new Master Plan, Southwick may finally replace its current central planning document, which dates from 1967.
Town officials have said that the new plan will be expensive and time consuming. Selectman Douglas Moglin said that the plan would cost at least $100,000 over multiple years to complete.
Planning Board Chair Michael Doherty said Aug. 5 that the Master Plan itself is not a binding document, but rather a guide that suggests actual policies to be enacted by relevant town boards and commissions. Doherty said the Master Plan is referenced throughout the bylaws that the Planning Board must consider when deciding to approve or reject a new development.
The 1967 Master Plan is a more than 200-page document that identifies Southwick’s physical, demographic and economic conditions of the time, while projecting how those conditions will change over the next two decades and beyond.
The document itself is split into three parts. The first section lays out Southwick’s physical characteristics. It displays maps of the town’s topography and soil type, which is taken into account in the zoning recommendations. It also shows a study of the physical conditions of different neighborhoods in Southwick, the average income of Southwick households at the time, and the total population of the time and the projected population growth.
The second section largely identifies traffic conditions and what infrastructure upgrades could be needed to handle the projections of growth. It also sets standards for schools, such as how many students should be in an average classroom, and how much space a new school would need. It is in this Master Plan that a single campus was proposed to hold all of Southwick’s schools, including the closure of the Southwick Consolidated School and its conversion into a municipal office building.
The third section gives specific recommendations for the town to implement over the next 20 years, and suggests zoning bylaws for the town.
One suggestion in the 1967 plan is that Southwick would need to diversify its economy in order to be less affected by economic downswings. The plan acknowledges that agriculture was not the economic driver that it had once been in Southwick, and that the local workforce would likely need to take some jobs outside of town.
How a new Master Plan affects zoning, and what kinds of businesses can come into Southwick, would be a likely point of discussion in 2021.
A desire to create a new Master Plan has been expressed by opponents of the Carvana automobile processing facility project, which was recently withdrawn after more than a month of backlash. The area around 686 College Highway, where the proposed Carvana facility would have been built, was identified as a good location for industrial-restricted zoning in the 1967 Master Plan.
The 1967 plan recommended several other areas for industrial development that were not eventually rezoned by Town Meeting, unlike 686 College Highway.
The plan makes many recommendations that have since been implemented, including the bylaws followed by the Planning Board. It recommended the development of a sewer system, which has since been built, though not the extent envisioned by the 1967 plan. It also recommended the standards for water distribution, construction of utilities, and the size and quality of roadways.