Board of Aldermen — 3/21/17 Page 14
Alderman Deane
| won’t be supporting this piece of legislation. This is a perfect example of you know, the premise behind the
beginning of it, cases before the planning board. Amendments or not, | can’t support that kind of activity and |
won't.
Alderman Siegel
| tried to kind of follow what’s been going on. This thing has been ping-ponging around for quite some time.
Normally | am pretty good about following what’s going on. I’d like to understand what motivated this and how
we arrived where we are at today. | don’t understand what’s going on with this or what motivated it. There
wasn't anything associated with the legislation that drove me to feel one way or the other about it, so where did
it come from and why?
Mayor Donchess
Many amendments have been made by the committee. | think they did a good job at looking at the issue,
negotiating and talking with Mr. Brad Westgate, who is the lawyer for many of the so-called elderly housing
developments and have come out with a compromise that everybody can live with. What motivated me was
just the fact that this type of development can result in a serious increase in density. Often times that makes
sense where it is proposed. For example, Hayden Green where there is not a lot of neighborhoods surrounding
it. But in certain locations, a very significant increase in density over what otherwise would be allowed, can
have a very negative impact on a neighborhood. For example at 122 Manchester Street where the Planning
Board had previously rejected four or five units in a small single family lot as being too dense. Then they come
forward with something under the elderly housing ordinance making it 18 units where 5 or 6, whatever the
number was before, was too dense. Nowit’s 18. | thought we needed to take a look at those issues and try to
balance our desire to provide housing options for people that are over 55 with the need to preserve
neighborhoods.
Although it kind of says that this provides a more reasonable, lower price unit for people over 55, it really
doesn’t. If you look at Hayden Green, those units are nice but they are same or maybe more expensive than
other condominiums around the city. So again, just to try to take a look at these issues, come up with
something that worked better for neighborhoods as well as for the proponents of the increased density. | think
the committee worked on it a long time and came up with a reasonable compromise.
Alderman Siegel
Since I’m not familiar with all the events, you pointed out the example of 122 Manchester, which | can infer was
a motivator for this perhaps. May | ask you, Mr. Mayor, was the revised plan which was rejected by the
planning board under the proposal to have elderly housing, was that plan approved under the ordinance as
they existed at the time? Was the developer given the opportunity to do that with the change of plan?
Mayor Donchess
122 Manchester Street was examined. It went to the ZBA for various technical reasons. It was examined
under the current ordinance and was not affected in the end by the proposed changes. They were applying
the laws that exist today not as is proposed in this new ordinance. | think that was your question.
President McCarthy
I’d like to ask Attorney Bolton to comment. My recollection after the amendments is there was no change in
the density that’s allowed in any of the zones. Is that correct?
