SHELBURNE FALLS — In the Town Office vault, Selectman Joseph Judd found a large postcard addressed to: “The Mayor” and signed “Yours for better parking, A Massachusetts Tourist.”
“…last Friday my wife and I were driving over the Mohawk Trail and we wanted to stop and see the much advertised Bridge of Flowers and have lunch — but I was unable to find a place to park my car,” reads the postcard. “We drove on to Greenfield where they seem to have some kind of parking regulations.”
The postcard got a laugh at this week’s Selectmen’s meeting — not just because the postcard was written in 1955, but because town officials are still trying to carve out more parking for businesses, visitors, and for village apartment dwellers.
Selectmen are applying for a $15,000 Massachusetts Downtown Initiative Technical Assistance Grant to better help town officials plan for parking as the village businesses grow. And the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals are considering whether current zoning regulations limit growth in the commercial village district.
“How do you rebuild areas for which there isn’t any parking?” asked Selectman Andrew Baker, referring to plans to reuse downtown sites that don’t come with parking spaces.
For instance, the buyers of the deteriorating, three-story Singley’s Furniture building want to replace it with a two-story mixed-use building that would have shops on the first floor and apartments on the second. But current zoning regulations require the building owners to provide two parking spaces per dwelling, one space per retail employee and an additional “customer” parking space for every 150 square feet of retail floor space.
“If we were to put 2,500 to 3,000 square feet of retail space on the street level, that alone would require 17 to 20 “off-street” parking spaces,” said Jon Stark, a co-investor who bought the former 6,700-square-foot Singley Furniture store along with his wife, Susan, Josh Simpson and Catherine “Cady” Coleman. “Off-street is defined as a space where an exiting car does not have to back into any street to get out,” he explained. “Should we add three or four apartments we would be required to provide six to eight more off-street spaces.”
Pottery artist Molly Cantor recently acquired the vacant Bridge Street lot where the old Swan Building stood. She plans to build a new pottery studio and gallery on the site. Cantor said she also wanted to add a second story with apartments — until she learned how many parking spaces she would have to provide, under existing zoning. Cantor said she received a variance to put four parking spaces on her building lot; but without the variance, she would have had to have 16 parking spaces. “Even putting four parking spaces on the lot really restricts the building,” she said.
Planning Board Chairman John Wheeler said it was unfortunate that the zoning requirement is discouraging people from building new apartments in the village center “because there’s a need for more,” he said. “We would like to see both more stores and affordable housing.”
“Now, the ZBA has the authority to grant variances, but they want to know how much leeway they have,” Wheeler added.
At a recent Planning Board meeting, Michael Parry of the Zoning Board of Appeals said the zoning law on parking requirements has been a problem for at least a year, when the board reviews special permit requests to develop commercial village properties. It has also been a concern for the redevelopment of the former Swan Building lot on Bridge Street and of the VFW on Water Street.
Among the issues the Planning Board discussed were: Is the two-hour parking limit on Bridge Street enough time, or should visitors be allowed to park for three hours, so they have more time to eat and to shop? Who is responsible for maintaining the unpaved parking area behind Deerfield Avenue? What would happen if a current business with an average number of visitors became more successful and needed more parking spaces? Should there be separate regulations for village commercial/residential parking than there are for Route 2? The parking needs for year-round residents are different than for seasonal or special-event visitors.
The Planning Board would like to see an updated parking survey, similar to the 1999 study done by the Franklin Regional Council of Governments. Wheeler said more signs might encourage visitors to park behind the old Mole Hollow Candle Co. building, where there are roughly 20 relatively unused free parking spaces.
If the town’s grant application is successful, Shelburne would get assistance from a state consultant. Requests for assistance may address any aspect of parking management, including: inventorying existing parking, analysis of existing and future parking needs, and a parking management plan.
This summer, the town began enforcing the two-hour parking limit for Bridge Street and Deerfield Avenue parking spaces near stores and businesses. Shelburne also set up a winter parking ban that prohibits on-street parking during snow storms; it allows all-night parking in the back row of the parking lot behind Keystone Market, in the cul-de-sac below Deerfield Avenue, the Cross Street lot and at the former Arms Academy parking lot.