By Rob Buchanan, Stuart Dash, Bill Shelton and Tim Talun

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

On October 18^th the Planning Board and Board of Aldermen will conduct a public hearing on new zoning for Union Square that includes major changes. In many respects, it is an improvement over what exists today. But its far-reaching and, in some cases, troubling consequences merit careful consideration by citizens and policy makers alike.

In May, Somerville’s Planning Board approved a Neighborhood Plan which lays out a vision for the future of Union Square.  The plan is intended to maximize benefits that the Green Line Extension may bring, and realize such SomerVision objectives as housing-type diversity, affordable housing creation, job growth, tax revenue increases, open space expansion and an improved public realm.

The Square’s zoning is the legal mechanism that largely determines whether the Neighborhood Plan’s vision is realized.

The aspects of Union Square redevelopment that would probably have the greatest impact on city residents who live outside of the neighborhood are jobs and tax revenues created by commercial development.  Of particular concern to planning staff and citizens has been boosting tax revenues in anticipation of massive capital expenses that include a $256 million high school, $5.3 billion sewer renovation, $50 million Green Line assessment, and new police and fire stations.

Somerville’s land use is overwhelmingly invested in residential property, which pays a tax rate only 60% of that which commercial property pays, but generates twice the municipal costs that commercial property of equivalent value does.

So in February, all eleven aldermen cosponsored a zoning amendment drafted by President Bill White that would require 68% of new development in critical districts like Union Square to be commercial. The proposed amendment has not yet been acted on.

Meanwhile, US2, the Union Square master developer selected by the Somerville Redevelopment Authority in June 2014, has been waiting and is understandably eager for zoning that it can act on.

After months of hard work, the city’s planning staff have produced a document that goes a long way toward codifying the Neighborhood Plan. It captures much of the Plan’s vision, including ensuring that the Square’s center remains predominantly commercial.

It includes carrots and sticks to promote an overall development mix that is 60% commercial. But the carrots are substantial, while the sticks are weak or nonexistent. The zoning would allow developers to propose speculative projects on land they do not own. And it would reduce the public’s ability to influence regulation of the highest impact developments.

These would be consequences of the creation of an overlay district whereby multiphase projects covering 200,000 square feet (4.6 acres) or more, and comprising two lots or more, could obtain a Coordinated Development Plan Special Permit. CDPSPs would be a new form of entitlement created by this legislation.

The land parcels would not have to be adjacent. Nor would the developer have to own or have contracted to buy all the lots, a provision that needs further consideration.

The latter suggests why the amendment allows the Somerville Redevelopment (SRA) Authority to be the “co-developer” of a CDPSP. The unelected SRA has the authority to take privately owned land by eminent domain without owners’ consent.

The danger here is that a developer who obtains a CDPSP could build profitable, high-end residential uses first on the land they already own, leaving commercial projects—or open space—to a future that might never happen.

Such was the case with “Union Place,” a development, begun in 2001 that straddles Webster Avenue. Six buildings comprising 131 housing units are up and occupied. The site of the promised commercial building remains conspicuously empty, a rock-strewn lot surrounded by fencing.

The CDPSP could be a positive new mechanism which provides the carrot to promote the commercial development we want and need.  But a means of enforcement must be included to make sure all the benefits being proposed are actually realized.

Once a CDPSP is granted, individual buildings would be permitted “as of right”.  The zoning prescribes many design elements that developers must adopt if they are to win “as of right” approval for their projects. Some of these are important new standards, ensuring things such as adequate sidewalk width.

But other elements are usually determined by individual architects and designers. Such over-prescriptive regulation can prevent them from creating interesting and unique buildings that would distinguish Union Square.

Because of these and more substantial elements within the proposed zoning that allow certain dimensional and design features “as of right,” it is unclear as to how much regulatory latitude the Planning Board would have in responding to broadly expressed public concerns.

One example is building heights. The Neighborhood Plan contemplated two twenty-story buildings next to the Green Line station. The new zoning appears to allow a twenty-story tower on the site of the current public safety building as well, next to existing residential neighborhoods.

While many neighborhood stakeholders seemed prepared to accept a high-rise building next to the Green Line station in return for open space, rational mobility planning, and an improved public realm, they deserve to be heard on the proliferation of projects that would transform their neighborhood’s character.

And they will be disappointed by the meager open-space requirements. The mayoral-appointed Civic Advisory Committee called for a minimum commitment of 34% of land to useable public open space. Planning staff ratcheted that figure down to 15%. But by allowing uses such as “pedestrian circulation” to be counted as open space, the actual figure would be even less.

In fairness to Somerville’s planning staff, a city cannot legally require a developer to create publicly accessible open space. And the amendment’s writers have wisely used pedestrian circulation requirements as a means of ensuring the creation of new open space. But successful projects like Boston’s Fan Pier and Cambridge’s North Point and University Park developments demonstrate that cities can facilitate plans that produce profitable land transformations with ample open space.

There are many more specifics of the proposed zoning that will literally shape the neighborhood’s buildings, public realm, and future. But they are too numerous to cover in this one column.

Somerville citizens devoted thousands of hours to producing a physical Plan for Union Square that promises to support and nourish the community that we love, even as market forces displace many from that community.  Planning staff have done a commendable job of translating this into zoning.

But the realization of the community’s vision for their future depends on paying close attention to the details.  Citizens must rely on their elected representatives’ diligence to ensure that the Plan’s promises are kept through enforceable zoning.