More Housing Density for North Amherst?
Aerial view of proposed North Amherst Overlay District. Photo: amherstma.gov
Report on the Meeting of the Amherst Planning Board, August 6, 2025
Present
Doug Marshall (Chair), Bruce Coldham, Fred Hartwell, Angus McLeod, and Jerah Smith. Absent: Johanna Neumann and Jesse Mager
Staff: Nate Malloy (Senior planner) and Pam Field Sadler (Assistant)
This meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded.
Public Input Needed for North Amherst Overlay District
Town Councilor Cathy Schoen (District 1) cautioned about greatly increasing the density of apartments at North Amherst complexes as proposed by the Planning Board at previous meetings. Planning Board member Bruce Coldham presented a proposal for Puffton Village at the June 18 meeting that would allow apartment buildings of up to six floors on the parcel that now contains three- to four-unit clusters of cottage apartments. If implemented, the plan would double or triple the number of residents, which is now about 1,000, most of whom are UMass students.
“I understand the intention of this [overlay district] to house more students somewhere in Amherst, and take them out of people’s backyards, but it just doesn’t make sense,” Schoen said. She urged the Planning Board to hold a meeting in North Amherst that includes residents of the complexes and property managers. In addition to the increase in traffic and need for sewer upgrades that expansion would cause, she noted that Puffton already spends $100,000 a year for security, and increasing the density of students there would make it far harder to manage.
Planning Board member Angus McLeod agreed with Schoen, saying that “it’s essential that we hear from people in North Amherst about the proposed project. I think we probably need more time to digest as a board whether we would be ready for September. October might be a possibility [for a public hearing]. But I think there’s a lot of promise here.”
Coldham said he and the Planning Department staff are still refining earlier proposals to manage the impact of such increased density on existing neighborhoods in North Amherst. He also hoped that by taking these steps to create more housing, Amherst “… can persuade neighboring towns to take more of the load” of housing students. He mentioned an email he received from Hilda Greenbaum, who said that North Amherst always gets what nobody else wants in their neighborhoods. “That is a very strong feeling at this end of town,” Coldham said. “We have to say why it is appropriate in North Amherst. Why does North Amherst yet again have to take the brunt of something that the rest of the town prefers to avoid? And that’s especially true with people who live in Amherst Woods and who think that everything can be bundled up and dumped here [in North Amherst].”
Planner Nate Malloy suggested that board members review the draft overlay proposal and submit comments to him. The proposal contains possible types of housing that could be allowed in the overlay, such as apartments, social dormitories, and mixed-use buildings, as well as dimensional standards and suggestions for expedited permitting through site plan review, instead of the usual special permit required for large multi-family developments. Discussion of the overlay proposal will be continued at subsequent meetings.
Recommendation on New Accessory Dwelling Bylaw Delayed to August 20 Meeting
The Planning Board continues to refine the Accessory Dwelling Unity (ADU) bylaw to meet the new state law that allows ADUs of up to 900 square feet to be built by right in any zone that allows residential use. Also, the principal residence on the site can be any structure that has at least one dwelling unit, such as a mixed-use building, a townhouse, apartment building, or single-family home. The state law also means that the town cannot require any setbacks, cannot regulate building coverage of a property, and cannot require owner-occupancy for these “protected use” ADUs, according to Malloy.
The town’s current proposal for the bylaw change is to keep the option for a “local ADU,” which would allow larger units up to 1,000 square feet, but limit lot and building coverage and require owner-occupancy of either the ADU or the principal dwelling. New board members McLeod and Jerah Smith, both of whom are fairly new to town and reside in Amherst Woods, which is not largely unaffected by student rentals and ADUs, spoke for simplifying the new bylaw by eliminating the local ADU option but increasing the allowable maximum size of the protected ADU to 1,000 square feet and completely eliminating the owner-occupancy requirement.
Both Coldham and Fred Hartwell objected to eliminating the owner-occupancy requirement for local ADUs. Hartwell said, “The housing subcommittee actively attempted to preserve in the application of ADU provisions such as owner occupancy that are, in this particular demographic, absolutely essential to orderly application of and provision of housing units. Now the state has said they are not going to allow us to do that, but I’m in favor. And I think we absolutely, positively, need to retain whatever control the state allows us to control because of the very unique factors that are relevant to the demographics in this town.“
Coldham added that “80-90% of people who are looking for housing are students, and there’s a great concern that housing in the center of town, particularly closer to the university, family housing has been taken over by entrepreneur student landlords, and to the extent that we allow non-owner occupancies, this is a very attractive proposition for that kind of investor. No matter what wonderful neighbors students are, the simple fact is that they’re transient.”
Planning Board Chair Doug Marshall observed that, with McLeod and Smith replacing Karin Winter on the board, the majority view of the earlier board to keep the local ADU option with the owner-occupancy requirement may be the minority view on the current board.
An interesting point was raised by Schoen in public comment. She noted that if there were two types of ADUs allowed in the bylaw (local and protected use) and a protected ADU could not be denied, it would be possible for two ADUs to be constructed on a lot, one of each type. Although this would be a possibility, Coldham said he was OK with it, because the existence of a local ADU would mean that one of the dwellings on the site would have to be owner-occupied.
There was some concern that the new ADU regulations do not specify any maximum amount of lot coverage nor can they require minimum setbacks. Malloy confirmed that a protected use ADU could not count toward the dimensional standards of the zoning district. Indeed, the ADU could be built right to the lot line or cover all existing green space. The Building Commissioner would be responsible for assuring that access for emergency vehicles and stormwater management was adequate before issuing a building permit.
The Planning Board favored eliminating some of the design specifications for local ADUs. Recommendations for the bylaw change were deferred until the board can obtain feedback from the Community Resources Committee (CRC) of the Town Council, which is also reviewing the changes. A public hearing will need to be held before a vote can be held. The Planning Board will discuss the bylaw again on August 20.
Changes Recommended to Inclusionary Zoning Bylaw
Chair of the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Gaston de los Reyes presented the trust’s recommendation that the amount developers must pay to the town if they decide to opt out of building affordable units should be raised from four times Median Family Income (MFI) to a range of four to 10 times MFI. The actual amount would be determined by the permit granting authority (Planning Board or Zoning Board of Appeals) based on location, market conditions, unit configuration, etc. The issue was raised when local developer Barry Roberts was allowed to contribute money to the housing trust in lieu of including three affordable units in the mixed-use building that will be used as an Amherst College dorm at 45-55 South Pleasant Street.
During the discussion of accepting the payment in lieu for the Roberts building, the town raised the issue of requiring a larger compensatory payment, but was constrained by the existing language in the bylaw. With the increasing cost of creating new housing and the increasing need, the housing trust recommended that the permit granting authority be able to recommend a larger payment from the developer. De los Reyes stressed that the goal was to discourage developers from opting out of building the required affordable units, but he acknowledged that some projects may not be suitable for housing non-students, such as families. The idea of the bylaw revision is to evaluate each project individually. The developer can always construct the affordable units if they feel the payment in lieu is too high.
Planning Board members felt the four times MFI minimum is too low, and that the range be five to 10 times MFI for “opt-out” payments. The CRC is also discussing this proposed bylaw change, and will need to hold a public hearing within 45 days of the referral before the proposal is voted on by the Town Council in the fall. The item will be on the Planning Board agenda for August 20 as well.
I live in North Amherst Village Center and drive along the stretch of North Pleasant Street covered by the proposed “overlay” district. Already during the school year, the northbound traffic at certain times of the day is backed up at the entrances to the area of proposed intense densification behind left turning vehicles. This will only be much, much worse if the proposed changes take place. The heavy trucks that would pass along that road daily, and along all the feeders to the site, would degrade the road surface already bumpy from recurring pothole fills. The atmosphere of the neighborhood would change from semi-agricultural with lots of green space to super urban (think a shorter example of the southwest dormitories jutting above the parking lots). Instead of inflicting off campus dormitories on a neighborhood that already houses 10 apartment complexes, why not put pressure on the Commonwealth to put its housing money where its mouth is and build enough dormitory rooms ON CAMPUS to require students to live there, thus freeing up all the rentals that they now occupy in the area?
It seems as if Planning Board member Coldham is pushing his own proposal ,from his seat on the Planning Board .
Maybe the Board should attend the Civic Academy ? Pay particular attention to the chapter on conflict of interest .
It was a huge mistake for the town to allow multi-story mixed use buildings by right. The aesthetics, the impact not only on abutters but ALL town residents, as well as the unintended consequences are not insignificant. Special Permits issued by the Zoning Board of Appeals must make findings that new structures are appropriate for their locations and can negotiate—for example— wider sidewalks for greater height. That did not happen when the planning Board approved One East Pleasant Street which got a Special Permit from the Planning Board yet a wheelchair or baby carriage doesn’t allow room for a pedestrian coming from the other direction.
Puffton Village wanting to re-build the 60-year old pre-fab units with more floors can be accomplished using the section of the bylaw dealing with non-conforming uses and structures. As long as the changes aren’t more detrimental to the neighborhood, ZBA can allow the project and have more control over the impact on the abutting North Amherst Historic District.
It’s about time now for residents to take back our (democratic) powers and demand to be heard!
Hilda is right both about the theory and the consequences. But it wasn’t a mistake; the desire of the Planning Board – and I presume the Town – to eliminate the protections provided by the distinction between “building by right” (Planning Board purview) and requiring a “special permit” (Zoning Board purview) was deliberate, the culmination of a thirty year process by which builders and developers wrestled free of what they felt as cumbersome restrictions imposed on them by the Town’s democratic form of government. The new Charter and the new form of government, the Business Improvement District (on whose board the Town Manager sits), the emergence of a secretive PAC (Amherst Forward) are all consequences of this process.
In 1993, as Chair of the Town-Commercial Relations Committee, I was asked to mediate a dispute between the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals, which at the time were not speaking to each other. That dispute was precisely over the issue Hilda identifies – the desire of the Planning Board (then appointed by the Town Manager) to take over from the ZBA certain categories of projects which did not conform to the Zoning Bylaw (and thus required a special permit) and require only a “site plan review” to allow construction “by right”. Over the decades builders and developers have won that argument, and while they have profited from their victory, the livability of Amherst and the natural and built environments which contribute so mightily to it have suffered mightily.
Believing in density and infill evades the questions, how much density? and how much infill? This is not a question of right vs wrong, it is a question of priorities. In Amherst, as elsewhere, livability does not seem to be a high priority of the power brokers in town.