The Parking & Traffic Commission meets for the first time in months, talks parking study, library lot, and the commissioners’ role in parking policy.

From the Ask And Ye Shall Receive Dept., I was just wondering a few days ago what had become of last year’s downtown parking study, when lo and behold, it turns out that the Greenfield Parking and Traffic Commission held its first meeting in ages last week and that very topic was on the agenda.

Getting the band back together

From what I can tell, this commission is currently pretty slim—just three members, with two vacancies—and per their discussion at this meeting, the last time they met was last July. It wasn’t clear to me what the cause of the long gap between meetings was, although Commissioner Jean Wall outright stated that while Mayor Martin involved the commission in all of the city’s projects during his tenure, Mayor Wedegartner "didn't care about this commission and never had us meet."

Also in attendance at this meeting was Christian LaPlante, the city’s Economic and Community Development Assistant and recently appointed parking policy coordinator. I noticed what seemed to be a consistent theme running through the meeting of Commissioner Wall wanting to wait for guidance from Mayor DeSorgher—both on specific issues as well as about the purpose of the commission more broadly—with LaPlante pointing out that he represents the mayor. It was an interesting dynamic.

The first item on the agenda was election of officers, a quick affair that resulted in Commissioners Sebastian Gutwein and Jim Geisman being elected Chair and Secretary respectively.

Picking up and then tabling the Downtown Parking Study

The commission discussed the Downtown Parking Study1 at this meeting but did not get very far with it. The commissioners agreed that they needed time to more thoroughly review the study’s results and recommendations, and I got the impression that Commissioners Geisman and Wall had not yet looked at it. Wall seemed reluctant here as well to proceed without guidance from the mayor, saying again that it depends "what the mayor wants from us” and then calling it "a waste of time" to do anything before they hear from the mayor.

The commissioners agreed to table the discussion and pick the parking study back up at their next meeting.

A side note from this part of the meeting was that planning for the Main Street Redesign project remains ongoing and that the next version of the plan should be available for public review sometime this spring.2

Parking maps old and new

One of the recommendations from the Downtown Parking Study that the city has already started moving forward on is a simplified map to help people looking for where they can park in the downtown area.

LaPlante presented the commissioners with the current draft of the new map. As it currently stands, even this version of the parking map—while a great improvement over the current map—is still quite complicated. I think that is less an issue of the map’s format and more an indicator that Greenfield’s parking rules are overly complicated. Commissioner Wall pointed out that what stands out on the map is the large amount of permit parking spots; LaPlante noted that all of these spots open up after 5PM and on weekends, but that is not clear on the map.

The review of the new map led to a somewhat extended discussion of the Olive Street garage. Rates at the garage have been reduced from $1 per hour to $0.40 per hour, but with the removal of the perpetually broken automated gates and the parking kiosk, the only way to pay for parking there is via the Passport app. Apparently lots of people express confusion about parking at the garage and frustration at having to use the app3, and the commissioners bounced around some ideas for solving these problems without reaching a conclusion.

There was also some discussion among the commissioners regarding what to do about the danger to pedestrians from cars exiting the garage now that the automated gates and the warning signal are gone.

What to do about the library lot?

The other big topic of conversation at this meeting was the parking lot at the library.

During the planning and construction of the new library, the intention had been to have the lot be a paid parking, but per a January announcement from the mayor, this lot has continued to be free. However, the commissioners noted at this meeting that the lot is constantly full during the day, speculating that most of the people parking there are not library patrons but rather courthouse visitors and others using the lot because it is free.

The commissioners seemed inclined to shift the library lot back to being paid parking (as it was for the old library) but figuring out a way to keep some free spots for library patrons. It is probably the right thing to do but I could imagine this topic becoming pretty noisy and controversial—folks do like their free parking.

During this part of the discussion, there was an off-hand reference (possibly by Chair Gutwein) to making the Davis/Chapman St. lot free.4 This conversation went no further than that, but I could imagine hearing more at next month’s meeting, when they dig into the details of the Downtown Parking Study.

That brought the meeting just past the one-hour mark, at which point the commissioners decided to table the rest of the topics and adjourned for the evening.

  1. If you need a refresher on the parking study, or never heard of it, I’ve got you covered. See what I do for you? 😁 ↩

  2. And that lines up with the conversation at the Community Development Block Grant meeting earlier this week about actual implementation work for that project happening in the 2026/27 timeframe. ↩

  3. I feel it necessary to note that I have been using the Olive St. garage pretty regularly during the week lately, and it is consistently at least half to three-quarters full. So it seems many folks are figuring it out just fine and it makes me wonder if there is not a noisy minority being over-represented here. ↩

  4. That’s the lot behind the old Wilson’s building, if you have lost track. ↩

2024-03-07

"No one uses the parking garage!"

A little before noon on a Friday, here is the first level of the Olive Street parking garage:

cars parked in a parking garage

And the second level looks like this:

cars parked in a parking garage

Level 3 was about half full at this point, and there were a smattering of cars parked up on Level 4. I have been using this garage at least once a week for the past few months, and what I was seeing there this morning is pretty standard most days of the week.

I'm not trying to advocate one way or the other here, but I think the popular (or maybe just loud) narrative around town about how this garage is always empty is more of a feeling than a fact.

2024-03-08

The Planning Board holds off on approving the Starbucks site plan and gives a unanimous positive recommendation to reducing the number of daily car trips to trigger a Major Development Review.

The Greenfield Planning Board had their regular monthly meeting this past Thursday:

The major topics on the agenda for this meeting were a site plan review for the new Starbucks going into the Friendly’s location off the traffic circle and deliberation on the same, as well as six proposed amendments to the city’s zoning ordinance.

One of these amendments was a proposed change to the Major Development Review process initiated by a citizens’ petition. The MDR currently kicks in if a proposed development will generate more than 3000 amendment would lower the

The MDR thing

I was going to save this for later in the post, but we’re going to need to take a bit of a detour here to talk about the Major Development Review process. Most of the rest of this meeting won’t make much sense otherwise.

Section 200-50 of Greenfield’s zoning ordinance lays out the Major Development Review (MDR) process:

The purpose of this section is to identify and attempt to mitigate potential negative impacts to the City of Greenfield, such as to City services, traffic patterns, the environment, abutting properties, or the public health and safety, caused directly or indirectly by major development.

The first of the four criteria that can trigger an MDR is:

All new uses as defined by the Greenfield Zoning Ordinance that generate 3,000 vehicle trips per day or more in the General Commercial District, and/or 1,500 vehicle trips per day in any other district.

Once the MDR is triggered, the project submitter has to provide more details and due diligence about their proposed project, they can be held to more rigorous standards for impact mitigation, and the Planning Board (and, by extension, Greenfield residents) have more power to question and challenge the project.

So, some backstory here…

If you cast your mind back to March of 2019, the City Council was deciding whether or not to approve the acceptance of the state grant that would fund a significant portion of the new library. The library had majority support on the Council but not the super-majority required to approve the necessary level of spending.

Then City Council President Rudy Renaud negotiated a deal with Isaac Mass, who was an At-large councilor at the time and de facto leader of the Council’s conservative minority. Mass agreed to vote in favor of the library grant in exchange for a change to the MDR process. That change was that the number of daily car trips that would trigger the MDR would be raised from 1000 to 3000.

Having just come out of—and losing—some bruising battles over zoning changes along the French King Highway that would have allowed for more development on the north end of town, Mass was looking to reduce the regulatory hurdles for new developments. The Major Development Review process is one of those hurdles; increasing the number of estimated car trips for a new project from 1000 to 3000 would make it less likely that any new project would have to go through that process.

With the City Council facing a do-or-die vote on approving the library, Mass saw his opportunity and he took it. The Council voted to change the zoning ordinance, and then they voted to approve the new library. That is why our zoning ordinance now says 3000 car trips, not 1000. Local gadfly Al Norman—who had been heavily involved in opposing the French King Highway development plans—was extremely unhappy about this change at the time, and has remained so ever since.

So if you now flash-forward to last summer when the proposal for the new Aldi’s came before the Planning Board, the project did not qualify for a Major Development Review. Unable to do much about that, Norman and his supporters responded by submitting a citizens petition to amend the zoning ordinance and change the number of car trips from 3000 back down to 1000.

The Starbucks site plan review

If you are not already aware, Friendly’s has announced they will be shuttering their location at the intersection of Rt. 2 and Robbins Road by the traffic circle. Starbucks is planning to take over the space and wants to make minor alternations to the building and to the site.

This meeting included a presentation from Kimley-Horn, the planning and design consultant that Starbucks has engaged for the project. Project manager Caroline Armstrong from K-H walked the Planning Board through the high-level site plan and had Bob Scully on the line as well; he had put together the traffic statement required by the review process.

The plan seems relatively straightforward—cosmetic changes to the existing building, an addition of a landscaping island in the parking lot to better define the drive-through line, and general landscaping improvements around the site.

Most of the discussion centered—unsurprisingly—around the traffic statement provided by the submitter. Per that statement, they estimate an increase of less than 1000 car trips per day, bringing the total to around 2300 car trips per day. Because this project does not require an MDR, there is no traffic study here; there numbers are estimates based on general, nation-wide data and do not factor in any other changes in the area (like the new Aldi’s).

There was a general sense of concern and uncertainty among the members of the Planning Board—about the reliability and applicability of this data and the traffic estimate, the absence of a holistic view of the traffic impact, and the late arrival of the site plan and traffic statement.

There were also some discussion—prompted by a resident email—about the lack of any native species in the proposed landscaping improvements. There was no definitive conclusion to this topic.

Noting the limited means at their disposal to require greater oversight or mitigation of the Starbucks project—since it is an in-place improvement rather than a major development—the Planning Board decided unanimously to delay approval of the plan to give themselves more time to consider it.

The zoning amendments

The proposed amendments to Greenfield’s zoning ordinance that were up for deliberation at this meeting were:

All of these amendments received a unanimous positive recommendations from the Planning Board and will now move to the City Council for a final vote.

The only amendment that had any discussion was the proposal to change the Major Development Review (MDR) process. This amendment was also the topic that all of the public commenters were there to talk about (all were in support of the amendment).

2024-03-10

Looking at the city meeting calendar - Week of March 11, 2024

I have to say it has been pretty great 1) to have a Zoom link for every city meeting that is happening and 2) to have the recordings of those meetings posted pretty quickly by GCTV. It makes keeping up with this stuff worlds easier when I don't have to pester the Clerk's office or whoever to get the recording

Here's what I'll be trying to keep an eye on this week:

Tuesday - Economic Development Committee

The EDC will be holding their regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 12, 2024 at 6:00 PM. The meeting will take place at City Hall and on Zoom.

The full agenda for the meeting is available, and at least the first half of the meeting looks to be a the EDC's version of last week's Planning Board meeting, with a public hearing and deliberation on the six proposed amendments to the zoning ordinance.

The committee also has an agenda item to discuss the Public Involvement Plan for the Lunt site cleanup.

Wednesday - Appointments & Ordinances Committee

A&O is meeting on Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 6:00 PM at City Hall and on Zoom.

They've posted their full agenda as well; as expected from last week's Committee Chairs meeting, it is going to be a busy one.

Wednesday - School Committee

The School Committee is meeting on Wednesday evening as well, 6:00 PM at the John Zon Community Center on Pleasant Street and also on Zoom.

This meeting looks to be a relatively light one a School Committee meetings go. Looking at the agenda, I'd expect the bulk of the time to be spent on the various reports and updates. It is hard to imagine any of the motions up for deliberation (a few job description approvals and the 24/25 school year calendar being the highlights) generating much controversy or debate, but I've been wrong before.

There are a few other meetings happening this week that I'm probably not going to be able to catch up with, seeing as how I'm just one dude:

The Zoning Board of Appeals has cancelled their scheduled Thursday evening meeting and won't convene again until April.

2024-03-10