City Council - Regular Meeting

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Hi, everybody. It's, what is it, 5.01. We're going to kick off the Economic Development Committee. We're joined by my colleagues, Councilor Katie Reeve-Walsh and Councilors LaVarclay-Bruce. And then we are here in person, and I'll have everybody in here shout out their names that you don't already know them. Starting off with Mr. Sheehan. Tim Sheehan, Chief Development Officer.

I can't show you a lot of apartment.

Michelle grout director of springfield this is from a district.

All drawing planning.

And you're going to be planning. I just feel it's going to teach trying to. Try to spell it. All right appreciate it well thank you everybody for coming. And we have. item on the agenda for the only issues with surface parking. And second item is minimum special permit requirements for multifamily housing. So with that, I will give it over to you, Mr. Sheer.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This discussion started with a commentary with regards to the and this is regarding the two zoning issues. It was an editorial commentary from the Boston Globe with regards to Boston's budget and concerns around keeping economic development and housing development going forward because they're so critical to the finances of any city in terms of tax revenue and other permit fees and things like that. It basically indicated that housing and commercial development is at the heart of keeping the city moving forward. And I think that's applicable not only to Boston, but to the city of Springfield as well. And two things that stood out with regards to some of the zoning issues. First was the requirement on over 10 units of housing being developed in Springfield requires a special permit of the city council. I understand the need for the council to consider large scale development. But in the development process, one thing that is needed and essential is that the developer have a sense of certainty. And the special permit on 10 units or more at that low level is not giving developers a sense of certainty. It's adding to the time for projects to get approved. And ironically, and looking at it on the other side, Developments over 10 units require a special permit, but a surface parking lot that's not an accessory used to an actual business or structure is as of right in the downtown. And both of those, I think, are conflicts in terms of accessibility. I think we all can agree that surface parking in the central business district is not the highest and best use of our land if it's not related specifically to a business or for public parking. It's just basically using land to create a profit associated with parking. And Council President Whitfield asked us to look into these two issues in terms of how other communities were dealing with them, which we did. We looked at Providence, Lowell, Hartford, Worcester, and Albany, and all of them did not have special permit for development of multifamily or mixed-use development at all most of what in terms of looking at the surface parking issue most did not allow for surface parking in the downtown We had forwarded this to the council for your consideration. Hartford, for example, does not allow any new surface parking lots in the downtown. And it also all zones which permit multifamily housing are allowed as of right in Hartford. Lowell is within the zone district, which was adopted in 2023 and includes their downtown housing development of any size can be constructed without the need for a special permit. Providence multifamily developments are allowed in their multifamily zone district as of right. So, I mean, it's pretty clear that our competitive size cities are leaving these issues to the planning board and the zoning staff. And, you know, I'm not looking to eliminate the special permit altogether. I think that we collectively need to consider raising it to an appropriate level so that the council is dealing with projects of more magnitude than 10 units or more, which is a pretty small housing development project.

Before you keep going, Tim, I just want to acknowledge my colleague, Councillor Justin Hirsch, who's on our line as well. Thank you, Councillor, for joining. All right.

So we also provided the tiered threshold. We also provide what are suggested.

Excuse me for breaking in. I think there's something wrong with the zone. I cannot see Tim.

Oh, you want me to move? I don't think you can see the other side either. The camera's pointed on Andrew.

I can move to the other side. There you go, Andrew.

Well, that's, yeah.

Here, let me just move back a bit.

I want to make sure you are really here. Hi, counselor. Hi, Tim. Nice to see you.

Nice to see you as well. So, I mean, again, I'm not looking to rush this out of committee. I think, you know, it would be helpful within the committee to have some dialogue about it and then come to an understanding of, you know, where we are with regards to surface parking, which I truly believe should be a special permit by the city council because some areas of our downtown surface parking represents... over 40% of the area. And, you know, it's just a situation that surface parking doesn't, first of all, it's not the highest and best land use. And there's nothing more deadening to an area in terms of we're trying to create livability and activate the downtown from a pedestrian standpoint. Surface parking lots do the exact opposite of that.

So if I could jump in, Tim, I think you've heard me say this before, especially when it comes to Dwight Street. I mean, that's one of my pet peeves of our city is that you have a walkable main street, but that's it. I mean, I was at Worcester a week or so ago. You go to other cities and they have... I'll call it a grid, but you have multiple cross streets that are walkable, whereas it seems like in our downtown, Main Street is like the only walkable one. You get to Dwight Street and it's all parking lots. And I think one of my criticisms of, you know, when we were doing the garage for the Mass Mutual Center was, you know, not having something activating the Dwight Street side. So I'm... open to hear what you're saying on the surface parking. I do think that that's something that we should definitely be exploring. But I'm also curious is, are you saying to activate it in a sense of having folks develop like those parcels into some type of structures? Like what are you envisioning? Because I also know like the challenges that come with developing in Springfield too. And so I just want to be realistic.

Yes, I'm actually saying that the surface parking isn't the highest and best use of the land area. And as such, approval of that type of use should be a special permit from the city council. It's not saying that you can't do it. You just need to go through the council in order to get approval to add additional surface parking into the downtown. Okay. Councilor Walsh?

Yes. And thank you for this meeting. And Tim, that's a really interesting concept. And, you know, I have always thought that we sometimes make it too hard for people to do business in Springfield. So I would be very interested in that proposal. If removing any, if it's applicable and if it's fair, removing red tape, because I don't think we're always business friendly.

Well, as I said, counselor, you know, every developer is looking for certainty in terms of the path forward to get their project built and the public entitlement process. They want to understand what the process is and how we stick to it. And unfortunately. we we've inserted into this housing development role realm um which you know we're all trying to advance more housing development in the city and unfortunately we have this situation that if you're and i think We all can agree that 10 units of multifamily housing is a very, very small development. Anything that goes over that number of 10 is requiring the legislative body of the city to issue a special permit for it. I just feel that that threshold is too low.

And you'd also get neighborhood councils and all other kinds of entities involved. I think it's a good idea.

Thank you. Any other questions from my colleagues?

I do have a question about the service parking. Is there something coming before us?

I'm not advancing anything right now, Counselor. I just wanted to have the conversation in committee to see where the committee members were with it.

In essence, the city council would be giving up some legislative power.

Right.

Yes.

Oh, if you take something, do you give something back?

Yeah. I'm giving back that the surface parking is going to require a special permit from the city council in the downtown. Okay.

So I guess my other question I have is, do you have any stats on around, you know, on the, I know we're on the parking issue right now. That's the first one. Stats on how many requests we get for parking, surface parking. It doesn't have to come before you at all. But like how many, how many, they still have to go through? Yes. So do you have stats on how many folks come to you for

Right. In business. Okay. So if you, in other words, if the zoning allows it as of right, if you want to do it, you just sail right through. Okay. Just do it. Okay.

May I just ask, are there a lot of parcels like that? 10 units waiting to come online?

Well, that was on the, we were talking about the parking, but in terms of development that's over 10 units, we have close to 700 units in the pipe, in the city's pipeline for housing development. So, you know, the vast majority of those would exceed the 10 units or more and would ultimately have to get a special permit from the city council.

I think we don't like to see more housing.

That was going to be my next question was like, what are the stats on the housing portion of it? So you're saying vast majority are above the 10. So how did you come up with the 10 number?

That's what the regulation is right now for the special permit from the city council. So, in our zoning regs, it says, if you're building more than 10 or more housing units, you have to come to the city council and get a special permit for that development.

You're saying to get rid of.

The 10, I'm asking for the 10 to be moved up to 50.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Justin, you had a question? Councilor Hurst? Sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was still on mute. Can you guys hear me? Yes, we can. I apologize. As I'm driving to get my kids to practice, I really love the fact that for the open parking lots that they have to come before the city council. That makes perfect sense to me. And hopefully it'll restrict so many of them being placed in the downtown. So I'm all for that. I guess the only question that I have with respect to the units going from 10 to 50, how many of 50 plus do you have on the docket out of the 600 that you have coming online?

Most of them are, except for the, and I don't want the councilors to misunderstand me on this. In terms of the larger scale developments that are 50 more or plus units, I think the council should ultimately be involved in making those decisions relative to land use and require the special permit for those very, very significant developments. But I would say that over 50% of the housing development that we have in the pipeline would ultimately be under the 50 number.

It seems like an awful lot.

Yeah, that was going to be my question is how did we get to that? Sorry, counselor. No, no, that's fine. I'm still thinking through it. Yeah, I mean, my initial question was the 10 number, but what I really meant to say is how do we get to the 50 number on the 10?

Well, I think you're looking at the level of scalable development. Like, for example, the McCaffrey project that's advancing, that's 99 units. That's a pretty significant scale of development that the council should consider. certainly be involved with. Can you give us some examples of some of the 50 and below that we've done? There's a Chestnut Street elderly project. I'm sorry, not Chestnut Street, but the old Brightwood School is going through redevelopment for an elderly housing in the north end. That's roughly 40 units. It's a conversion of the school into elderly housing. And those are kind of like the infill development projects. Like, for example, Gordon Pulsifer's project in the old school department and on Temple Street is roughly, I want to say it's like 48 units combined with the two buildings. Okay.

Yeah, because I mean, I want to make, I mean, housing obviously is a challenge and we want to make it easier. And to Councilor Walsh's point, we want to, you know, want to make it easier for folks. I was just curious because that is a significant amount that you're taking off of the plate of the council. And my only worry is not that whether we need to vote on it or not, is just knowing about these projects I think are important. I mean, to me, a 48-unit project is still pretty significant in my opinion. But, I mean, I'm not against or, you know, whatever. I'm just curious how we got to that number.

Just so you know, Counselor, that the If you're under 48, there's still a level of review under our breakdown. There's currently three levels of review. It's either administrative, planning board, or special permit city council. So if you're under 50, there would still be a full review, but it would be through the planning board and not the city council. So public notice and all that would still go out to a botter's

neighborhood it would still go through a the planning board unlike the city council can't deny a site plan review but it would still go through a public review and you're you're going to be able to um i guess at a future point get us stats on that i think it would be great to have stats of like what we've done in the last i don't know five years or if you don't have that then like what we have coming up and what's under 50, what's above 50, I think it'd be really good for us to see that. Again, I'm not necessarily, like I said, I think make it, you know, red tape, less strict for folks, especially if our sister cities are kind of moving in that direction or are in that direction. I don't want to be left behind in slow progress. I just, yeah, that's my feedback for now. Councilor Hurst.

Yeah. Are we thinking that we're slowing these, the progress of these properties up? I mean, it's one of my fears. Go ahead.

Go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, go ahead.

I'll let you finish. Okay. So as I said, counselor, it's the issue of uncertainty and adding time to the process.

have we ever denied it denied one of those I just don't remember us denying you know a significant development since when I was on the council I mean have we ever running the issues I know and I think one of my biggest fears is losing the vibrancy of the discussion and the checks and balances that I believe the members of the city council have when it comes to really asking some tough questions of these developers uh especially as it relates to making sure that they hire minority contractors or at least um you know being able to question them on their willingness to hire minority contractors veteran contractors women contractors um you know residents of the city i mean i think a lot of those tough questions that we tend to ask Now we won't be able to ask. And so I guess that worries me a bit. Did I freeze? No, no, you're good. You're good. OK. OK.

It sounds like we're pretty in alignment on the surface parking. Once, you know, I think I think the 2nd, 1 again, this is could be the 1st of maybe 2 meetings. I think. You know, dialogue back and forth would be helpful. I know you, you sent us the stats on the other communities as well. So those are all like, the kind of. The Massachusetts gateway communities are similar size cities in New England. On that. And would that also help in the downtown area on the multi-unit piece? Yes. Because I know that's one of the things, especially, you know, you mentioned the MBTA bill there that they passed in 2023, which required a bunch of MBTA communities to put up some housing units. I would love to see, like, us do something with the Union Station and having development around the Union Station to maximize one, one of the things that we did in terms of changing the zoning laws downtown from industrial, but also to hopefully get the service parking lots to some type of activation, which brings me to another question. So obviously the service parking lot would be for future, but there's nothing we can do with current, obviously.

you just wouldn't be able to have a change in use and then come back to make it a surface parking lot.

All right. Any other comments for anybody else? What are your guys thoughts? Downtown.

On the surface lots?

Yes.

I wholeheartedly agree about the surface lots.

Are you seeing it from folks that are visiting the downtown? points about that?

I mean, I usually I thought people like, like Tim said, there's a significant amount of underutilized property in the downtown. And to your point, the Doitre corridor, a lot of it's unnecessary, given how many parking spaces we actually have, and what they're doing over with the McCaffrey scooping them up, building them up, and utilizing the space in a more appropriate way. I Definitely agree. I was going to ask Tim if it meant even if there's a deed transfer, they'll have to apply for the repurpose of it.

Yeah.

That's good.

I do think also in the past, you've lost buildings in the downtown for certain parking lots. So a lot of the certain parking lots you're at, it was easier to tear the building down and make money on a parking lot versus trying to renovate.

Versus rehabbing it. Yeah. Which is what I would imagine happened to Dwight Street, all those spaces. Is a tax impact. Yeah. um, tower square. I mean, that was ability to structure stagers, right?

Stagers too young to remember.

I know it was there, but too young for that. But I mean, it's just goes to show that we've lost some of the character of the downtown that, so, um, but that's, that's a whole other issue in terms of buildings and getting them reactivated. And so, um, yeah, All right.

Counselor. Yes, sir. Just one other thought in terms of the building approvals that are by us. I guess the other thing that I would be concerned about is the fact that when it comes before the city council, we get informed of what is happening in our city. We also get informed of who's developing in our city. And so I guess, you know, one of my big fears would be that we would have, you know, a good number of development of these 600 units. Is it 600 or 6,000? No, 600. 600 units and over 50% of them we would have no knowledge of unless there was some sort of way in which you all are proposing that we get knowledge of those particular properties. So that would be another concern that maybe we can think about working through.

Thank you, Kostler. That was actually, I think you might have jumped off when I mentioned that piece. So you're singing the same tune as I was, is just wanting to know about those projects, not necessarily whether we voted on them or not.

Let us think about how to incorporate that information back to the council.

I think that's a valuable piece for us, at least knowing what's going on. Again, I'm not saying I'm against moving it. I just think there's a piece of information that we lose from not changing that I mean we're losing the power to vote on it but again I'm not you know I think it we should be looking at how do we make stuff more efficient red tape but I also don't want to be you know and I want to be in the know what's going on in our city as Councilor Hurst mentioned right it's good to know what's going on in our community so if we can find something where it balances you know us not totally being out of the loop you know I'd be I myself I can only speak for myself I'd be willing to look at something like that

Maybe it's a reporting from the planning board as to what's before the planning board.

It could be something like that if you think about it a little bit more. Yeah, let's let's think about it and. And again, the number, the number piece, I mean, like I said, that's why I asked, like. How'd you get to the 50 number versus you said other communities don't have any.

Any at all else? It's basically the zoning staff and the zoning bylaws and then the planning board goes through its process.

Got it. Okay.

Councilor Walsh?

Yeah, I'm just wondering, is there something else we can do that makes it easier or more business friendly? Or is it just doing this without council approval?

I don't know of how you can make the special permit business friendly. I mean, because it's basically saying you've got to go through all of the bells and whistles with regards to site plan review approval, planning board approval, and then the unknown is ultimately if the city council is going to approve your special permit.

Right, right. It'd be interesting to know what the other cities and towns do. I think we should continue this discussion.

The comparable cities to Springfield, basically, if the area is zoned for multifamily, there is no requirement for a special permit.

So as we were saying, Councilor Walsh, many of our sister communities don't have any regulations on that piece. And you're just saying from zoned multi-housing. So if there's obviously some zoning changes required, then that would still... That would absolutely have to come to counts. Okay. That actually makes me feel a little bit better because I know that not everywhere is zoned for multi-unit. So that makes me feel a little bit more comfortable. But still, I think it's a conversation that we should continue having and figure out a way to... make sure that council keeps getting informed in terms of what's happening. Councilor Click-Bruce.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for having this meeting. Thank you, Tim, for the presentation. I'm aligned with the councilors that's already spoke. I basically would love to still be in the process, what that looks like, because what you just said, Tim, they still have an unknown of you guys not approving them as well. A lot of times we were out in the community and we're getting, you know, what's this project? What's that project? A lot of times, you know, I don't even know. So this would be another barrier for us to not know. And I think for sure it should be, I'm willing to go a little above versus a 10. And, you know, you suggested 50. I'm pretty sure we'll have more conversations on that. But I still, me personally, I still like to be involved. with the process, but obviously I'm really willing to hear more dialogue on this. Thank you, Council. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Clerk Bruce. Yeah, I think this is, you know, probably send out the information to folks and then probably set back another quick meeting to, not a quick meeting, but to discuss that piece. But yeah, I think I'd love to learn more about the stats, what we have. Also, understanding where are we zoned for? Obviously, you have a map of what's zoned what. And so I know in the downtown, we just changed that from industrial. But I imagine anything that's not, we still have to change it. So yeah, I'd love to have more conversation on it.

Okay. Again, counselors, thank you for the discussion. Let me think a little bit more on how to deal with some of the concerns that you brought to the table and we'll come back for another subcommittee.

And I think, you know, the two of the things that I heard from my colleagues is One, like we were going to look into, which is the how do we stay informed as part of that process without slopping? Because I hear you. I hear you that, you know, some developers might not look at Springfield if they have, you know, to look at. Oh, like we got to do all this and we've got to go in front of the council. They can look at. Worcester that's gone that's boom and they can go to Providence that's boom and they go to Hartford right so I understand that I don't want to make us um what's the word I'm looking for you know disadvantage I guess um I don't want to make us less competitive to our sister cities but I think there's got to be a happy medium there and then the other piece in terms of what that appropriate dwelling unit is, whether it's 50, whether it's whatever, whether it's nothing, right? I don't know if my colleagues will go for that, but I mean, there's an argument that other communities are doing it, but I think, you know, there's valid in those two points is what I've seen, so.

with that. One quick question. Do you think that with the level of support coming from committee with regards to the surface parking, we would be able to advance that?

Yeah, I was going to actually ask one of my colleagues to make a motion to move item number one, zoning issue with surface parking. Take a vote.

Don't move. Don't move.

Second. All right, so we've got a motion made by, I'm going to pick one, Councilor Walsh, and seconded by Justin Hurst, or vice versa. All in favor?

Aye.

All right. Any opposed? hearing that, so you're good on number one. Thank you. You got a win. Yep, I did. All right, if there's no other questions, I hope everybody enjoys the rest of their day.

Oh, you got one other issue. Oh, what's the other one? It's the ordinance for the food.

Oh, cars and parking lots.

Oh, okay, sorry. Yep. Oh, okay. Oh, you have to stay. Okay.

All right, next issue.

Yeah, I didn't see it. I see public portion here. I wanted to.

Oh, I'm sorry. We sent it to the staff. Yeah, that's why I was.

Oh, I looked online today. It was on there. I think it was on there. Yeah.

Just double checks. I don't want to be against any. No, definitely check. Because if it's published, it should be good.

What was the first one called?

First one was the service parking. Double check. It might have just given me a different printout.

No, I might have thought the service parking was the next one.

It all went to Sean.

Yeah, and here I have public portion is service parking and special permit requirements. Okay. So it's not on there. So we'll bring that forward for the next meeting. For the next one. Oh, not doing that. It's not on the agenda. It's not on the agenda, sir. All right. Thank you, guys.