Belmont Center businesses are very worried about the Planning Board’s overlay zoning project being rushed to completion by May. They think it’s delusional and dangerous. We do too.
They are worried they won’t survive the disruption and construction over years. Stores are already super challenged, customers would be deterred by 3-year construction, and it doesn’t take much to push a small store out of business.
They are particularly distressed that the new zoning plans will take away critical parking in the Claflin Lot, and replace it with a 4 story overshadowing building, as per the current plan.
They are unhappy the Planning Board hasn’t engaged with them sufficiently or consistently, to create a plan more sensitive to their life-or-death concerns, and more sensitive to preserving the character and charm of the Center itself.
And they, like neighbors, abutters, and Town Meeting members, are disillusioned with the Planning Board’s lack of transparency and disclosure, its failure to do due diligence, its irresponsible denial of potential negative impacts, and its pie-in-the-sky decisions, which make a mockery of their talk about “consider the neighbors” (by destroying their businesses?)
Deran Muckjian, owner of The Toy Shop of Belmont, has lived here for 63 years, and is passionately opposed to the current plan. As he put it:
“Why aren’t we focusing on other parts of Belmont like Purecoat or Pleasant Street, which could take a commercial build up?
We need to focus on what we HAVE, not take away the character of the Center, and we need to realize we are not Arsenal Mall.
Why don’t we fix the train station instead, which we can revive with state funds?
This zoning plan not only WON’T succeed in expanding commercial tax revenue, it WILL kill the small businesses which make the Center what it is.”
You can hear Deran commenting at the Feb 12 public meeting above.
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WHY isn’t the Planning Board actively studying impacts on area businesses, lives, and traffic?
The Board hasn’t done its homework, or even basic due diligence on impacts. At the public meeting on February 25, Chris Ryan said he would do fiscal impact analysis ONLY focusing on revenue – but with no analysis of costs!
You and I can’t manage a household budget without costs. And we’d be fired from jobs where we had to manage budgets and ignored costs. It’s delusional.
Planning without any information on costs is lazy, deceptive, and a recipe for a disaster which we and our children will have to live with for decades.
Or is it not just laziness, but active deception, because they KNOW the costs on the town and the strain on services and schools, and fiscal impacts, will be huge?
The Town Planner’s contention that they can’t do a cost analysis because it’s too expensive is bogus and laughable. In 5 minutes, any of us can download apps and spreadsheets which model impact scenarios, after plugging in the numbers.
As an example of negative impacts, one Belmont Ctr business owner points out that if rents go up to the level of neighboring towns, after the buildout, to $65/sq foot, small businesses which can’t pay would quickly be driven out of town.
Yet that is exactly what the Planning Board is inviting.
How would you like a Center with a CVS, but no Belmont Bookstore, no Toy Shop of Belmont, no Didriks, Revolve, Helena’s, Chocolate Dream, or Champions, no Wellington, Patou, Butternut Bakery, Qebrada, Stone Hearth Pizza or Rancatores?
Trust in the Planning Board, after months of manipulated meetings, is already broken for many of us, and is steadily breaking for others.
The PB can start to repair this trust, if it wishes, by doing the following:
1. Walk your own talk about “consider the neighbors”.
Translation: HONOR the community’s and the consultant’s advice. Return to Map Option 1 – lower building heights, under 3 stories – on West Leonard Street.
2. LISTEN to business owners. Remove the pending seizure of the Claflin Lot.
3. Put taller-than-3-story buildings ONLY on Concord Ave, where neither abutters nor small businesses’ lives and livelihoods are endangered.
4. Plan creatively for available spaces in Belmont Ctr – eg the railway station.
5. Do a responsible fiscal analysis with costs as well as revenues projected under different scenarios.
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Trust must be earned. This Planning Board and Town Planner are losing it fast.
BELMONT DESERVES BETTER. OUR LIVES, HOMES AND BUSINESSES ARE ON THE LINE.