By Bella Levavi

The Somerville Land Use Committee held their final meeting before their summer recess on Tuesday, July 29. They approved four zoning amendments, and discussed four larger amendments the committee has been working on.

The largest discussion at the meeting involved two separate issues with public spaces near highways. The Committee would like to create a special permit to authorize civic spaces away from large highways in Somerville. They suggested that civic spaces should be 500 feet from Interstate 93 and 300 feet from Route 28.

Throughout many past meetings they discussed the particle pollution residents are exposed to from these highways and are working to create public spaces away from the pollution. “The decisions we are making will have impacts for decades for people to gather,” Ward 5 City Councilor Mark Niedergang said.

Additionally, the Committee talked about a change in fees for these spaces away from highways. Originally the fee was five times the “average cost to acquire, design, and develop land as a civic space.” According to a Supreme Court ruling, the fee must have a nexus or connection and be roughly proportional to the cost.

Zoning and Urban Design Senior Planner Dan Bartman said that there should be no precise mathematical equation, but the city should make individual decisions keeping in mind the needs of each area. The Committee tabled the decision on the fee to be discussed at another meeting.

At the end of the meeting, the Permit Committee announced that with their expanded budget, they are able to focus on larger land use projects. Bartman said he is working on a project involving the change in zoning ordinances to allow for cannabis delivery services. He explained that when the cannabis laws were first put into effect there were no ordinances for delivery services. He said this project is expected to be done by the end of the summer.

The Committee unanimously approved an amendment to revise the façade build-out dimensional standard. The original language of the ordinance said apartments next to Neighborhood Residence Districts need to be 90-foot buildings with 120 feet of frontage. The intent of the ordinance was to ensure that large buildings were not put next to single family homes, but the ordinance made many projects impossible.

Rooftop ordinances were also discussed at the meeting. Currently, there are extensive rooftop ordinances for labs in all buildings in Somerville. They discussed different requirements for rooftop mechanics for varying types of buildings and districts. There is not a huge priority to change the ordinances in districts with smaller buildings such as MR3 and MR4 districts, but it was suggested in public comment for high rise buildings to remove setback requirements.

For most of the decisions made at the meeting, the Committee does not have the final say, and most items will be moved out of Committee to be actualized.