Zoning in Newton

There are two Zoning initiatives currently underway in Newton—one reflects long-term thinking regarding zoning reform and economic development by the city, and the other reflects the MBTA Communities Law mandated by the state. They have different intents and different goals. 

1). Village Center Zoning: The emphasis of Village Center Zoning is to create dense, multi-use, and multi-story buildings on a very small percentage of land area. The concept was first introduced in the Washington Street Vision Plan adopted by the City Council in 2019 and was then was incorporated in the thinking for Village Center Zoning in 2021.

2). MBTA Communities Law: The emphasis of the MBTA Communities Law is to promote the rezoning of single-family districts into districts that permit homes with 3 or 4-family units. These multi-family homes should be buildable by right, either by adaptive reuse of an existing single-family home or by new construction. The MBTA law charges Newton with enabling a minimum of 8330 multi-family units, most of which must lie within half-mile circles around transit stations. 

It is important to note that while it is possible under MBTA zoning to provide housing units in densely zoned multi-story buildings, that is not the primary intention of the MBTA Communities Law. Instead, the definitions in the MBTA Communities Law focus on the contrast between single-family zoning and zoning for multiple families in a building. The quotes below from the MBTA Communities Law show that the primary thinking is about enabling multi-family housing in areas with single-family zoning.

“Housing suitable for families” means housing comprised of residential dwelling units that are not age-restricted housing and for which there are no zoning restrictions on the number of bedrooms, the size of bedrooms, or the number of occupants.

“Multi-family housing” means a building with 3 or more residential dwelling units or 2 or more buildings on the same lot with more than 1 residential dwelling unit in each building.. 

Although one might provide multi-family housing in large apartment buildings, that does not appear to be what was envisioned when the MBTA Communities Law was framed.

It is unfortunate that the city of Newton had the ongoing project of Village Center Zoning underway when the MBTA Communities Law was passed in 2022. If Village Center Zoning had not existed when the Communities Law was passed, it is doubtful that anyone would have invented it to implement the MBTA Communities Law. 

We do not support the use of Village Center Zoning to satisfy the requirements of the MBTA Communities Law because:

The intention of the MBTA Communities Law is to promote 3-4-family homes in residential areas. Gerrymandering multi-family housing into high-density districts in and around village centers will not lead to the desired outcome for families with children. 

The distribution of housing units for MBTA compliance in Version 2 of the Village Center Zoning plan is as follows:

   1 & 2). Route 9 - 2600 units: Eliot (Route 9) 1600 units and Highlands (Route 9) 1000 units 

The Route 9 district includes narrow strips of land on each side of the highway except for one bump at Elliot Street. This is “imagined” as a neighborhood but exists for planning purposes only and ignores the dangers posed by the highway which has limited safe pedestrian crossing possibilities.

   3). Newton Centre - 2000 units

   4). Newton Highlands - 1650 units

   5). Newtonville - 1400 units 

   6). West Newton - 1850 units

   7). Waban - 500 units 

The first six districts use intense, dense zoning to achieve MBTA compliance. Only Waban has moderate zoning using only VC2 and MRT. Waban accounts for 5% of the housing units.

The result of the choices made by the Planning Department by combining the two Zoning initiatives - the state-mandated MBTA Communities Law and the Village Center Zoning is the creation of MBTA districts with more than twice the density of housing units sought by the state. In Newton, the MBTA housing density is 35 units per acre, while the state mandate is 15 units per acre. 

A new Multi Resident Transit (MRT) district has been designed to implement moderate multi-family housing zoning. In the zoning maps, MRT may be seen to overlay the following current zoning districts:

   * Single Residence 2 (SR2)

   * Single Residence 3 (SR3)

   * Multi Residence 1 (MR1)

   * Multi Residence 2 (MR2)

   * Multi Residence 3 (MR3)

In particular, MRT along Centre Street from Paul Street south to Hyde Street overlays the Single Residence 2 district west of Centre Street and the Single Residents 3 district east of Centre Street. Without doing this, the Planning Department could not create a large contiguous zone that connects Newton Centre to Newton Highlands as required by the MBTA Law.

The importance of this action is that it sets a precedent for using MRT to overlay Single Residence Districts, at least at the SR2 and SR3 level. Having done this, it is reasonable to do this throughout the city.

Richard Rasala, in his web document,

Thoughts on Village Center Zoning Version 2 and MBTA Community Zoning

has proposed using MRT as the basis for zoning in the 5 half-mile circles at 5 transit stops along the Riverside Line. With some adjustments, this proposal can be a serious alternative to using Village Center Zoning as the means for MBTA compliance.

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