This Op-ed is from the Amherst Bulletin, November 2003

In Hadley, Potential Third Vote on Rezoning for Lowe's Prompts More Questions

By David Elvin

Well, there's no shortage of democracy in Hadley.

This week the Select Board will consider calling a third vote on the proposal to rezone 12.8 acres on Route 9 so a Lowe's home improvement store can be set back further from the road than current zoning allows.

The persistence of rezoning advocates raises the first of many questions: Is it actually possible to squeeze a 137,000 square-foot Lowe's store into the existing 500-foot commercial zone? (For comparison, a football field is 45,000 square feet.)

The plans for this so-called front-build alternative suggest it may not. Parking does not appear to meet the requirement that the total parking area be at least twice the size of a retail building. In fact, the parking lot seems to be about the same size as Lowe's itself. Furthermore, there are no water detention facilities shown to handle parking lot runoff. Above-ground detention basins would reduce open space below the required 20 percent, and underground water detention is not allowed in the aquifer protection district. There is also perennial stream running through the future parking lot would have to be relocated, a measure that conservation boards and state environmental agencies are hesitant to approve.

Given all these problems, is it possible the front-build alternative is a monster created to scare voters into choosing the developer's preferred plan?

As for the setback alternative, the passage of the construction moratorium on October 23 raises new questions about whether or not a Lowe's could be built before the moratorium expires in 2005. According to state zoning laws, a zoning freeze to "grandfather" Lowe's and exempt it from the moratorium applies only to zoning that is in effect at the time a site or subdivision plan is filed. Because the property is still zoned residential/agricultural, and the moratorium is now in effect, it would seem that any commercial plan submitted for the site would be subject to the moratorium.

The developer's offers of a financial gift to the town's APR fund and a limit on site build-out suggest an awakening to the fact that a Lowe's would come with impacts, as well as benefits. At the first rezoning vote on August 21, there were no gifts or build-out limits on the table. But at the second vote on October 23, the developer offered $100,000 for the town's APR fund and a limit of 140,000 square feet on total construction. When voters approved an amendment pressing for legal assurances, the developer raised the build-out limit to 181,000 square feet. The rezoning failed again, but only by two votes.

At last week's Select Board meeting, the developer upped the gift to $128,000, based on $10,000 an acre for the 12.8 acres of proposed rezoned land. But the Lowe's development would actually cover 27 acres, and farmland in Hadley now often sells for $20,000 or more per acre. Therefore, a gift in the range of $540,000 would be a truer reflection of the actual cost of protecting a comparable amount of farmland land elsewhere in town.

To make an informed decision about any gift, a better grasp of the net financial impact of the project is needed. Up to now, only generalized statistics and case studies have been available, and Hadley has not performed its own economic impact assessment.

But now the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs has made available to the public their Fiscal Impact Tool (FIT), an analysis program that estimates the tax revenues and municipal costs of new development for individual Massachusetts municipalities based on local tax rates, property values, type of development, and other community-specific variables.

When asked to calculate the impact of adding 181,000 square feet of new commercial development in Hadley in 2005, the FIT program confirms the developer's claim of approximately $250,000 in annual property taxes. But FIT also estimates $140,000 in annual costs to the town, resulting in an annual net gain of only $110,000. Is that dollar amount worth the increased traffic congestion, accidents and inconvenience that the project would bring?

Scheduling a third vote risks turning off residents who are tired of debating the issue. But another vote would be an opportunity for Hadley to receive better information about the alternatives —and get a better deal to offset the project's impacts.

David Elvin is a transportation planning outreach consultant and member of Hadley Neighbors for Sensible Development.