[MassHistPres] Town Village Zoning and Historical Preservation

[sally milne]

Hi Paul
    Good luck to you it's such an important endeavor.  We recently passed the “West Harwich Special District”  (AKA  Captains’ Row )after  finding it difficult to get enough support for  another Historic District in town. We had an area of Historic Captains’ Homes on a 3/4 of a mile stretch that was becoming the go to place for demolishing properties including demolition by neglect. .We successfully fought off a Dollar General project.. Something had to be done, as this area was originally our village center. Luckily we were able to obtain a District of Critical Planning Concern designation through the Cape Cod Commission who then worked with the town Panning Department to create more appropriate zoning .I will include the link.  The second phase is to create an architectural guide that we hope will help retain the historic nature of the areas buildings etc.  .
. I believe Chatham, Orleans and Harwich  have a village overlay zoning  bylaw   but I am not as  familiar with those.
Best to you
Sally Urbano
Harwich, no board affiliations.
https://www.harwich-ma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif3236/f/pages/whsd_warrant_article.pdf

> On Nov 3, 2020, at 11:30 AM, Paul Schwab <paulfschwab at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> The Town of Shrewsbury recently passed a series of zoning articles in order to identify a Town Center DIstrict (many towns call this Town Village District) as well to promote development. The visioning is quite good but the preservation component was largely left out of the bylaw. Our Historical Commission is now working with the Town Planner and Planning Board to try to rectify this. I am curious if anyone has had experience with these types of "Town Village" bylaws and if they could recommend examples that you have found worked well to help preserve historic structures/properties within these areas. In Shrewsbury, we have a number of historic homes, churches, monuments and a cemetery that now fall under the guise of this "Town Center". We are hoping to better align our bylaw with an end goal of preservation rather than simply allowing new structures to be built that merely appear historic. 
> 
> I should also add that we are finally in the beginning stages of having our first ever Historic Property Inventory completed. In addition we have Community Preservation Act on the ballot today and am hopeful it will pass.
> 
> Here are some links to our bylaw: 
> 
> Article 31 - TC Zoning District Definitions and Use Table <https://shrewsburyma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/7183/Article-31---TC-Zoning-District-Definitions-and-Use-Table>
> Article 32 - TC Zoning District Site Plan <https://shrewsburyma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/7184/Article-32---TC-Zoning-District-Site-Plan>
> Article 33 - TC Zoning District New Sub-section "U" <https://shrewsburyma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/7185/Article-33---TC-Zoning-District-New-Sub-section-U>
> 
> Thank you,
> Paul Schwab
> Shrewsbury Historical Commission Chair
> _______________________________________________
> MassHistPres mailing list
> MassHistPres at cs.umb.edu
> http://mailman.cs.umb.edu/listinfo/masshistpres

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.cs.umb.edu/pipermail/masshistpres/attachments/20201104/d639421c/attachment.html>