Zoning is focus of Special Town Meeting
Creation of new commercial districts, town and country overlay changes are highlights
BY PETER B. BRACE
Monday's Special Town Meeting is loaded with zoning articles designed to immerse voters in new district concepts and, hopefully, gain their support so specific island areas can be mapped for changes at the spring Town Meeting.

However, for a majority of the voters, there is certainly nothing special about having two Town Meetings in one year, a sentiment Planning Director Andrew Vorce is trying to modify.

In this second round of 41-81D Master Planning in which the evolution of land use on Nantucket is a work-in-progress, Vorce and the Planning Board are trying to coax voters into zoning changes to specific parts of the island by first getting them to understand and adopt policies before defining their island applications.

Realizing that change is a dirty word on Nantucket when it comes to zoning and still wincing from the defeat of the Comprehensive Community Plan by Special Town Meeting voters who said, collectively, they did not have enough time to digest the articles to cast informed positive votes, Vorce is hoping this approach will make future zoning changes more palatable.

"We heard when people said they don't want any of the high impact articles to come up at a Special Town Meeting," said Vorce. "There's some significant concepts and some things we're looking for actual feedback on, but most of them aren't meant to be implemented until the annual [Town Meeting]. We can only put so many zoning articles [on the warrant] before people glaze over. It allows us to be more efficient with the work between now and the annual."

Those who attend this Special Town Meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. in the auditorium at Nantucket High School this Monday, Oct. 23, will have 16 41- 81D and regular zoning articles to deal with should all of them be called. Seven deal with Town & Country Overlay District changes. Others focus on new commercial districts and several are actual zoning changes to certain island neighborhoods.

A SEPARATION OF TOWN AND COUNTRY

When voters adopted the Town & Country Overlay Districts, the Planning Board's intent behind it was to clearly delineate between urban and rural sections of the island based on uses, density, infrastructure and other defining characteristics that help determine what should be built where and why. But after voters approved the map of the two districts, obvious errors began to surface. Articles 4 through 10 are Vorce's and the Planning Board's version of shaking up the Etch-A-Sketch and redrawing the lines on the map.

Taking lots that were mistakenly included in each district and flip-flopping them into where they truly belong is one of the foundations of the entire land use element of the 41-81D Master Plan.

"We think it's critical to get the Town and Country map correct before we move forward with development of standards," said Vorce. "By doing it now, we can spend more time at the annual [Town Meeting] getting into more substantive changes."

As voters read through the descriptions of these and the new commercial district articles, Vorce could not stress enough that they should remember that although certain areas of the island are being changed from town to country and vice versa, no zoning district changes are being proposed with these articles. If the map changes are adopted, the next step is for zoning to be applied to each area. When that happens, Vorce said there would be plenty of public hearings for residents of these neighborhoods to offer comment and lots of time to speak individually with Vorce and his staff.

COMMERCIALLY SPEAKING

The same holds true for the four new commercial districts being proposed in Articles 2 and 3. The districts, Commercial-Mid-Island (CMI), Commercial Neighborhood (CN), Commercial Trade, Entrepreneurship and Craft (CTEC) and Commercial- Industrial (CI), are part of the Planning Board's aim to concentrate commercial development where it belongs on the island and weed it out of mostly residential areas where only the lightest, least intrusive commercial activity would be allowed.

Count this as another essential building block of the land use element of the 41-81D Master Plan.

"That really sets a direction that I think is really critical, that the town updates how commercial areas are created," said Vorce. "It's overdue and the sooner we start moving in that direction the better."

Each new commercial district's name hints at where this zoning would apply, but again, Vorce is hesitant to get too specific because he wants voters to become comfortable with the reasoning behind new commercial districts. However, should voters approve both the new commercial zoning and specific areas, Nantucket's planners are hoping voters agree with their belief that there is no longer a need for the RC-2 and RC districts and the Residential- Commercial-Downtown and Limited-Commercial zones, which would then be phased out over time.

MILLER'S LANE AND OTHER GOODIES

Out of the realm of the 41-81D Master Plan are three key articles that could have equally far-reaching impacts on island life. Article 13, a seemingly innocuous request by the Nantucket Housing Office to convert 1.1 acres of the Old South Road end of the paper section of Miller's Lane opposite Naushop from R-2 to RC-2 would allow the NHO to build its own building for a larger office and still have land left over for more affordable housing sites.

Trouble is, the town, more specifically, the Planning Board, would like to keep this road open should the need arise to provide an alternative access to the airport. As paved, Miller's Lane extends northwest from Macy's Lane along the south side of and beyond the Nantucket Inn running parallel with Daffodil Lane for while before turning to dirt and dwindling down to a narrow trail leading into a pine grove.

However, the entire road as laid out from Old South Road to Macy's Lane is 80 feet wide and could easily handle a busy road to the airport, something that residents of Daffodil Lane are against.

"The neighborhood does think the best use of this land is for a road," said attorney Steven Cohen, a resident of Daffodil Lane. "The compromise that we arrived at with with the county commissioners is that the pavement down here [pointing towards Macy's Lane] would be a good place for a road."

The board, led by Chairman Don Visco, said it could come in handy as the 69-lot Coffin pit development off Arrowhead Drive is built and the area