The Valley Advocate's Northampton Redoubt blog today publishes a guest article from NSNA member Adam Cohen, "The Kohl condo proposal and the Struggle Over the Meaning of Infill". This article reviews the current state of the condo proposal and outlines many of our key objections. A difficulty that is becoming increasingly apparent is how unresolved Land Court issues are disrupting the negotiation process:

One aspect of the Kohl condo controversy actually has more to do with best practices than Smart Growth. At the January Planning Board hearing, Kohl implied the neighbors were obstinate and rigid for not negotiating with him over the design of the project. The neighbors feel hamstrung in this regard, however, because a Land Court lawsuit over titles and rights-of-way on the property is not resolved. We don’t know what the baseline is that we should start negotiating from.

Even [Kohl attorney] Michael Pill, I believe, would concede at this point that the lawsuit is not frivolous, and indeed the judge has agreed to hear our motion for summary judgment this coming August. The neighbors have asked the Planning Board to defer consideration of Kohl’s proposal until the case is resolved. The board decided to proceed anyway. There is a strong possibility that even if the Conservation Commission and Planning Board approve Kohl’s proposal in the coming months, they will have to revisit it all over again after decisions come down from Land Court. None of this strikes me as good practice or an efficient use of people’s time.

See also:

Gazette: "Developer to submit revised North Street plans"

Video: Planning Board Meeting of 3/26/09; Board Declines to Endorse Zero Lot Line Changes; New Kohl Condo Proposal Discussed

Valley Advocate: "Bogged Down - Doug Kohl runs into trouble with plans for his subdivision off North Street in Northampton"

Video: Conservation Commission Meeting of 3/12/09; Deadlock on Kohl Condo Proposal
3:11:40... Wetzel: "So to me, getting rid of these guys [points to condo units 1-10]...is a big help" because they are at a relatively low elevation close to the water table. He wants more room to be made for the development's normal operations, such as snow clearing and snow storage. He believes that violations of wetlands protection covenants are likely to occur over time...

3:51:13...: Meyer: "This has been the problem with this project from the beginning... When the footprint of the project impinges on the wetlands, there's no other place to do improvements... If you had the project heavily concentrated in one end of the site, going right to 35 feet, but nothing was happening down at the other end of the site, then there's some place where you can do significant mitigation in the 35 to 50 foot zone... I don't think that the difficulty is something that is set in stone. I think it's generated to a certain extent by the design of the project."

Planning Board Gives Initial Critique of Kohl Condo Proposal: Jan 22 Video
0:30:46...: Attorney Alan Seewald for the North Street Neighborhood Association: "When I first looked at this plan [a version with 25 units], the thing that struck me was just how dense it is. It's completely out of character with the neighborhood... There are no yards here. There is no place for kids to play. There's no place for people to be outside. This is a real shoehorn project, trying to stuff too much into too small a space... The other thing I would suggest about parking is that because of the high water here, there are going to be no basements. So all of the people's stuff is going to where? ...It's probably going to go into the garage. So no cars are going to be in garages here, because there's no other place to put stuff...  This needs to be significantly reduced in size. That would alleviate the problem with parking, traffic, pedestrian movement around the site, traffic and intersections offsite. This whole project creates problems because of its density."

1:09:30... Doug Kohl of Kohl Construction: "I could see that making little single-family houses is more in keeping with the footprint of this neighborhood."

1:37:00... Planning Board chair Francis Johnson: "I think there's a concern about the number of units..."

1:37:07... Planning Board member George Kohout: "...perhaps this development is a little too dense for a number of reasons. Just that it does create a different kind of burden on a neighborhood--not quite in character...and that's one of our big criteria in this kind of review. It would also relax part of the stress on wetlands by moving, let's just say, for example, those four units, 22, 23, 24 and 25, out of there. That might allow for some different configuration of the stormwater structures and provide more room for some of that shared access. But I'm also struck by the offer that the developer made about looking at single-family homes... workforce housing...because single-unit structures would fit in much more with this area."

1:47:48... Doug Kohl: "You will get as part of that [forthcoming additional test pit data], questions addressed like, 'Is any portion of the building that we're placing here built in any kind of a previously filled wetlands?' We should be able to answer that question for you quite clearly."

Good Cul-De-Sacs and Bad Ones

Tree Loss and Slab-on-Grade Foundations: A Poor Fit with the Sustainable Northampton Plan

Northampton Redoubt: Urban Planning, Public Policies, and Urban Ecology
...the Kohl development on North Street will probably not closely mimic dense older urban neighborhoods in any country, and it will cost us part of an urban forest as well. Look at the schematic below [refers to the original 31-unit proposal] and tell me that this proposed development is the best that can be done with regards to Smart Growth. It appears to me as a tightly clustered residential sprawl-development moved into town with basically a token nod toward Smart Growth principles, that is it's close to town and it's clustered...

...I have not been able to find definitions of infill that include removing viable greenfields, though they may exist. Generally infill seems to concern redeveloping previously developed areas, vacant lots, or brownfields and rehabilitating historic buildings. Thus obscured from the recent debate has been the importance of maintaining Northampton's Urban Ecology, which enhances the quality of life of intown dwellers, human or otherwise...

...the Kohl North Street area development proposal includes row house condominiums set to the rear of parking lots, not free standing detached single family homes that front the "street," which would better match the existing neighborhood and is also a tenet of Smart Growth.

Daryl LaFleur: North Street Area and Urban Ecology
Constructing homes in the downtown area near existing services, infrastructure and public transit makes sense. However, the Urban Land Institute's report on Springfield [PDF] suggests removing decaying buildings and creating more green spaces in Springfield's downtown area as a way to enhance that city's quality of life and lure people back to downtown. Springfield would like to create, on a larger scale, what Northampton currently has and one need only walk around downtown Springfield and observe the lack of urban green patches to understand why. Similarly, despite all of its problems, the Big Dig in Boston aims to add parkland and green recreational areas in an urban environment for the same reason, to improve the quality of life for inhabitants and give business owners a reason to stay put.

Northampton Redoubt: Urban Ecology, Planting Trees, and the Long-Term View
...I have yet to read anywhere where infill is described as developing existing and vital ecosystems. Each time I read about infill the topics concern redeveloping brownfields or previously developed urban areas that are not utilized to the fullest extent.

For more on urban ecology visit: http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/la/LA338-S01/groups/d/ and note in the bibliography Northampton's own Rutherford Platt from the University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. According to the website urban ecology was founded in the 1970's by Richard Register in Berkeley, California to "rebuild cities in balance with nature." Urban ecology is defined as the study of the interactions between biological communities and the urban environment and its goal is to achieve a balance between human culture and the natural environment.