Chelsea is working to make it easier and cheaper to build housing here, and two events in the next two weeks show how. On Thursday, October 1, the City and a real estate industry group will take developers on a tour of building sites. And at community meetings on September 30 and October 8, the City will ask residents what they think of eliminating parking minimums, the rule that sets how many off-street spaces new housing must include.
The parking question
“What if new housing in Chelsea didn’t have to include a set minimum number of parking spaces?” the City asked in its announcement. It says it is “exploring the elimination of parking minimums for new development,” a change it says “could help make housing easier and more affordable to build while better reflecting the needs of our community.”
The two meetings:
- Wednesday, September 30, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., La Colaborativa, 63 Sixth Street.
- Thursday, October 8, 6 to 8 p.m., GreenRoots, 90 Everett Avenue, third floor, Suite 10.
Translation and food will be provided at both.
This has been building all year
The idea is not new. In January, City Manager Fidel Maltez invited councillors to a January 13 community meeting at the Senior Center on parking minimums, with panelists from MassHousing Partnership, Abundant Housing Massachusetts, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Salem Planning Board. The manager’s letter argued that high parking minimums can limit the number of housing units that get built.
Since then the city has already dropped them in one place. The West Chelsea overlay district the council adopted in June requires no minimum off-street parking at all. The Fitzpatrick-Prattville smart growth district sets a minimum of 0.5 spaces per unit. What the City is now floating is doing the same for new development generally.
The zoning board already sees the tradeoff case by case. On September 8 it approved four new family-sized units on Beacon Street with no parking, on the condition that their tenants cannot get resident street parking stickers, and it approved a Lisa Lane conversion on the same condition because the lot’s tandem spaces do not count under the zoning code. Denying new tenants stickers is the city’s current answer to the obvious worry: that housing without garages pushes cars onto streets that are already full.
The developer tour
On October 1 the City is partnering with The Builder Coalition for what it calls the Chelsea Development Tour, “an opportunity for developers, housing professionals, and industry partners to see firsthand why Chelsea is a place to build, invest, and grow.” Participants will hear from City leaders about Chelsea’s plans for new housing, economic development and infrastructure, and tour development sites around the city. The tour runs from noon to 3:30 p.m. starting at City Hall, 500 Broadway, followed by a networking reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at Chelsea Station Restaurant. Registration is at chelseatour.tbco.info.
The Builder Coalition is a real estate industry organization that describes its mission as increasing access and diversity in the real estate industry, through developer fellowships, education and networking. Its listed sponsors include developers, banks, law firms and affordable housing organizations.
Why these belong together
Both are pieces of the same argument the administration has made all year: that Chelsea has not been building enough housing and that its rules are part of the reason. The council accepted a version of that argument in June when it loosened the inclusionary housing ordinance, and this month three approved projects cut their affordable units under the new rules. Parking minimums are the next rule on the table. The draft master plan, Chelsea Pa’Lante, puts a rewrite of the zoning code at the top of its priorities, and the Planning Board votes on the plan October 27.
Eliminating minimums would not ban parking. Developers could still build spaces; they would no longer be required to. Whether that means cheaper housing near transit or more competition for curb space on side streets is the question the two meetings are for.