WEST BRATTLEBORO — “No chain stores!” was a consensus of village residents engaged in helping the Planning Commission decide on a development plan, or Master Plan, for their community.
After two drafts and 15 public meetings, the Selectboard voted Feb. 19 to incorporate the West Brattleboro Master Plan into the Town Plan, a document that will serve as a road map for turning "citizens' opinions into productive conversation on improving community life, building infrastructure, creating new business opportunities, and protecting the environment," according to the plan's introduction.
With a municipal planning grant from the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs, a community development consulting firm, Crane Associates LLC of Burlington, began work on the plan in February 2006.
The firm, in conjunction with the West Brattleboro Association, asked some of the 3,619 residents who live in Village area - 28 percent of Brattleboro's total population - about their vision for the village.
Chain store backlash
The amendment to the town plan calls for, among other things, increasing pedestrian infrastructure and public transportation, expanding the village green, addressing traffic concerns, preserving open spaces, and ensuring any development will not be “incongruent” with existing structures, while also allowing “prohibition or regulation” of chain stores.
“What motivated people was the Cumberland Farms,” Assistant Planner Sarah Brennan said.
The convenience store chain built a 4,180-square-foot store at 317 Marlboro Rd. in 2007.
The Master Plan process has already effected change in the town's zoning ordinance.
Interim zoning changes implemented last summer for West Brattleboro's Suburban-Commercial district “limits new construction to no more than 10,000 square feet and prohibits any more gas stations, auto repair establishments, hotels and motels, storage facilities, shopping centers, drive-throughs, and internally-lit plastic signs,” according to the Planning Commission's Web site.
“There is a concern about not letting West Brattleboro turn into Putney Road,” Brennan said. (See story, page 1.)
Residents of West Brattleboro need not worry about being inundated with box stores, due to size and signage restrictions, though Brennan said the plan would still “allow businesses to flourish, but preserve the character of the area.”
Consultant Michael Crane expressed concerns about this aspect of the plan, however.
“There's a lot of businesses that come and go down there,” he said. “There's a reason for it. . . . Most of the successful businesses are serving a market that's huge, regionally [or] multistate.”
Quality of life
For local businesses to prosper, more people need to live there.
To this end, the Master Plan calls for more housing and to improve pedestrian safety to create a walkable community. The amendment calls for the possibility of additional housing up to three stories high as far west as Sunset Lake Road and envisions a path from there to Interstate 91.
Crane said that these changes are important if the area is going to thrive commercially, but that there was resistance to new housing from current residents.
In the short term, “sidewalks should be going in in the near future” to link the area west of Edward Heights with the Village, Brennan said. The West Brattleboro Association will play a large role in implementing the plan.
“They tackle whatever they feel they can tackle,” Brennan said, including “tree planting, helping the town identify pedestrian issues” and getting the community involved in the expansion of the village green, a project which will likely take “years.”
The Parks and Recreation Department plans to improve, and possibly add, trails in Living Memorial Park, which Brennan said citizens identified “as one of the most cherished assets of the community.”
“That's a project that's in the works as soon as we get the funding to get the land surveyed,” Brennan said.
Brennan called the work on the trails “ancillary,” but said having such projects included in the Master Plan makes it easier to convince a future Selectboard of their importance by documenting that “everybody wants to do this, it's official. Let's support it.”
The amendment dovetails with some existing projects as well.
“There are two mini-plans that were running concurrently, which we got the Master Plan to include by reference,” Brennan said.
The Farmers' Market bought a house just over the Creamery Bridge for more parking and intends on adding a footbridge to alleviate traffic.
“While people love the Farmers' Market, the traffic it causes is unbearable,” It also reiterates plans to address the flooding of the Whetstone Brook, which limits what can be done in West Brattleboro.
Crane called Whetstone Brook a barrier to development because of the environmental constraints it imposes.
“That entire valley is a flood plain, so you're stuck,” he said. Brennan said officials are working on a solution.
Putting it into action
The Master Plan documents a community's vision for its future, but it takes money to put the plan's recommendations into action.
While grants can provide funding for some of the changes called for in the Master Plan, Brennan said “there's less money to the states from the federal government, so less money to fix roads and bridges. Where projects like the village green will fall on the priority list, I don't know.”
“Even if you get the state to cover that, typically there still has to be 20 percent cash from the town,” Brennan said. “That's a lot of money.”
The next step is the scoping process which will determine how much money is needed.
Even if the Master Plan can overcome the hurdles it faces, Brennan said it will be years before the recommendations are in place.
And the plan could either be used for years to come as a road map, or it could gather dust in a binder on an office shelf.
“Sometimes people implement my plans, and sometimes they don't,” Crane said. “It's often full of a lot of politics.”