WESTFIELD —After several hours of discussion and debate, the Westfield Town Council voted Tuesday to allow professional businesses like physical therapy centers and real estate offices to operate out of certain street-level storefronts on the border of the town’s Central Business District (CBD).
The measure, which was approved by the town’s planning board in a 9-to-1 vote last week, drew criticism from local residents who worried that the newly-permitted usages could negatively impact the character of the downtown area.
“This ordinance is expressly identifying a discrete, smaller district and reducing the Central Business District as it is currently defined by one third,” resident Carla Bonacci said. “There has been no exploration, no qualitative or quantitative studies performed.”
Other residents, including Courtney Schael, said the changes would likely introduce too much new traffic into an already-congested corridor.
“I operate an office space downtown, and a lot of my clients won’t come in to see me there because the parking situation is so terrible,” she said. “This is not going to improve anything.”
Up until now, all first-floor space in the downtown area has been reserved for three specific usages: restaurants, retail shops and personal-service establishments like yoga studios, hair salons and fitness centers. Other businesses, like tax preparers or professional consultants, have always been asked to apply for a variance in order to operate their businesses out of the same spaces.
“We do have a few businesses that have applied for these types of variances, but you don’t want that to be the basis of your zoning code,” Town Planner Don Sammet said, speaking during the agenda-setting portion of Tuesday night’s proceedings.
Forcing businesses to apply for a variance in order to open their doors, Mr. Sammet said, can be a time-consuming process that may result in unwanted vacancies, lead to poor relationships with property owners and investors and cause economic growth to stagnate.
“If you make this process too complicated, you run the risk of losing potential tenants. You may even cause existing businesses to reconsider their expansions,” he said.
Mr. Sammet explained that the move to rezone 25 properties in what he called the downtown’s “fringe” area — comprised of sections of Prospect Street, Elm Street, Elmer Street, Central Avenue, Lenox Avenue, South Avenue West and Westfield Avenue — would not preclude active businesses from renting space.
But, he said, those types of businesses, with some exceptions, have not historically been drawn to the identified properties due to poor foot traffic, spaced-out building configurations and other mitigating factors.
Of the 25 identified properties, Mr. Sammet continued, eight already host professional office spaces while five others sit at least partially vacant. The town’s post office, along with two restaurants, several municipal parking lots and two existing retail shops, also will be included in the newly-designated area.
Councilmen Todd Saunders and David Kiefer both said that while they were not opposed to the plan in its entirety (Mr. Saunders reiterated that he would “rather have offices than vacancies”), both representatives questioned the need to incorporate the town’s municipal lots into the amendment.
“This is being done for continuity purposes. These properties are owned by the town and are therefore not subject to municipal zoning,” Mr. Sammet said. “Just to be very clear, there is no plan to convert either the post office or any of the parking lots into office space. If the town ever does decide to develop these properties, whoever is sitting on this council at that time will be in the driver’s seat.”
Mr. Kiefer challenged the response. “So, if the town isn’t subject to its own zoning code, then this just feels meaningless. If it’s meaningless, why do it?” he asked.
Councilman Michael Armento ultimately made a motion to table the conversation in order to give the council more time to consider its options, but was voted down by Mayor Shelley Brindle and council members Linda Habgood, Michael Dardia, David Contract and Dawn Mackey.
“We talk a lot about process, and how important it is,” Mayor Brindle said. “This ordinance has been discussed in the Code Review and Town Property Committee for five or six months now. This is not anything out of the ordinary, but for some reason, it has been made out to be something bigger than just a continuation of the Master Plan. I don’t see any reason to delay this vote.”
The council eventually voted to approve the ordinance by a narrow margin, with Mayor Brindle and council members Habgood, Dardia, Contract and Mackey voting for the amendments and council members Kiefer, Saunders and Armento voting against it. Councilman Michal Domogala was absent from Tuesday night’s meeting.
The council also finalized three local historic designations on Tuesday and introduced a new “Skip The Stuff” ordinance which would prohibit restaurants from handing out single-use items like plastic cutlery, condiment packages and napkins unless a customer specifically requests them.
“You can still have all of these things; you just have to ask for them,” said Councilman Contract, who heads up the town’s Green Team. “People tend to throw a lot of this stuff out without even using it, and it leads to a lot of unnecessary waste.”
