by Valerie Hurley ·
Friday, March 14, 2025
At Town Meeting May 3, the Planning Board will ask residents to enact a bylaw creating a new zoning district for approximately 89 lots in the heart of Harvard (see map below). Adopting a bylaw to create a town center overlay district would make it easier for property owners to renovate, expand, and even change the use of their properties. Currently, renovations and expansions are strictly limited, and a change in use is all but impossible.
This has been the case since 1967, when the town enacted agricultural-residential (A-R) zoning for much of the town, including town center. Tailored to minimum 1.5-acre lots, this A-R zoning made most town center parcels (schools are exempt) into “legally existing nonconformities.” As such, these properties require special permits for simpler alterations and variances to build garages, additions, or other accessory structures.
The trouble is that the lots in town center are too small to meet the existing setback requirements, so options for homeowners are severely restricted. For example, a basic “type 1” lot under A-R zoning generally requires a 40-foot side and rear setback and a front setback of 75 feet, according to Jeff Hayes, the town’s building commissioner. But the average town center lot is one-fourth of an acre, and at least one is only a tenth of an acre.
This mismatch between the current zoning and the buildings as they exist in town center is a problem worthy of a solution, said Chris Tracey in an interview with the Press. As the chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals—the board that deals with legally existing nonconformities—Tracey is familiar with the challenge homeowners face in trying to alter or build in Harvard’s center. The discrepancy in setback requirements is the primary problem, he said.
According to Tracey, special permits for minor renovations are fairly easily granted, but it is “extremely rare” for the ZBA to grant variances for new accessory structures. “Our bylaws provide for a very clear but an incredibly limited set of standards that must be met for the ZBA to grant [variances]. There is no section that allows for a variance to be granted ‘because it just makes sense,’” Tracey said.
To underline the ZBA’s limited agency in town center, Tracey recalled that in 2013 the ZBA denied the town’s request for a variance to renovate Town Hall. Voters had to adopt a new bylaw exempting municipal buildings from the A-R zoning before exterior work could proceed.
State law does indeed limit the ZBA’s scope of authority. Property owners seeking to build or add must show that denial would cause “substantial hardship” and that the change would not “substantially increase the existing nonconformity” or be “detrimental to the public good.”
Tracey said the proposed bylaw could ease the challenges in town center. New structures that met standards of the proposed overlay district could be built by right, “eliminating the need to go before the ZBA for either a special permit or variance.” (A building permit would still be required, as would adherence to Title 5 and local Sewer Commission standards and state and local wetland regulations.) He also said that the proposed setbacks for the town center were an “appropriate” action, considering that town center “in its current form” could not have been built today.
Planning Board Chair John McCormack echoed Tracey’s observations, “We are trying to codify the existing conditions and allow people to make beneficial improvements to their homes,” he told the Press. “Right now you’re stuck in 1967,” he said. The new district “allows the town to put reasonable boundaries” on changes instead of essentially disallowing them by default.
Furthermore, he said, his board was bringing the proposal to Town Meeting because master and town center plans dating back 20 years have recommended the overlay district. According to the 2016 Master Plan, “allowing subordinate structures to be built will promote the continued usefulness and relevance of homes and businesses in the town center, and will be in keeping with the character of traditional New England villages and the town of Harvard.” The 2005 Town Center Action Plan made a similar case for an overlay district.
Town center zoning: Views from Elm Street and Mass. Ave. residents
The Press asked two town center residents for their thoughts on a town center overlay district. Both 37-year resident Billy Salter of Elm Street and Brandon Smithwood, who has lived on Mass. Ave. for five years, took a generally positive view of the proposed bylaw.
Elm Street
Salter noted that he had, over the years, been a member of various town center committees. “So I’ve thought about it, perhaps, more than the average person. … I think the articulated goal [of the bylaw] is very much correct,” he said, adding that the view advanced by the late urban scholar and activist Jane Jacobs advocating mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods “is now establishment thinking.”
Having places to walk to is especially important to Salter, who fondly recalled how pleased he and his spouse, Kathy Hewett, were for their kids to walk to the library—and to the General Store to rent videos. “A little more development helps with [walkability]—not a lot.”
“And if we could do a little more with those big old houses, that would be a good thing,” Salter said. “The real concern is unintended consequences. A garage, an apartment, that seems OK. But if every house did it, how bad would that be?”
“You don’t want more parking. The thinking has changed about that.” Parking is best distributed around the center of town, he said, as it is now. “And if you have mixed uses, across the day you’re going to run into people walking around” to various destinations. “That’s what you want.”
To people who don’t live in the center of town and “think nothing should change,” Salter would say: “It’s not a museum.”
Mass. Ave.
Being within walking distance of the schools, the library, and the General Store appealed to Smithwood and his family and drew them to Harvard from Concord five years ago. He views the overlay district in a positive light, voicing support for the increased options for residential and commercial uses.
“I like the spirit of what they’re trying to do; it would be nice to have more flexibility.” Smithwood’s spouse, Meg Davis, also thought the bylaw could benefit the town. “We welcome both increased density and keeping the historic look of the town,” Davis said.
“One way to improve downtown would be to have more retail options,” Smithwood added, though “practical considerations” such as parking would need to be taken into account.
As much as he enjoys living in the town center, Smithwood said pedestrian safety is a major concern. Walking down Mass. Ave. to the elementary school “is still not safe,” especially in the winter, given all the parked cars, the snow, and the lack of sidewalks on that stretch of road. “Walkability, as a practical matter, should be improved,” he observed.
—VH
The new district would enact several new standards. First, it would create new setbacks to lower the bar for building accessory structures such as in-law apartments (now known as accessory dwelling units) or garages. It would allow specific commercial uses and mixed use, in which residential and commercial exist in the same building. Multifamily homes with up to four units per structure, a condition that already exists in several structures in town center, would be allowed by right.
The proposed setbacks would reflect existing conditions and create new standards proportional to the center’s small lots. For example, the rear and side yard setbacks would be 10 to 40 feet for primary structures. And for accessory structures, setbacks would be 5 feet from any property line, 15 feet from an adjacent structure on an abutting property, and no taller than 20 feet. (See table below for all setbacks.)
Perhaps most significant changes are the proposed small-scale commercial uses, which would be allowed by special permit in a primary or accessory structure. Those include personal or business services (beauty salon, tailor, locksmith); medical and dental office; inn or bed-and-breakfast; dry cleaning and laundry pickup; recreation, dance, or fitness facility; nursery school, kindergarten, or day care; catering service, deli, or other food market or permitted eating establishment; restaurant or other food service with primary business of prepared food; pharmacy; grocery or farm store.
A mix of residential and any of the above commercial uses would also be allowed by special permit. For example, a homeowner in the district could open a candy store on their first floor and live on the second floor.
The mixed-use proposal has raised questions. “Parking is always going to be a problem in town center; I do not want to create more of it [there].” McCormack told the Press. To address that issue, the bylaw requires a “narrative discussion of parking” and suggests “innovative parking strategies” such as shared on-site parking for noncompeting uses and off-site parking on separate private property “subject to legally binding agreement.”
ZBA member Steve Moeser offered his opinion at a Feb. 10 public hearing on the proposed bylaw. Moeser said that as a 50-year resident, he’d prefer to avoid change in the town center and suggested the bylaw specify some new allowed uses and leave it at that.
At the same hearing, Tracey posed a question in the “unanticipated consequences” category. Under the new bylaw, building a garage would be easier, he said. Then, too, so would building an accessory apartment on top of the garage. “You’re going to have parking problems,” Tracey said.
In addition to limitations written into the bylaw through setback, use, and design standards, the ZBA, Sewer Commission, and Historical Commission will also have a say. For instance, the ZBA would need to approve accessory dwelling units larger than 900 square feet and could accept the setbacks as written in the proposed bylaw “at their discretion.”
Likewise a “growth neutrality” regulation governs additions to the town center sewer system, requiring applicants to either demonstrate that a new structure could have been built with a septic system or supply evidence that “the connection is necessary or beneficial to the town.” But what is the remaining sewer capacity in the town center? According to Town Administrator Dan Nason, a consultant is looking into the question. However, DPW Director David Smith provided the Planning Board with a rough estimate indicating the system could handle more daily use: It is licensed by the Department of Environmental Protection to discharge 20,000 gallons per day and discharges 12,000 gallons per day when school is in session and 6,000 when it is not.
When it comes to the appearance of proposed changes to town center buildings, the Historical Commission will retain its authority over changes in buildings’ design or materials because the Harvard Center Historic District largely overlaps the proposed overlay district.
With Town Meeting about seven weeks away, both the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals chairs are urging town center residents to evaluate the proposed bylaw. The ZBA’s Tracey asked residents to think about what they wanted. “Are neighbors OK with each other creating these new structures next door to them? What if someone converted a barn to an eating establishment?”
And in a letter to the 89 property owners in the proposed district, McCormack encouraged residents to attend the remaining public hearings, via Zoom, on March 17, April 7, and April 14. The letter said: “I want to assure you that this initiative is as a result of the inputs from the town, and there is nothing about the proposal that cannot be adjusted or changed based on your feedback. … I hope you are excited about maintaining the relevance and vibrancy of the town center through this zoning amendment.” The board also plans to host a forum for town center residents sometime in April.