Parking Build-up Avoided.
By Jim Conley • January 31st, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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There is such a thing as too much parking at Coolidge Corner, or so said Jeff Levine, Brookline’s planning director at last night’s meeting of the Brookline Developer’s Guild (i.e., the town’s Zoning by-law Committee). In a session chaired by our own Man in Full, Bobby Allen, the committee set in motion a plan to reduce the number of parking spaces tied to a residential development in the area.
Currently, the zoning bylaw requires that developers provide 2 spaces per dwelling unit for 1-2 bedrooms and 2.3 spaces per dwelling unit for 3+ bedrooms.
“Too much parking,” say the Guild’s members. I’m guessing that a developer wants only one space per flat, so that’s what the Committee will recommend. And it looks like they’ll try and do so by the Fall 2008 town meeting.
After all, we’ve heard for years that these parking space requirements deter large development projects in Coolidge Corner. And that can’t stand.
After all, a man’s gotta build what a man’s gotta build.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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“All meetings of a governmental body shall be open to the public and any person shall be permitted to attend any meeting except as otherwise provided in this section.” M.G.L. c. 39, s. 23B.
The town’s website calendar indicated that this meeting was scheduled to occur in the community room of the police station. When I arrived there last evening, the police officer at the front desk told me that the meeting room had been changed to the “board room” on the second floor of the library. I didn’t see any notice of a change of meeting place posted on the door to the community room (in which another meeting was taking place). I went to the 2nd floor of the library and could not find the “board room.” There was an entrance to a hallway with some offices but the door to the hallway was locked. There was no sign on that door identifying that that was the location of either the meeting or the “board room.” I went downstairs and asked one of the librarians where was the meeting. She told me that it was upstairs in the “board room” where the administrative offices were located. The librarian asked the reference librarian to escort me upstairs to unlock the door to the hallway so I could access the “board room.” After the reference librarian went upstairs in the elevator with me and unlocked the door to the hallway, I walked down the hall and into the “board room” to find the planning director giving a slide presentation to the committee entitled, “Parking In Coolidge Corner.”
According to materials about the Open Meeting law distributed at a town seminar, “… the governmental body must ensure that a door remains unlocked to provide access…”
Since Jeff is the head of the Planning Department, I’m surprised that the meeting was so ill-planned, unless that was the plan. The new concept seems to be the closed-door open meeting, an oxy-something.
I think it’s time for another installment of “The World of Brookline Zoning” on “Parking Your Car-cass in Coolidge Corner.”