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Westborough planner reports steady progress on Master Plan; downtown zoning work ongoing
Summary
Planning Director Jenny Gingras told the special town meeting the 2021 Master Plan has produced zoning incentives, an updated building guide, a completed dog park and early work on downtown zoning, regional dispatch and an EV charging assessment; downtown zoning remains under active review.
Jenny Gingras, Westborough’s director of planning, opened the special town meeting’s substantive agenda with a brief update on Master Plan implementation, describing completed items, projects in progress and next steps.
Gingras said the town adopted the Master Plan in 2021 and has since revised the zoning bylaw to encourage sustainable development in the Highway Business district, adopted accessory-dwelling-unit changes, published a permanent guide for the Building Department and completed a dog park in June. She also listed ongoing work including downtown zoning updates, the regional dispatch center, a library addition, an Open Space and Recreation Plan and an assessment of EV charging needs.
“Last Town Meeting, we revised the Zoning Bylaw to create incentives for sustainable development in the Highway Business Zoning District,” Gingras said. She described a chart showing more action-item completions in 2025 than in 2024 and emphasized that many tasks remain in progress.
Gingras told voters that action items in the Master Plan are assigned to boards, committees and departments based on subject matter, and that implementation is a multi-year process. She said the planning department will continue public engagement as zoning work moves forward.
Why it matters: the Master Plan is the town’s roadmap for growth and public investment; Gingras’s update signaled steady progress while foreshadowing a longer debate over Downtown zoning, which later in the meeting was referred back to the planning board for additional study.
What’s next: planners said they will continue outreach and finalize draft zoning changes; several articles later in the meeting — notably the downtown zoning article — drew directly from the Master Plan work Gingras described.
