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Somerville planning board backs affordable-housing ordinances, outlines Bell Avenue credit plan
Summary
The Somerville Planning Board recommended two ordinances to implement a court-mediated affordable-housing agreement that sets the borough's prospective need at 74 units (a vacant-land adjustment reduces the immediate local requirement to 22 units) and forwarded the zoning and overlay measures to the borough council with minor edits, after public questions about flooding, parking and homeowners association arrangements at Bell Avenue.
Ron Gordon, special counsel for affordable housing, told the Somerville Planning Board on Feb. 20 that the borough has joined a court-mediated settlement with the Fair Share Housing Center that sets Somerville's prospective affordable-housing need at 74 units for the 2025'2035 round. "That agreement provides that your affordable housing obligation for this round will be 74 units," Gordon said, explaining that a vacant-land adjustment reduces the borough's immediate plan obligation to 22 affordable units and assigns the remaining 52 to unmet need carried into future rounds.
Gordon outlined two implementing ordinances the board considered: Ordinance 2786-26-0217, which creates a subsection for affordable housing, and Ordinance 2787-26-0217, which would create an affordable-housing overlay (AHO-1) for Block 127, Lot 4 and provide development regulations. He said the Bell Avenue conversion in the settlement will generate six affordable-housing credits and three bonus credits for adaptive reuse, which helps the borough meet prior and current round obligations.
Board members asked technical questions about how the rules apply. "If there are going to be five or more units that are for-sale units, there will be 20% of them affordable; if it is going to be rental units, the requirement is 15% to be affordable," Gordon said. He also noted statutory deadlines tied to the settlement and that the borough is expected to adopt implementing ordinances by March 15, 2026 to stay on the compliance timeline.
During public comment, neighbor George Palco of 21 Bell Avenue said many residents felt the zoning-board hearings they had attended previously ' and the issues they had raised ' might be displaced by the ordinance. "Is this going to just take away everything that was presented by the neighbors at the zoning board hearing?" Palco asked, listing flooding, the homeowners association question and low parking assumptions as unresolved concerns. Gordon and staff responded that the change would move site-plan hearings from the zoning board to the planning board and that neighbors will have opportunities to raise the same technical issues at future planning-board hearings.
Following discussion the board voted to recommend adoption of the revised Housing Element and Fair Share Plan (dated Feb. 11, 2026) and to forward Ordinances 2786-26-0217 and 2787-26-0217 to the borough council, approving a staff-proposed minor edit to set minimum lot frontage to 388 feet in the ordinance text. Separately, when the West Main Street redevelopment and Granite's Building revisions were discussed, the board agreed to recommend the redevelopment ordinance to council with an added minimum NFPA 13 requirement for fire suppression in the building's rehabilitation language.
What happens next: the board's recommendations will go to the borough council for final action; separate site-plan or redevelopment applications for the Bell Avenue and West Main projects will return to the planning board as formal hearings with notice to abutters. The board and staff said they will continue to refine ordinance language and notify the public when specific site-plan hearings are scheduled.
