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Planning Board debates Tiny Mountain Overlay District language, size caps and stormwater rules
Summary
The board discussed proposed Tiny Mountain Overlay District (TMD) amendments — specifically definitions for manufacturing/industry, whether to cap large facilities at 150,000 ft², and stormwater/site-plan standards — and asked staff to reconcile terminology and return with revised language; no ordinance vote was taken.
The Plymouth Planning Board spent the bulk of its meeting reviewing draft language for the Tiny Mountain Overlay District, focusing on three areas the board had previously flagged: how to define manufacturing versus industry, possible size limits for industrial or warehouse uses, and whether town stormwater/site-plan standards are sufficient for large developments.
Staff reminded the board that the draft TMD lists manufacturing with a parenthetical cap of 200,000 ft² but that “manufacturing” is not currently defined in the town zoning code; the draft also lists research and development/testing laboratories and warehouses without consistent definitions. Board members generally favored aligning the TMD language with existing town definitions where possible to avoid introducing overly broad or inconsistent new terms.
A recurring suggestion was to lower the cap on large industrial/warehouse buildings. Several members proposed reducing the parenthetical 200,000 ft² threshold to 150,000 ft² and to rely on an existing definition of industry (with possible light/heavy subcategories) rather than add a separate manufacturing definition. As Phil Emery put it during the discussion, “I was thinking, like, just changing that to match our existing industrial and limit it to 150,000ft².”
Members raised site-capacity and traffic concerns: engineers and members observed local soils (clay, silt, ledge) and steep topography could make very large, single-story warehouses costly or impractical and could increase truck traffic on local roads. Staff noted town site-plan review standards (revised in 2023) now require drainage analyses and mitigation that, for most large proposals, compare pre- and post-development runoff and require system design to address 100-year overflows; subdivision regulations still reference older (10-year) thresholds and may need updating.
The board debated whether to resolve some of these technical issues in the overlay or to rely on town-wide revisions to site-plan and subdivision regulations. Members favored a two-step approach: reconcile and tighten definitions in the TMD, cap large building sizes (members expressed support for 150,000 ft² as a reasonable limit), and separately review broader stormwater and subdivision rules so protections apply town-wide.
No formal vote on the overlay amendments occurred; the board directed staff (Joseph) to reconcile terminology among the draft documents, reflect the 150,000 ft² discussion, and return with revised language for future consideration.
