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Planning board sets July 22 public hearing on proposal to bar new ground-floor residences on Main Street
Summary
The Winthrop Planning Board voted to hold a July 22 public hearing on a proposed amendment to restrict new ground-floor residential uses along Main Street (Hansen Street/Royal Street extent) to preserve commercial storefronts; staff will mail notices to affected property owners.
The Winthrop Planning Board voted to hold a public hearing on July 22 to consider an amendment that would bar new ground-floor residential uses on a stretch of Main Street intended to preserve commercial storefronts.
Planning board members said the change—drawn from a comprehensive-plan committee recommendation—would prevent future conversions of first-floor retail and service space into apartments or other residential uses. The board set the initial notification area roughly from Hansen Street to Royal (Roll) Street so property owners in that swath will receive mailed notices ahead of the hearing.
Steve Mars, chair of the comprehensive-plan committee, drew from the committee’s recommendation when presenting the draft wording to the board: “The zoning ordinance be amended to not allow new residential uses on the first floor of multi-story mixed-use buildings or buildings that are currently only commercial use located on Main Street between Town Hall Lane and Bowden Street,” language the committee proposed to preserve downtown commercial space.
Board members focused their discussion on three drafting details: (1) whether the ban should apply only to “new” residential uses rather than existing residences, (2) a clear definition of “mixed use” to avoid ambiguous interpretations, and (3) how nonconforming-use or grandfathering rules should operate (members noted the town’s code contains multi-year thresholds and sought consistency with the nonconforming-use section).
Staff and board members urged that the public notice include a brief explanation of the policy goal—the committee’s recommendation to maintain a downtown commercial core—so that affected property owners understand the rationale before the hearing. The board agreed staff should err on the side of broader notice (so owners can request narrowing later) and to draft illustrative boundary language that could be revised after public comment.
A motion to hold the public hearing on Article 3.11 (land uses outside the shoreland zone) for Ground-floor Residential Restrictions was seconded and approved; board discussion recorded that the hearing would be noticed to owners between Hansen Street and Royal (Roll) Street. The board agreed to return to the item after the hearing with revised verbiage and a recommendation to the town council.
The board’s next procedural step is to finalize public-notice language and the list of property owners to be mailed; the hearing record will capture public input and any suggested edits before the board votes on a formal recommendation to send an ordinance forward to the town council.
