Changes to ordinance to make downtown redevelopment easier back in front of city council

LACONIA — A proposed zoning amendment to make it easier to develop housing downtown is back in front of city councilors for a public hearing at their meeting at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 22.

The amendment is intended to rewrite the Housing Redevelopment Overlay District to target redevelopment of older properties. The district was created in July 1995, but has never once been used by a property developer. 

“To date, no application has been submitted in accordance with this ordinance,” Planning Director Rob Mora said during the council meeting on Sept. 8. 

The proposed language is written intentionally to provide incentives and increased flexibility to developers and landlords to redevelop existing parcels within the district to better service its intended purpose of promoting redevelopment of affordable housing, encouraging investment in multi-family housing stock, increasing the quality of living conditions for renters, and providing rental housing in close proximity to central business districts. 

At their meeting on Aug. 5, members of the planning board approved the proposed rewrite following a public hearing. 

Attorney Ethan Wood approached the city’s planning department and suggested developers may be more interested in using the ordinance if it could actually benefit them. 

“It really didn’t benefit anybody to utilize the redevelopment overlay district,” Mora said. “We worked with [Wood], we rewrote the ordinance. We decided we’d use an innovative land use control — much like we do with performance zoning — but with it we would add in a lot of performance standards that weren’t originally adopted when we did performance zoning.”

Some of those performance standards include: preservation of the neighborhood character; not exceeding 20 units per acre; buildings must be under four stories; 20% of units must be deeded as workforce housing units for at least 25 years; primary use of the parcel must be residential; lots with three or more workforce housing units could have a neighborhood store; and providing at least one parking space per unit, among others.

“If you’re creating the workforce housing units, if you have a place where they can work already in the district, you’re promoting that urban growth and helping to reduce that urban sprawl,” Mora said.

Ward 2 Councilor Bob Soucy asked how workforce housing is defined. The answer: it’s complicated.

Workforce housing refers to permanent housing, intended as a primary year-round residence available to households regardless of age, and is best provided near places of employment. Workforce housing can include subsidized and affordable housing, market-rate housing and mixed-income housing, according to New Hampshire Housing.

State law defines income and affordability ranges: workforce housing is shelter that’s affordable to a renter family of three earning 60% of the area median income, or to an owner family of four earning 100% of the same. “Affordable” means no more than 30% of income should be spent on housing, including rent and utilities, or a mortgage principal and interest plus taxes and insurance. 

“If you look at the main arteries, Union [Avenue] and Main Street, those parcels that directly abut those roads would be [zoned] urban-commercial, and then urban-commercial is probably one or two parcels in depth along each of those main corridors,” Mora said. “Directly abutting those would be the residential-general [zone], those areas just adjacent to the urban-commercial core.”

One individual has already come forward and expressed their support for the rewrite, communicating their intention to use the rules to redevelop a parcel they own, Mora told councilors. 

“So, in order to facilitate the development of more affordable housing, this basically just gives them leeway on dimensional standards, signs, parking requirements?” Ward 3 Councilor Eric Hoffman asked.

Mora said Hoffman was correct. Many lots are older, constructed in the 1940s or 1950s, and lack green space, or may already be totally paved, for example, so would-be developers would already need to request relief from the zoning board.

“So the target of this is for properties that are currently difficult to develop?” Hoffman asked. “This would make them easier to develop, with the caveat that they have to provide affordable housing.”