The Medford City Council Planning & Permitting Committee has been working hard on our continued citywide zoning review and overhaul – a project years in the making. Following on the heels of the newly codified Mystic Avenue Corridor District, the Salem Street Corridor District (SSCD) has been referred out of Committee and is under review by the Community Development Board (CDB). It was first introduced to the CDB last Wednesday, 1/22/25, and the CDB is expected to continue the hearing to 3/5/25 to allow more time for review and feedback before it promulgates its recommendations and refers the proposal back to the City Council for a vote.
That gives us an excellent window to add some more opportunities for community engagement around this proposal. At 6:30pm on Monday, February 10th, there will be an in-person Q&A session on the Salem Street proposal at the Roberts Elementary School. All are welcome!
If you are just learning about the SSCD or want the 30,000-foot version to get oriented, here is a short primer of the proposal and its goals.
The Salem Street Corridor District proposes new zoning for the main drag along Salem Street from the roundabout up to the Haines Square business area that would moderately increase residential housing, ensure neighborhood compatibility, and maintain first floor commercial uses.
The proposal allows 4 story maximum heights (with smaller stepped-back floors up to 5 and 6 stories if property owners provide additional community benefits) on the blocks that are already busier and more developed; it maintains 3 story heights along other blocks that are currently primarily residential; and includes development context standards to ensure cohesion where shorter and taller buildings abut each other.
Salem Street is characterized by beloved small businesses – all of which are nonconforming under the current zoning. The SSCD proposes new Mixed Use blocks would allow ground-level commercial by-right to encourage small business development.
This proposal revises the Commercial zoning in Haines Square and fixes our current zoning that allows for 15-story hotels by-right. It also introduces a new, clearer definition of “neighborhood medical office” to ensure in-district doctor’s offices are small-scale and low-volume.
The proposal also allows for developers to go above the maximum by-right heights in Mixed Use and Commercial subdistricts but only if certain community benefits are maximized and fully satisfy Incentive Zoning conditions, i.e., public green space or street and sidewalk improvements. As noted above, the total height cap, even with maximum IZ, is 6 stories in Commercial and Mixed-Use districts. IZ height incentives are not extended for Multi-Unit Residential subdistricts - the height cap in those subdistricts remains at 3 stories.
Adoption of new or amended zoning is not the end of the line for community process. Developers seeking to operate within our new zoning will still be subject to Site Plan Review and permitting procedures which involve traffic and environmental impact studies, public meetings, and further negotiation and mitigation agreements on a development-by-development basis.
This proposal makes no change to existing per-unit parking standards, maintaining the current standard of at least 1.5 parking spots per dwelling unit for one-, two-, and multiple-unit dwellings. The City Council does plan to review parking standards as part of the citywide zoning project, later in the spring, as part of a comprehensive citywide strategy and rather than on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
At the same time as we are working on other zoning topics in the Planning & Permitting Committee, there is also a lot of work going on behind the scenes to revamp the City's public-facing zoning project information. President Bears and I are collaborating with the Mayor's Office on an overhaul of medfordma.org/zoning so that this will be a better resource for residents for the remainder of the zoning project. Quite soon I'll be able to link you there directly to see things like FAQs, diagrams of current zoning vs. proposed zoning, upcoming meetings for each zoning topic, explainer videos from our zoning consultant, and links to full text of current zoning proposals. Stay tuned – we will be announcing that soon.




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