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Chester debates housing and rural development as proposed zoning regs are put on hold

A row of businesses in historic buildings on a sunny street.
Angela Evancie
/
Vermont Public file
Businesses in Chester are pictured in 2019. The town is debating a new set of zoning regulations that some fear would alter the area's rural character.

Towns across Vermont are being asked to update their zoning regulations to encourage more housing development.

But in the small, Windsor County town of Chester, some residents are wondering what the long-term impact will be in the rural parts of town.

The Chester Select Board at their Sept. 18 meeting put off a vote on a new proposed zoning bylaw, which would make substantial changes to how development can be carried out in rural districts.

The so-called density-based zoning, which would apply to more than 75% of the land in Chester, would allow landowners to develop homes clustered together, removing minimum lot sizes that are currently in the zoning regulations.

Planning Commission Chair Hugh Quinn told the select board that the proposed bylaw would protect wildlife corridors.

By allowing landowners to build four homes, for instance, in a cluster, and not spread out on 3-acre minimum lots as the town currently requires, it would allow for more open land in the end.

“We’re trying to create some what are called connectivity blocks; so corridors for wildlife to move north and south,” Quinn said.

He also said a lot of the land in Chester has steep slopes, or wetlands or other natural features that might prevent a landowner from building.

But if that landowner is allowed to build four homes near each other, on a flat piece of land, without a minimum lot size, it might lead to additional development in a market that is desperately in need of housing.

More from Vermont Public: Vermont towns are considering changes in their zoning regulations to spur more housing

“We understand that a lot of the land has a lot of different topologies and topographies in terms of slopes and conditions,” he said. “And we’re trying to figure out how to achieve lower density where it makes sense, but allow landowners to actually maximize the land they have.”

Arne Jonynas, select board chair, said Chester needed more housing, and the new zoning regulations were supposed to open up more land that might have been more difficult to develop under the current bylaws.

“There’s a lot of land in the rest of the town where there are places that it’s conducive to put in some group of houses or some strip of houses,” Jonynas said. “You know, not everybody can afford to build towards the center of town.”

The planning commission has been working on the new zoning bylaws for more than two years, and the select board was hoping to vote on the proposed changes at the meeting on Sept. 18.

More from Vermont Public: Londonderry residents push back on proposed housing and development zoning bylaws

But after a number of residents raised questions about the changes, the board put off a vote until more information could be gathered on what the new regulations might do to the town’s rural character.

“By taking away the minimum lot size requirement, the town would be inviting suburban development into these sensitive rural areas,” said Chester resident Amy Mosher.

Mosher said she lives in a rural part of town that has been affected by the recent flooding over the past two years, and she wondered what more cars and more development would mean to her neighborhood.

“After the homes are built, we have more trips per day on narrow town highways, increased maintenance of the roads, more mud season truckloads of gravel, and the rural character has been completely altered, and does not look or feel rural anymore,” she said. “And there would be no going back. What would be done would already be done.”

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Howard Weiss-Tisman is Vermont Public’s southern Vermont reporter, but sometimes the story takes him to other parts of the state.
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