For the past two years, work has been underway on Chelsea’s first comprehensive plan in more than 50 years.
The process is now coming close to a conclusion.
Last week, the planning board held a public hearing on the Chelsea Pa’Lante Master Plan. The plan will be back before the board on Oct. 27, at which point it is likely to make a recommendation on final approval to the city council.
During the public hearing, Permitting and Land Use Planning Director Will Cecio and land use administrator Adam Roy hit on the highlights of the approximately 200 page document.
The master plan highlights the vision for the future of Chelsea and then breaks it down into seven separate goals to achieve that vision, Roy said.
“For each of those goals, it’s broken into specific strategies and actions that the city will undertake to achieve the goals that come together to form that vision,” said Roy.
The key themes that have been highlighted as part of the master plan include housing; economic opportunity; services and safety net; community safety; environmental justice; mobility, culture, and placemaking; and land use planning.
The first section of the master plan looks at the existing conditions of the city, its needs, and the opportunities Chelsea has moving forward. The second section sets the vision and goals, as well as the framework for the decisions city officials will make moving forward. The final section of the master plan addresses the strategies and specific actions, including recommended policies, needed to achieve those goals.
Roy noted that the vision and goals, and the overall plan itself, was crafted with input from residents garnered over numerous public engagement opportunities over the past two years.
“The existing trends, needs, and opportunities of the city then informed specific urban design strategies or scenarios that could inform strategies and action items that we can implement to actually achieve our goals going forward,” said Roy.
The plans consultant team did a lot of analysis on the existing conditions in the city, said Roy.
“They examined the budget, they broke down where our funds were going to, where our funds were coming from, the amount of new growth in the budget that the city was receiving every single year,” said Roy. “They look at the different housing types, where crime had been reported, how much crime had been reported, how much housing had been produced. All of this is shaping the existing trends of the city, the needs of the city, where we need to allocate more resources; but also the opportunities and the potential that the city has going forward that we can leverage to make sure that we are serving our residents in the best ways possible.”
The master plan states that going forward, the city’s needs and opportunities include making sure that housing is available to everyone who wishes to live in Chelsea, and that the housing available is affordable for Chelsea residents.
“To achieve the framework, the vision that we have for the future, balanced growth is critical to ensure the city’s fiscal stability going forward,” said Roy.
The consultants analyzed the budget and saw that new growth revenue was declining in recent years and putting a strain on the city’s budget.
“They highlighted the need for balanced growth going forward, and while the balanced growth is food for the city’s fiscal revenue, it’s also about leveraging and accessing economic opportunity for Chelsea residents,” said Roy. “The more that we can grow, the more opportunity that we’re giving to Chelsea residents.”
Cecio highlighted the vision that came out of the master plan of by 2040, making Chelsea a vibrant city where families can stay, businesses can prosper, and strong community networks help everyone thrive in safe and healthy neighborhoods.
“It is a very lofty vision, but a unified vision that can help guide us forward,” said Cecio.
Within the housing goals, Cecio said there are sections on how the city can produce and preserve housing options for everyone, while the economic opportunity goal includes sections on how local businesses can prosper and how Chelsea can help grow the local and regional economy.
“It is a lofty vision and some lofty goals, and coming out of the research and analysis phase, there was this recognition of the twin tasks of a gateway city,” said Cecio. “There are two realities that every gateway city like ours has to address and navigate and face, that we are trying to address crisis response and stabilization, so our residents are under pressure and many of them are in crisis and need their needs met now. But we also need to build towards long-term prosperity.”
The master plan looks at ways to build a framework for long-term prosperity while looking at the current needs of residents, Cecio said.
“Our vision and goals really require building and attracting new development, whether that’s housing, new businesses, new job sources, or investing in programs and services. Growth is not the end, we’re not doing growth for growth’s sake, but growth is a means to generate the resources we need to achieve and implement our vision.”
Balanced growth is a key to the plan, one that creates affordable and market rate housing as well as commercial and industrial development, Cecio.
One of the many action items highlighted in the plan is a need to overhaul and revise the city’s zoning bylaws.
Comprehensive, citywide zoning reform was probably the biggest priority laid out in the plan over the next five years, according to Cecio.
“We just really need a full revamp of our zoning,” he said. “The last time it was holistically updated was in the 80s, so we have a zoning code that is really advancing a vision that maybe no longer exists. We have different goals and different visions, so how do we use our zoning code to advance that?”