Condos or condoms? Be careful when you refuse to adjust zoning.

A recent survey by the Donahue Institute at UMASS and Citizens Housing and Planning Association found that “more than seven in ten (71.3%) Cape and Islands residents support building affordable housing in their neighborhood,” higher than the statewide average of 64.8%.

We have a hard time believing that statistic tells the whole story. We can believe that most Cape and Islands residents understand that affordable housing is necessary to their security and a viable economy, but they do not want to do what is necessary to let that housing be built in their towns. Nearly every attempt to change zoning in a way that would allow multi-family units of any kind, including cluster zoning designed to preserve open space, seems to run into a buzz-saw of opposition.

Too often people talk the talk instead of walk the walk; ” I support affordable housing, just put it somewhere else!” Anything other than single-family homes on acre (or greater) lots is anathema to many Cape residents, and you simply cannot build affordable housing on Cape Cod with single-family homes on an acre.

One of the ideas we have advanced in the past is to allow development of multi-family units – apartments or small condos – on any land zoned for commercial development. But even this idea can meet a lot of resistance.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on a development proposal in San Francisco. When an old armory closed in the Mission District near city hall, developers bought the building and started to work at getting approval to change the zoning from industrial to residential.

Over time, developers sought permission to remodel the building into a church, a storage space or an apartment complex. But every proposal ran into a maze of zoning rules and objections from various interest groups, including those interested in preserving the site as historical and those who wanted it to be exclusively low-income housing.

In the end, one developer decided to stop fighting and find a use that did not require rezoning. Before long he found someone who wanted to turn the building into a film studio, and the city agreed that film production fell within existing zoning. But they overlooked one detail in the paperwork. The movies being produced were to be hardcore pornography.

Seems that the large stone rooms, winding staircases, marble columns and dank basement are perfect for some of the film ideas in the hopper at “Kink Films,” the new owner of the building.

Soon, where soldiers use to march, there will be a bunch of naked people playing paintball for the cameras. And the basement is perfect for a movie about zombies (naked of course)!

Reflexive opposition to any change in one’s neighborhood can sometimes lead to much worse development than that being opposed.

Affordable housing on Cape Cod is essential if we are to just maintain the conditions we have come to appreciate and expect. If we are unable to make reasonable accommodations to fit our needs we all may lose.

Wireless municipal Internet is here, now.

At the beginning of last year we wrote that Tempe, Arizona (pop 160,00) was first city of its size in US to be fully covered by wireless Internet service. Since then things have moved faster than we expected. According to the public radio program On The Media (onthemedia.org), no less than 300 municipalities in the United States are currently moving forward with this new technology, offering great benefits to their residents, businesses and visitors.

City-wide, wireless, high-speed Internet service is usually cheaper than cable or DSL and has no wires and no restrictions. It works in homes, businesses, parks, beaches, and on the road.

It seems that that there are several different ways to set up wireless Internet service. St Cloud Florida built its own wireless system using $3 million of tax money, and now offers Internet service free to all residents. The increase in taxes to pay for the system is more than offset, city officials claim, by the $600 or so per year that town residents save on high speed Internet service.

Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, and Corpus Christi, Texas have also created municipally owned systems, but they are not free. Corpus Christi claims the system has saved a lot of money on the city budget, partly by providing on-the-road Internet access to municipal employees, and partly because they use the net to read meters automatically. They claim to have eliminated 21 meter-reading jobs.

Philadelphia has chosen to license a private provider, Earthlink, to build and operate its system. Comcast and Verizon are not happy about this because Earthlink will offer high speed service for only $22 a month — $9.95 for households in the bottom third of income.

Boston (where close to 60% of the households do not have high speed Internet access) is working on a system that is closest to the most common European system in which the government builds the wireless network and then rents time at wholesale rates to as many Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) as want to use it. This creates competition among providers and keeps rates down.

My daughter, who lives in Ireland, was offered a choice of three wireless ISP’s and ten cable ISP’s. They had different speeds and different rates. She chose the one that was best for her.

In Boston, a non-profit corporation has been set up to raise money and build the system. It will then rent out space to various ISP’s at low, wholesale rates. Regular service will not be free, as it is in St. Cloud – they expect rates to be about $10 to $15 a month — but the Boston group envisions the possibility that one ISP will offer a free, ad-supported service.

The United States now ranks 21st in Internet access and affordability, according to the Department of Commerce, right behind Estonia. And Cape Cod is now falling behind many other cities and towns in the U.S.

Time to stop worrying about the gay marriage amendment and turn our attention to something that can keep us ahead of the curve. I look forward to seeing tourism ads that tell prospective Cape Cod visitors that they can take their laptops to the beach!

Maybe we should stop trying to “save” Otis AFB

Now that the F-15’s have been ordered out, almost every Cape Cod elected official is engaged in trying to “save” Otis Air Force Base and Camp Edwards for exclusive military use.

Before we go all the way down this road, I think we should take a careful look at what’s been going on at Fort Devens, in Ayer, Mass. After 79 years as one of the larger military bases in New England (I used to go there for summer training in the late 60’s), Devens closed in 1996, after a long and unsuccessful fight to keep it open.

That “failure” was the beginning of an incredible success story.

The stage was set by 1993 state legislation setting up a planned community. The community is governed by the “Devens Enterprise Commission,” a panel of six local residents and six representatives from the region’s business community. The Commission’s operations are supported by permitting fees and two percent of property taxes paid by Devens’ businesses and residents for municipal services.

The Commission has taken advantage of Devens’ large quantity of open space and good location to create an impressive mixed-use community. Not only does it have hundreds of units of housing, along with beaches, recreation areas and a golf course, but, thanks partly to its rapid permitting process (90 days or less) it has already enticed more than 80 companies to set up shop in the community.

Right now more than 4,000 workers are employed at Devens – twice the number of civilians employed by the Army when it ran the base. And Bristol Myers/Squibb recently announced that it will locate a $660 million manufacturing plant at Devens.

Wouldn’t Cape Cod be better off if something similar happened at Otis?

First we could move the Barnstable airport (along with it’s multi-million dollar federal subsidy) to Otis, which has much longer runways. This would allow the Coast Guard to stay at Otis and, at the same time, provide much better passenger service from the Cape. Planes could take off from here, fly to Green in Rhode Island and then go on to destinations all over the country.

For those who are worried about the noise, I can be reassuring. I volunteer at an office right off the end of a Barnstable runway and I am near the approaches to Otis. One F-15 taking off or landing is many times noisier than any four civilian planes added up!

With the airport right there, many businesses would be attracted to Otis. Add a quick permitting process, as Devens did, and we can expect hundreds, maybe thousands, of new jobs to be created.

Then there is the chance to add hundreds of units of residential property. I suggest small condos and rental properties to provide reasonably priced workforce housing for young families. This will keep hundreds of Cape Codders from having to cross the bridge to find good jobs and a reasonably priced place to live.

Is this something on which the Cape Cod Commission could do a feasibility study?

High density makes for affordable housing

When it comes to zoning, people on Cape Cod think “density” is a four-letter word. Anytime anyone wants to build more than one house per acre, Cape Codders hyperventilate. But guess what the latest trend in building is in the rest of the country? “Faux urban” developments with high-density residential areas intermixed with retail and office use.

One company is building a 52-acre “town” in North Carolina that is designed to “…recall a New England Coastal town,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

More typical of this type of development is a town called Legacy, built on 75 acres outside Dallas, Texas, in the center of typical suburban sprawl. This town includes more than 1,500 apartments and town houses, 4,000 people, 80 shops and restaurants, two mid-rise office buildings and a Marriott Hotel. And the people who live there love it. Units sell for as much as $400,000.

Refusal to accept density is the main roadblock to the development of affordable housing on Cape Cod. Everyone says they want to solve this problem so our young families and working people do not have to move off Cape, but, realistically, the only way to do that is with high-density housing.

By dividing the cost of the land up among multiple units, and putting more units in one building, you can reduce the cost of each unit, so they can be sold for reasonable prices and rented at reasonable rents.

High-density has other advantages, too. It allows affordable high-tech sewage treatment systems for example, that do not load nitrogen into our bays and estuaries. Shared amenities, like pools and tennis courts, are environmentally friendly and reduce demands on town water supplies.

High-density housing has one more huge advantage: It does not generate as many students for local schools. One- and two-bedroom units, typical for high-density housing, do not have nearly as many school age kids as 3-4 bedroom single-family homes.

The main disadvantage of high-density housing according to most people is what it will do to property values. The evidence does not support this assertion. If you talk to the residents at New Seabury and Kings Way (two large, relatively high-density developments), for example, you do not find anyone complaining about property values except those would like to buy. Haven’t heard the neighbors complain either.

I used to own a home in Newton. In the 70’s they built a condo development across the street on a former parking lot at a density of about 20 units per acre. I was shocked to see that these units, smaller than my house, sold for 20% more than my house was worth. Today, both have gone way up, but my former house sells for more than the condos.

I think that towns make a bad mistake when they try to force builders to put in single-family homes at low density on undeveloped land. The towns would be much better off economically by finding suitable areas – including areas currently zoned for commercial development — and rezoning some of them for high -density development (as much as 20 units per acre). It would be good for the town economically and, at the same time, we would be providing relatively affordable housing for those who love the Cape but are unable to afford it any more.

By Jack Edmonston

Mass should play to its strengths, not join race to the bottom

State Representative Jeff Perry sent a letter to some business owners on Cape Cod asking for their suggestions to help Massachusetts become more business friendly. He quotes Barbara Anderson to explain what is wrong with Massachusetts:

” ‘A lot of the states you’re competing with were really backwater states, and now they’re attracting the businesses and we’re losing out’ said Barbara Anderson, President of the Citizens for Limited Taxation. ‘You’ve always dealt with a Legislature that doesn’t have a clue about how business works, people with a business mindset think that Massachusetts is nuts, and that word spreads throughout the country’ Anderson also said the State’s total per capita tax burden is the Nation’s fourth highest”

I believe that both Barbara and Jeff are making a big mistake. Instead of trying to compete with “backwater states” Massachusetts should emphasize what we have that others states do not. We should not join a “race to the bottom.” We should play to our strengths, of which there are many.

Perhaps the single greatest strength of our state is the level of education of our citizens. We have one of the best educational systems in the country and a huge number of colleges and universities.

Private colleges are a huge business in Massachusetts. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, Massachusetts is the only state with more students enrolled in private degree-granting institutions than enrolled in state institutions. Many of those students are from out of state or from other countries.

So higher education is one business that we should be selling, and, wonderfully, it leads to others. There is a long list of successful local businesses started by professors and graduate students who came here to attend or teach at our various colleges and universities.

Our educational system has also given us the most educated work force in the country. Almost 30% of Massachusetts’s adults are college graduates. Only Connecticut has a similarly high percentage of college graduates.

Educated workers make Massachusetts a wonderful place for some businesses to locate. Computers, communications, biotechnology, medicine, finance and businesses dealing with military and marine technologies need the kind of educated employees that Massachusetts can provide in abundance.

Years ago textiles and shoes were two of the leading industries in Massachusetts. (Lowell was built to be a textile manufacturing city; Brockton and Weymouth were shoe manufacturing centers). Both of these industries moved south in order to get lower wage employees, and Massachusetts suffered from their loss. But then came computers. And a huge new industry developed. Long before anyone ever heard of “silicon valley”, Route 128 became known around the world for high technology.

Meanwhile, textiles and shoes kept seeking cheap labor, and ended up in going abroad. The south took the hit this time.

We should not compete for businesses that depend on low wages. We should do what we do best: Find business that can benefit from our incredible network of colleges, and our highly educated citizens.

Why The Chapter 40B Law Can Be Good for All of Us.

Most people on Cape Cod do not like Chapter 40B, near as we can tell, because it allows developers to override local zoning laws in towns that have less than 10% affordable housing if they make at least 25% of their units affordable.

No one likes having their local boards and rules overridden by faceless state bureaucrats. Almost no one wants developments that are more dense than current zoning. And most of us do not want any more low-income people in our neighborhoods.

We have a different point of view. We believe that our dedication to current zoning is disastrous for the Cape. Almost one-third of the Cape remains to be “built out.” There is not enough money to buy all that land, so there is no way to stop the development. It is going to happen.

If the Cape is developed under current zoning laws, we will be flooded with single family homes on large lots. And many of those houses will have school kids. Unless we change the way we fund out schools, this will drive our property taxes through the roof. Or it will force us to seriously degrade the quality of education we give our children.

This is like being between a rock and a hard place.

The only way out in our opinion, is to change zoning rules to allow denser development with smaller units. Instead of one four-bedroom house, how about a duplex with two, two-bedroom units? Or even three condos if there is enough land?

Smaller units will not have as many school age kids. They will provide more housing, both rental and owned, for both younger families and “empty nesters.” They are also good second homes. In general these families will pay more taxes than they cost the town in services. They should help lower taxes rather than raise them.

So, what does this have to do with 40B? As anyone who has ever been to a town meeting knows, there is no way we are ever going to get approval of zoning changes for denser development without strong reason. Everyone wants the Cape to stay just the way it is. So, we stick our heads in the sand and head slowly down the road to fiscal disaster.

The 40B law can provide us with the strong reason we need to change. Developers use 40B to force towns to accept developments they do not want. But developers would rather not go down that long, arduous road if they could make a reasonable deal with the town.

Using reason, town managers can make “win-win” deals with developers. They can approve smaller, less dense developments than the developer would get under 40B , and make life easier for the developer in return.

In doing these deals, towns can get more affordable housing as well. Newton has made developers give 10% of their units to the city housing authority for low income housing whenever they get permission to build more densely than permitted under existing zoning laws. No reason we cannot do the same here.

Jack Edmonston and Paul Schrader

INNDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ON OLDE CAPE COD

According to the Cape Cod Commission’s 1999 land survey, there are a total of 3,923 acres of industrially zoned land on the Cape. About 2,500 acres of this land have been developed, but nearly 1,500 acres is vacant and available for new development.

So, Cape Cod, under current zoning, could have nearly two-thirds more industrial development than we now have! This could make a major change in the nature of our favorite peninsula.

Frankly, we probably do not have to worry very much about standard industrial development taking us over. The dream of clean, light manufacturing paying our taxes is elusive. Manufacturing is declining in the United States, and the Cape is out of the way, with difficult airport access and often-jammed bridges. The Cape is an expensive place to live, so we have a limited labor supply as well.

But, a sea of big box stores and malls is not out of the question. Such development would exacerbate the problems with our fragile environment, and tax our limited resources. For example, such development would drive out a lot of the small retail stores in our “quaint little villages.”

If we don’t do anything, we can be sure of only one thing: This land will be developed, and we may not have a lot to say about HOW it is developed. We think it’s time for some creative thinking about we can use this land to make the Cape a better place. We have put together a few below. We’d love to hear yours.

Basically, our idea is that the Cape should take advantage of its strengths: Sand dunes, salty air, quaint little villages (with high quality retail services) here and there, miles and miles of beaches — and not one, single high-rise building anywhere.

People want to live here and visit here. We can use this land to meet that demand. The key to most of these ideas is to include affordable housing for the workers in every project. Here are some examples:

— Office/Apartment complexes. There are plenty of both all over the state, but very few that are both. People could walk from their modern apartment to their modern office through natural spaces that preserve the look and feel of Cape Cod ecology.

— Mixed residential and start-up businesses. Many people come here to pursue their interest in arts and crafts. Why not make it easier for them by providing complexes in which they can both work and live? We could provide “loft” spaces for artists or small manufacturing spaces for things like woodworking. We could also have small “incubator” spaces for all kinds of start-ups, from web design and software to food packaging. (“Nantucket Nectars” could have started in such a space.) Again, affordable housing for workers and crafts people would be crucial to the plan.

— Housing for the Elderly. This comes in a wide variety of forms these days, from elderly apartments to assisted living to nursing homes. And the demand for these facilities should be increasing for the next three decades as the baby boomers reach their dotage. Again, the facilities should also provide affordable apartments for the workers.

— Schools and research facilities. We already have some of each (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Cape Cod Community College for example.) We think more people would love to come here to work and learn. How about a residential school for undergraduates that specializes in oceanography and environmental issues affiliated with Wood Hole? The WHOI name would draw students. The school could provide dorms for students as well as some of the administrative and other workers.

We are sure there are many other good ideas out there. We just need to be willing to think differently. The Cape is a unique place. We should be able to create some unique ways of using our industrial land.

Jack Edmonston and Paul Schrader