Plan calls for half-acre zoning in town’s center

By Lloyd Garrison

After 18 months of hearings and numerous rewrites, the town plan’s calculated vision of Norfolk’s future for the next ten years is finally nearing the finish line. The closest to a radical change in direction is a recommendation to spur both residential and commercial growth in the town center by cutting the zoning requirement from one acre to one half acre. “We want to create more of a village in the downtown district,” said Glenn Chalder, the Planimetrics consultant who presented the plan at a public meeting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 25. After a cold and rainy spring, April 25 dawned both sunny and warm, which could explain a turnout of only 16 residents at Botelle School’s Hall of Flags auditorium. Despite the sparse attendance, Chalder fielded more than an hour of questions, some seeking clarification, others with specific recommendations. The queries ranged from promoting soil-based development, as practiced in Washington, Conn., to expanding setback requirements on scenic roads. Others called for more aggressive road maintenance, setting up a visitor’s kiosk with trail maps, creating uniform signage standards and lobbying Internet providers to expand local coverage. Chalder stressed that the plan, which attempts to define “who we are and where we want to go,” has no power to initiate change. “It is only a guide to development in certain directions.” The directions favored by most residents grew out of an elaborate town-wide questionnaire in October 2007. It concluded that residents overwhelmingly favor measures to protect the rural quality of the town and restore economic vitality to the town center. The plan offers many tools to accomplish these goals. Among them are six detailed initiatives to preserve open space, which already constitutes over 80 percent of town land. “Many residents assume such picturesque tracts of privately owned land will remain perpetually open and undeveloped,” said Chalder. “But there is no guarantee that this will always be so. Norfolk needs better tools to protect itself.” There are also specific strategies for creating a separate Conservation Commission, banning construction on scenic ridgelines, establishing a “Village District” downtown that would promote building and landscape design in keeping with Norfolk’s traditional character, and adopting a PA-490 Local Ordinance that would give a tax break while preserving open space for residents with less than 25 acres of forest or tillable land. Sample copies of the plan handed out by Chalder revealed a glossy, easy-to-read four-color document with stunning illustrative maps provided by Norfolk’s Kirk Sinclair, Ph.D. “From the looks of this,” said Chalder, “you might think the plan was written in stone. But we can and will make changes based on today’s discussion.” The next step is to incorporate such changes into the text at a meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission on May 21. Residents will be asked to approve the final document at another public meeting to be held sometime in late summer.