SELLING A ZONING CHANGE WITH GIS

The City of Fitchburg's Redevelopment Authority proposed a zoning change from Rural Residential to Limited Industrial zoning in order to develop an industrial park. Opposition to this change was intense, particularly among residents of the affected neighborhood. City planners used their Unix ArcInfo GIS to prepare a visual analysis of the amount of unrestricted land in industrial zones available for development. This analysis incorporated a visual depiction of property protected by the Rivers Protection Act, FEMA 100 year floodplain, parcels already developed (from Assessor's data), and protected open space restrictions. Plotted on acetate, this information had a significant impact on the final decision by City Councillors and shows one of the many purposes to which a broad based municipal GIS with sufficient data can be put.

The City of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, is an older mill town of roughly 41,000 population in north-central Massachusetts, USA. Together with the neighboring city of Leominster, it forms the population center for northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. The city of Fitchburg grew rapidly between 1850 and 1920 when the Nashua River provided the waterpower necessary for operating the woolen mills that were an important part of this country's industrial revolution.

The City of Fitchburg has been searching for an area to locate an industrial park. Existing parks are nearly full, and there is a critical lack of space suitable for modern industrial development. Unfortunately, the river that proved so beneficial during Fitchburg's golden age of industrial expansion became problematic during the current, more environmentally sensitive era. A significant area of industrially zoned land at the southern edge of Fitchburg was unavailable for economic development due to the presence of a reservoir across the highway in Leominster. An earlier proposal for an industrial park at this location was stopped by Leominster for fear of contamination of the reservoir. While this issue is still politically sensitive and nettlesome to some, a site needed to be found to accommodate additional economic development.

Massachusetts for years has had the strongest wetland protection laws in the country, requiring a developer to obtain permission from the local Conservation Commission prior to developing within 100 feet of an environmental resource, such as a river or wetland. In late 1996 the Rivers Protection Act was passed by the state legislature and imposed additional restrictions on development near a river. The Rivers Protection Act prohibits ANY development within 200 feet of a flowing river if it has a significant adverse impact on the river, in the opinion of the local Conservation Commission.

Zoning in Fitchburg began in 1954. The map of allowable uses was developed for the most part by determining the current land uses and creating use districts around them. As a result, Industrial Zoned land in the city was relegated principally to the areas around the Nashua River, and was primarily developed earlier this century. The first map shows the area of Industrial and Limited Industrial land in Fitchburg, and the location of the Nashua River through the center of much of the industrially-zoned areas.

A proposal was made to rezone a large parcel of land in west Fitchburg adjacent to an existing industrial park to Limited Industrial, to permit the construction of an industrial park. This proposal faced a difficult fight, as the West Fitchburg neighborhood is well organized and politically strong, and fiercely opposed the development of this parcel of land. It was felt by planners that perhaps the proposal could be sold if we could effectively demonstrate how constrained the existing industrial land is. In order to show this effectively, the city turned to its geographic information system.

The City of Fitchburg has been developing its GIS since 1990, and as a result has a great deal of geographic information is available for analysis. Parcel boundaries, hydrology, zoning districts, wetlands, and assessor data could be utilized for this analysis. Planners felt that the impact of the Rivers Protection Bill on available industrial land could be compellingly presented. Also, the amount of industrial land already developed could be shown by reference to the assessor's land use data for each parcel. Parks and protected open space could be shown. Finally, the effect of the Wetlands Protection Act could be shown. Each of these could be presented as overlays blocking out an underlaying display of industrial zoned land. The amount of land showing through the acetate would show how much (or how little) land was available.

The proposed zoning change was on an extremely tight schedule due to the imminent expiration of several grants that the Industrial Development Commission was able to obtain for the city. These grants had been obtained to develop an industrial park in the area of Leominster's No-Town Reservoir. When this earlier proposal was ultimately shot down, it was necessary to quickly move to the back-up location in west Fitchburg.

There was, therefore, no time to prepare the database for this sort of analysis. A base map and series of overlays had to be prepared in time for the Planning Board's public hearing on the recommendation to City Council on the proposed zoning change. Planners had roughly two weeks to prepare the material that would be required for the presentations.

The final product consisted of a 36" x 24" paper map showing the industrially zoned land in Fitchburg, and a succession of acetate overlays showing the river and other water bodies, a 200 foot buffer of the river and tributaries to show the effect of the Rivers Protection Bill, a 100 foot buffer around each wetland area in an industrial zone, the 100 rear floodplain, all parks and protected open space in the industrial zones, and all parcels that had greater than 100 square feet of total gross floor area according to the Fitchburg Assessors. The presumption was that these parcels had a building on the parcel.

At the public hearing for the rezoning petition held by the Planning Board, the proponent of the rezoning petition, Michael Lanava, Director of the Fitchburg Redevelopment Authority, made extensive use of the base map and overlays to illustrate to the crowd the scarcity of industrial zoned land available for development. While this point had been made in previous presentations, questions would always arise about the availability of other sites. The large scale base map of the city showed every parcel, and as a result proved to be extremely useful in explaining the situation to the audience and the Planning Board members. The Board subsequently voted to recommend approval of the rezoning petition to City Council.

For the City Council hearing on the petition, eleven copies of the base map and a single acetate overlay were made at 11" x 17" for distribution to each City Councillor. While individual restrictions couldn't be displayed on a separate sheet in this format, it was effective to give each councillor an individual copy to see for themselves the extent to which the industrial land was restricted.

After all this, the project lost by one vote in City Council, and the rezoning attempt was defeated. Now it is the task of city planners to perform an industrial build-out analysis with existing industrial land to see exactly what options remain to the city. This project ongoing as of this writing, and we anticipate using our ArcInfo system extensively for this task.

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