Hamilton Planning Board finalizes flexible bylaw draft, plans developer feedback sessions

HAMILTON — January 5, 2021 — Hamilton Planning Board advances flexible development bylaw and defers Winthrop School rezoning to master plan. At the January 5 meeting, Chair Brian Stein led the board through final edits to a density matrix that would allow developers to build at up to 1.75 units per acre in an RA zone — against a baseline of 0.5 units per acre — in exchange for open-space contributions, with a worked example showing a $600,000 fee for 12.5 bonus units on a 10-acre parcel. Members agreed to set a minimum parcel size of 80,000 square feet, require energy and water efficiency exceeding building codes by 10 percent, and round all unit totals down to the nearest whole number. Developer feedback sessions are tentatively set for February. The board also debated rezoning the roughly 19-acre Winthrop School site on Bay Road to business use, with Rick Mitchell arguing the move would preserve future fiscal options, but agreed instead to incorporate the question into the town's funded master plan after public commenter Mike Palazzolo warned that undefined commercial rezoning risks lowering assessed values rather than raising them.