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Shank Painter Road

    ZONING

    Building a New Sense of Place in Eastham and Provincetown

    ‘Form-based zoning’ shapes ambitious development projects in two towns

    By

    North Eastham’s commercial district, if all goes according to plan, will be transformed into a walkable village center within the next few years. Provincetown, too, hopes for similar changes to create a walkable and bike-friendly Shank Painter Road.

    The nuts and bolts of zoning bylaws are what will make these long-discussed visions real.

    The town of Eastham has hired Brovitz Community Planning and Dodson & Flinker Landscape Architecture & Planning to create the zoning bylaw amendments needed for the village center plan. The most pressing are so-called form-based code updates — zoning regulations that prioritize built form and appearance rather than specific use categories like residential or commercial. The firms are also tasked with creating architectural design standards for the North Eastham Corridor Special District to streamline the regulatory process.

    Eastham Town Planner Paul Lagg told the select board on Aug. 21 that the goal was to present updates on both initiatives at the 2024 annual town meeting.

    The consultants’ strategy includes pursuing three opportunities for state support by establishing a so-called 40R smart growth district, which would encourage dense and mixed-use residential development where at least 20 percent of the mix must be affordable; district improvement financing, which can harness tax revenue for economic development; and a Route 6 corridor plan.

    The last of these three would look at how to connect three key parcels: the town-owned T-Time property, the Town Center Plaza, and the Council on Aging site on Nauset Road.

    A redeveloped North Eastham has been discussed here since at least 2007, when the first North Eastham Village Center plan was created. Ted Brovitz worked on that initial plan, Lagg told the select board.

    Lagg said that this zoning work is a crucial foundation for the ongoing planning and design process. As Lagg told the Independent in June, it should make the project more attractive to developers when the next rounds of RFPs go out.

    The goal of these zoning amendments, Lagg said, is “to create a village center that’s appropriate for Eastham.”

    Select board chair Art Autorino raised a question about whether the architectural standards would be too prescriptive, but Lagg said the guidelines would not be overly demanding. Basic standards, he said, “get us to an aesthetic without dictating personal preferences.”

    On Shank Painter Road

    Provincetown already has the dense, walkable town center that Eastham is now adapting its zoning bylaw for. But ask anyone in town and they’ll say that Shank Painter Road is an exception. A new subcommittee is preparing for a zoning effort that could unlock state and federal funds for its makeover.

    The goal, according to the community planning process outline, is to turn the corridor into a walkable and bikable mixed-use area with both affordable housing and commercial uses — “a gateway neighborhood with its own unique sense of place.”

    The MassDOT corridor improvement project on Shank Painter Road from Route 6 to Bradford Street is slated to receive $5 million in 2024-2025 Transportation Improvement Project funding to transform the 60-foot-wide right-of-way using a “complete streets” design, with sidewalks, bike lanes, pavement markings, and rebuilt drainage pathways.

    The plan also encompasses a roundabout at the Route 6 intersection and a shared-use path along Route 6 from Shank Painter to the Seashore, where it will link up with the Herring Cove bike trail.

    A partial design went to a public hearing on June 13 of this year; the Cape Cod Commission first issued a corridor study in 2012.

    The Shank Painter Corridor Planning Subcommittee, which began meeting biweekly on July 26, will respond to the “gift” of this infrastructure investment, as planning board chair Dana Masterpolo told the Independent in April.

    They’re in the early stages of developing the scope of work for a community planning consultant, for whom town meeting voters approved $50,000 back in April.

    The ad hoc subcommittee is overseen by Town Planner Thaddeus Soulé and is composed of Masterpolo, planning board alternate Stephen Roope, representatives from the conservation and historic district commissions, zoning board member Daniel Wagner, Shank Painter business owners Chuck Silva (who owns the laundromat) and Liz Athenius (the Bike Shack), former Town Planner Gloria McPherson, and at-large appointees and residents with urban design and policy backgrounds.

    Three meetings in, the subcommittee, like the consultants in Eastham, are focusing on form-based code possibilities — zoning that focuses on appearance rather residential and commercial categories of development — according to Soulé.

     

    HOUSING

    Provincetown Takes Two Steps Toward Building More Housing

    Select board endorses 40 units on Shank Painter and a land purchase on Nelson Ave.

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The select board took two votes on July 24 that put the town on course to create up to 100 new apartments at two locations — one on Shank Painter Road and the other on Nelson Avenue.

    An architectural rendering of a 40-unit building of market-rate rental apartments being proposed for 26 Shank Painter Road, the site of the town’s old police station. (Image courtesy Town of Provincetown)

    The first vote was to award Christine Barker and M. Tatiana Eck and their respective companies a contract to redevelop the former police station site at 26 Shank Painter Road into 40 market-rate apartments.

    The town asked for proposals for market-rate apartments at that site in April, and Barker and Eck, working with architect Jeffry Burchard, filed the only response. Their proposal includes the transfer of 26 Shank Painter and the adjacent parking lot at 15 Browne Street to them for $500, a potential $4-million contribution from the town, and the development of 40 apartments that would be restricted to market-rate year-round rental occupancy only.

    “The town would convey the property with a deed restriction that all units must remain as year-round rentals,” Town Manager Alex Morse wrote in a memo to the select board recommending the contract.

    The contract does not itself convey the property or spend any money. “The conveyance of the property does not occur until a project is permitted, financed, and ready to break ground,” Morse wrote in the memo.

    The vote to purchase three adjacent parcels on Nelson Avenue — numbers 22, 22R, and 24 with a total area of .91 acres — came at the end of the meeting, after a brief interval in executive session. The first two parcels will cost $1,270,000, while the third one will be $765,000, for a combined total of $2,035,000.

    The three parcels at 22, 22R, and 24 Nelson Ave. that the select board voted to purchase for $2,035,000 on July 24. That spending decision will have to be ratified by voters, likely at a special town meeting on Oct. 23. (Image courtesy Town of Provincetown)

    Developer Tom Tannariello had spent 13 months securing permits to build 10 market-rate condos and two affordable-ownership condos at 22 and 22R Nelson. He was awarded his final permits in January but put the properties on the market in April.

    Combined, the three parcels have an allowed density of 18 units, Morse wrote to the select board. But once the town’s sewer system has expanded to serve Nelson Avenue, sometime between 2027 and 2030, the parcel could support from 48 to 60 units, he wrote.

    “While the town does not have immediate plans for redevelopment of these parcels, securing this land is in the town’s best interests,” Morse wrote.

    “The vast majority of units in any privately-owned plan would be market-rate condos,” Morse wrote, “many of which would be eligible to be short-term rented.” By purchasing the Nelson Avenue property, the town is “positioning itself to have the assets needed to provide affordable, community, and workforce housing in the long term,” Morse wrote.

    The select board’s vote to endorse the purchase and sale agreement was unanimous. The purchase would have to be approved by voters at a fall town meeting, which is tentatively scheduled for Monday, Oct. 23.

    Market-Rate Apartments

    The 40 apartments that Barker and Eck propose to build would be the first deed-restricted market-rate rentals the town has commissioned without state or federal support.

    Similar construction projects, such as the apartments at Province Landing at 90 Shank Painter Road, have all been deed-restricted for people making less than 80 percent of the county’s median income in order to capture federal and state funding for affordable housing.

    Jeffry Burchard, Christine Barker, and M. Tatiana Eck at town hall after presenting their development proposal to the select board on July 24. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    The Harbor Hill timeshare complex on Bradford Street Extension was purchased with town funds and rehabilitated into 28 market-rate apartments, but building market-rate apartments from scratch has not been attempted on the Outer Cape in many years.

    The town had issued a request for proposals that specifically sought developers who would not use state and federal funding in order to ensure that the units could be inhabited by people who earn 80 percent of area median income or more.

    Barker and Eck asked for a 10-year abatement of local property taxes alongside the $4-million town contribution. In his memo to the select board, Morse wrote, “While the discussion regarding the town’s financial contribution can be decided at a future time, the review committee feels the initial request does not seem unreasonable given the lack of financial subsidies” from other layers of government.

    Barker and Eck’s apartment building would include 32 units with no income restrictions on the occupants and 8 units with an income restriction from 80 percent to 150 percent of area median income. In dollar terms, that would be $67,700 to $126,975 per year for a single person, or $77,400 to $145,125 for a couple.

    They propose to rent 18 studio apartments at $1,675 to $2,000 per month, 18 one-bedroom apartments at $2,500 to $2,750 a month, and four two-bedroom apartments for $3,000 a month.

    Their partners on the proposal include Burchard, the architect from Machado Silvetti who designed the Provincetown Art Association and Museum’s building at 460 Commercial, and John Ciluzzi, owner of Premier Commercial Real Estate, which will manage the apartments.

    The building uses a new zoning bylaw, passed at town meeting in 2022, that allows four-story residential buildings in the town’s General Commercial zone, which runs along Shank Painter Road and the northern end of Conwell Street. Burchard’s design steps back the fourth story by wrapping it with balconies and steps back part of the first story that faces Commercial Street as well.

    The parcels on which it would sit amount to only 0.4 acres and wrap around an existing three-story building at 30 Shank Painter Road that comprises eight residential condominium units. There would be no onsite parking at the property, although there are 27 town-owned paid parking spaces across the street at the fire station.

    The entire project is projected to cost $13.3 million, or $333,000 per apartment.

    Select board members praised the presentation and then voted for it unanimously.

    “I was on the RFP review committee,” said select board member Erik Borg, “and my major takeaways were that it’s a creative and well-designed solution on a strange plot of land, and it serves a demographic in town where we have a gap.”

    “When the town issued this RFP, we weren’t sure what we were going to get back,” said select board member Austin Miller. “I think what we see here in terms of unit count, design, and thoughtfulness of the proposal is really solid work.”

    PLANNING

    Shank Painter Study Gets Go-Ahead at Town Meeting

    A chance to build on the ‘gift’ of the future MassDOT redesign

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — A measure to start a community planning process for Shank Painter Road passed at town meeting on April 3, with some voters raising questions about its scope. Article 13 allots $50,000 from the town’s free cash to hire an independent consultant who will work with an appointed subcommittee to produce a zoning study on the high-traffic corridor.

    The impetus for the study is an incipient MassDOT project that promises to transform the Shank Painter Road right-of-way from Bradford Street to Route 6, work that is slated for state and federal funding over three years, from 2025 to 2027. That project will include a “road diet” — a reduction in lanes intended to calm traffic — on Route 6 from Shank Painter to Herring Cove, reassigning two lanes for bikes and pedestrians to share.

    “In light of this big infrastructure project coming as a gift to us, essentially,” said planning board Chair Dana Masterpolo, “we want to take advantage of that and make the most of our vision for the neighborhood.”

    Home to many restaurants and businesses, including the Stop & Shop, as well as the Methodist church, the current Provincetown police station, and the future one, not to mention multiple town-owned parcels slated for housing development, Shank Painter Road is one of the widest and busiest streets in town. It’s also treacherous for pedestrians and cyclists.

    The town-sponsored Shank Painter Road community planning process is technically unrelated to the state-sponsored Shank Painter Road transportation project. But town staff’s vision is to capitalize on the road redesign to make the Shank Painter “neighborhood” an accessible and inviting mixed-use environment.

    The community planning process will look at incentives for affordable housing development and mixed commercial use, mobility improvements, reduced curb cuts, recessed parking areas, and other designs “that further an energetic and attractive streetscape,” according to documents prepared by Town Planner Thaddeus Soule. He will serve as the staff liaison for the appointed committee.

    Masterpolo and Soule initially asked the select board on Feb. 13 to put a $200,000 capital improvement allotment on the warrant for the study. But on Feb. 27, Town Manager Alex Morse told the select board that he and the community development dept. had landed on a lower number, $50,000, to get the process started, given the relative lateness of the request.

    Morse said in his presentation of Article 13 at town meeting that the process would draw on last year’s zoning change for the Shank Painter commercial district. The district now allows up to four stories for community housing projects, with the goal of encouraging mixed-use development. “The vision for Shank Painter is first-floor potential commercial development with three stories of residential on the upper floors,” he said.

    Morse also tried to clear up confusion among voters about the relationship between the state highway project on Shank Painter, which he said is “still in the pipeline with the state,” and the study funded by the article.

    One voter who identified himself as an urban planner encouraged the town to “be clear about deliverables,” insofar as the requested sum was too paltry for a full urban design plan.

    “You’re absolutely right,” Masterpolo responded. “The $50,000 that is on the warrant is for the initiation of this study.”

    The planning board is finalizing its picks for a subcommittee to work with the consultant on the planning process. “We’re anxious to get going as soon as we can,” Masterpolo said.

    The hypothetical lineup for the planning board’s subcommittee on the community’s plans for Shank Painter includes Masterpolo and planning board member Stephen Roope, two Shank Painter business owners or residents, two at-large appointees with expertise in architecture and design, and one representative each from the zoning board of appeals, the conservation commission, the historic district commission, the board of assessors, and potentially town housing boards, according to Masterpolo and a memo sent to the select board outlining the planning process and its goals.

    TOWN MEETING PREVIEW

    Voters to Be Asked for $3.5M to Fix Court Street Flooding

    The town budget is up 8.2 percent; schools ask 18 percent more

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Dept. of Public Works Director Rich Waldo said it is possible to fix the flooding that has for decades impeded pedestrians, harmed businesses, and damaged cars at the corner of Court Street and Shank Painter Road.

    But it’s going to cost $3.5 million, an expense on the warrant for the May 1 annual town meeting. That is the largest of five budget override requests on the 39-article warrant. It must pass by a two-thirds majority at the meeting and by a majority vote at the May 11 town election.

    PtwnTM
    Provincetown’s socially distanced outdoor annual town meeting in 2020. (Photo Paul Benson)

    The $3.5-million debt exclusion would increase taxes on a home valued at $620,500 by $55.85 in the first year, according to Finance Director Josee Young.

    Court Street floods because of wetlands being filled decades ago, though exactly what happened remains the subject of rumors, Waldo said. The area is a perfect storm of poor drainage. The flat topography is low-lying, with groundwater just below the surface, near a wetland, and in a 30-acre watershed, Waldo said.

    The giant puddles that last for days in front of Cape Cod Excavating, Cape Tip Seafoods, and BWell Holdings (formerly Fay’s Automotive) will require large pumps and pipes to move that water far enough away.

    The proposed pumping station will take water from Court Street to the north end of Shank Painter Road, where it will go into a retention area at a proposed roundabout at the intersection with Route 6. The good news, Waldo said, is that the roundabout and water retention area will be paid for by the state as part of the $14-million reconstruction of Shank Painter Road.

    The Shank Painter project is now fully funded and expected to go out to bid in 2023, Waldo said.

    The retention area on Route 6 would direct overflow into Duck Pond following huge rainstorms, Waldo said. Duck Pond, north of Route 6, “is a very large wetland, so there would be no impact,” he said. “You will not notice the added water.”

    The flooding has “plagued the town for a long time,” Waldo added, “and if the town is serious about getting rid of that problem, this is the way to do it.”

    This fix would be game-changing for residents and business owners on Court Street. In 2017, Rita Silva, of 40 Court St., told the Provincetown Banner, “My husband is handicapped. He only has one leg and sometimes the water is so bad I can’t get him down our ramp. I have to push him through the water.”

    Since then, the town’s DPW has started to pump as soon as there is a big rain, and “that has saved us,” Silva told the Independent this week.

    Other Big Tickets

    The town’s operating budget for fiscal 2022 is up 8.2 percent overall, though the size of the increase is deceiving because town staff kept the 2021 budget low, due to concerns about revenue shortfalls from the pandemic, Young said. The town’s $30.7-million budget is up by $2.3 million from the current year. But it’s only a $1.09-million or 3.7-percent increase over 2020, due mostly to fixed costs, she said.

    The school budget of $5,126,441, however, is up 18.4 percent. Several factors are in play. First, the early learning center, which offers free child care and preschool for infants up to kindergarten is extremely popular and growing annually, said School Supt. Suzanne Scallion. Its costs are up by 17.5 percent to $581,657.

    “We need to have our eyes wide open on how the early learning center has affected the school budget,” Scallion told the finance committee and select board in January.

    Scallion and Mark Hatch, chair of the finance committee, have each said it’s time to talk about charging fees on a sliding scale so parents who can afford to pay help support the program.

    The school budget increase is also due to the rehiring of a business manager, a job that had been done by the superintendent’s assistant for one year. But that proved unmanageable, said the superintendent. Scallion, who is not paid insurance benefits and works part-time, also saw a salary increase from $64,000 in 2021 to $82,000 in 2022.

    Noting that the average full-time superintendent earned $140,000, school committee chair Eva Enos said, “I have no doubt she deserves every single penny. … The school committee is united in having trust in Suzanne.”

    Lastly, the school committee is trying to protect money earned from school choice, that is, the tuition paid for out-of-district students. The former superintendent, Beth Singer, used school choice funds to offset expenses generally, Hatch told the Independent.

    Scallion is preserving school choice for direct education enrichment costs, such as paying for music and theater staff, she said.

    Last year, when all department heads had to tighten budgets, the school dept. used school choice funds to cover basic operating expenses. But that’s not their purpose, Enos said. This year, even though the school choice fund now has $566,000 in it, the department plans to use only $288,481 towards its budget and save the rest for unforeseen future costs.

    Other Debt Exclusions

    Other debt exclusion requests on the town meeting warrant include Article 10R, $410,000 for storm water improvements, with a first-year tax impact on a $620,500 home of $8.03; Article 10S, $530,000 for town building repairs, with a tax impact of $10.35; and Article 10U, $625,000 for a storm water or outfall program at Ryder Street, with a tax impact of $13.44.

    REAL ESTATE

    Former Medical Building Will Become Condos

    Two affordable units are in the first ‘inclusionary’ deal

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The former Provincetown Medical Group building on Shank Painter Road has been sold and will be redeveloped into a three-story building with eight condominiums.

    This story would not be news in a town where so many buildings have been converted into condos, but this is the first such conversion to be permitted using the town’s so-called inclusionary bylaw — designed to allow a developer to increase the density of a project if it includes affordable housing.

    Under this new process, the developer got to create more units at the Shank Painter site because he agreed to make one of them affordable. To provide the second required affordable unit, he purchased an apartment in a different location and agreed to sell it through the town’s affordable housing lottery process. That off-site property is at 26 Nelson Ave.

    Edward “Ted” Roach, one of the managers of Meili West LLC, had originally wanted to build 13 condominiums at the Shank Painter location. The existing building housed the medical practice of Dr. Brian O’Malley and the late Dr. Wilsa Ryder for almost 40 years. It is next door to the Provincetown Police Station and had at one time been considered as a possible location for an expanded police headquarters.

    Demolition of the old building should begin in one or two months, Roach said. His project went from 13 units with four affordable down to eight units with one affordable in the building and one located off site. To comply with the inclusionary bylaw, the off-site apartment must be sold to an income-eligible buyer.

    The sale of 30 Shank Painter Rd., at right in photo above, went through after Ted Roach became the first developer to get a proposal approved under the town’s “inclusionary” bylaw. (Photo courtesy Premier Commercial)

    The off-site option, Roach said, allowed him to maximize the profitability of the units on Shank Painter, which will be new and in a more valuable, in-town location than Nelson Avenue.

    “If you don’t make money, nobody is going to do it,” he said. Roach bought the property for $1.2 million.

    Roach, who rebuilt Jan Kelly’s apartment building on Bradford Street, proposed to make the 3,268-square-foot medical building into condominiums after a previous developer, Doug Dolezal, gave up trying to navigate the complex new inclusionary bylaw.

    Roach said he found the inclusionary bylaw process challenging because so many board members weighed in and many did not understand the process or their jurisdiction. The permitting process took 16 months, though Roach said that’s not so long, considering the pandemic.

    Still, the process could be streamlined, he said, and he hopes it will be, so that more developers take advantage of the opportunity.

    “It was a year and a half of getting shut down and then accepted,” Roach said. “We were approved for 11 units at one point, and then that got knocked down at the next meeting.”

    Roach said he cannot remember how many units the building could have had by right without the inclusionary bylaw.

    Attorney Christopher Snow represented him before the zoning board of appeals. According to the minutes of its July 3, 2020, meeting, the ZBA granted special permits to demolish and rebuild a pre-existing, nonconforming structure and a special permit to exceed the scale allowance in the neighborhood.

    Snow told the ZBA there will be a 173.9-percent increase over the existing building scale and the actual structure will be 318-percent increase over the neighborhood average building scale allowed by right, the minutes state. The scale conforms to other large structures in the neighborhood, Snow argued, such as the Methodist Church and the Provincetown Fire Station.

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