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Comments on The Newburyport Master Plan Pauline Chase-Harrell
August 15, 2001
Overall Comments
The overarching goals and thrust of the Plan are excellent, and many of the concepts included are sophisticated and useful. However, I believe it needs more explicitly expressed policy commitments in certain areas that are key to preserving the special character of the City, and a few additional strategies spelled out.
First, in the Existing Conditions portion of the Plan, it concerns me to see under Natural and Cultural Resources 9 pages of detail regarding natural resources - detailed assessments of water, soil and air quality, open space, organizations controlling specific resources, etc. - and only 6 sentences regarding historic resources. Noting merely that the City has "the second largest National Register District in the Commonwealth," with no mention of the 21 other individual and district listings, seems extremely strange in a city nationally renowned for its historic character. And relegating the complete lack of municipal protection for historic resources in such a city to a parenthetical phrase that "no Local Historic District has been established in the City" seems to ignore a major existing problem. The inclusion of Scenic Resources is very good, however.
While everyone acknowledges that the City's historic character is a major economic asset as well as a quality-of-life amenity, Newburyport is in fact far behind many cities and towns in the Commonwealth in its protection of historic resources. A number of my specific comments address this weakness.
In the section on Implementing the Plan, under Planning I applaud inclusion in the list of needed studies the call for analysis of existing site development patterns by neighborhood. When I served on the Special Legislative Commission on Historic Preservation (the
"Durand Commission") several years ago, the need for this kind of approach to zoning was one of our major recommendations. It is an important tool for preserving the unique qualities of historic towns like Newburyport, which more "modern" zoning concepts erode.
However, zoning is only one tool; and I would like to see an addition to the list of studies:
- Update the inventory of historic resources to current Massachusetts Historical Commission standards for all parts of the City.
And in the list of uses for zoning, to reinforce the concept of tailoring zoning to the historic environment, I would like to see explicit mention of:
- Preservation of character-defining historic development patterns.
Goals, Policies and Strategies
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