The West Side is the home of Pittsfield’s Black community. Due to years of discriminatory redlining, the neighborhood experiences a markedly lower quality of life compared to other parts of Berkshire County’s largest community.
“The city is undertaking some updates to our zoning ordinance. And this is part of the work that we started with the downtown creative district for the North Street corridor that looked at form base, what they call in zoning is form based code, which is really looking at the property itself, and trying to determine what the best what the best use for that property is," said Pittsfield Director of Community Development Justine Dodds. “It focuses on more flexible, predictable permitting, expanding by right uses, and inclusionary zoning as well. And so, we started that with the downtown creative district, and now we're bringing that into the West Side neighborhood. At the end of this process, too, we should have some text that will apply that we could then pull out into residential development throughout the rest of the city.”
Monday’s meeting at Conte Community School is the second in a series of gatherings aimed at collecting input from residents about the West Side’s future.
“People are just looking for it to be more inclusion, more walkable neighborhoods is a big thing that we've been hearing a lot about, making neighborhoods more conducive to people who bike, people who walk, people who want to engage with their neighborhood green space, and again, the flexibility for you know, all types of housing,” said Dodds.
The meetings mark a notable change in approach for Pittsfield’s city planning.
“They haven't done big changes in zoning and what can be and what could be for decades," said Carolyn Valli. "So, they've had overlay districts, and they've done different things for like North Street and Tyler Street, but they haven't come right into a neighborhood and said, you know what, let's look at how people actually use their homes, how they would like to use their homes, and what kind of community would they like to see for the future- And let's see if zoning can be a way to help them achieve it.”
Valli is the CEO of Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, whose headquarters are in the heart of the West Side on Columbus Avenue.
Zoning changes can have a variety of impacts on the neighborhood.
“Many homes have zoning things that prohibit them from being able to put a porch on the front, or it could be you can't have like a shed on your property, it could be that you have a property that you have a house, and you might have had an old dilapidated garage, and depending on where the setbacks are, it could affect whether or not you could rebuild that garage,” the CEO explained.
Valli says the city’s new approach is an opportunity to return agency to residents.
“People underestimate how smart the community is, because in the first one that happened regarding zoning, people asked such great questions like, okay, if I were to have a business in my home, what would that do to my real estate taxes? What would the impact of this be? What would the impact of that be? Could I have a home-based kitchen, where I make special salsa that I could sell? Just a variety of different things," she told WAMC. "People really wanted to make sure that the community maybe had access to things that some of them used to have when they were younger. Like, there used to be a neighborhood bakery, there used to be a place to have coffee right in the neighborhood. And those have all, you know, kind of gone away.”
Attendees will have an opportunity to have a hands-on experience in plotting out the future of their neighborhood.
“The most important thing is, the policies that will be put forth through city council and the community development board will come from the people that live here, and I think that that is going to make all the difference in making sure that those rules and regulations that we're all going to live by are informed by the people that currently live here,” said Valli.
The meeting includes refreshments and child care and begins at 6 p.m. Monday.
