Concern About Commerce On South Main

People just love Newtown. Its historic Main Street, its small village-like commercial centers, its elegant neighborhoods, and its scenic rural vistas have attracted a population of 26,000-plus. The Planning and Zoning Commission, however, is worried that people may eventually love our attractive town to death. Already, the clogged arterial highways leading into town are ample warning of even greater congestion to come if commercial development continues in its current configurations and at its current pace.

Anticipating the development pressures that are now coming to bear on the South Main Street commercial corridor on South Main Street from Borough Lane to the Monroe border, the commission started work two years ago on a South Main Street Village Design District adding yet another string of letters to their growing list of working acronyms (SMSVDD).  Similar districts have been created in Sandy Hook and Hawleyville. Such village districts strengthen the P&Z’s hand in regulating the traffic flows, building configurations, and architectural designs of commercial development visible from public roads. The districts give the town’s land use regulators added flexibility to guide commercial development, or even restrict it when necessary, in ways that have a direct bearing on the quality of life in Newtown.

At first look, the South Main Street design district may look like a threat to the prerogatives of developers of land in existing commercial zones. But it also creates new opportunities for commercial developers to work with the Planning and Zoning Commission to come up with solutions to design and traffic problems that may have been impossible to address in the older, more rigid commercial zones. If the process works the way it is supposed to, village design districts foster creativity and cooperation rather than confrontation in meeting the challenges posed by growth and commercial development.

Design districts, when coupled with the Planning and Zoning Commission’s prescient prohibition in 1996 of  “big box” stores over 40,000 square feet, should help keep Newtown’s commercial growth local in scale and scope. The Legislative Council is currently reviewing the South Main Street District proposal and should add its endorsement to the Board of Selectmen’s recent approval of the plan. Given the quickening pace of commercial development on South Main Street, we hope the P&Z responds by expediting the required amendments to both the Town Plan of Conservation and Development and its own regulations to help realize a future Newtown we all still love, even as it grows.