I Don't Want This Tiny Town to Grow
One of the big controversies in This Tiny Town recently has been a proposed (now approved) Planned Residential Development (PRD) on the north part of town.
Before going any farther I'll just give you an overview of a PRD as it is allowed in This Tiny Town. You take the area of a big chunk of land and subtract out any un-developable land like waterways and slopes greater than 25%. Then you take what is left and divide the acreage by the minimum allowable lot size for which that area is zoned. And that equals the maximum number of dwellings you can build on the land. (150 acres to start – 50 acres of ponds = 100 acres /5 acres per lot = 20 houses). That sounds reasonable, right? But wait, a PRD then allows the developer to cluster all the houses on lots smaller than the actual zoned lot size as long as the left over area that is not built on gets protected as open space. (20 houses on 2 acre lots leaves 60 acres of protected open space) Even that sounds pretty good. But now to get into the controversy…
OK, here's the controversy, this PDR is being built in an area, practically on the slopes of Pack Monadnock and the houses are going to be clustered on 2-acre lots. Normally the houses in that area would be built on 5-acre lots but because this is a PRD the lots are going to be 2 acre lots and all right next to each other (reminds me of all the new developments in NJ). Also because of their placement, the Wapack trail that runs over Pack Monadnock and Temple Mountain are going to have a clear view of the houses (not very pretty). Oh, did I mention that there's going to be 34 houses? $500,000 houses? All clustered together? Here's an artist's rendition of what that might look like.
The people who live over that side of town aren't very happy. I'm not real happy either because this is the type of development I hated in NJ. Although one might say, "Hey, but there's going to be protected open space!" Well, the answer is that the open space isn't there for anyone to really enjoy. Actually the space will belong to the residents of the development and they can bar anyone else from using it. I'm not even sure that the land is in protected permanently. There's a possibility that the homeowner's association could sell it or whatever in the future. Open or not it would still be considered private land. But I have a way to thwart them. When most of the development has been built, I am going to leave a geocache in their "open space". Maybe even more than one. Then hopefully lots and lots of people will go there and enjoy the open space. Perhaps I shouldn't encourage tons of people to tromp through the woods, but it just bugs me that there's going to be a suburb on the north side of This Tiny Town.
Before going any farther I'll just give you an overview of a PRD as it is allowed in This Tiny Town. You take the area of a big chunk of land and subtract out any un-developable land like waterways and slopes greater than 25%. Then you take what is left and divide the acreage by the minimum allowable lot size for which that area is zoned. And that equals the maximum number of dwellings you can build on the land. (150 acres to start – 50 acres of ponds = 100 acres /5 acres per lot = 20 houses). That sounds reasonable, right? But wait, a PRD then allows the developer to cluster all the houses on lots smaller than the actual zoned lot size as long as the left over area that is not built on gets protected as open space. (20 houses on 2 acre lots leaves 60 acres of protected open space) Even that sounds pretty good. But now to get into the controversy…
OK, here's the controversy, this PDR is being built in an area, practically on the slopes of Pack Monadnock and the houses are going to be clustered on 2-acre lots. Normally the houses in that area would be built on 5-acre lots but because this is a PRD the lots are going to be 2 acre lots and all right next to each other (reminds me of all the new developments in NJ). Also because of their placement, the Wapack trail that runs over Pack Monadnock and Temple Mountain are going to have a clear view of the houses (not very pretty). Oh, did I mention that there's going to be 34 houses? $500,000 houses? All clustered together? Here's an artist's rendition of what that might look like.
The people who live over that side of town aren't very happy. I'm not real happy either because this is the type of development I hated in NJ. Although one might say, "Hey, but there's going to be protected open space!" Well, the answer is that the open space isn't there for anyone to really enjoy. Actually the space will belong to the residents of the development and they can bar anyone else from using it. I'm not even sure that the land is in protected permanently. There's a possibility that the homeowner's association could sell it or whatever in the future. Open or not it would still be considered private land. But I have a way to thwart them. When most of the development has been built, I am going to leave a geocache in their "open space". Maybe even more than one. Then hopefully lots and lots of people will go there and enjoy the open space. Perhaps I shouldn't encourage tons of people to tromp through the woods, but it just bugs me that there's going to be a suburb on the north side of This Tiny Town.
posted by NH Neophyte at 1:50 PM
2 Comments:
I love the idea of geocaching, in many ways.
I dream of empty space!
Green grass and trees!
Leaves the crunch under your feet!
One day maybe!
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