Next Steps For Main Street

BOURNE- Creating a Growth Incentive Zone, along with some more immediate steps that need to be taken to move Bourne’s plans for its downtown forward, were on the agenda for discussion at Wednesday’s gathering of the Cape Cod Canal Region Chamber of Commerce’s Bourne Committee.
Some 40 members of the business community, town government, and the public came to the early morning meeting to hear the answer to the question, “What’s next?”
As Town Planner Coreen V. Moore launched into that discussion, she told meeting attendees that the Downtown District zoning that was passed at Fall Town Meeting had already been useful.
While no one has been beating down her door with projects, Ms. Moore said the bylaw has helped the town stop what it does not want. She received applause Wednesday when she reported saying, “Sorry, you can’t do that,” to people who wanted to locate a new used car lot on Main Street.
“And no more gas stations,” someone called from the audience.
Among the upcoming actions the town intends to take are work on the town’s design review guidelines for developing Main Street. Eventually, Ms. Moore said, the guidelines need to be refined and adopted as standards.
It will take some time, a year to 18 months of work at the least, to complete the Growth Incentive Zone process.
Between the Bourne Financial Development Corporation, its Main Street Steering Committee, the Buzzards Bay Village Association, and others, a plan has been coming together.
Ms. Moore said planners now need to move forward with an action plan, but while they can propose such a plan, at least on paper, any action has to be taken by selectmen. They, and voters, have the final word.
Meeting attendees heard this week that once an action plan has been drafted, it will be given to selectmen. If and when a plan is adopted, it will probably go back to the planning board and town counsel for another review.
When it is complete, the town can move forward on the Growth Incentive Zone or any other items in that plan. In the meantime, development initiatives can be undertaken. While sewage capacity is still an issue, the town is not at the point of a moratorium, businessmen heard. Also, some projects for which sewerage has been approved, such as the Equivise condominium development proposed for Perry Avenue, may not move forward.
The town is already working on the application to the state that is part of the Chapter 43D expedited permitting process that Town Meeting voters approved. If and when funding becomes available as a part of that process, the town may be able to use matching economic development money and finally be able to afford help in bringing together and implementing the various initiatives that are a part of the Main Street efforts.
Town Administrator Thomas M. Guerino said a team of three people to work with the chairman of the planning board, the town planner and his office could be used to move a Growth Incentive Zone proposal through the Cape Cod Commission.
The reins, however, are now in the hands of selectmen.
While members of the Main Street Steering Committee hope that the “brain trust” of people who have been working on downtown revitalization will be asked to move forward with implementation, that decision lies with selectmen. They may choose an entirely different committee.
Mr. Guerino said the town would be moving forward to use some $800,000 in funding earmarked for the next phase of the Main Street improvement program that has already installed sidewalks, lighting, and other amenities along the road. He said that $150,000 in state funds would be used to look at passenger and commuter rail issues in Bourne, helping to determine how those issues will affect downtown Buzzards Bay.
He also told meeting attendees that the town will also need to work with the US Army Corps of Engineers as a part of the process. He said he has already begun working with Canal Field Office head Frank Fedele on the paving of the Cape Cod Canal parking area in Buzzards Bay.
Town Moderator Robert W. Parady, who also moderates the Bourne Committee meetings, commented on the presentation as a former selectman. He wanted to know whether the private sector was on board with the proposed changes to downtown.
When he was a selectman in the 1980s, he said, the board made millions of dollars’ worth of public improvements in hopes that the private sector would be “incentivized” to take action to improve their properties as well.
At the time, he said, about five people owned major blocks of Main Street. Some $400,000 was available for low-interest loans to private business, money that could have been used to make façade changes and other improvements.
The town ended up sending $200,000 back to the granting agency, Mr. Parady said. No one was interested.
“I run the day care center,” an audience member said. She said that at one time the center wanted to move upstairs and expand, but could not do so. Because of the economy, she said, there now is not even money available to redo the playground, implying that in at least one case, it is lack of funds or financing, not lack of interest, behind inaction.
Planning Board Chairman Christopher J. Farrell, a member of the Main Street Steering Committee, said planners reached out and asked businesses what they needed. The answer, he said, was more density, enough to make redevelopment work in a floodplain.
He suggested that what the town needs now is to market itself, letting developers and land owners know what it can do to assist them.
Stantec Consulting’s drawings of what might be done to the building at Wallace Avenue and Main Street have sparked some interest and discussions with the property owner, Ms. Moore said.
William W. Locke of Cataumet asked whether Stantec Consulting’s idea of putting in an underground parking structure and raising the level of Main Street several feet was viable. He noted that it had been done at public gardens in Boston.
“It was the developers’ suggestion,” Mr. Farrell said. While it might be the best option, meeting attendees heard, it would also be very expensive.
While the town has completed a study about building in a flood zone, Ms. Moore said, it will also eventually need a flood zone bylaw.
The bottom line, attendees appeared to agree, is that there are tools in place to move forward now. There is also a lot of work yet to be done to put mechanisms in place to direct and assist  future, large-scale projects, work that can be done while the economy is slow.