Londonderry News

Londonderry is looking at a PUD a Planned Unit Development, presented last week to the planning board. The concept is one of planned large scale communities that mix compatible entities for lifestyle living. One person may have a vision of the North End in Boston with shops and restaurants on the street level, restaurants and apartments on the second level and lofts and condos on the third level.

Some would consider it islands of use, close enough to walk to. Not unlike the North Londonderry Village at the turn of the century. Where taverns, lodging, modest homes, grand Victorian homes, shops, manufacturing and transportation services were all commingled and formed a community.

A short trolley ride to the Cohas Spring and the hotel of the Cohasaukee Corporation for a break was just a nickle away from the village. Not unlike those that visit Londonderry for agrativities in our modern day world. Living near transportation corridors and spending the day in the U-Pick farm fields.

What if you could live here, work here and play here?

Would life be better?

The following is one reporters record of last weeks meeting and introduction of Planned Unit Development.

LONDONDERRY – Residents who left Wednesday’s Planning Board meeting after work on work-force housing was completed missed out on a workshop board members said may have a greater impact in town in the next 10 years: the board’s innovative Planned Unit Development overlay ordinance.

As the town conference room cleared out at 10:45 p.m. after the board recommended passage of a state mandated work-force housing ordinance, board member Mary Wing Soares lamented how few were staying for the next discussion. Soares’ comments were echoed by Planning Board Chairman Art Rugg, who said Planned Unit Development gave the town the opportunity to “avoid the sprawl” that zoning in other communities created.

“This could take away the sprawl you see in the South Willow Street, the Salems,” Rugg said. “It gives us a tool that allows us to make them (developments) flow through the community.”

Planned Unit Developments rely on a little used page of the state zoning ordinance, and while there are examples of its implementation in communities such as Rochester, there is no local example for the scale on which the board is considering using the concept, Town Planner Tim Thompson said.

In a Planned Unit Development, an applicant would work with town staff to draft a master plan for his or her lot and then, following a lengthy series of conceptual discussions and public hearings, the planning board would have the authority to approve uses for the development outside of what the zoning for the area requires. The bottom line, Thompson said, is if the partnership was successful, developers would have a true blank canvas to propose a mix of commercial, retail, residential and office space regardless of the initial zoning of the lot…

Read the rest of the story “Planners pitch solution to sprawl” by Alec O’Meara in the Union Leader Today.