Agenda - Planning Commission - 02/02/2012

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significant amount of pavement visible from the roadway, multiple driveway openings, large signs, and a dependency on automo- biles for access and circulation. Salem's Route 28 strip contains more than 300 retail businesses, including big box retailers, several large shopping cen- ters, and dozens of smaller strip malls and individual stores. Just off the strip sits the 1.1- million - square -foot Mall at Rockingham Park, the Largest enclosed mall in New Hampshire. Since 1984 more than 3.6 mil- lion square feet of retail space has been approved in Salem. The strip in Salem was originally de- veloped in the 195os and 196os with little regard for design. Retailers wanted to be in Salem because of its location and the lack of a sates tax in New Hampshire. The town wanted tax revenue to support the services needed for a growing residential popula- tion. Property owners wanted to develop sites at the lowest possible cost. The domi- nant development style along the strip was cement -block and sheet -metal buildings with flat roofs, massive parking lots, little if any landscaping, giant signs, and multiple curb cuts. PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE TFIE STRIP Over the years we tried many different techniques to control strip development and improve the aesthetic character along Route 28, including rezoning commercial lots to noncommercial districts, limiting the size of retail stores, reducing the allowable size and height of signs, requiring more landscaping and buffers, imposing impact fees, and regulating traffic management and architectural design. Although all these regulations improved the quality of new development, many applicants and plan- ning board members did not understand what the town actually wanted. The design regulations were simply words in a long document filled with many other require- ments. Various people interpreted the text in different ways. It was not unusual to have applicants negotiate specific design features with the planning board at public meetings, which usually took lots of time and left both sides uncomfortable with the result. I began to realize that the text -based regulations were not good enough to deal with complex design issues. GOOD EXAMPLES OF DESIGN GUIDELINES For many years, I felt design guidelines were the missing link in our quest to im- prove the aesthetic character of Route 28. Guidelines use photographs and drawings to illustrate the desired form of develop- ment. One of the early design guideline documents that influenced my thinking was Designing the Future to Honor the Past: Design Guidelines for Cape Cod, prepared by the Cape Cod Commission in 1994. It uses photographs, drawings, and text to present detailed guidelines for open spaces, roadways, architecture, adaptive reuse, infill construction, landscaping, ac- cessibility, parking, outdoor lighting, and signage. A unique feature of these guide- lines is a model case study for commercial strip development with sequenced illustra- tions of existing conditions and phased redevelopment. Another document I consulted was Design Guidelines for the Route One Corridor in Falmouth, Maine, produced by Terrence DeWan and Associates in 1997. This booklet is about 50 pages tong and contains large (4 -inch by 4.5 -inch) photo- graphs with brief explanations. Guidelines for architectural design and signage are presented as brief bullet - points. The format of the document and the simplic- ity of the messages make it very easy to understand. INTRODUCING DESIGN GUIDELINES TO SALEM In 2010 the Town of Salem received a grant from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation to prepare design guide- lines as part of the Community Technical Assistance Program for the Interstate Route 93 expansion project. We started this project with a meet- ing to get input from the businesses and property owners who would be affected by ZONINGPRACTICE AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION Ipage 3