Town Council Declines Recommendation on Regulations For Self Storage

When: Monday, September 23 at 7 pm
Where: Charlestown Town Hall
What: Public Hearing On Zoning Ordinance Changes For Public Storage Units

As was allowed under zoning, Charlestown has approved over 400 self-storage units along Post Road (Rt.1), a state-designated Scenic Highway. Enacted in 2021, Charlestown’s Comprehensive Plan designates this area for “Scenic Highway Commercial” and recommends strong design standards. In addition, most of the commercial lots are also in the Groundwater Protection Overlay District, with the strongest need to prevent groundwater contamination. For these reasons, the Charlestown Planning Commission had asked that Public Storage Units remain a prohibited use in these zones until stronger regulations and design standards can be adopted. For that reason, storage units were prohibited beginning in April, 2022.

The current Town Council majority ignored the recommendation that the prohibition be extended and made this an allowed use in the Scenic Highway Commercial District in April 2024. The Planning Commission then proposed regulations to address some of the concerns for aesthetics along our Scenic Highway and the environmental concerns associated with the Groundwater Protection Overlay District. The centerpiece of those recommendations was to require a “Special Use Permit” for this use and require that any proposal under the Special Use Permit meet certain standards.

The standards were based on the conditions that had been placed on the approved, but not yet built, storage facility on the north side of Post Road across from the Quonochontaug Grange. The buildings there would look very much like the Grange in both architecture and materials, the hours would be limited to daytime so there would be little to no light pollution, the facility would have strong enforcement mechanisms to prevent groundwater and wildlife impacts, and residential neighbors would have a 50-foot buffer of dense plantings to screen the facility.

A Special Use Permit allows the Planning Commission to take into consideration the unique characteristics of a property. For example, even if some locations need to provide screening, a large elevation difference between the use and an abutting residential property may make screening almost impossible. Or because of soil characteristics, some lots may not be suitable for this type of development.

Before sending the storage unit ordinance to the upcoming public hearing, the Town Council stripped the regulations of the Special Use Permit requirement from the proposed ordinance. This action by the current Town Council makes it a “by-right” use on any commercial lot along the Scenic Highway. The Town Council also removed several other recommendations from the Planning Commission’s version of the ordinance. Examples of these were:

• Prohibiting the use of poison baits to control rodents. The Charlestown Moraine and the Coastal ponds that lie on both sides of Rt. 1 and are important areas for eagles, hawks, owls, and other raptors. The use of poison baits is one of the leading causes of death among raptors that ingest the poison when hunting mice that have been fed the bait. Mice can be controlled by not allowing the storage of food and using traps, but the Town Council ignored these suggestions and allowed poison baits.
• Limiting hours of operation to daytime to decrease light pollution and increase safety. Instead, the Town Council majority increased the hours to 9 p.m. that would ensure that hundreds of lights would create a dome of light over the facility and that renters would be able to access their units with the least amount of surveillance.
• Requiring a fifty-foot-wide perimeter buffer that provides an opaque screen to abutting residential uses.

New regulations do not impact existing businesses, but new development does impact abutting residential uses, the groundwater, our night sky, and wildlife. Always weighting new regulations in favor of the developer chips away at the rights of abutters and impacts neighborhoods and natural resources. State and local law strongly protects the rights of developers; developers don’t need the extra protection that this Town Council always seeks to give them.

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Bonnie Van Slyke, the author of this post, is a candidate for Town Council in the 2024 election. She was a member of the Charlestown Town Council from 2014 to 2022. She was the Town Council Liaison to the Planning Commission, Parks and Recreation Commission, and Senior Citizens Commission. She is a former officer and member of the Board of Directors of the Frosty Drew Observatory & Science Center, a former Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals in Harvard, MA and a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Harvard Conservation Trust. Bonnie is a freelance copy editor, technical writer, and publications specialist. You can learn more about Bonnie on her profile page.

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The banner image is a photo of storage units proposed in Charlestown.