2019.11.13 Council Agenda Item 7

The Tidewater Master Development Plan (“The Master Plan”) was adopted in 2005 and is one of several regulatory documents that govern development within the Tidewater Master Planned Development District. The Master Plan was originally adopted with a 10 year expiration provision, however, six short-term extensions of the Master Plan have been approved over the past several years.    

Between 2015 and 2018 the Town and the property owners of the remaining undeveloped Tidewater properties expressed a desire to amend the Tidewater regulatory documents in various ways. Conceptual ideas for the structure of these amendments were developed but the formal drafting and adopting of amendments was never completed so numerous Master Plan extensions of limited duration were approved to allow additional time for the formalization of amendments to occur. In addition, an annual prohibition on the filing of Site Plan Review applications within the areas known as TF2 and TF3 was added to the Ordinance to prevent development from occurring on those areas until the regulatory documents could be amended.

Earlier this year, the Town of Falmouth purchased all of the remaining undeveloped properties within the Tidewater District (TF1, TF2, TF3) with the exception of the development site known as TV3 off Clearwater Drive.  (The Council just recently updated and amended the development regulations for the TV3 site on May 29, 2019.)  With the Town now owning and controlling the remaining TF development sites the prospect of having unpredictable and/or undesirable development on these properties without any Town oversight has lessened. This has also arguably lessened the need to repeat the exercise of having to extend the Master Plan on an annual basis and lessened the need to extend the prohibition on the filing of site plan applications for the TF2 and TF3 sites. This proposed amendment would extend the timeframe for allowing development under the Master Plan for an additional 10 years and would remove the prohibition on the filing of site plan applications on the TF2 and TF3 sites.

This amendment was introduced at the 9/9/2019 Council meeting and the Planning Board held its MRA Public Hearing on 10/1/2019.  

Attachments:

• An introduction letter from Councilor Hemphill;
• The proposed ordinance amendment language;
• The approved Master Plan;
• Summary of the Planning Board's Public Hearing; and
• Ordinance 53-2020.