The residents on Pleasant Street have good reason to object to the Concord Orthopaedics rezoning request. The only reason to rezone that district is to accommodate Concord Orthopaedics’s desire to build its new surgical center in a convenient location close to its existing offices. That is not a basis for rezoning.
The zoning history of the Pleasant Street corridor and the development history of Langley Parkway are crucial to understanding why the request to rezone is not appropriate. Here are the facts: In 2001, the city rezoned that portion of Pleasant Street from institutional to residential because of its residential character and use. Since then, little has changed. In 2001, it was residential and it remains residential, a fact known to Concord Orthopaedics when it recently purchased a house in that district with the intent of building an institutional facility of nearly one-half acre in size with a parking lot for 90 cars.
Well before the city rezoned Pleasant Street to residential, Langley Parkway and its future extension were never intended to accommodate buildings of the type that Concord Orthopaedics proposes. In fact, the permit conditions that authorized the initial construction of the Langley Parkway specifically prohibited secondary development along the road corridor.
In the wetlands permit issued in 1993, the parkway is described as a “limited access arterial circumferential road around the city.” To ensure it remained that way, the permit imposed conditions to prevent any secondary development along the road corridor. The permit states: “The construction of the bypass and filling of wetlands is proposed to provide a facility that is a thoroughfare and not a local development road. Its continued viability as a thoroughfare is dependent upon the bypass being constructed and maintained as a controlled access highway with no driveways or intersections along its length, other than the possible signalized intersections.”
There is no question that in 2001 when the city rezoned the Pleasant Street district from institutional to residential that the city, its planners, its engineers and its lawyers knew that secondary development could not occur on the Langley Parkway extension road corridor. The fact that the extension to Langley Parkway was not constructed is irrelevant because even if it had been constructed, no secondary development could have occurred.
Now, knowing that it has no legal basis for obtaining a variance that would allow it to use the property for institutional use, Concord Orthopaedics has asked the city to rezone the entire Pleasant Street district for institutional use. Concord Orthopaedics bases its request for rezoning on the unsubstantiated and false claim that when the city rezoned the area as residential in 2001, the city thought that the Langley Parkway extension would be the “proper home for future medical offices.”
The argument is that had the city known in 2001 that the Langley Parkway extension would not be built, the city would not have changed the zoning on Pleasant Street from institutional to residential. All of this is patently false and contradicts both the original permit issued for Langley Parkway as well as numerous representations made by the city during the Langley Parkway permitting process that secondary development would not occur along any part of the Langley Parkway corridor.
If Concord Orthopaedics has proof to the contrary, it should provide it to the neighbors who purchased and live in homes in a residential zoning district. If it has no proof to back up its claim that the city’s decision to zone the district residential was made based on a belief that medical offices would be located on the Langley Parkway extension, it should withdraw its request for rezoning.
Just wanting an area to be rezoned because it is a convenient place to locate a facility is not sufficient to warrant any review by either the city council or the city planning department.
(Leslie Ludtke lives in Concord.)