AMHERST — University Drive has become the focus for a housing overlay district aimed at encouraging construction of new apartment buildings and mixed-use developments that could potentially provide hundreds of new beds.
During Wednesday’s monthly meeting focused on addressing the town’s housing crisis, the Planning Board was presented a plan for rezoning the west side of the street between Route 9 to the south and Amity Street to the north.
Senior Planner Nate Malloy said what is being considered is allowing large-scale apartment complexes, with more than the current cap of 24 units, and only limited by site constraints of parking and wetlands, accompanied by up to four-story mixed-use buildings that would have limited commercial space.
“What staff is thinking with the overlay is mixed use on the corners (of the roads) and infill with apartments,” Malloy said, explaining that the mixed-use buildings would be required at the intersection of University Drive and Amity Street. Various design standards and guidelines would also be mandated.
Right now, Malloy said zoning doesn’t allow for much along the road, which has commercial strip-type development with restaurants and other commercial uses.
Under the plan, more curb cuts would be allowed, as the access road that runs along the west side would be removed, replaced with a wider pedestrian path.
The discussion of the overlay district came after a presentation by University of Massachusetts officials of statistics showing the on-campus housing available to students, as well as estimates for how many students are living off campus in Amherst. This information was provided, in part, as a response to the continued pressures on the town’s housing stock and finding a viable way to increase the number of beds.
Members of the board seemed intrigued by the zoning proposal, which if formalized would have to be brought to the Town Council at some point for review.
“This is so exciting. I like your ideas,” said member Karin Winter, noting that projects could create a bicycle-friendly corridor to the university.
Winter said the town needs to work with UMass to save the town, informing Tony Maroulis, the university’s executive director of community and strategic initiatives, and Nancy Buffone, associate vice chancellor of university relations, of her own experience living near downtown.
“One house after another is sort of turning into a rental. The more that happens, the more it’s going to escalate,” Winter said.
Maroulis presented statistics showing that UMass had 19,226 undergraduates with 11,000 beds in 1982 and currently has 22,813 undergraduates with about 14,000 living on campus.
“There’s always been that gap,” Maroulis said.
“That’s a huge pool of undergraduates who are looking for houses,” Winter said.
UMass had a 24,939 in-person enrollment in 1982 and, while over 30,000 now, 4,523 are online-only students. But UMass has seen a 3,500 net gain in beds over the past 17 years, which Maroulis said mirrors enrollment growth over that time.
Campus housing production, though, was quite slow until 2006, Maroulis said, when North Apartments on Eastman Lane opened, followed by the Commonwealth Honors College in 2012. Since then, he said, UMass has used “above design capacity” strategies that have turned dormitory lounges into rooms and converted double rooms into triples. This has got UMass to the 14,000 beds, with the latest 624 beds at the Fieldstone project, built through a public-private partnership, that opened this fall on Massachusetts Avenue.
“Even by adding those units, we’re still not able to take offline many of the older units that need rehabilitation,” Maroulis said.
When counting graduate students and families, about 15,000 students live on campus. UMass houses 63% to 65% of all students, including all freshmen and more than 80% of sophomores, which is in line with other similar universities. “State institutions generally don’t house all of their students,” Maroulis said.
Since the pandemic, more students have sought campus housing. “In general, there is more demand for on-campus housing,” Maroulis said. “It doesn’t mean we’re not meeting it, we’re just hearing from more students who want it.”
Other statistics show that of the 7,251 off campus undergraduates living in the immediate neighboring towns, 6,262 have Amherst addresses.
Unlike in the past, students have been seeking to live closer to campus, and even with the new mixed-use buildings going up in downtown Amherst over the past decade, beginning with Boltwood Place, that has not necessarily stemmed the tide of single-family homes being turned into student rentals.
This shows that Amherst is absorbing more off-campus students, pointing out that just 550 undergraduates and 550 graduate students live in Sunderland, the neighboring town that has many apartment complexes. “That is staggering considering the inventory there,” Maroulis said.
“It’s a proximity issue that in some ways has cost Sunderland that student rental,” Maroulis said.
If any new dorms or housing are being planned on campus, Maroulis said he is not yet making that public. “At this time I have nothing firm I can talk about,” Maroulis said.
At a Planning Board meeting last month, Lily Bruce, the UMass secretary of external affairs for the Student Government Association, cautioned against other zoning proposals being considered, including restrictions on where students might be able to live.
“Students don’t move off campus because it’s cheaper, we move off campus because the university doesn’t guarantee housing off campus past our first year of being on campus,” Bruce said.