Master Plan...Why Now?

PLANNING AMHERST TOGETHER really began some 9 years ago with the formation of CPC - the Comprehensive Planning Committee. During those years, several planning exercises established the need for a complete comprehensive start-to-finish Master Plan.

Those earlier planning exercises also established the need in Amherst for a highly transparent Master Plan process that would involve wider public participation than any previous civic enterprise.

Our town hasn't had a Master Plan since 1969.  While Amherst has done many innovative planning projects, most were focused on specific public interests and none of these studies were comprehensive in nature. None were ever formally adopted by Town Meeting.  Completing and starting to implement our comprehensive plan can ensure that the important Phased Growth protections in our Zoning Bylaws will remain in effect until we can replace them with better regulations.

In August of 2004, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in a case involving Hadley that a community could not regulate growth by means of "growth restraints" like Phased Growth unless it did so temporarily, to provide time to prepare a Master Plan. The SJC decision also applied to all communities with such regulations, including Amherst. That meant we now had to embark on our long-anticipated comprehensive Master Plan (the first since 1969, some 37 years ago), if we were to avoid losing important zoning protections.