Agreement reached on controversial Shelburne development

This story is by Liberty Darr was published for the first time in the Shelburne News on August 1.

SHELBURNE — Developers have scaled back a controversial development after reaching an agreement with neighbors who opposed the project.

The city council approved an agreement that allows for a total of 63 units — a maximum of 48 units in multifamily buildings and seven single-family homes, including eight for sale or rent in a mixed-use commercial building on Route 7, according to City Manager Matt Lawless.

The original proposal for the 115-unit development by Shelburne chiropractors Stephen Brandon and Shelley Crombach first went before the city’s Zoning Review Board in 2021 and quickly sparked controversy among residents who argued that the development, and ultimately the zoning codes, allowed for too much density in the area and was inconsistent with the character of the surrounding neighborhoods.

The development was proposed in a zoning zone surrounding the site on the west side of the busy Route 7 corridor, just north of Bay Road, known as a mixed-use residential district — one of seven neighborhoods in the city’s form-based overlay district. The district, just a 10-minute drive from Burlington, was first introduced in 2016 to revitalize the Route 7 corridor, Kate Lalley, the planning commission chairwoman at the time, wrote in the Shelburne News in 2015.

“Form-based regulations emphasize aesthetics over use,” she wrote. “We believe this type of zoning is the best way to breathe new life into vacant buildings and Route 7 properties, in the process creating walkable nodes in a car-oriented corridor.”

Current Planning Commission Chairman Stephen Kendall told the Shelburne News seven years later, during the controversy, that other than a six-unit project on Bay Road, no projects had been proposed in the mixed-use district other than the one proposed by Crombach and Brandon.

In the months following the original proposal’s release, there were numerous public hearings, fierce opposition from residents, and ultimately the city spent nearly $30,000 to hire a consultant to study the regulations.

Due to opposition, Brandon and Crombach limited their development to 78 units and zoned some for senior housing. Although they ultimately won board approval in 2022, the Shelburne Neighbors United for Responsible Growth group quickly filed an appeal.

After a consultant confirmed that the zoning rules were “too complicated,” city council members unanimously tabled a motion in 2022 to completely exclude the mixed-use district from the city’s overlay district.

Lawless explained that while the city remained an interested party throughout the mediation process, its attorneys and he were not present during any negotiations and did not incur any significant legal costs.

“They solved it themselves and then presented their solution to us,” he said.

The project will not have to go back to the Shelburne Development Review Board because the city council has the final say on substantive approval of the agreement.

“Then there’s just administrative oversight at the staff level of the building plans to make sure things like the storm pond is the right size, and the water main is in the right place, and the parking spaces are the right size, those kinds of technicalities of the design,” he said. “But there’s no other public process.”

Members of the residents’ group and neighbors involved in the project, as well as Brandon and Crombach, declined to comment on the process.