ROCKINGHAM-The Rockingham Selectboard has approved an updated and amended zoning ordinance for the first time in 25 years.
The new bylaws, which became effective Sept. 10, are the result of five years of work and the efforts of some 20 local citizens and town officials.
The ordinance, enacted by the Selectboard by a 4–0 vote on Aug. 20, updates several key zoning changes that will shape town and village development for years.
Some of the biggest changes have to do with meeting the town's long-term plan of increasing moderate-sized local housing, and in making the town an easier place to build a home. Many of the previous regulations simply did not address the town's housing needs, officials have said.
According to a July report to the Selectboard from the Planning Commission, part of the bylaw update process, some of the changes are designed to accommodate new state laws: the HOME Act, which imposed state zoning reforms to encourage more affordable housing, and Act 181, a 2024 law that reforms Act 250, the state's longstanding land use statute.
A number of the changes came as a direct result of a 2022 Vermont Housing Finance Agency analysis of Rockingham housing needs. That study showed that the town has some of the oldest homes in the state, with nearly 60% of the housing built before 1940. That's compared to just 26% statewide.
Additionally, 58% of the town's population own their homes, while 42% rent, which contrasts to the statewide statistic of 70% homeowners and 30% renters.
The average Rockingham household is just two people, while 58% of the available houses in the town are three-bedroom. That, combined with a seriously decreasing and aging population, as Selectboard Vice Chair John Dunbar said, "showed us that our housing stock wasn't matching the needs" of the town.
The population of the village of Bellows Falls has decreased from around 3,500 in 1980 to about 2,700 in 2024.
Development Director Gary Fox said that the decreasing population adds to the overall tax burden. Not helping, he said, was that the town has some 2,500 housing units, but 250 of them are empty and not usable.
"That's 10% of available housing, and it's huge," he said.
"Complaints about high taxes are justified," Fox said. "To reverse it, we need to increase the population and increase commercial and residential property."
He said the town has industrial parks for larger industry and, while the downtown is pretty full, the town has immediate plans to add 100 housing units and several street level commercial spaces on the area known as the Island.
Focus on developing the Island
The housing assessment concluded that Rockingham needs to focus on creating new housing in the community centers and, at the same time, make it available for light industrial/commercial use.
That led to the major step in the new zoning bylaws, which open the area known as the Island for use as both future residential and commercial space.
The 30-acre Island, bordered by the Bellows Falls Canal on one side and the Connecticut River on the others, was one of the village's major industrial sites for much of the 1900s. It still houses a very active 8-acre rail yard and train depot, as well as several buildings repurposed from their industrial origins.
Much of the Island's former crumbling industrial infrastructure has either burned or been torn down over the past century. Some of those sites, such as the former Robertson Paper Company building, were cleaned up under the Brownfields Economic Revitalization Alliance (BERA), and are now available for new use.
The goal of BERA, a now-dormant program of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, was to clean-up unused or underutilized former industrial sites and make them available for new economic activity.
The Island's location - just a short, easy walk from the Bellows Falls Village Square - makes it an ideal expansion site for both housing and new small businesses. The new zoning laws can expedite this process.
The Island is now included as part of the Village of Bellows Falls Historic Downtown District, which will also open additional funding sources for projects on the Island, which will undergo a flurry of construction and development over the next five years.
• New Hampshire is working on plans to reopen the Vilas Bridge - closed for safety reasons in 2009 - by the end of the decade.
• A new 135,000-square-foot project will add 45,000 square feet of first-floor retail space and 90,000 square feet of second- and third-floor, 1- and 2-bedroom apartments.
• Construction has already been scheduled for new entrance and egress infrastructure projects on the Island, including improved pedestrian access to the downtown area. Hiking paths will be added to take advantage of the Island's location on the scenic Great Falls of the Connecticut River.
Those paths will connect with the hiking trails in the village's Riverfront Park, which are, in turn, part of a much-larger hiking trail system that will eventually connect with the village of Saxtons River.
• The Great River Co-op, a producer-grower food cooperative project, is being developed for the former Robertson Paper Mill site on the Island and is hoped to be completed in the next few years. The project is slated to include a food co-op for shoppers, plus storage, freezer, and food-processing facilities for the use of local farmers.
Opening the Island for mixed residential and commercial use is a major zoning change. As Selectboard Chair Rick Cowan noted, "zoning dating from the paper mill era prohibited anyone other than night watchmen from residing on the Island." The few people who have lived on the site in recent decades all had to get special permission from the town.
"Allowing residential development on the Island paves the way for way for respected Vermont developer DEW Construction Corp to pursue the 0 Bridge Street project," said Cowan.
The vision for that project was described in a 2024 site assessment for the town as "a 4-story building with a basement-level parking garage, ground-floor commercial space, and three residential floors above. The unit goal for the project is approximately 30 residential units."
Cowan added that "the beautiful views of the Connecticut River and canal combined with walkable proximity to downtown Bellows Falls and Amtrak service will attract lots of new residents."
He noted that major industry on the Island has been in decline for nearly a century.
"It's clear that smokestacks won't be sprouting there in the 21st century, so residential use of that lovely location makes sense," Cowan said.
Realistic housing/zoning laws
"Housing is a big issue locally," said Dunbar, one of the local officials involved in the zoning rewrite. "We updated the zoning to work with the overall Town Plan. We were also concerned with matching with the state's current legislative changes as far as land use is concerned."
Dunbar said that "one of the biggest takeaways that we had in reviewing the bylaws was that they didn't match the existing built environment."
He noted that the town's previous zoning bylaws were so restrictive that the majority of the current buildings in the village were in violation.
For example, the previous zoning required a minimum 7,000-square-foot lot size, with only half the lot available for a building.
"That zoning made it too difficult to build on an empty lot if one became available in the village," Dunbar said. He added that only "a very small percentage of the lots in town meet the minimum square footage requirements."
The new zoning laws were rewritten to decrease minimum lot size to 5,000 square feet and address more realistically how the lot could be built on.
"There were too many hurdles that had to be crossed," Dunbar said.
He explained that the assessment showed that Rockingham's "housing stock wasn't meeting the needs" of the town. "There are not enough single bedroom homes. We're going to have a very serious housing shortage if we continue to not match the needs of the population."
The new zoning laws address the needs of the town "25 to 50 years down the road," Dunbar said, by encouraging "more population in the downtown areas" and "protecting our green spaces."
He said that people are concerned, and rightly so, about increasing property taxes. But he noted that just having the town reduce expenses "isn't necessarily going to solve the tax problem. You also need to add to the tax base, and the new zoning laws address this."
Planning Commission Chair Dalila Hall agreed. She said that the "process to update the town's bylaws has produced a clearer, more effective document that achieves two primary goals. First, it provides clear and consistent guidance, streamlining the path for developers to create much-needed housing in our community. Second, it improves administration in that it simplifies the interpretation and administration of the rules for our town officials and boards."
The revised zoning laws also discourage the commercial sprawl that scars so many communities, Cowan noted, and they remove other impediments for new housing. The new zoning laws "support preservation of the rural character of our scenic countryside," Cowan said.
Cowan listed other zoning changes that the new bylaws address in being pro-active regarding new housing legislation in the state.
"These include bringing the town into compliance with new and existing requirements of state statute, including the Home Act of 2023, and preparing the town for implementation of Act 181, the new version of Act 250, Vermont's land-use legislation," Cowan said.
In addition to facilitating residential and commercial development on the Island in Bellows Falls, the new bylaws also add a new zoning district - Saxtons River Main Street (SR-M).
'A debt of gratitude'
The new ordinances and maps of the various districts are posted to the town's website.
Cowan said that the many citizens involved in updating the zoning bylaws include Fox, Hall, and Dunbar, as well as Fox's predecessor, Chuck Wise; Hall's predecessor, Deb Wright; Jana Bryan, Taylor Pichette, Jim Mullen, Remy Walker, Scott Phillips, Bonnie North, Guy Payne, Kate Roome, Nathan Rounds, Tylar Stanley, Jaden Luebbert, and Laurie Rowell; and student representatives Lia Clark, Andrew Dunbar, and Stephanie Ager.
"We owe these community-minded folks a debt of gratitude for providing us with modernized zoning that will make Rockingham an even better place to live," Cowan said.
To see the final zoning bylaw, the new Saxtons River map, and associated documents, visit rockinghamvt.org/bylaw-modernization-project.
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.