Over the past three years, members of Chestnut Hill’s three principal Registered Community Organizations – or RCOs - (the Chestnut Hill Community Association, Chestnut Hill Business District and Chestnut Hill Conservancy) have met on a regular basis to tackle two thorny issues: First, how to further restrict the zoning in our business district to protect the unique qualities of our Main Street Corridor and second, how to reform our zoning review process so that it is equitable across the community, while still responding effectively to the challenges we will face in the years ahead. It has been my privilege to be involved in both of these related efforts and we have, I believe, crafted a proposal that is streamlined but rigorous and, most importantly, fair to the various competing interests in this community. The Conservancy has voted unanimously to move this pilot program forward and I believe the Business District will do the same when it votes this week.

For over 45 years, as a fourth-generation resident, long-time business owner and nearly 30-year board member of all three of the principal neighborhood RCOs, maintaining Chestnut Hill’s built and natural environments has been my passion. In the 1980s, helping to craft the original “Green Book” Land Use Guidelines, co-writing the Hill’s National Historic District and later creating and donating to the Conservancy’s conservation easement program provided a front-row seat for what was then this community’s cutting-edge neighborhood preservation ethos. Over the past 46 years, our company has been an applicant for zoning variances, as well as – more frequently – a protestant fighting bad development. This long experience has also given tremendous insight into what’s not working: Our processes – once universally admired -- are now jerry-built contraptions spread among two and possibly three RCOs that take too much time from applicants and volunteers alike, are costly to our businesses and drive away great builders and offerings we would like to see here. As a property owner and manager, I know from firsthand experience that these requirements contribute directly to vacancy in our business corridor.

In addition to this cumbersome set of approvals, what Chestnut Hill has always lacked, for all its vaunted processes, rules and regulations, is the ability for these major organizations to truly work together on an equal basis -- particularly when it comes to zoning. None has a claim to sovereignty alone: CHCA, through its membership, now comprises less than 20 percent of the residents in our neighborhood. The Business District, through its BID and membership organization, has far deeper penetration in its Main Street catchment area, but is concentrated there, now shouldering a number of responsibilities for maintenance that once fell to others. And the Conservancy, with tremendous reach through its easement programs and as keeper of the community’s history, claims many residents that neither organization attracts. The upshot? None of these groups can really do it alone and all are so much better working in concert. The new ZRC is an enormous step forward in furthering that level of equitable cooperation.

These past three years working with representatives from all three of these groups has felt like a tremendous breakthrough. Numerous reviews of this pilot program have brought widespread community support. We envision a future where all three groups have equal representation and truly feel as though we can link arms and cooperatively work for the neighborhood’s betterment as equal partners. What has been particularly gratifying is the number of younger people with a real stake in Chestnut Hill’s future who have helped advance these efforts despite the protestations of a few entrenched interests clinging to a past that does not work in our world today. I am particularly thankful for this involvement of younger people as it signals that there will be fighters for Chestnut Hill when those of us who have been in the trenches for many years are finally put out to pasture.

Chestnut Hill has an amazing future built on an incredible past. Let’s all of us work together to make the new ZRC a reality that responds to the needs of all of Chestnut Hill’s residents, businesses and preservationists.

Thank you for considering this bright new future.

Rich Snowden

Managing Partner - Bowman Properties, Ltd