KITTERY, Maine — The Kittery Planning Board put off a recommendation Thursday on a town-written zoning change that would open a 68-acre parcel on Dennett Road to dense housing. Most residents who spoke at a public hearing opposed the plan, and several board members voiced doubts of their own.

The parcel is now zoned as a business park. The proposed amendments have been worked on by the town's Housing Committee for more than three years and by a land issues committee for more than a year, a committee member told the board during the Nov. 12 meeting. Supporters say the change would allow affordable housing on the land.

"Sitting here right now, I mean 75 percent of the people that spoke today were not in favor of the change," one board member said. "And we have three committees, subcommittees that cannot agree on an amendment, and we're being asked to push this through to town council with our signature on."

Open space and wetlands

The draft requires 25% of the parcel, about 17 acres, to be open space. The chair of the Kittery Conservation Commission said that as written, those acres could be made up of wetlands, setbacks and other land that already can't be built on. "Counting them as open space is duplicitous," she said. The commission asked that the 17 acres be forested upland set aside permanently, in addition to the wetlands. She said the commission supports affordable housing in the area only if it comes with real land protections.

Other residents raised concerns about water supply, traffic and flooding. One neighbor said Kittery has been under a watering ban for months because of drought and limited supply. She said traffic on Martin Road was alarming when an Interstate 95 on-ramp closed recently, and she asked the board to recommend residential suburban zoning, matching the surrounding neighborhoods. Another resident asked that the proposal be "rejected and sent back for revision."

A Housing Committee member who said he does affordable housing advocacy told the board that "all affordable housing is subsidized." He said most federal financing programs won't fund buildings of fewer than five units, which suburban residential zoning doesn't allow by right.

Board members split

Jason Garnham, the town's director of planning and development, told the board that the parcel's old residential suburban zoning predates the public sewer line on Dennett Road. He said it doesn't really suit the kind of development that would justify that public investment. He also said Maine's new zoning laws bar towns from setting different setbacks for multifamily buildings than for single-family homes. Garnham said there has been no legal review of the proposal. He said he had not planned one unless the board or council raised issues that called for it.

One board member said the proposal "reads more like a wish list that came from the developer or like-minded folks." He said vague language on building heights and setbacks would leave the board unable to referee disputes between a developer and abutters. Another member said, "I say zone this thing RS," referring to residential suburban, and argued that affordable housing belongs on Route 1. Town staff said sewer capacity there is limited.

Other members argued for moving the proposal forward. "We can't let it stay a business park," one said. Another said that if the board does nothing, "at some point, this will get developed," and the town's job is to put better protections in place than exist now.

The board voted to close spoken public comment but keep the hearing open for written comments until noon Friday. Members said an email outage on Thursday may have kept some comments from arriving on time. The board agreed to make reading the written comments the first item at its next meeting. It also discussed adding a December meeting, possibly Dec. 17, so it can send a recommendation to the Town Council by the end of the year.