Hudson Officials Sort Out Zoning, Design for $11 Million Clinton Crossing Site

Hudson City Council and the Planning Commission met Monday night for a joint special workshop on the Clinton Crossing redevelopment. The session ran nearly an hour and a half at City Hall. Leaders focused on process rather than a final design. City officials have discussed the project for more than a decade. Council President Michael Bird opened the meeting by thanking both bodies for the extra night. He said the city wants to move the concept plan toward approval while sorting out how future applications will be reviewed. Two Paths for Review Staff outlined two ways to review a future developer application. One option is a conventional review. That could stack multiple layers of approval, including subdivision review, site plan review, variances and conditional use permits. The other option is a planned development process. It consolidates those steps into one coordinated review shared by council and the Planning Commission. Community Development Director Greg Hannan said staff favors the planned development route. He said it fits a project with mixed housing types, varying lot sizes and shared public spaces. Before a developer can use that process, the city will need to update its planned development language. Planning Commission members described the current ordinance as inconsistent and hard to apply. The city plans to start with a concept site plan review either way. That step is voluntary for most applicants. It is mandatory for planned developments, according to Planning Commission Chair Sarah Norman. It would include a public hearing where residents could weigh in before any formal site plan is submitted. Zoning Gaps Surface Norman reviewed the district's permitted uses ahead of the meeting. She raised concerns about how several draft plan elements would fit under current zoning. A market hall large enough to match early concepts would need a variance. The use is not defined in the city's code. A community center is not currently permitted in the district at all. A proposed co working or flex space would likely need conditional use approval because of its size. Ward 1 Planning Commission member Dr. Patricia Goetz asked whether an architectural pattern book would need to be written into the planned development code. The pattern book is a design guide staff hopes to create for the site. She also asked whether it should instead fall under the Architectural Review Board's authority. City Planner Nick Sugar said staff has researched how to tie the pattern book to the city's existing architectural design standards. Staff did not dispute the zoning gaps. Sugar said the code should reflect what residents want. He said staff would be open to proposing changes to allow for those uses. Planning Commission members said they support updating the code. They also said they want to avoid fast tracking amendments. Their concern is serving only this project while other zoning issues sit unresolved elsewhere in the city. Hannan told council the housing densities under discussion would still fit within the city's existing framework. Single family homes are allowed at up to 8 dwelling units per acre. Townhomes are allowed at up to 20. The Clinton Crossing concept falls well below both maximums. Rewriting the Rules for Planned Developments Norman outlined early work from a Planning Commission subcommittee studying how to fix the planned development chapter of the city's code. The subcommittee wants to limit planned developments to a handful of districts. Those include District 5, District 7's overlay, District 8 with conditions and District 11. Members also want to rewrite the chapter's purpose statement to give clearer guidance to future applicants. Sugar said the subcommittee raised the option of a temporary moratorium on new planned developments while that work continues. The city has only completed one planned development to date. Council Member Amanda Weinstein said Clinton Crossing remains a top priority. She asked the subcommittee to focus first on a mid sized planned development framework that would fit the project's roughly 20 acres, rather than spending months on rules for other districts first. Norman said she hopes to have the district limits and purpose statement changes ready for council by the end of the year, with detailed guidelines to follow. She also flagged that Hudson's current appeals process between Planning Commission and council is unclear. That process will need to be untangled with legal counsel before it becomes a bigger problem. Preferred Plan Takes Shape Community project planner Emily Fernandez walked both bodies through months of public input. The process started with 17 resident drafted concepts in June. It narrowed to three consolidated plans by late July. More than 200 residents attended the July session. Another 234 completed a follow up survey. Weinstein noted that each of the three consolidated plans intentionally included different amenities. One plan had a dog park and another had