The Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission (CVRPC) invited the municipalities of Moretown, Duxbury, Middlesex, Montpelier, Berlin, Waterbury and East Montpelier to participate in the Northwest Vermont Project as they are currently being, or most likely to in the future to be, affected by the expansion of the Chittenden County metropolitan area and the construction of the Circumferential Highway.

During Phase I, CVRPC prepared a development potential analysis and a build-out analysis for each community. For Phase II, CVRPC prepared written reports that provided participating communities an analysis of growth and development issues in the context of the build-out results. Each report provided recommendations to address ant identified discrepencies between land use goals as expressed in the municipal plan and the policies of land use regulations and/or development trends. Results of the analysis were presented to each community. In addition to the individual municipal reports, CVRPC prepared a written report and PowerPoint presentation summarizing the actions and outcomes of both project phases.

Development Constraints Analysis

The Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission worked with each participating municipality to develop a list of features likely to affect the capacity for and probably of land development. Typically this list included such features as slope, wetlands, wildlife habitat, soil properties, stream buffers and the availability of public water and/or sewer infrastructure.

Each feature was assigned either a negative or positive point value based on its expected ability to either limit or support new growth. This evaluation system was used to assign land to various categories of development potential ranging from “Conserved Lands” to areas with “High Potential” for new growth. Town-wide maps of development potential were produced using GIS.

After completing this analysis for the seven municipalities, CVRPC noted that the benefit of their methodology is that the constraint analysis to can be customized to address local concerns. A limitation, however, is that the results are not directly comparable between municipalities. CVRPC also learned that limiting the list of resource-based constraints to those regulated at the federal, state or local level would likely result in a more accurate prediction of development potential under current land use regulations and development review processes.

Build-Out Analysis

Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission also utilized the Community Build-Out Analysis software. For most towns, this analysis was restricted to residential development, however commercial and/or industrial development potential was calculated and mapped for Waterbury and Berlin.

The Community Build-Out Analysis software can estimate the amount of non-residential development potential based on allowable building footprints and heights, floor area ratios and parking requirements per square foot of commercial or industrial space. The version of the software used for this analysis requires that an area be dedicated to either residential or nonresidential uses; it was not effective at modeling the build-out potential of mixed use areas. In mixed use districts, CVRPC ran two build-out scenarios to calculate the maximum potential for residential development assuming no non-residential development, and then the opposite to find the maximum commercial or industrial potential.