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A Lost Opportunity

I was glad to read of the Hubbard Road project of 100 moderate and price-adjusted rental units that may serve singles, the young, empty nesters, and employed of more modest means [Nov. 11 story “100-Unit Apartment Complex Proposed for Hubbard Road”]. It’s still not quite “affordable housing” by a realistic parameter of that term for certain persons in need, but a step forward in housing diversity and affordability in our community.

My regret is that it landed on Hubbard Road. There were two locations that would have been better-suited for such a development, both on Route 1: the top of the hill where U-Haul is building a storage facility, much to expressed community chagrin, and the top of the hill on the west end of town where a multi-unit development is planned of lesser density.

Our Town Plan of Conservation and Development professes commitment to transit-oriented development. Land use patterns drive transportation options. Transit-oriented development requires density to be justifiable and sustainable. We missed opportunities in both cases to create optimum uses by not being aggressive in their pursuit when the option was there. The Hubbard Road project will not support bus transportation for the region and will not benefit from it. That is unfortunate.

My point is not to engage in a coulda-woulda-shoulda exercise. Rather, it is to cite this lost opportunity as a problem too prevalent in Guilford governance: the predilection to plan and the aversion to act on plans in an intentional, substantive way, as if planning and good intentions are enough to sustain our status quo.

Climate change will challenge those assumptions over the next 30 years or less. If we do not learn from our past mistakes, we will surely repeat them. Consistency is not always a virtue.

Sidney F. Gale

Guilford