Bridgewater Planning Board advances CBD zoning overhaul, schedules June 24 vote

BRIDGEWATER -- June 17, 2026, Bridgewater Planning Board and Town Council's CED Committee advance sweeping downtown zoning overhaul toward a June 24 vote. The joint public hearing on Ordinance DFY 26-014 consumed most of a two-hour session June 17, with Town Planner Shane O'Brien walking both bodies through a redlined draft that would reduce maximum building height from four stories to 3.5 in all CBD subdistricts, cut the maximum building width in the mixed-use CBDR from 200 feet to 100 feet, eliminate a footnote that had allowed building footprints as large as 16,000 square feet, and replace a depth-based commercial ground-floor rule with percentage minimums of 80 percent in the CBDS and 70 percent in the CBDR. The most contested element was a procedural shift returning final approval authority over downtown development to the elected Planning Board through formal site-plan review, ending a process under which the board could only submit non-binding recommendations to the CED director. Building Commissioner Steven Solari called the cleaner commercial-percentage standard "a lot easier for determination." Member Michael McDonald pushed back on a 30-day decision window, warning that a board that meets once a month could be forced into a single-meeting review of a major project; the issue was left open for June 24. Resident Donna Jewel, citing the Friendlies project, called the authority shift "critical" and said the board's prior 20 recommendations, carrying no mandate, were "just unacceptable." Both bodies voted unanimously to continue the hearing to June 24 at 6 p.m., with a clean redlined draft due for circulation by the weekend.