Economic Development

Making Hebron Town Center more vibrant is crucial to our housing choice goals because, increasingly, people prefer to live and work in walkable, green, traditional villages that offer a mix of uses and provide welcoming neighborhoods for people of all ages, backgrounds, and income levels and because the Hebron Town Center provides tremendous opportunities to diversify housing.

Goal 2A:  Endorse on-going plans to create a more vibrant, green, and walkable Town Center with a diversity of uses.

Action Steps:

  • Promote plans that create traditional, village-style, mixed-use development in the Hebron Town Center and ensure that these plans are adopted by the PZC and the BoS.
    • Future infill development should include a significant number of housing units either within mixed-use buildings (e.g., apartments above retail shops) or as free-standing multifamily buildings.
    • Plans for a more vibrant Town Center need to include traffic-calming measures on Main Street and other streets to ensure that the Town Center is safe and contributes to a more peaceful and walkable village environment.
  • Provide opportunities/training for members of the EDC and the PZC to learn about how other communities coordinate land use and economic policies to advance social well-being and to improve economic viability.
  • Provide input into the update of Hebron’s Plan of Conservation and Development to ensure that this plan addresses the need to revise Zoning Regulations to better enable quality, village-style, mixed-use development (e.g., by refining and expanding the Mixed Use Overlay District in the Hebron Town Center).

Goal 2B:  Work with Town boards and commissions to implement new policies that will create a more vibrant, green and walkable Town Center.

Action Steps:

  • Work with the PZC to identify and implement zoning mechanisms (such as the Form-Based Code[1]) that encourage sustainable, village-style, mixed-use development, including quality, mixed-income housing.
  • Advocate for the streamlining of the zoning application process to reduce real and perceived barriers for developers.
  • Explore opportunities to support small business, in particular minority and women owned.
  • Encourage the EDC and the BoS to refine the Town’s strategy for the Town Center to align economic, social, housing, equity, and environmental policies.

[1] https://formbasedcodes.org/