471 Somerville Ave - Zoning Change Request — File 211675

CITY OF SOMERVILLE 471 Somerville Avenue 52 F 11 Scott Zink 7 Morrison Rd West Wakefield MA 01880

March 25, 2021 To the Somerville City Council: We are requesting to change the zoning of 471 Somerville Ave from Urban Residential (UR) to MR4, for the following reasons: • This is a project that was approved under the previous zoning code via Special Permit, to build 5 residential units over ground floor retail. The building was designed to meet MR4 standards. • Changing the zoning from Urban Residential to MR4 will make the new building zoning compliant • Ground floor retail uses under Urban Residential are extremely limited. MR4 will allow for an expanded variety of possible retail options, and greatly improve the viability of finding a tenant for this space • We believe that it was simply an oversight that this change was not made during the zoning map overhaul, since it was clear that this project was being built to MR4 standards. Respectfully, Scott Zink President | ZRE Development