Affordable Housing Institute : US

Zoning is destiny, and like many other powers of government it can be wielded either as a crowbar (to pry open land use, as with inclusionary zoning) or a club (to preclude land use), in which latter use it is frequently deployed to exclude affordable housing.  Because the kind of class snobbery of keeping out ‘those people’ is socially discouraged, seldom does it speak its name, but now and then its face is revealed through the clouds of polysyllabic obfuscation, as in this apparently tangential example from the snooty town of Wellesley, as shamelessly displayed in this Boston Globe article:

 

Few things are as inextricable from the New England identity as the ubiquitous pink-and-orange of Dunkin’ Donuts shops, so common they’re used for business meetings and cited as landmarks in driving directions.

 

But not so, apparently, in Wellesley.

 

The aesthetically minded town –

 

Journalistic code for ’snobby’ …

 

– home to the author of ”America the Beautiful” and, according to its website, the nation’s first zoning laws — is in an uproar over a new Dunkin’ Donuts shop that has opened blocks from town center.

 

If you put in a Dunkin’ Donuts, I’ll break your ankles.

 

You have to be a New Englander to appreciate the aura of Dunkin’ Donuts. 

 

Every morning, every evening, every subway stop ….

 

Where I come from, everyone knows that:

 

1.       Their donuts are sinfully tasty.  The aroma is hypnotic. 

2.       They’re ubiquitous.  There is a small kiosk literally twenty steps from my office entrance, in case I overlooked the one twenty steps from my subway exit. 

3.       They’re unbelievably popular (”a license to print money,” says former small business owner Nancy, whose business was adjacent to one).  On a typical morning there will be ten to twenty people lined up at my kiosk. 

4.       They’re down-market.  Their customers are, as the good snobs of Wellesley might sniff, ‘not esthetically minded,’ but rather those who work the blue-collar jobs, who buy the starter homes, and who live in the affordable housing. 

 

The Dunkin’ Donut is thus seen by some as the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of the collapse of suburban aristocracy:

 

In a hamlet where residents can lunch at The Uptown Gourmet [Could a chain’s name be any more elitist? — Ed.] and shop at Comina (”where the world’s finest furnishings and accessories come together”), the town has thrown its bureaucratic weight against the new franchise.

 

It first tried to convince the owner that he is obligated to seek a town license to continue operating. When he refused, the town took its beef to court, where a judge ruled against it this month [March, 2006 — Ed.].  Officials are now plotting a new law that could give the town power to shut down the franchise.

 

Using laws to compel conformity?  Charming.

 

The stakes are considered high. The franchise, in the words of one town official, is ”a barnacle on the face of progress.”

 

 

 

Do these look the same?

 

The new Wellesley outlet is a somewhat toned-down version of the usual Dunkin’ Donuts look, housed in a red brick building with fresh flowers in the bay window and a black-and-gold wooden sign, instead of the usual lighted one.

 

 

 

Wellesley officials fear that the new Dunkin’ Donuts shop will damage the character of the town center.

 

Just ghastly, isn’t it? 

 

“My goodness, and I thought Ghostbusters’ Stay-Puf Man was bad.”

 

An excrescence.

 

Still, its presence has become a kind of call to arms.

 

”What this was for us was a huge wake-up call,” said Selectman David J. Himmelberger.

 

One of the reasons, beyond traffic and parking concerns, town officials say, is that such franchises could damage the town’s character. In one recent effort to preserve that charm, Wellesley forced the developer of a nearby commercial strip to prohibit ”McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Taco Bell, Roy Rogers, Arby’s, Wendy’s, or Hardee’s, or their respective equivalents,” according to an agreement signed by the developer and the town.

 

 

     

Let them in, and their riffraff customers will follow.

 

In other words, lacking any legitimate grievance against a donut shop, the town instead extorts a concession to which it is logically not entitled by tying it to a discretionary permission:

 

The town has not banned chains from the town altogether, with a Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and Bruegger’s Bagels flourishing on the main drag.

 

 

 One of these dots is an abomination, says Wellesley.

 

Like the bigot who likes ’some of your kind,’ Wellesley is perfectly willing to embrace upscale economic immigrants; it’s those slightly dirty downscale types we want to keep out altogether or at the very least out of sight:

 

There are also other Dunkin’ Donuts franchises, though they are well out of view, in outlying corners of the town, or, in one case, tucked inside a Mobil gas station.

 

Good thing those people know their place.

 

The new Dunkin’ Donuts shop was all the more alarming to town officials because it seemed to slip, for a time, below the radar.

 

What skullduggery.  What deceit.

 

The owner, who declined to speak to the Globe,

 

“Would you like to go on the record, sir?”

 

signed a lease late last year for the space when a bakery that sold handmade breads vacated the space, according to town officials and court papers.

 

Isn’t it just like an upstart to think that replacing one bakery with another requires no permission?

 

But because the owner never applied for a restaurant license, town officials say they were unaware that the franchise was moving in until they spotted a legal notice in the local paper about plans to convert the space into a Dunkin’ Donuts.

 

Bakery, good; donut shop, bad!

 

According to court papers and town officials, the owner is arguing that his shop escapes the town’s definition of a restaurant because it has no seats and therefore needs no license.

 

“Escapes the town’s definition”? 

 

“I need a what?”

 

What brilliant camouflage of one’s inherently restaurant character, to have no seats.  What will those infiltrators think of next?

 

“Never should have opened that Dunkin’s in Wellesley.”

 

Meanwhile, the town sought to impose its redefinition of ‘restaurant’ to mean ‘any food-oriented use we do not like.’

 

Town officials took the matter to court in February. A Superior Court Judge ruled against the request for an injunction this month, saying licenses are not required for take-out establishments and that another law cited by the town, a requirement that coffee and tea houses not operate without licenses, had not been enforced since its adoption in 1918.

 

That’s the problem with blatant inconsistency, it’s just so hard to explain plausibly.

 

 

Town officials are now pinning their hopes on a piece of legislation they plan to introduce at Town Meeting in coming weeks. If passed, it would require Dunkin’ Donuts and every other existing and future take-out establishment in Wellesley to obtain a restaurant license from the town.

 

Behold the levers of power being wielded to coerce: instead of adhering to some basic principle of utilization, the town of Wellesley is trying to write a rule that permissibly excludes ‘those businesses’ even as it includes ‘our kind of business.’ 

 

Among the citizenry, there are clearly mixed feelings about the new Dunkin’ Donuts shop.

Christine Stirret and her twin sister, Laura, dropped in during a lunch break from nearby Wellesley High School. They are both happy to have a Dunkin’ Donuts. ”People are going to get fast food, even if it’s not in the city,” said Laura. ”It’s kind of nice to have a full Dunkin’ Donuts,” said Christine.

 

”It’s not as attractive as it should be,” said Maureen Bach, who works at a neighboring dental practice.

 

Paging the taste police!

 

Let me see your fashion license.

 

Stratagems of exclusion such as Wellesley’s clumsy panicked example are frequently unveiled, usually with more suavity, when seeking to exclude affordable housing, masquerading as ‘minimum-lot-size’ or ‘maximum density’ or even ‘planning commission review.’

 

In biological ecosystems, diversity is an intrinsic measure of health.  In the same way, communities need income and cultural diversity.  Income diversity supports the local economy; cultural diversity encourages growth in home value and civic polity.  Whom do you think works in the Dunkin’ Donuts that serves the coffee you buy?

 

I suspect that Globe author Donovan Slack smells the rich fulsome aroma of hypocrisy, for he concludes:

 

 [Ms. Bach] opposes the store but nonetheless bought a coffee there on a recent morning.

 

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.  Make mine a latte to go.”

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