Frontage, square footage, zoning bylaws, and pre-existing lots

Pictured: a cute puppy on a front lawn. It’s very hard to find a picture of the area bordering a street.

When a client asks us about building on an undeveloped lot of land, the first thing we look at is the frontage and square footage of the lot. These are easy enough to understand - frontage is the length of the plot of land of land along a way and square footage is the total area of the lot. For example, if you have a 100 ft x 100 ft square lot, the frontage is 100 ft and the area is 10,000 sq ft.

Why are we concerned with those measurements? Towns and cities having zoning bylaws setting minimum requirements for buildable lots. For example, East Longmeadow bylaws for the Residential A district require a minimum of 140 ft frontage and and an area of 25,000 sq ft. Thus, at first glance, our lot above is not buildable and the town would not issue a building permit.

An important exception can apply, however. Massachusetts General Laws c. 40A s. 6 was enacted to ensure that zoning bylaws cannot render a previous buildable lot as unbuildable* as long as the lot has 50 ft of frontage and 5,000 sq ft in total. Thus, a lot in existence at the time zoning bylaws were enacted can be buildable.

Of course, there is one further wrinkle. The pre-existing lot, at the time of the bylaw enactment, could not be held jointly with an adjoining lot. So if, at the time the bylaw was put into place, our fantasy lot owner had an adjoining, identical lot, the owner can not now partition the lot and re-create the pre-existing lot.

If that sounds complicated, it sometimes is! That’s why you should contact the team at Levine Law if you have questions about your potentially pre-existing lot.

*For residential purposes only.