Stone Hearth Pizza on Leonard Street closed its doors in the summer of 2025, part of the slow churn any small commercial strip goes through. What's different this time is what happens to that storefront next. Depending on which side of the street it sits on, the owner now has a choice between the zoning code Belmont has used for decades, a state-mandated overlay that arrived in 2025, and a brand-new town overlay that Town Meeting approved by a vote of 165 to 87 this past March. All three apply to the same parcel. Only one applies at a time, and the owner picks.
That stacking, more than the vote count or the height limits on their own, is the story for anyone comparing Belmont to other towns for a multifamily purchase or a Center storefront. Two parcels that look identical today, same size, same current use, same block, can carry very different value depending on which of those three rule sets reaches furthest. The gap opens on November 1, 2026, when the town starts accepting applications under the new overlay. Most sellers haven't priced that gap in yet, because most of Belmont Center has never had a reason to think about zoning as a variable.
What the old code made impossible
Belmont Center's zoning before this year capped new construction at two stories and 28 feet, a limit written for a downtown that hasn't changed shape in decades. Town Planner Chris Ryan told Town Meeting members plainly why that mattered: the ceiling was so low that redevelopment simply didn't pencil out.
"That's why nothing happens here."
That single line explains why Belmont spent more than a year building two separate overlays rather than one blanket upzoning. Solving parking, traffic, and the character of the Center all at once in a single vote would have been a much harder fight. Splitting the work into a general overlay and a narrow one let each argument happen on its own terms.
Two overlays, two different bars to clear
The Belmont Center Overlay District needed only a simple majority, and it cleared Town Meeting 165 to 87 with 10 abstentions in March 2026. A separate measure, the Center Gateway Overlay District, needed a two-thirds supermajority because it carves out a specific new use, a hotel, on three parcels along Concord Avenue: 365, 375, and 385. That measure passed the same week, and the full bylaw text is public on the town's site. Together, the two overlays are why the town can begin taking applications on November 1, 2026, for projects that would have been legally impossible under the Center's old rules.
The two documents aren't the same overlay wearing two names. The Gateway district applies only to those three Concord Avenue parcels and allows a hotel of up to 150 rooms at up to five stories. The Center Overlay District covers the wider commercial core and is form-based, meaning it regulates how a building looks and sits on the street as much as how tall it can go.
The height tiers that actually decide value
Inside the Center Overlay District, height depends entirely on which block a parcel sits on.
| Location | Base height | Maximum height |
|---|---|---|
| Northwest side of Leonard Street | 2.5 stories | 3.5 stories |
| Southeast side of Leonard Street (the CVS and Toy Shop block) | 3 stories | 4 stories |
| Claflin Street and the Concord Avenue portion | up to 5 stories | up to 5 stories |
A parcel on the northwest side of Leonard Street and a parcel a block away on Claflin Street are now separated by nearly two full stories of buildable height under the same overlay. That isn't a rounding difference. It's the kind of gap that decides whether a redevelopment covers its own construction loan.
One of the parcels inside that top tier is the Claflin Lot, the municipal parking lot that also hosts the Belmont Farmers Market each summer. Nothing in the overlay requires that site to be redeveloped. It simply means that, for the first time, someone legally could propose to.
Why Waverley Square doesn't get this same layer
Belmont's other commuter rail stop, Waverley Square, has the state-mandated multifamily overlay that arrived through the 2021 MBTA Communities Act. Town Meeting adopted that zoning for both Belmont Center and Waverley Square in November 2024, and the state's Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities gave final approval in April 2025. That state overlay required Belmont to zone for a minimum capacity of 1,632 multifamily units at a minimum density of 15 units per acre, split across roughly 50 acres, with more than half of that acreage sitting in Waverley Square specifically to satisfy the law's contiguity rules.
That state overlay is still the only added layer in Waverley Square. Belmont Center now has that same state layer plus its own local overlay on top of it. An investor comparing a Waverley Square triple-decker lot to a Belmont Center storefront isn't comparing two versions of the same opportunity. One has a single added zoning path. The other has two, and the two don't always agree with each other on height, use, or parking.
Optionality is the product, not the building
Nothing in either overlay forces an owner to build anything. A property owner inside the Center Overlay District can keep operating exactly as they do now under the old two-story rules, or file under the state's 3A overlay, or file under the town's new overlay, whichever produces the better project on that specific lot. That right to choose is what changed in March 2026, and it changed for every qualifying parcel regardless of whether its owner has any interest in construction.
This is why appraising a Belmont Center parcel by its current rent roll alone misses half the picture now. A two-story storefront on the Claflin Street tier carries development rights a comparable storefront on the Leonard Street northwest side does not, even if the two buildings rent for the same amount today. That gap in optionality gets priced by buyers who understand it and missed by buyers who don't.
The two weeks where the rules are still moving
The town opens applications on November 1, 2026, but the code underneath those applications isn't fully settled. Planning Board minutes filed with the town clerk in early August 2026 show staff still working through amendments to the overlay's administrative section, including adding parcels along the south side of Channing Road and coordinating with the Belmont Housing Authority on how the overlay interacts with nearby Hill Estates properties. The Planning Board is aiming to bring those amendments to Town Meeting on November 16, 2026, two weeks after applications open.
That means the first projects filed in early November operate under a version of the bylaw that may not be the final one. Anyone negotiating a Belmont Center property right now should ask which version of the code a seller is pricing against, and whether that seller has confirmed the parcel's boundary status against the town's current adopted map rather than an earlier draft.
What this means if you're pricing a Belmont Center parcel
A few questions matter more than the asking price on any Belmont Center listing right now.
- Which tier does the parcel sit in: Leonard Street northwest, Leonard Street southeast, or the Claflin and Concord Avenue block?
- Does the current use already exceed what the underlying zoning allowed, meaning the overlay adds less than it looks like on paper?
- Is the parcel one of the ones still under review for the November 16 amendments?
- If the parcel touches a town-owned lot like the Farmers Market site, has the town signaled any timeline for its own move, or is this purely private-parcel opportunity?
None of these show up on a standard listing sheet. They come from reading the town's adopted zoning map and the Planning Board's current minutes side by side, which is slower than pulling a comp sheet but is the only way to know what a Belmont Center parcel is actually worth right now.
Common questions
Does the new overlay force property owners to redevelop? No. Both overlays are optional. An owner can continue operating under the existing zoning indefinitely and only needs to use the overlay if they choose to build under its terms.
Is Waverley Square getting a version of the Belmont Center Overlay District? Not currently. Waverley Square has the state-mandated MBTA 3A multifamily zoning Belmont adopted in 2024, but the Center Overlay District is a separate, town-specific tool that applies only within Belmont Center.
Will the Belmont Farmers Market lose its home? Not automatically. The Claflin Lot, where the market operates each summer, falls inside the overlay's tallest height tier, which means it could be proposed for redevelopment. No project has been filed, and the market's continued operation isn't tied to the zoning change itself.
If you're weighing a purchase, a sale, or a hold in Belmont Center or Waverley Square this fall, the zoning map matters as much as the listing price. The Toland Team has spent years reading Belmont parcel by parcel, and we can tell you where a specific address sits against the current overlay boundaries before you make an offer or set an asking price. Get a free home valuation and we'll walk through what your parcel can actually do under Belmont's new rules.
