 Okay, Mr. Marshall. You have a forum available. The attendees are coming in. My computer says it's 636 so that must mean your says 635. And no, my mind agrees with your years. All right, so let's go ahead. Go for it. All right. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of November 2nd 2022. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 637 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. And extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. And extended again by the state legislature on July 16th 2022. This planning board meeting, including public hearings will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting. Or go to the planning board webpage and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. This meeting will be held in person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship or despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call when I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively and return to mute. Bruce Coldham. Bruce, you are muted. Here. Thank you. Tom Long. Here. Andrew McDool. Present. I Doug Marshall and present. Janet McGowan. Present. Thank you. Johanna Newman. We've been told we'll be late. If she arrives at all. And Karen winter. Here. Thank you. Thank you. Board members. I'm sorry. If technical issues arise, we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes. If you need to ask a question or make a comment, I will see your request and call on you to speak after speaking. Remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting when deemed appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Excuse me. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, a participation will be disconnected from the meeting. All right, board members. So the first item on our agenda for this evening are approval of minutes. And the time is 640. And the minutes to be approved for tonight are from our October 19th meeting, the last meeting we held. Are there any comments on the minutes that members want to make? Bruce, I see your hand. Yes, I read the meeting. I would move to adopt an entirety except. It's kind of a comment or a question. On the, in relation to the. Meadows. I'm stated as saying this is on page nine. That I essentially agreed with Mr. Long. And that I noted the blame could be laid upon the town and the developer and the town accepted. The roads 15 years. If the town had accepted the roads 15 years ago. The town would be responsible for the. Progressive deterioration. And that's all accurate. I said one thing. Additionally in there, which I think might be relevant, but you decide. I also said that I thought that the town would be responsible for the lack of leverage that the town has. And I thought that that also was a factor in terms of, you know, I was looking at, you know, that there is. Failures, you know, throughout this. And I thought that my. I also said that I thought that the. The failure of the town to collect 11 of the 13 surety. Payments for lot releases. Was. In my view, we're responsible for the lack of leverage that the town has. And I thought that that also was a factor in terms of, you know, the lack of leverage that the town has. And I thought that my attempt to document them should include that one. I think I said it. I'm sure I said it. But it wasn't recorded. I think it's, I think I would like it to be recorded that the, that in addition to the. Following that notice about the failure. Blame could be laid upon the town. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Of the, of the 13 surety payments. If you would add that there. Okay. Thank you. And you've made a motion with. That includes in inserting that language. Yes. Motion to approve. Okay. Why don't we first determine whether we want to. Add that language. But before that, does anyone else have any other. Comments. No other comments. I was, I was going to support. Bruce's motion with the amended language. I don't recall the exact, what he said exactly, but I'm sure that he, he does. Okay. So Bruce, why don't you make a first motion to. Add that language. Okay. Essentially so moved, but. Pam, have you got that language? I do. I mean, I'm going to go back into my notes and just, you know, look. To see exactly what you did say, but yeah, I have it. All right. And Andrew, can we. Are you okay with. Second. I am. Okay. So let's. All right. So do, is anybody want to have any other comments on the minutes? I haven't seen or heard. Any other hands. All right. So let's make that. Have that vote. So a motion to add to the. Minutes that. Bruce. And Bruce stated that. The town had also failed to. Collect 11 of the 13 sureties for the subdivision. All right. Bruce. So moved. And. In favor or opposed. Move to adopt the amended minutes as amended. All right. Do you need a second? I thought. Andrew seconded. Okay. Sorry. Mr. Marshall has frozen. It's your longness. Maybe your moment. I'm next. Who would be next? I believe I am. And I am an I as well. Janet. I. And Karen. Karen. Hi. Is that everyone? Well, Doug did not give his vote. It's true. Hopefully there he is. Doug, everybody voted except for you at the moment. We went through. We carry. Okay. So I'm in favor of. Adding Bruce's language to the minutes. Thank you for. I assume jumping in, Tom. So, okay. So then let's do a motion to approve those minutes with the edit. And we'll just let's go through again. Bruce. Hi. And Tom. Hi. And Andrew. Hi. And Janet. Hi. Karen. Hi. And I'm an I as well. All right. Mr. Marshall. I need just a little bit of clarification. So we just did two. Motions and two votes. It's the way I'm seeing it. So I have the. The. The first and the second for the first motion. I guess it was to just amend the minutes. As suggested by Mr. Cole, Pam. And so we took that vote. But now we've just taken a subsequent vote, which I believe is to approve those minutes, but I'm not sure who made the motion and who seconded that. All right. Thank you. Thank you for. Pointing that out. Yeah. So I made the motion. Bruce Bruce made one initial motion. But we didn't. Clearly get a second. Okay. You know, I think we used Andrew's second on the first vote. So why don't you just say that I seconded it. All right. And I'm sorry for that. It's okay. It's okay. I misunderstood to begin with. I thought the initial motion was to approve. And amend and approve. So I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for that. It's okay. It's okay. I misunderstood to begin with. Sorry for that. I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for the moment. I'm, I'm just going to go ahead and amend and approve. So it's my misunderstanding, but thank you for the moment. Okay. Okay. So the second item on our agenda. The time is six 47. And, uh, We'll move on. So members of the public at this time. If you wish to make a comment. All right. from Elizabeth Vierling. And this needs to be about topics that are not on our agenda tonight. So Elizabeth, if you would state your name and your address. Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, thank you. Yes, this is Elizabeth Vierling at 36 Cottage Street. I believe what I'm speaking about is not on the agenda. And I also understand that you are not required to respond to any comments at this time. But in any case, I did want to propose two questions and a comment. One was that I saw that the town has received a $75,000 grant for streetscape design. And I wondered how that fit with the RFP for town design standards. And if you could provide an update on the status of that RFP. Additionally, could you provide an update on the status of the review of the suitability of the Bolt with garage for adding parking levels? And if other sites other than behind CVS are seriously being evaluated? And those are my two questions. Whether or not you are able to answer them, I understand. And my comment is I can't help but comment that as I watch 11 East Pleasant Street rise, realize that it was approved without sufficient space between the building and the street for a tree of sufficient size to provide shade. And as you know, trees are also an important component of climate mitigation, which I thought was a town priority. And I hope that new streetscape design standards include that consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. Let's see. For a moment, I had seen a second hand and it has dropped away. So Elizabeth, OK, yeah, your hand has now come down. All right, I don't see any other hands from the members of the public. So this public comment period will now end. All right, so the time now is 6.50, and we will move on into the third item on the agenda. And it is a joint public hearing. So in accordance with the provisions of Mass General Law Chapter 40A, these public hearings have been duly advertised. And notice thereup has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding, first, a zoning bylaw for Article 2, zoning districts. And Article 3, use regulations. And Article 16, FEMA floodplain overlay district. This has continued from June 1st and September 7th and September 21st, all in this year. To see if the town will vote to add Article 16, FEMA floodplain overlay district to the zoning bylaw and amend Article 2, zoning districts to add FEMA floodplain overlay district and amend related sections of Article 3, use regulations to regulate activities in the 100-year floodplain as shown in the flood insurance rate firm maps. Issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, for the administration of the National Flood Insurance Program. Firm maps indicate areas that have a 1% chance of flooding in a given year. The purpose of the floodplain management regulations is to protect the public health, safety, and general welfare, and to minimize the harmful impacts of flooding upon the community. The second hearing is for the FEMA floodplain overlay district, also continued from the same dates, June 1st, September 7th, and September 21st, to see if the town will vote to amend the official zoning map to add the FEMA floodplain overlay district for the purpose of regulating activities. As described in Article 16, FEMA floodplain overlay district. Are there any board disclosures? I do not see any hands for disclosure. All right, Chris, I think you are probably the applicant for this, or is it Nate? Well, I have an opening statement that I'd like to offer, and then Nate will take it away with the presentation. All right. So hello, I'm Christine Brestrup, Planning Director, and I'd like to update the planning board members about where we are with the flood mapping project. We've been talking to you about flood mapping for a long time now, and we actually have been working on this project since 2012. There have been a number of delays in moving forward, but we're finally in a position so that the planning board can offer a recommendation. The CRC recently offered a recommendation on this project. On April 25th, the town council referred the zoning portion of this project and the associated changes to the official zoning map to the planning board and the CRC for public hearings. And on May 2nd, the town council referred the firm map or flood insurance rate maps and the flood insurance study to the CRC for a recommendation. The planning board is not required to make a recommendation on those two things. The CRC opened a public hearing on the project on May 26th, and the planning board opened its public hearing on the project on June 1st. The CRC public hearing that was held in May was continued a couple of times, and then finally on October 27th, the CRC made a recommendation on all four of these items, a positive recommendation to the town council. The reason for the recent delays had been that we had everything in place, but we were waiting to receive the flood maps, and we have finally received the flood maps. And I believe you had a link to those flood maps sent to you with your packet materials. The planning board public hearing was opened in June and continued several times, as Doug mentioned. Our letter of final determination from FEMA arrived in August, but then it took two months more for the maps and the flood insurance study to arrive. So we finally got them in mid-October. The town of Amherstet is a participant in the National Flood Insurance Program, which is administered by FEMA. And this program provides flood insurance for property owners whose properties are subject to flooding. If the municipality in which the property is located participates in the National Flood Insurance Program. I'm not going to repeat the history of the project as I have on numerous occasions, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. The maps that we have currently in place are from 1983, and I think 1981, and they were based on the USGS topography with 10 foot contour intervals. And now, and those maps were also based on data that was gathered up until the early 70s, 1970s. The new maps are based on town of Amherstet's GIS topography at one foot contour intervals, and they're based on more recently gathered data. This means that the new maps are much more accurate in terms of where flooding occurs. So the town council needs to adopt the flood insurance rate maps as well as the flood insurance study. And town council also needs to adopt the zoning amendment that Nate will present to you and the changes to the official zoning map. And the planning board needs to make a recommendation on two zoning issues. If the town fails to adopt the new flood maps, the town of Amherst will no longer be able to participate in the flood insurance program. And people in Amherst will not be able to purchase flood insurance through the flood insurance program. Now, Nate Malloy will present the zoning amendments to articles two, three, and an additional article 16 and also present the changes to the official zoning map to you. And we'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Nate, I know you've, we've talked about the zoning several times. So I'm hoping you can focus on what's changed in the zoning from the last time we've talked about it and then show us the maps. Sure, yeah, I have a half an hour presentation dog. I can, I'll slowly go through it. No, so yeah, in brief, you know, we have to have local regulations that regulate development in the floodplain. And so what we're doing is creating, you know, article 16 is own section, the FEMA floodplain overlay district. And so we've previewed this a few times with you in the CRC, the state has looked at our by-law and said it's all right. And so, you know, there's other parts of the by-law that are affected. And so I'm just gonna share my screen and I'll walk. I guess Pam, you also give me permission to share so I, when I made you, when I made you host, I guess I disabled my ability to. Okay, I'm gonna make you a co-host. Sure, so, you know, it's our zoning that becomes our regulatory tool that will keep us compliant with FEMA in the firm program. And so that's visible for everyone. The, there's three sections of the by-law that's changing. There's article two where we define zoning districts. And so this hasn't changed since May or June. You know, it's the definition of the FEMA floodplain overlay district. So it's actually what Doug read as the part of the hearing notice. It's the, you know, area defined by the 1% chance of flooding based on the new firm map. So that's article two. In article three, there's two sections that mention development and floodways. One is this 3.13. And so what's shown in bold italics is what's changing. We're just saying see also article 16, FEMA floodplain overlay district. And then there's 3.22, the flood prone conservancy district. And so the FPC is actually a base zoning district. That is not changing. And so in some cases, you know, the FEMA overlay district is gonna be on top of the FPC. And so we've added this language in bold that the floodplain regulations found in article 16 shall take precedence over any less restrictive conflicting provisions of this bylaw. And, you know, again, this language has been in place for a few months, many months, and it hasn't changed. And the state finds that this works. And so really what we then have is article 16 is the FEMA bylaw. And this bylaw will only apply to those areas that are mapped. And so it doesn't apply outside of anything else in town. It really only applies where there's the regulated flood hazard area. And so what we have here is the marked up version, Doug, to show what's changed since you've last seen it. You know, there's a little starting mistake up here. The really important piece is when Chris had received our letter of final determination, the maps and flood studies are dated February 9th, 2023. And so that means is we have to have our local vote on these regulations four to six weeks ahead of that. And then we send it to the state in FEMA for their final review and approval. And they have to approve it by February 9th. And so that becomes the effective date of our new maps and flood insurance study. If we are delayed doing that, then, well, I'm not sure what'll happen, but let's hope we don't get there. You know, there are some language changes just minor in the purposes, you know, to prevent the occurrence of public emergencies. There was an addition, allow the floodplain to operate naturally and drain floodwaters without development that can add to flooding. So, you know, nothing, you know, so I guess these are just the changes in the last, you know, four to six weeks. In the definition section, we used to parenthetically reference every code after each defined term. And we found that to be somewhat kind of difficult and it was confusing. So we actually say the definitions are based on state building code. Standard references found in the state building code and FEMA regulations found in the code of federal regulations. And so where you see where we define development, we've, you know, we've removed this, this parenthetical afterwards. And, you know, it's not really necessary. The state coordinator said we don't really have to do that. We have this parenthetical in that this statement was fine. So really that's what's changed within the bylaw. We actually don't have this type of flood hazard boundary map. So that could be removed from the definitions. You don't have that. And that's not what we're adopting in Amherst. We clarified that in the floodways, the elevation is shown on the approved firm maps as opposed to the designated height. Just to clarify that that's what, you know, how the floodway is defined. And again, these definitions are only applicable within the FEMA floodplain overlay. So, you know, it's not, it doesn't apply anywhere else. So when we see new construction, again, that's only for the FEMA area. None of this has changed. It's all been the same start of construction. We say, we added that the actual start of construction must commence within 180 days. And it said it where the statement has crossed out, but we felt it was cleaner language this way. It didn't change the meaning at all. And so these defined terms, you know, we added an A and a B here. It was in a, we separated out again, just to clarify it, the floodplain administrator. So the state recommends having a position that can help administer the bylaw. And here we're naming the planning director and in the absence of the planning director, they're designee. And, you know, some communities have a different position. Really, you know, we think the planning director is in a good position because it coordinates with many departments, conservation, public works. And really the floodplain administrator is helping to make sure that everything's coordinated. They don't necessarily have to enforce certain regulations. They just have to make sure that the applicant or the town is following them. And so here we had said that their duties may include. And so, you know, the state said, we don't even have to list these specific duties of the floodplain administrator. We're doing that in part just to help educate, you know, an applicant, the town and boards and committees. And so we've restructured this a little bit. You know, coordination with local departments. We removed oversight of the application review process because that's something that will happen. You know, we're saying up here ensuring permits are applied for. And so again, it was somewhat redundant. You know, we say working with the appropriate local staff to coordinate compliance issues and enforcement actions, maintaining current and historic FEMA maps. And then so these sections were re-lettered, renumbered. We also removed the addresses from the FEMA one risk analysis in the Massachusetts state coordinator just in case they changed, the by-law doesn't have to change. And so that was acceptable to the state just to mention that we have to provide notice to them. The real, you know, the regulatory piece of this is, you know, 16.3 of the regulations. And so this follows the standard FEMA by-law. The one difference is 16.31 local permitting. So FEMA wants to know that we, that the town of Amherst will monitor any development in the floodplain. And so this first paragraph right here, it says the town of Amherst requires a permit for all proposed construction or other development in the FEMA floodplain overlay district. And the rest of that is really standard FEMA language, you know, new construction changes to existing buildings, placement of manufactured homes, you know, agricultural facilities fill. What we're proposing is kind of our local language is what's shown here. It says the town's permit review process includes the requirement that the proponent obtain all local, state and federal permits. It says in addition to any building permit or other local, state, federal permits needed, any development in the FEMA floodplain overlay district down here shall require review by the Wellands administrator to determine if review and approval by the conservation commission is required. And so that's actually happening right now with our new permitting software. Any time a permit is located within a floodplain area, it's all electronic, the Wellands administrator is notified and they have to review it. So even an electrical permit gets flagged and they review it. And so by adding this language here and you know, we have a new permits, we're starting with some new permit software, the Wellands administrator really will review all permits. And then if they determine it needs some type of permitting process, you know, most of it will require review and approval by the conservation commission, then we follow the FEMA guidelines. And if no reviewer is required, then the Wellands administrator can note that in the permitting software. And again, that's compliant with FEMA. So that's the local piece. The rest of all this section 16.3, like I said, it's kind of standard language from FEMA, encroachment to floodways, a number of flood zones. And as you can see, none of this has really changed. Subdivision approvals we just included by town staff just to clarify who's looking at this. So, you know, if there's a subdivision, we just have to make sure that we're following what's also in this section of the bylaw. And base flood elevation, we said greater than 50 lots and or five acres, as opposed to whichever is less if you thought was somewhat confusing. And we changed a little bit of the language here again. And again, we eliminate the addresses for the state coordinator or the firm program specialist just so that if the address changes, we don't have to change the bylaw. We're saying that the flood plan administrator shell is required to request from the state building code if there's an appeal or variance request. And so, you know, that's something that we would do anyways, instead of saying, will it shell? And really, I guess the big change is we name the building commissioner as the enforcement officer. And you know, the building for the building commissioner is the zoning enforcement officer. And so this is a piece of zoning. So it really shouldn't be the flood plan administrator. They're really the coordinator and the building commissioner is named elsewhere in the bylaw as the zoning enforcement officer. So we don't actually need this enforcement section. It's kind of repetitive to other sections of the bylaw, but it's nice to have it all in one, you know, FEMA overlay district section. So, you know, those are, you know, I just went over article two, three and now the proposed 16. What, you know, what it looks like is, you know, here's one map panel. And so this is, here's Amherst College, here's the center of town. Sorry about that. The new map panels, it's really touchy, are based on overlay districts. I mean, you know, our overlaying over the aerial photographs and they're a lot more accurate. So the current maps, you know, like Chris said, are from 1983, they don't have any structures. They don't have any aerial imagery and they're hard to read. This one, and it's, there we are, is showing the actual floodway and the cross hatching and then the regulated area and blue. And so it's really detailed, right? It really follows the elevation of the contours. There's cross sections here with specific elevations. And so this is a lot more accurate than it used to be. And so when Chris mentioned that this has taken a while, these maps were essentially generated in 2020 with new regression analysis that was developed in the late 2000s. And so the maps themselves really haven't changed the, you know, all the studies and everything were done. What happened was on some of the map panels, some of the mapping itself needed to be updated with the new regression equation. So it's not as if the boundaries were wrong, the maps just hadn't been updated to show some of the new areas. And I guess FEMA is really strict about labeling of cross elevations and sectional elevations. And so some of the labeling was incorrect. And so FEMA just required that these map panels be adjusted. Now, all these map panels, and this thing is really, really touchy, is will have an effective date of, it should have it on February 3rd, February 9th, 2023. If that's visible, I'm trying to zoom out a little bit. Yeah, so map revised February 9th, 2023. And so when they adopted this will have, you know, that's the date. There's a webpage on the town's planning department that has a comparison map. And I think this is more useful, a more useful tool to show town-wide what it looks like. And so it shows the yellow is the 1983 map and the blue or blue is the updated map. And so if we zoom in, you can see in this area of town, the yellow is the old map. And so the boundary is not as accurate in terms of topography and the newer map is. And so this is a slider map. So you could, you know, you can zoom in, but you can see you could turn it on and off the whole town. So here's what it would look like today with the current 83 maps. And here's what it would look like with the proposed maps. And so the overlay district only applies was shown in blue here. And so those definitions, the regulations only apply in this area. And so, you know, in this section, you can see where it's a lot more accurate in terms of following topography. It follows the stream corridor a little bit more accurately. So in some cases on the 83 map, the stream or river is actually almost outside the actual floodway, the flood map area. And so, you know, this is really what it captures. And so, you know, I could zoom out and show you the whole town again, but that this is really what it will look like, you know, when these, when this, if this is adopted, this is where it applies just in this area. Okay, thank you, Nate. So board members, any questions? Andrew. Thanks Doug, I actually don't have a question. Nate, I was just gonna say that the link for the map, the slider map and our attachment wasn't working for me. Okay. You showed it before, so that's, it's fine. I've, you know, I've seen it, but if anybody else was trying it, they may not be able to connect you there. Okay. First. Just wanted to say what a great job it appears that everybody's done all before I arrived here, of course, but I think it needs to be said it's clearly been a pretty prolonged act of heavy lifting or just sustained lifting. So thank you all. So very impressive. All right. Thank you, Bruce. I would second your comments. Anybody else have any comments? I don't see any other hands. Not seeing any, I will, but ask the public attendees, do any of you want to make comments on these flood maps and the zoning proposed changes to incorporate them in this district? Not seeing any public hands raised. Well, maybe we can move right to a vote. Tom. I would move to a, would it be approved this? I believe we're recommending to town council. I would move to recommend this. Very complete and well presented document from Nate. All right. Karen, if I read your list. I second that. Yeah. I second this, yes. Okay. Thank you, Karen. And thank you, Tom. Let's see, are there any other comments before we go ahead and vote? So the motion is to recommend to town council that they adopt the zoning changes and incorporate the maps and create the overlay district. Is that close enough, Nate? Sounds good. That sounds good. I mean, across to the motion, across include to close the hearing. Yep. So moved. All right. All right. So then Karen, I see your hand. Okay. It's a legacy. I will second. All right. Thank you, Janet. Karen had already seconded. Okay. Bruce, can you, how do you vote? Aye. All right. Thank you. Tom. Aye. Andrew. Aye. Janet. Aye. Karen. Aye. And I'm and I as well. So six in favor and one member absent. Congratulations, Nate and Chris and Pam, however much you contributed. And this has been a long, long slog, I guess. Hopefully it'll be another 50 years before we have to do this again. Okay. So moving along to the next item in our agenda. The time now is 716. And we have another, we have a zoning bylaw hearing. Item four on the agenda. In accordance with the provisions of mass general law chapter 48, these public hearings have been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding the zoning bylaw proposal for food and drink establishments. All right, I'm back. Can you all hear me? Yes. All right. I seem to have a bad internet connection tonight. All right. So I don't know exactly when I froze. So I'll say the time now is 718 and we are doing a zoning bylaw for food and drink establishments. Article three, use regulations. Article five, accessory uses. Article 11, administration and enforcement. And article 12, definitions. To see if the town will vote to amend article three, use regulations to delete existing use categories. In section 3.352.0, class one, restaurant, cafe, lunch room, cafeteria or similar place. Section 3.352.1, class two, restaurant or bar and section 3.352.0, restaurant, cafe, bar with food or other similar food and beverage establishment where food is available at all times. Section 3.352.1, bar with no food served. Section 3.352.2, nightclub and section 3.352.3, any of the above food and drink establishments with occupant capacity of more than 250 occupants. And to add standards and conditions for these uses and to amend article five, accessory uses. Sections 5.041, 042 and 043 to allow seasonal outdoor dining as an accessory use to a principal use authorized by section 3.3 to allow outdoor furnishings associated with such use to remain in place between November one and April one as long as the use is active and operational. To remove the prohibitions on outdoor heating and pooling devices and to allow live or prerecorded entertainment as an accessory use to a principal use authorized by section 3.3 and to delete reference to drive-in restaurants and to amend article 111 rather administration and enforcement to rearrange the paragraphs describing when site plan review is not required and to clarify the requirements and process for granting administrative approval and to amend article 12 definitions by clarifying section 12.05 bar and by deleting section 12.11 drive-up restaurant and any associated renumbering that may be necessary. That's probably the longest sentence I've ever read. Do we have any board member disclosure for this hearing? All right, I do not see any. Chris or Nate, which of you would like to make the presentation? I don't have an introduction. So Nate is going to make the presentation and I wanted to point out that Rob Mora is here and he can answer questions. Thank you. Sure, thanks everyone. Nate Malloy, a planner with the town and I'll be presenting this food and drink establishment zoning amendment. I think Doug covered it all in that one long statement. I'll go into a little more detail though. I'm going to share my screen, I have a presentation and then we can walk through the language of the bylaw. And so the planning board has seen this before and there's been some slight changes in response to comments from the planning board and CRC. And so what may have started as Article 14 we're really calling it updating food and drink establishments because that's what we're doing, that one classification, use classification in the zoning bylaw. And so the background is that planning staff had been looking at changes to 3.352 prior to COVID and then when the pandemic hit and we were using Article 14, we realized that we could do this. We have the capacity, we've been applying standards and conditions for the past 20 years that really seem to work. And so what Jana found was the town meeting action from 2001, and so that had updated the bylaw at that time. And my thought is that this is an update based on 20 more years of experience. And so we're trying to make it better and better. Additionally, the Community Resources Committee, town staff and the business community liked certain aspects of Article 14 temporary zoning and wanted to see if those could be incorporated into the bylaw. And so some of that is administrative approval. Some of that is the accessory uses in Article 5. And so because of that, this zoning amendment actually touches a number of different articles in the bylaw. The purpose is really to have new classifications of food and drink establishments that correspond to the uses that we're seeing. Right now we don't really have a definition for a bar or a nightclub, although those are what we're seeing being requested and proposed. I would like to clarify and improve the permitting process for businesses and the downtown and village centers and apply the lessons of Article 14. And so typically right now, there are uses that could go through site plan review, but because there's no changes to the exterior of a building, they get administratively approved. That's happening right now. And it was happening before Article 14 is happening with Article 14 right now. And so the planning board actually doesn't see many applications for restaurants or food and drink establishments. And so I think we think that's a great way to encourage businesses to stay and expand in Amherst. And so we're trying to formalize the administrative review process in Article 11. And this supports efforts of the bid and chamber. And this is just an example of what was permitted through Article 14. The drake, the spoke expanded to include this whole building at almost essentially doubled in size. Mexico Lido opened and Garcia's opened. And so during Article 14, the town developed an application process. And so although it was administrative approval, an applicant had to submit a management plan, floor plans, site plan, and there was a written decision that was filed with the town. And so that's something that Article 14 authorized. And it's really not in the bylaw now. And that's what we're suggesting in Article 11 to move forward is that even an administrative approval has a record of the decision. Just to highlight that there's five zoning districts where this applies. It's in the business village center and limited business, neighborhood business, general business and commercial. And so it's these areas that are highlighted in red and pink and cross hatching. So the regulations in terms of where food and drink establishments are permitted only happens in these areas. Everywhere else, they're not allowed. Just a comparison of what's existing and what's proposed. So right now we have class one, class two and class three definitions in the use table. So class one is a restaurant, cafe, lunchroom, cafeteria or similar place that closes before 1130. It's site plan review, but mostly it's administrative approval. There's class two, which is a restaurant or bar. It's open after 1130 and it's a special permit. And then there's a drive up restaurant that's also a special permit. Proposed is new definitions in the use table. So restaurant, cafe, bar with food or other similar food or beverage establishment. And so it's site plan review administrative approval. There's bar with no food. And so when we had this discussion before, doggy asked, what does it mean by no food? But really that means they don't have a kitchen. So that's a special permit. If there's a bar that has a full kitchen, then it's in the first category here, bar with food. And so that's something that staff and the building commission understand a nightclub, which there are a few enamors and there's been some discussion about there could be more, that's a special permit and establishment with occupancy of more than 250. And so that's not seating, that's an occupant load by code. And so again, that's special permit. So what we're proposing is that uses that may have more impacts are still by special permit and ones that we've seen can be managed through conditions that we have been applying can be through site plan review. And so for the last 20 years, class two restaurants are pretty much always approved with a standard set of conditions. And so we can apply that now in the site plan review and not have them go through a special permit process. In terms of what it would look like existing restaurants and how they'd fit into the proposed permitting pathways, Johnny's Tavern, El Comolito, Peter Pockets and House of Teriyaki. And we have the maximum occupant capacity shown. And so there was a question about why was 250 chosen as a threshold? And so Johnny's, for instance, is about 175 right now. And that has been managed really well for its size through the permitting it has. If it jumps to 250, then it may become more impactful. And so 250 really was to allow some existing to expand and it's around that size is where the size and possible impacts could be greater. So that's why we chose 250. A bar with no food is like the moan and dove. So prepackaged food or certain things like peanuts or bag of pretzels is not considered food in this instance. And so that'd be a special permit. Hazel's Blue Lagoon is a nightclub. And then the Hangar and ABC has a capacity of almost 400. So that'd be a special permit. And with the changes to food and drink establishments as Doug read, there's changes to accessory uses in article five, we're trying to formalize administrative approval in article 11 and then slight modifications to definitions in article 12. And so although we're trying to update the food and drink establishments and just in table three, it has this ripple effect for these other areas. I was just gonna quickly walk through those. And so existing table three, basically everything's being removed except for this one condition that in the neighborhood business district, a class one restaurant shall have no more than 30 seats indoor and out, both indoor and outdoor initial stop serving alcohol at nine and that there's this perimeter of this buffer at an outside wallet building occupied by the establishment should be located more than 100 feet from any residential dwelling in a residential district. And so everything else in this section would be replaced with a proposal to have these new uses a restaurant cafe, bar with food or other similar food beverage establishment, a bar with no food. And what's shown in blue here is what's changed since the last time you've seen it and what was the CRC also asked for some changes. So a nightclub, parenthetically as defined by the state building code. And then any food or drink establishment with an occupying capacity more than 250. And so a nightclub, the state building code says that it's less seating than capacity, like loud music, dim lighting. So there is a definition in the state building code that would be applied if someone was asking for it. And so, and then as applicable we have all these standards and conditions that can lead to conditions in an administrative approval or site plan review. And so, if applicable they're subject to the Board of Licensing Commissioners, other state and local codes, accessory uses were specifically calling out outdoor dining, live or pre-recorded entertainment and a drive-through facility. We're asking that they operate and be maintained in accordance with an approved site plan, floor plan, a layout plan with occupying capacity for indoor and outdoor dining, a patron management plan, a general management plan, a parking management plan and a traffic impact statement. And so, even if an applicant were applying for site plan review and was determined to be administratively approved because there are no changes we would still ask for all of these things which could lead to conditions in an administrative approval. We're asking that the management plan include hours of operations, trash and refuse storage, outdoor dining if applicable, queuing, signage, lighting, delivery, noise containment and response to complaints. And what's new here is strategies to screen buffer adjacent properties from noise and other impacts, employee parking and other requested information. So, in the management plan now there's gonna be a section where if we're asking applicants to describe how they can protect adjacent properties. And so, if they say they're going to manage how they close in terms of directing people down a certain street or something then that can become a condition that can be part of the permitting. And so, the language isn't too exact but what it's doing is it's helping direct staff and the applicant to what could be conditions. Tronic ID verification if they are serving alcohol, onsite staff training and certifications including crowd control and tips. Number eight, reusable tableware shall be used for outdoor table service. All areas to be cleaned in daily and left in a clean condition by the end of normal business hours. Outdoor furniture shall be placed to meet clearance services and egress requirements and then this BN condition that remains from the current. And so, what we're proposing is everything here in bold italics in table three. I'll just walk through article 11 quickly. As I mentioned, a number of site plan review whether it's food and drink or other site plan review uses if there are minimal changes to the exterior then they actually are administratively approved now and we're proposing to strengthen that administrative process. So it's shown here in bold italics is being proposed and what's in red strike through is proposed to being removed. So, we're just clarifying that site plan review shall not be required when and these were already in the bylaw and we're just renumbering them and nesting them under the site plan review is not required when just so it's clear when there's no physical change to the exterior of a building or site. The only change to the exterior of a building or site includes the installation of signs and compliance with article eight and a change of use is proposed and no physical changes to the exterior or site will occur and the building commissioner determines that the changes won't conflict with the purpose of this bylaw and finds that the proposed use will not result in further need for review under the following section and minor alteration to building exterior site. So as you can see, there's minor changes to these sections but essentially this language is already in the bylaw and so if any of this occurs there really isn't site plan review it's administratively approved. What we're adding is this new section administrative approval instances where site plan review is not required we're saying no work shall commence until the building commissioner has authorized the work or used to proceed. The building commissioner may approve approve with conditions or deny the proposal decisions shall be made in writing filed with the town clerk and kept on record with the conservation development department. The building commissioner in consultation with the plan director shall be authorized to apply any designer view criteria I found in article three section 3.204 designer view principles and standards. And so this isn't taking away review by designer review board but it's saying that staff the building commissioner could apply those in an administrative review instance. And then 11.213 I guess it's just renumbered but it's already in the bylaw that they may seek guidance the building commissioner may seek guidance from the designer view board or historical commission. And so really the big change article 11 is this paragraph strengthening administrative approval and reorganizing when site plan review is not required. So we're renumbering and putting all this together. In article 12 as Doug mentioned we're changing the definition of a bar slightly where we say food may be incidental to the consumption and service of alcohol. And so we have a definition of bar and then we're deleting a drive up restaurant. Essentially we would now consider a restaurant a drive up restaurant a restaurant and then the drive through facility is considered an accessory use. And so we're deleting this because this would just become a restaurant which is a defined term further in the bylaw. And I think I could stop I guess there is section five which maybe I skipped accessory uses. We're proposing to say that anything so it's only 5.04 retail business and consumer services. We're saying that season outdoor dining including sidewalk cafes, courtyard or terrace dining and similar uses may be permitted and the BGBL, BVC, BN or COM. So this is already here as long as an accessory to a principal use authorized by section 3.3 and subject to the same review as the principal use. And so before it listed one, two or three we're proposing to eliminate that. And so there was some question about so any use in section 3.3 which is the use chart and we're saying yes but it has to be accessory. So is someone really gonna go through the effort of spending six figures to put in a kitchen to have an accessory used to say like a gas station? Maybe a gas station would say I could come up with some accessory dining options but really it has to be accessory to that. We're allowing outdoor dining saying any structure framework for the dining shall remain as long as the accessory use is active and operational. And that before we'd say that it couldn't operate between November and April but we're saying if someone wants to maintain outdoor dining year round then let's have them try that. And so the changes to this section are allowing that. Also in 5.0413 it had said no such facility shall be equipped with freestanding heating and cooling devices or served by HVAC system of adjacent buildings and we're striking that. We found during the pandemic that we actually did install freestanding heaters and they worked really well. For live or prerecorded music we're kind of following a similar instance to outdoor dining that they are accessory to any principal use allowed in sections 3.3 or a bed and breakfast. So if it's a special permit use or a site plan it will be allowed by that as opposed to just specifically to a restaurant bar in or bed and breakfast. I think those are the changes to the accessory uses. We removed this one section in drive-thru facilities because it's no longer proposed in the use chart. So a drive-thru facility would still be allowed as an accessory use if someone wanted to do that. And so those are the changes to the accessory uses. So much of this is already in the bylaw. We're not changing a lot. We're trying to expand outdoor dining to go year round and that it could be permitted as accessory to a few different things, not just restaurants or bars. Great, thanks, Nate. All right, I see a couple of hands from board members. Thanks for your patience. Janet. Nate, I wonder if you can go back to your PowerPoint on the one that has like the current a little chart. Yeah, the original PowerPoint and it has, let's see, go back. I think it was your second or third slide. And so when I was looking at the planning board report to town meeting, in the old days, any bar or restaurant had to have a special permit and then they broke out into these different categories. So looking at the existing class one restaurant, there's also a distance from residence, residence in our zone, a residential zone. And so you can go from class one, a class two restaurant, a restaurant and a bar that's open after 1130 could be class one, if it's more than 150 feet away from a home. And so I think that in a way, the existing category, you're not including all the factors. So proximity to private homes or residences or apartments in a residential zone can put you either in class one and class two. So I think that's sort of, so I think that this chart doesn't kind of explain what all the reasons you go into class one and class two. And I saw, when I was reading, my question has been, why did the planning department, the planning board, the zoning subcommittee, the select board town meeting vote in these categories? And so I thought that the planning board report was really useful. And they recognized the planning, the recommendation from the board was, they recognized that impacts on residents would be based on different factors, proximity to apartments or homes. How late is it open? And are you, are people drinking? And with the idea that last call is kind of an exciting time and lab time. And I don't know what has changed that would make us go from special permit for every bar and restaurant to loosening up some criteria that we have now, a site plan review, mostly administrative approval for a restaurant or a cafe that closes before 1130 or stays open after 1130, but it's not close to homes for people sleep. So, you know, I just- So your question is what's changed, right? Yeah, and I, you know, it seems like- Let's see what Nate and Rob have to say about that. Well, I guess what has changed in terms of impacts on, you know, residents and what, you know. Okay. Yeah, so I think the, I think what's changed is, you know, we've had 20 years of experience and now in the proposed use chart, we've developed a standard set of conditions that would be in place. So, you know, one through 10, which weren't in place prior to 2001 when this was adopted. And so, you know, we're asking for a number of things that weren't asked for before, you know, from site plan to floor plan to a management plan that has noise containment in response to complaints to buffering. So, you know, we have 20 years of experience and what we found was, you know, what we had mentioned this last time, many places will come in, get a class one permit and then immediately transition to a class two. And once they're already established, they almost always get approved as a class two. And so what we found was that the distance to the residential districts and the time of operation, you know, could be managed with these conditions right here we're proposing. And so it wasn't, you know, they're not as relevant as they were prior to 2000 because perhaps the bylaw didn't have as much teeth in it in terms of conditions that were being read into a restaurant. We've also, one thing just to clarify is that a bar with no food and a bar with food could be the same establishment, but they may be two different uses. And so they may actually have to have two different permits. And so the monkey bar is an example where for most of the time they operate as a bar with food and they'd be site plan review. But after hours, say at nine o'clock they're gonna close their kitchen and they're gonna become a bar with no food, you know, four nights a week and they actually still have to get a special permit because now they're a bar with no food. And so if a restaurant, what we found is that if a restaurant wants to serve food and stay open late, they don't need to have a special permit, they can be site plan reviewed. If they want to transition to a bar with no food, that's actually a different use category and they would need both a site plan review and a special permit. And so we don't actually don't think we're reducing the protections to neighborhoods. We're actually incorporating it in these standards and conditions we're proposing in the bylaw. And so- I'm not quarreling with that, but is there, so there'd be no notice to a butters, there'd be no public hearing, there'd be no opportunity for residents or anybody to participate in almost, you know, all things that fall in that category of bar, restaurant, food, you know, after 1130, close to residents. So that's what the huge change is the taking the lack of a notice to a butters, a public hearing, a chance for the public to participate and to know when the permit issues and how to appeal it if they choose to. So I think that is a big change. I don't quarrel with, I think these standards and conditions are great. I think there's a lot of really good things in these changes, but I do think this is a huge change to take it out of the public, you know, the public eye, a butters have no notice. And then also no resident has an ability to participate in open hearing like we have here. And so, you know, so I guess what my question is, what has changed? Well, the impacts really haven't changed. The public's interest in these type of establishments when they're close to them, when they're open late and they're allowed. And, you know, if we bootstrap in the live music and outdoor dining, a lot of these things can happen with actually no notice to the public, a butters or participation. Cause if it's under site plan review, building commissioners doing most of those. And, you know, things just will happen in people's neighborhoods without noticing it. So, you know, so I just, that's my fundamental issue. But I kind of just wonder like the current process seems to be working fine. You know, people have a chance to know what's going on, participate, people, you know, restaurants and bars are getting permits. Probably the permits are adjusted by comments. So I'm not quite sure why there's such a seismic change in this part of these bylaws. Other parts I think are really good. Well, I mean, I like to think of it as like, you know, the 2001 was an update on something that was 30 years old and now we're updating it 20 years later because we found there's ways to improve it. And so, you know, currently anything that's site plan or view, if there's no changes doesn't get noticed and it goes through administrative approval. So if there is something that changes to the exterior or needs to, you know, outdoor dining is added to an establishment, that's a site plan or view hearing and a butters are noticed. If it's permitted as site plan or view and the outdoor dining stays and then the restaurant changes hands, there's already a land use permit on there with conditions. And so, right, the butters won't be noticed. That doesn't change. That's what happens now. That's what would happen in the future in their proposed changes. So, you know. You've taken special permit and reduced it quite greatly. You've taken that away from the ZBA quite a bit. Well, so what we found is that the ZBA approves almost all the permits. So there's really no discretion being used, right? And so if they're not denying them and they're standardizing their conditions, right? We've just taken that and applied it in the use chart. And now it can be site plan or view because we've found out what conditions can work. And so- I think we all agree on the conditions, the need for that. But now, does the ZBA have, do people come and talk? They have noticed to a butters, they have residents will know, you know there's gonna be a change in hours or, you know so I don't see what the problem is other than, I mean, I love the standards and conditions. I think that makes sense. But I don't love the idea that we have reducing public participation about our notice and the board's participation. Okay, I think that's clear. That's clear. And I think it'll be up to the rest of the board members whether they agree with you on that concern. Other board members, Bruce. I chatted with Janet about this quite a while back but perhaps I just wanna clear. I know that when we went through this last time, I think I said that having had some concerns largely because I probably didn't fully understand. And then Nate, particularly with your summary which was even more detailed than it was tonight. I think I concluded that I was satisfied with a lot of my concerns with single exception. And that was the 250 threshold number. And I asked you whether that come from and you gave a full answer but included in the full answer was something about stuff sticking to walls and so forth. And I asked you whether you would provide some examples and you have. And so, and the examples were that as you read and it seems to me that most of the establishments that the thresholds, their occupancies are quite low. I mean, relative to 250, Johnny's was 175. I'm wondering whether Janet's concerns, although actually I'll break here. I just wanna ask a clarifying question for a moment. I think I understand correctly that the public notifications, hearings, about us notice and so forth is still applies when there is a site plan review hearing. So all of those SPRs are going to involve about us receiving notices and there will be a public hearing and people can ask questions. Is that correct? Nate? That's true. So I guess what Janet is saying that is, once a site plan review is already approved, there can be an administrative approval if there are no changes to the exterior or something, if there's a new establishment comes in. Okay. And so I think that's the concern is that, but that administrative approval happens now. But yes, a site plan review does require a hearing and a butter notices and... Okay, that helps me to understand Janet's concern a little more, but continue with my concern, I guess still is that the 250 numbers seems pretty high and that would seem that Janet's concerns are at least my, to the extent that I share Janet's concerns, it would be ameliorated by lowering that threshold. And so a question then, my question is, is there any structural problem, any administrative problem, any kind of problem that would be in just taking that down to, I don't know, 175, for example, in other words, because I'm thinking about the rather large commercial area in North Amherst. I mean, these posse little spot, almost essentially spot zone limited business and business, neighborhood businesses and so forth that are around, one thing they are kind of in the neighborhoods, but they're quite small, but up in North Amherst, we have quite a large area of, well, village center business and then even larger section of commercial. And whereas I can see something like Johnny's arriving under the process that you're describing, but anything much bigger than that might be something that I'd be concerned about. So on the basis of what you've presented and the data, so far as the examples of existing enterprises and their occupancies, I would, I guess it feels like I would be more comfortable if the threshold number was lowered, but let's simply reduce it as a question. Is there any problem? Does it make it difficult in any way if that threshold was lowered from 250 to, let's say 200 or 175? I think 175 is getting low enough where some things that may be currently site plan review and then might have to all of a sudden be special permit. So, Johnny's is an example. I think 200 is a safer number where existing establishments wouldn't all of a sudden become non-compliant or have to become a special permit just because of their occupancy, even though they're permitted through site plan review. Rob may know better, but I think, the lower you go, the more complicated it could get depending on size. So I think maybe 200 would be a better number. It just seems to me that most of these buildings are well below that. And I mean, all of the others are below 100. Why don't we see, Rob's got his hand up. Rob, would you like to say something? I just wanted to mention that the occupant load also includes staff. So just to have that in mind that when you get up to the 175 to 200 or 200 plus, it's not uncommon for a busy night to have 30 staff as part of that count. So I just want to make sure you're aware of that. And it was thought to be a comfortable number at 250 from our experience. It was what we had recommended to Nate in the planning department. I don't think we have any establishment at 250 other than the hangar. The closest is the monkey bar at 240 and then it starts to drop at 225 for the ginger garden. And then most of the other establishments are at that 180, 190. And that's what we're really seeing with the newer establishments that are coming forward such as protocol and the oyster bar. Those are just under 200 for an occupant load. So I just wanted to let you know that it also includes the staffing that would be on site during the time of operation. Thank you, Rob. And it's my understanding that the occupant load is not the actual number of seats. It's the code calculated occupancy based on the area of the serving area. That's right. And it's actually includes in most of these establishments now a standing area only. So there's bar seating and then there's standing area behind the bar that calculates for footage that allows a certain number of occupants to be there in that area. So an establishment such as protocol that's proposing 170 occupants might only have 80 or 90 seats at tables. The rest of it could be standing and bar seating. Okay, thank you. Tom, you've got your hand up. You're next. Sure, thanks Doug. I mean, I said a quick comment in that I feel like I've been on this committee for quite some time and every time a new project comes up it's all about how do we create more commercial space? And all of a sudden I feel like now we're trying to restrict that space, like how it's used. And as Rob said, the scale of the space isn't just the numbers of people it's actually related to the square footage and how many people can actually fit into those spaces. And so I think making more requirements and more challenge for people to open those businesses or manage those businesses is usually problematic given the climate that we've been asking for for so many years. How do we create more and more commercial space? Let's not try to restrict what's available let's actually try to capitalize on the opportunities and streamline it to the best of our ability which I think is what Nate's trying to accomplish through this particular document. So I mean, I support it and I have a sense that it has a trickle down effect of, let's make sure that we can streamline commercial businesses downtown as much as possible as opposed to putting roadblocks up in front of them based on their square footage and based on the number of occupants. So you're generally, you're obviously supportive. Correct. Okay. Bruce, you're next. I just want to comment in relation to what Rob just said that yes, I guess in the clinical sense we can be cognizant of those occupancies including staff and standing and so forth but what for me is more significant, more useful is simply the establishments that Nate presented and Rob you added to as being examples of establishments that have occupancies of 175, 180, 190 and because I can relate to that and I'm somewhat familiar with codes related occupancies of course because I spent 50 years in the business but even notwithstanding that it's much easier for me in considering this to say well, do I want something bigger than Johnny's to be exempt from or would I prefer something larger than Johnny's to go through a special permit process and I think the answer is that I would. It doesn't seem to be particularly onerous because there are so few that will reach that threshold and when you get into places, as I've mentioned that seems to be quite reasonable that those few establishments that are larger than that would be enterprises that I think would expect to have this more this kind of approval process. So it doesn't seem to be something that would get in the way or it would add to the town's reputation or effect the town's reputation so far as business friendliness is concerned because it'll be a small fraction of the proposed new or any proposed new establishments that would be affected by that. So it's thinking about the kind of establishments that have that occupancy threshold around 200 below and above that I'll be thinking about in relation to how I feel about this. In all other respects, as I say, I think this is excellent. I think it's really important that this experience has been codified recent experience and that the board and the town and the staff of taking this initiative, which I support in every respect with I may be persuaded in the course of subsequent conversation tonight to shift from that proposal to lower the threshold to 200, but right now that's where I stand. Thank you, Bruce. Nate, what do you want from us tonight? Do you want us to vote on a recommendation to town council or are you simply looking for our feedback or are you looking for our feedback? Well, it's been referred to you. So I mean, if you're comfortable, then it would be a recommendation. You know, unless you need more information or have, you know, lingering questions, you have looked at it before. There were some minor changes made. So it's really, I guess, you know, how comfortable the planning board is with the proposal. Okay. Thank you, Janet. So I'm actually supportive of, you know, many of these changes and I didn't, you know, I could go through those. I'm a little confused about the changes in the BN, because I think those are significant where prohibited uses are now being allowed. And that wasn't really brought out, but I do think like, I don't think anybody can look at Amherst and say, wow, we don't have many restaurants or mirrors. And so I don't, I'm not saying let's throw roadblocks in the city, I don't think the ZBA is a roadblock to opening Johnny's or admission cantina. I think it's just, if it's a larger establishment, if it's open after 1130, if it's close to residents where people sleep. And I'm, you know, I live in South Amherst, so I'm thinking about, you know, people who live around Atkins Corner, people who live around Pomeroy, you know, which has a lot of low income housing. And then maybe down by whatever East Amherst, like College Street and Southeast Street, which it will has a lot of low income housing people living there and more. And if a Johnny's came in and had outdoor dining past 1130 or outdoor music, you know, and it came in there site plan review, using an existing building, say maybe spirit house or something that goes on site plan review goes to the building commissioner, but I don't think we want to go there. I don't think going to the ZBA and noticing the butters, inviting the community to come in and talk about their concerns, having the ZBA listen and draft conditions. If we're going through the building commissioner, nobody would know the pit, the permit was applied for that. He was considering it for her in the future. And when he made a decision or when it could be appealed. And so you could wake up in the spirit house is now a Johnny's, you know, and open after 1130 at night. People stumbling out, not, you know, not Johnny's, but, you know, going down to students to live around there too. And so I don't know, I don't see the problem with the current situation. I think the current distinction based on proximity, drinking, time of night, it ends, you know, whatever. They all made sense and they work. I don't see the problems that we're having right now. Okay. Thank you. Rob. So, and I just want to respond to that because I, I think it all makes sense as you presented, but what really happens is, and I can name off the establishments that have done this is they come to me and they asked for a permit as a class one establishment. Because they know it's three months of preparation for a special permit hearing and then three months of the special permit hearing process before they have their decision. So they open and operate as a class one restaurant. And then some number of months later, they get the authorization to stay open from 1130 to one. Otherwise, nothing has changed. The establishments there. It's open. And really no one would know that anything else has happened. And we don't get any participation from the public in those hearings. That's just my experience that I can, you know, talk about over the last 10 years. I think. Quickly too, that if the spirit house were to. Change the use and there's outdoor dining now and there's something that would require a site and review hearing. That just wouldn't be an administrative approval. So if they're going. To have significant changes. Then that's, you know, that's a, that's an initial site plan review hearing. After the fact. If there's a site plan review on record and that restaurant then changes. And nothing changes, right? The owner of the restaurant. That goes from one type of restaurant to another than that's an administrative approval. But the initial change from spirit house to a restaurant. May require a site plan review if it has all those changes that Janet mentioned. So outdoor dining or, you know, later hours or something that is. Triggering, you know, a change to the appearance. Thank you, Nate. Karen. Yeah, I'm, I'm very supportive of this. I think that the fears that we're kind of losing control and that all of a sudden something comes up. That's going to be loud music and disturb the people around them. I think there are. I don't think that can happen without some. Mitigating controls under what is proposed. It just seems. That's, there's always going to be that site plan review. That means that the butters are notified as far as I'm concerned. So the difficulty of protecting the public from. These large noisy things that I'm familiar with, because they live in the middle of town. And there are a lot of times when students are very loud. But I think that the staff has really done a good study of what in reality is happening and how to make it simpler. And I think there is progress. And as, as Nate said, that's the experience of what actually happens. So if the reality is that this is the way it works, I think that the staff has really done a good study of what in reality is that this is the way it works. And it works fine. And they've put all this work in it. I can support it. Okay. Thank you, Karen. I do see one hand from the public. So I thought I would go to them now since there are no other. Board hands. Oh, and now there's two hands. So Pam. Pam, let's bring Pam Rooney over. Pam, if you'd give us your name and your address. You have up to three minutes. Wonderful. Pam Rooney. 42 cottage street. I do have some concerns with this. As I understand it, the current bylaws do take a look at hours of operation. The serving of alcohol proximity to residential buildings. And size of this of the building and its capacity. A very short story. Pizza place. 400, 300 feet from my windows. Applied several times to extend their. Their hours of operation past 1130. We have. We have people talking loudly. We have people going in and out at that hour. If, if in this scenario. The owner would be able to go to get administrative review. And say, under. Under this new bylaw. I can now operate. At will until I don't know what, what actually closes down a shop. But until bars close. So the loud noise, the loud. Talking would continue until. Hours of operation ceased. So in this proposal, even though generally speaking. There may not be very many issues. Generally speaking. The, the hours of operation are, are critical to adjoining neighborhoods. The serving of alcohol has not been addressed really. But it has not been addressed. It has not been addressed. And proximity to, to the residential areas. So if, if in any consideration that you're making of this, I would agree with Mr. Coldham that the threshold for size of a building. Or capacity, excuse me. Should be more around the 150. He's, he mentioned 175. Not the 250. Because that would be all zones. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. BG frankly, it doesn't matter. But outside of that, every single beat other BL or calm district. Is immediately adjacent to a residential district. So you need to consider that. I would, I would agree with it. Allowing administrative approval or staff approval for businesses in the BG. Within existing buildings. No change to site or structure. So I would agree with that. I would agree with that. The D. She said. And that you need to consider the condition H. And have a noise impact statement. I think that was addressed in this very last. Version with some blue tight that says maybe there would be some. You know, screening or something to help ameliorate. Noise impact. But I think, I think you really need to look at that again. Add to standard condition. Number five, your management plan. Service of alcohol has not been, man. in your management plan, are you serving alcohol or not? If you're trying to lump out all restaurants and most bars into one category, how do you regulate the hours of operation? How do you operate proximity to neighbors? You don't, you've lost that capability. I'm very sorry. I may raise my hand again for my next comment. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Our second member of the public who wishes to make a comment is Gordon Green. Pam, if you could bring him over and Mr. Green, if you could give us your name and your street address. Hi, my name is Gordon Green. I'm at 150 Montague Road. Thank you. You have three minutes. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the subtleties of zoning laws. So these comments might be kind of blunt or not very articulate, but I live right adjacent to North Square and noise is a problem, particularly outdoor amplified pre-recorded music. I think one thing that's distinctive about pre-recorded music is that it can go on for hours as opposed to being an event. And one thing I'd like to point out is that the extent to which noise can bother people can be independent of distance to some extent. For example, with North Squares, you have these tall buildings that basically act like a speaker funnel. So the noises that there are kind of not very loud actually are quite loud in my living room. So there's a way in which, and that's probably, I don't know, a few hundred feet away. And there's no outdoor dining there now, but they have like, or at least in prior years, this year there hasn't been much, but in prior years they had, for example, outdoor exercise classes that would go on in almost a weekend afternoons that would basically, you know, fill my living room with sounds of bass and drums. That was highly annoying. And so one question I have is the provision that said that entities not labeled or as bars can make sound outside. It was the last of the text changes there. I'm just personally very wary of anything that loosens any rules about outdoor sound, especially outdoor prerecorded music that isn't tied to like a special event because of its capacity to interfere with things in unpredictable ways. And also about the zoning board opportunity for review, I just wanted to express the point that, you know, the fact that 99% of cases didn't result in public comment or were approved by the ZBA doesn't mean that the 1% was not critical. So I would just want to point out that even though most cases review opportunities may not be important, the question is the cost of the ones you're eliminating. If that 1% would have ruined several people's home value or quality of life, that's a very significant thing, even though it is a rare occurrence. So I just wanted to sort of generally support Janet McGowan's concerns. And as, you know, they're especially heightened for me being close to North Square. And I think that's all I had to say. Okay, thank you. Nate or Rob, I wondered if you wanted to respond to any of that, either of those comments, particularly how you might, you know, handle an application administratively that is in the vicinity of a residential area and whether, you know, whether you might just shy away from doing it administratively and automatically move it to the planning board or not. Rob. So I would say in recent years, we apply criteria in a similar way, no matter where the location is. I've gotten more complaints downtown than I do in the Village Centers. And there are several businesses, several restaurants that are within 150 feet of a residential dwelling in a residential district. But I, you know, we've brought back businesses downtown and amended special permits to help, you know, alleviate the impact of, and we feel that for every application, you know, originated back when we were looking at it just for resident, close to residential uses, but really apply everywhere now. You know, we have a lot of residential dwellings downtown and yes, it's expected that it's gonna be a little bit noisier downtown when you go to live there, but it can still be managed well and the owner of the building or the business can take responsibility for certain things. And then the other thing I want to mention is North Square went through about seven months of public hearings and every proposal that goes into that complex now does require a hearing, you know, with the exception of what's been done under Article 14 when that expires, the comprehensive permit requires that every new use either visit the planning board or the zoning board of appeals before that can be authorized. And that'll remain in effect regardless of this, whether this new proposal for the bylaw changes or not. Right, that's a, it's a specific condition of the comprehensive permit. And just along those lines, any existing special permit that exists now will remain. That doesn't just automatically disappear by adopting this bylaw. So establishments that have special permits that have specific conditions will continue to be in effect. Okay, thank you. Looks like Pam Rooney would like to continue her comment. So, Pam, would you bring her back over? Hi, Pam. Hi, thank you. I actually did that accidentally. So. You told us you had more you wanted to say. I have more. And I'd like to actually email to Pam the, my notes, but I guess part of what was going through my head when I looked at this is that the current bylaw does look at categories of operational and locational factors. And each of those has some associated level of control or management. So it's the hours of operations, serving of alcohol, proximity to residential dwellings and the size. And I guess part of what you all are looking at and evaluating is I totally trust that Rob Mora and his staff are doing a really good job reviewing these conditions. Do we know when Rob retires, if the person doing it next will have the same level of scrutiny and follow the same standard and conditions? So I had several questions that were similar to Janet McGowan's and that is this change actually necessary to improve the viability of existing businesses? And do removing those operational and locational considerations make it easier to issue a permit? And is this proposed change actually going to improve the quality of life in the adjoining districts who abut business neighborhood, business village center, business low, limited business or commercial? And I think that's the biggest question is are these changes going to impact the neighbors of the business districts outside of downtown? Thank you. Okay, thank you Pam. So let's see, I don't see any more public hands. I see Janet's hand, but I think Janet, why don't you go ahead and make your comment and then I think I'm ready to make a motion. So my question is about how the system works now. Like I haven't, I've been on the planning board for three years, I've never seen a special permit, a site plan review permit application for a restaurant, partly cause COVID's been around, but my suspicion is that most of those just go to the building commissioner because there's no real change to the outside of the building when they have a new establishment. So if somebody did apply for site plan review, it was coming to the planning board or a special permit for a restaurant, bar restaurant, whatever, a class, so they would file their application, there'd be a public notice, we'd have one or two hearings, make a decision. That's a six month process for the ZBA. I mean, has that been a six month process for the planning board? Is that your question? That's my first question. I have a question about the business neighborhood cause about the expansion of it. Rob, what's the typical process, the duration? I think you'll find that it is about six months. And when an applicant shows up at the town hall and says, I wanna open a restaurant, that's when they start to learn what's necessary to satisfy all the special permit submission requirements. And site plan review isn't much different. Chris might have a comment on the length of time because I don't work with those that closely. But I do with the zoning board of appeals applications and they often take a number of months to get the applications together. For example, they find out when they come into town and they wanna open a restaurant, that's when the applicant finds out that they need architects plans or a site plan or a lighting study or whatever it might be and a written management plan. And they work on that for whatever length of time is necessary for the application to be deemed complete. And then it's clocked in and starts the process. And as you know, the board's not available for a hearing for six, seven, eight weeks. And there's one or two hearings and then there's an appeal period. So it just goes on and on. And back to an earlier comment about special permitting just in general, I do get calls. I get calls from prospective business owners and asking specifically what is the process to open a restaurant? And I've had prospective applicants disappear. Once they hear it's a special permit, you can go to Northampton and it's a yes, it's not even a site plan review. It's a yes, come open your restaurant here. We're telling them it's a special permit. Now, I think our special permits are very, we support them. We help applicants get through the process. We try to make their projects appear very well to the board and be ready for the board to review. But applicants don't have that experience in other communities and they see special permit, hear special permit and they go the other way. And I think we do lose businesses because of that. And it's really difficult to justify the timeframe that's needed for some of these smaller establishments. And all of that is part of supporting why we're proposing this. So Rob, you- Thank you, Rob. What's your second question, Janet? Well, I was wondering what Rob requires, like do you require all that preliminary stuff too? And my second question is, I'm just really perplexed about the BM because it seems like you've added like, you can have a, now you can have a bar with no food in the BM. Now you can have a nightclub in the BM before that was all, all the things that were no's are now in the BM. And yet there's still this like nine o'clock limit on alcohol and 30 seat capacity. And I just seemed to me that the language didn't make sense. So it seems like you're expanding what can happen in the BM. And then no one can drink after a nine. And so I just, I just found that confusing. Like why are you expanding it? And then what happens at nine? All right, thank you, Janet. Nate, do you want to take that one or is that Rob? You know, currently it's, what we're proposing is, you know, except for a restaurant, you know, bar with food or similar establishments, that site will review the rest of the special permit. But then we have the condition that it has to have no more than 30 seats. So, you know, those are the limiting conditions. So yeah, if a bar wants to have 29 seats and close at 930, it's allowed in the BM. I mean, those conditions regulate it. And it says it can't be within a certain distance of a residential building and a residential district. So, you know, the BM really is six properties. And if you take that distance requirement, there's about, you know, two properties where there could be a food or drink establishment actually located in the BM. And so we're not opening the BM up to, you know, a nightclub, those, that condition in terms of our seating and distance greatly limit what can happen in the BM district. All right, thank you, Nate. All right, in the interest of moving this along, I'm going to make, I would like to move that the board recommend to town council the proposal as proposed by Nate. Anybody would like to second that? Then we can move on to whether anybody wants to make any motions to change any parts of it before we vote on them. Tom. I second that motion. All right, thank you, Tom. Any discussion from the board? We've heard certain members advocate for adjustments to some of the conditions, some of the parts of the proposal. Bruce, you are muted. I would you accept a friendly amendment to add with the condition, with the understanding that the 250 threshold is lowered to 200. I'm going to reject it as a friendly amendment. So let's do it as a regular amendment. So would somebody like to second that motion? Karen. I second. To reduce from 250 to 200, I believe. Yes. Okay, thank you. Any discussion from the board? All right, so we'll go through and we'll vote on Bruce's amendment, reducing the occupancy limit beyond which I believe a special permit is always required. So a vote in favor of that. Okay, Janet, you have a comment? You are muted. Are we voting to recommend that the town council take this and send it back to us? Well, the way the process works is that amendments go to town council and then they move it to us for a public hearing on final adoption. So Chris, you can correct me, but I believe the answer is it will come back to us. No? No. This has been referred to the planning board for a public hearing. Okay. And planning board now makes a recommendation to town council and it won't come back unless town council sends it back. Okay, thank you. Really, I thought that you were going to, the planning department was going to send that to town council, and then it would come back to us for, this is the public hearing on the amendment, on the zoning amendments. I don't think we said that last meeting. Okay, I just don't think they're, okay, I just don't think it's ready. Okay, but I supplies. Okay. Well, thanks for that clarification, Chris. All right, let's see, where were we? We were voting, we were discussing whether to amend Nate's proposal by reducing the 250 to 200. And so we were going to vote on that particular question first. So, board members, I'll go through a roll call. Bruce, would you like to support that? Yes, aye. All right. Tom. Andrew. Thanks. That was a nay. Correct. I can't hear people. Were those no's? Yeah, mine was a no, I'm sorry, mine was a no. Or nay, yes. Janet. So this is just to support reducing the number but not to particularly support the whole thing. I'm a yay. Okay. You're, okay, yes. I'm not voting on the whole thing though. Okay, I don't think it's ready. Okay. Karen. Yes. All right. And I'm a nay. So that's three opposed and three in favor. Chris, am I correct that the motion fails or does it carry? I think the motion fails because it doesn't have a majority. Okay. All right. So why don't we move on to the overall motion unless anybody wants to make any other motions for changing this before we have the vote. Well, I do see Pam Rooney's hand and I guess I'll, Pam, Setfield Sadler, can you bring her over for a moment? Hi, Pam, you should be- Why don't you try to say what you need to say in one minute? I'll say it succinctly. I didn't speak at all to article five, article 11 or article 12. In article 12, there is no nightclub definition. Can you please add one? Article one, 11.212, a change of use is proposed. Yet the proposed changes to section 3.5.2 could mean that any restaurant could change to a bar without any restrictions of hours of operation or proximity to residents. So please request that that clause be removed since having only admin review and approval. A change of use is an important change that needs to be considered outside of administrative permitting only. Article five, please keep as a principal food and drink purpose not wide open to any and all section 3.3 uses from the table. Same goes with music. If it's under site plan review that no longer requires operational or locational restrictions. And that went to the speaker that lives on Montague Road. That means that all restaurants and many bars that can allow outdoor music will be able to do so with only administrative review. I don't think that's appropriate. Thank you. And I'd love some discussion on the points that I brought up earlier as to how you might incorporate those into the bylaw. Thank you, Pam. Janet. Probably cause I'm startled that we're recommending this for town council and I didn't think that's where we were but I would like to move that we send this to the dormant zoning subcommittee for some more analysis and fine tooth combing. I don't think it's ready to go. It's just, there's, let, you know, wording problems, some confusion, but also there's, you know, a fundamental some fundamental issues. I don't think we've really sessed out. So I'd like to make a motion to refer to the subcommittee, the zoning subcommittee which has been on hiatus for two years. Well, since we have a preexisting motion why don't we vote on that? And, you know, if the motion fails then we can talk about what to do with it next. Anybody else have any comment? Otherwise we'll vote Karen. Yeah, so a lot of the comments of Pam, Pam Rooney, I take very seriously and I do agree with her. So I wonder can Rob Mora address those particular concerns before we have to vote? Well, we can ask him. Rob, I don't know if you caught all of the specific comments that Pam made. Were there any that you would like to comment on? Yeah, I mean, I guess I take those as suggestions or recommendations to do something different than we proposed and I think that's fine. You know, obviously as Nate mentioned, we are trying to take this in a different direction than the current bylaw reads. We're trying to deal with avoiding situations where there's gaming of the bylaw by applying under one condition and transferring to another one. But specifically to a couple of Pam's comments, change of use, there's a lot of change of uses that occur that are not restaurants. So I would not be in favor of changing that provision. We use the change of use for any establishment that might have been previously something else, retail office space and move it into something else, not necessarily a restaurant. So I don't think I have a comment about much of the other suggestions at this time. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And Nate, I don't see your hand. So I assume you are not have nothing to say at this point either. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, Pam had mentioned having, you know, like a noise management plan in the standards and conditions. And, you know, looking at what we have and there we have, you know, you know, that shall operate in accordance with an, you know, an approved list, you know, eight things and one is a patron management plan for the interior and exterior. And we say such things as queuing and we could just put parenthetically noise. We also then mentioned that the management plan has to deal with noise attenuation, containment and response to complaints as well as strategies to screen and buffer adjacent properties from noise and other impacts. And so, I mean, I feel like it's there. It's just a matter of how much do you want to tweak the language? You know, she didn't mention that staff may do a good job now or not in the future. And so, you know, we ask for hours of operation. Is it that we, you know, again, add some language to say, if open after 1130, you know, add extra, you know, management for, you know, closing or something. And so, you know, I'm not sure we would necessarily then change the restaurant cafe or anything to, from site point of view to a special permit, but we could have acknowledgement in the management form or what's submitted, have something written that then becomes a condition we could put on the establishment. And so that's what we've been finding works really well. So even with Article 14, you know, there's a written decision, there's conditions. And what we found in the last 20 years with the zoning board is that we've standardized, you know, like 50 sets, 50 conditions that we've kind of been able to address management, whether it's noise, it's queuing, it's closing, and then we can deal with it because it's a condition and it's enforceable. And so, you know, what we're asking for now and the standards and conditions in the proposed use chart get us there. It gets us to a set of conditions that can be enforced. And so, you know, if we need to strengthen some language in that, you know, in those A through H standards and conditions, we could do that. I'm not sure it would, you know, staff would have to consider, does that mean you would make something, a site, a special permit where we're recommending a site plan review right now? I think we would just include better language in the, you know, in those conditions. Okay. So as I understand it, you're gonna get a rec, if you get a recommendation from us this evening, you still have the latitude to adjust the language before it gets to town council. We're not recommending a final set of proposals. Chris? I think you need to recommend a final set of proposals. And if you're not happy with what is being presented to you, you can continue the public hearing and have Nate come back with changes to the conditions that may satisfy some of your concerns. Okay. Thank you. So board members, based on the comments we've received and the comments that you all have made, are there other proposals to change anything or does anyone want to call the question? Andrew? Thanks Doug. I was just wondering if Nate made those changes, so if Nate made the changes, when would we be able to see this again? I mean, I see there's a lot of passion around some minor changes. I'm personally comfortable with the motion as is, the proposal as is, but if this is something where two weeks of revisions can, you know, swage other spheres, then I'm comfortable with waiting that time. I just would not feel good if this has to get pushed back another two or three or four months. Thank you, Andrew. Chris, is your hand up as a legacy? No, I wanted to say that you could bring it back on the 16th of November, if you wanted to. Okay. So that would be our next meeting. All right, Janet? I do have changes, but I didn't, I mean, I have changes I'd like to make, but I'm not prepared at this minute to do that. And, you know, so I would love to be able to talk maybe to staff about them and stuff like that. Perhaps the zoning subcommittee, but I don't, I would do like specific changes in language. I wasn't prepared. I didn't think we were at that point. Sorry. Okay. All right. So I'm not seeing any more hands from the board. Pam failed Sadler. Why don't you bring Gordon Green over from the public? Oh, just a quick comment. It seems to me with these zoning changes and zoning exceptions, that there are often unintended consequences and that caution is in order. And it just seems to me that given the extent of the possible effects on residents' lives that you consider it carefully. And if it takes a little more time to do it, that, I don't know, that all sounds reasonable to me. I just wanted to throw that in there. Okay. Thank you. All right. So why don't we close out the process we're in the middle of? I don't see any hands from the board or the attendees. And so why don't we go ahead and vote on the original motion, which was to recommend this package as proposed by Nate to town council. So a no vote will allow us to talk about moving this to a later meeting and having later chain, you know, emailing Nate or Chris with more suggested edits and Nate can bring another version to the next meeting. Okay. So a yes vote is in favor of recommending tonight and moving on. And a no vote is in favor of not recommending tonight and therefore we're likely to see it again. All right. So Bruce. Doug, would you let me pass for the moment and vote at the end? Sure. Okay. Thank you. Tom. I'm sorry. I had to step up for a moment. Are we voting? Yes. So a yes vote is in favor of adopt or recommending this evening and a no vote is to not recommend this evening in which case we'll probably have a chance to talk more. I vote to recommend this evening. Okay. Thank you. Andrew. With the belief that this would be, you know, our next meeting and that would give time for Janet share her thoughts on paper. I'll say nay. Okay. And Janet. Nay also the same idea. All right. And Karen. Nay, I agree. Okay. And I am an eye in favor of voting the seat of recommending this package and Bruce, that leaves you. Well, I'll take nay. I wanted to register that I supported this, but if there was a, if there was going to be a fourth to vote, I was going to be a nay, but I'll continue to be a nay. Okay. So the motion fails and Chris, I guess we'll have to put this on the agenda for November 16th. So you'll have to take a vote to continue the public hearing November 16th. And Janet, I urge you to communicate with Chris with any suggestions you are interested in Nate considering for when he brings this back in two weeks. Thank you. Okay. So would anybody like to make a motion to continue the hearing? Bruce. So moved. So we're to the continue the hearing to, and we need a time, Chris. Yes. I don't think we have anything established for the 16th. Am I right, Pam? That is correct. At this time, there is nothing that has a time. We could say 635 on the 16th. Okay. Bruce, that. Yes. That sounds good. Okay. Andrew. Second. All right. And Karen, your hand is up. No, I was getting sorry. Okay. Thank you. Any discussion about continuing to the 16th? I don't see any. So we'll go ahead and vote on that. Bruce. Yes. And Tom. No. Andrew. Hi. And Janet. Hi. And Karen. Hi. And I'm an I since I want to get this back on the agenda and finished up. All right. So that passed five to one. This hearing is clear, is continued to November 16th sometime after 635. All right. So at this time, it's quarter of nine and actually 844. We'll take a five minute break. Please come back at 10 minutes before nine, turn off your video and mute your microphone. Thank you. So what is this about the voting thing? Oh, it's really in restaurants. Karen, you are not muted. Oh, sorry. All right. The time is 850. So if you are within earshot, please come on back and turn on your camera to let us know that you are ready to reengage. Chris, you have your hand up. I don't know if you're ready to say something or if that's a legacy. Yeah, I'm ready to say something. This next piece of your agenda is an important piece and you received documents last week and you received draft conditions and findings, but this week we received more documents within the last 48 hours. And so I think it would be reasonable for you to have a presentation and discuss the project and figure out what you need to have moving forward in order to be able to vote on this, but not necessarily to feel like you have to vote tonight because there were things that came in even within the last day on the project that you haven't had a chance to review. So my recommendation would be hear the presentation, discuss it, but then continue the public hearing to a date in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Oh, one more thing. Pam, I wonder if you could bring Kyle Wilson in. I think he's in the attendees. Are we, have we all returned from break? No, well, we're not all back quite yet. It looks like we're missing Bruce. Okay, so Kyle has joined us. Thank you. There's Bruce. Okay. All right. All right, so we'll continue here. The time is now 8.52, and we'll move on to item five on our agenda, a site plan review and special permit public hearing. Let's see. Okay. In accordance with the provisions of mass general law, chapter 40A, this joint public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and it's being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding SPR 2023-01 and SPP 2023-01 archipelago investments, LLC 47 Olympia Drive. This hearing is continued from August 3rd, September 7th, September 21st and October 19th, all of this year. Joint public hearing to request site plan review and approval under section 3.326 of the Zoning By-law to construct a private apartment style dormitory with 68 dwelling units and associated interior and exterior spaces and associated site improvements, including waiver of onsite parking requirements and a special permit to modify maximum building coverage and height requirements under section six, table three, footnote A of the Zoning By-law, map D parcel 18 in the RF zoning district. And I know there've been a little bit of publicity or press coverage of this or letters to the editor in which there might have been some confusion, but the RF zoning district is zoned for fraternities and sororities. So student housing is essentially what is allowed in this area. So Mr. Wilson, I believe you're here to make a presentation on the latest plans for this project. If you'll go ahead, welcome. I am, thank you. Thanks for everybody time. And I agree with what Chris Breastrup said earlier to open this that since we last saw you, we've been before the conservation commission on the 14th of September, the 28th of September, the 12th of October and the 26th of October. So our last meeting was just last week. And I will very quickly go through, if I can share a screen, can I do that Pam? You should be able to. You can't? Okay. There it is. You got it? Got it. Okay, perfect. Can you see me there? Yep. Yes. Okay. So I'll show you what we presented to conservation commission through the number of meetings. This is the landscape plan that went to the conservation commission. There's kind of two sides to this landscape plan facing the street and then facing the conservation area to the east. East. This is the plan that conservation has settled on. This is in coordination with the civil plan that SVE spent a lot of time on, which I'll show here. The civil plan, a number of revisions to the civil plan that show the new wetland bylaw regulations, which came in in June in terms of setbacks, show the stormwater, show grading in terms of how the stormwater is dealt with going to the east and to the wetland and to the west and to the street and the infrastructure. Test bits were dug, infiltration was measured, the retainant and underground structures were moved around and worked to everybody's agreement. And have got us to a point where conservation is just as an email that went from Aaron Jocks to Chris Brestrup said is at the final stages of approving the project. And Chris can clarify that if I misspoke in any way. The updated architectural drawings show a couple of items. One is bicycle parking on the north. It also shows in subsequent plans, the other change to this, which is a manager's apartment, which we've integrated onto the ground floor, similar to 57 Olympia to the north and was one of the concerns from previously. And then we've also all the upper four plans have stayed the same. The connector with the amenities have stayed the same. The roof has stayed the same. The height and elevations have all remained the same. We kept the pink height on there to have clarity in terms of what was being measured off of what. We did remove the access to the back. So as you'll see here, there used to be stairs down to an area that has become a viewing deck only rather than accessible to the back as we worked with stormwater and made the pertainage work on the east side of the site. And I'm sorry, I'll show you that on the floor plan as well. So you can see this covered porch here. Previously there were stairs down and there were some, the resolution of grading and so on was difficult to resolve. So that's become a dead end and a covered porch and a viewing porch, which you'll see in the elevations. We've updated the renderings also to show, to integrate with the landscape plan, which I can talk through you in terms of how we address the street, how we address the courtyard. You'll see there's very large landscape elements, stone elements similar to our 11 East Pleasant Project downtown that will create the space within the landscape and work with the scale of the building and the scale of the people in the courtyard. So you'll see these larger elements, a singular tree, their stormwater underneath portions of that. This area has shade-loving plants, it has a lot of flowering plants. So it's kind of a cultivated garden. The site that you see through the back is more of the native garden and all the native plants that fade to the wetland on the East, as you can see here. So a different plant pallet on the East with a pollinator seed mix and native plants. And as you can see this, the stairs have gone away and this is now a viewing deck out the back. The materials have all stayed the same. We also, let's see, we've got a, we updated the management plan to include the manager's apartment. We have, stormwater has updated the stormwater management and maintenance plan which has been sent to Jason Skeels and town engineer and he's gotten back and forwarded to Chris and I believe is in your packet. I did take a picture recently that I wanted to show you, I forwarded to Chris. This is nine something on an evening or a morning couple of weeks ago. That's the PBTI bus loop. In this case, it's route 35. There's route 34, 35 and 36 and I'll stop at this bus stop. And this is 57 Olympia, 47 Olympia is right behind. This is how most people occupy and move them around the site. I did want to show you utilities. This is from the town's GIS because that has come up. And in talking with Jason Skeels and talking with Tony Merulis and Shankon from the UMass, I have a better understanding of how the utility history went and how the town took title to Olympia Drive. There are some easements relative to water and sewer around authority way. And then how, as owners of 57 Olympia and 47, the deed of rights that we have for these other parcels and the access to the utilities makes this a fairly straightforward connection onto Mather and then down to Olympia for water and sewer. This is route 35, which is the southbound loop, campus shuttle, there's a northbound loop. As you can see for Olympia Drive here, the bus comes very frequently right past the site. And then we do have a parking exhibit in terms of pickup and drop-off and working with the existing parking on site. These are the spaces that were used by Ky Omega in the past. These are spaces that are currently used for handicap and visitor parking for the Mather building. This is the proposed renovation of that to allow for handicapped spaces, additional handicapped spaces along the street and some additional visitor spaces, make the grading work, make the sidewalk work and work within the utilities that are under Mather. And I believe that's it. I wanted to be able to get to questions as soon as I could. Thank you, Kyle. One quick question about the last civil drawing you just showed about the parking exhibit, I think. Is that kind of work? You've been in contact with UMass about getting their agreement for you to do work on that land? Yes, did have a conversation. They, we talked about our deeded rights to all of these areas. We talked about the history of utilities in the town that connect through Olympia, the need to connect our utility to upgrade the existing utilities in Mather and our ability to do so, talking with UMass about how we can manage that in terms of doing work on state land, our current contractor, Western Builders, who is gonna build this building, is currently doing a lab on UMass campus. So very well versed in how to make that happen in the appropriate manner. Okay. And I wondered whether you've showed one of your larger site plans of the whole Olympia Drive area. Whether you could show that or if you also, or if you in fact have the original subdivision plan that shows the five sites which are to be retained for parking. So that the board understands which parts of the subdivision you have rights to park in. Sure. So this is the 1971 map, the original subdivision map. This is the IOTA chapter of Sigma, Sigma, Sigma is 57 Olympia. The IOTA beta chapter of Chi Omega is 47 Olympia before you. Zeta, Zeta, Zeta was the UMass building that was built. These two parcels up here, Lambda, Delta Phi and Alpha Gamma Rho were purchased but never built upon. The deeded, the rights for parking and recreation are five. It's the one north of 57 Olympia here. It's the one in the center. This is fraternity sorority. It's this ear shaped parcel. It's this ear shaped parcel that's four and it's this long parcel that's five. And those are the spaces that any of the owners within this subdivision have deeded rights to. Thank you. Thank you. All right, board members, questions for Kyle? Oh, we don't want you to leave the meeting. I didn't, I was, I was. I was. Andrew. Thanks Doug and thanks Kyle. I guess I may be confusing because you were seeking parking waivers, I believe, right? But residents can park in these lots by right? The deeded rights of any owner of one of these 12 parcels are such that their, the user, those, the folks who use that property can use those five parcels by right. Those parcels are all currently under the ownership in one of four different ways of the Commonwealth of Mass. This is what was set up and what we're utilizing for the parking north of us at 57 Olympia, which has gone very well. And the same thing that we're proposing for 47. Okay, so the, I was thinking that the parking to the northwest was like a UMass sticker parking line. Is that the case? And I guess in those stickered lots, how would a resident be able to access that? That is correct. So the history of the site is that as these sites became managed by the university, they received permits. And so anybody parking there needed to get a permit. And so anybody that's at 57 or 47 who wants to park there needs to get a permit from the university. Okay, and they could do that through your management office or they would have to go to the university for that. That's the university. Okay. Kyle, Kyle, are you only renting these rooms to UMass students or might an Amherst college or Hampshire college student end up in one of these and not be able to get a permit from UMass? We rent to matriculating students. The vast majority are the university of Massachusetts. There have been students from Amherst college, I think Mount Holyoke even. We have not had any, we have not had from the management standpoint had any issues with parking and don't expect to have any issues with parking at 47 Olympia. I think that the reason most people, one of the benefits of this housing is that there is a bus loop that stops every 10 minutes immediately outside of your door that is a campus loop that takes you right to the center of campus. It's almost unlike any other housing in town. All right, Bruce. Yes. I want to pursue this parking question a little further because we're being asked to grant a waiver on the one hand but Kyle, you're telling us that the project has parking entitlement. And I think I want before I can, maybe I should preface this by saying, I think this is a terrific project and I want to be supportive ultimately but the parking piece is just being wildly confusing to me. The idea that we're, I mean, on the surface, not on the surface, the one line summary is because it's the in the application that we're asking for a complete, you're asking and we're being asked to grant a complete parking waiver. And I think we need to make the record very clear about what this means. And I think what you're saying is that we are being asked to grant a waiver for parking on the site but we need to attach that I think to some formal understanding that parking entitlement or parking is provided. I'm not sure what the correct verb is here but the formal verbs is provided on one or more of the the deeded parcels that were, according to that deed from 1969 were quote to be retained and they were to be retained for recreation and parking. But it seems that in the course of time that recreation requirement or the aspiration for any recreation to be developed on those parcels has passed and that parking has taken full precedent and not only for the parcels concerned but for parcels all around for the whole of the university campus need. And so I guess we would want to, I would want to be sure that there was some guaranteed allotment of parking provided. Maybe yes, it's not on the site of course because there's no room on the site. Yes, it's on the other sites because historically that's the way this zone was created with consolidated parking on separate sites serving those that the ones that we're talking about. And but we perhaps understand that if the university decides to or if it's not controlled otherwise it'll sell all of the permits because we understand that at the moment there's a dearth of parking campus wide and that it's possible to imagine that students who were late to arrive here might find that even though there's parking entitlements there's none to, I mean I quite sure how you figure a parking entitlement that is sold out from under somebody. So I think I would want to understand that there were a fixed number of spaces that the university would hold or maybe that becomes a question. Can you reassure us that there are a fixed number or there will be a fixed number of spaces in these parcels that will be allocated and available to 47 Olympia Drive? I think I'll just make that a question and I've got a couple of follow-ups around that but can we understand that the waiver is granted because we understand that there is approximate parking available, guaranteed available upon purchase of a parking permit. Kyle, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I'll try to answer that. We've purchased a fraternity and sorority in this location. When we purchased the fraternity was housing 40 people now it houses 230 people same thing here. So we're trying to build as much of the much needed housing as we possibly can in the right location which is adjacent campus and immediately across the street from UMass managed parking which has a very unique history here. The fraternity and the sorority did not have onsite parking. So the entire history of the site is the residential portion and the parking and recreation portions are separate. We share those rights with the university which owns one of the buildings which has had used to be admissions, the Zeta Zeta Zeta and then it was the Mather building and now it is what it is. The university also owns the rest of those parses that are now you don't even see the road off of the other Olympia Drive here anymore it's just kind of paved over. So we could ask for a parking within the bylaw we could ask for a parking waiver anywhere and say that we're not gonna provide any parking we're just gonna provide much needed housing and we're relying on buses and we're relying on people not showing up with cars. What we're trying to hear is present a parking waiver because this obviously the history of this site is not black and white within the current bylaw in any way, shape or form. So when we got Olympia Place approved back in 2014 the town subsequently went back and re-zoned RF to make Olympia Place the example. Olympia Place its density, its size, its scale its occupancy of the site is the model for the future redevelopment of this parcel with the purchase of 47 we own the only two privately owned parcels that pay real estate taxes. So the building immediately north of us is the model the building immediately north of us has no parking on site it recognizes that it's adjacent to managed parking and immediately adjacent to a very active bus route. So that's what we're looking to continue to do in terms of a guarantee, I don't have a guarantee. We jointly own, we jointly have rights to five parcels that are six to 700 parking spaces combined. The way it's currently managed works very well with the university managing that as a yellow lot and a blue lot up near Mather. We don't intend to upset that apple cart we think that we'd like to continue with that. With the delivery of 57 Olympia we have not seen a parking issue in this area. We don't expect to see a parking issue with 47. I know that the university has dealt with parking in a unique way through COVID. I don't know what their, what this year of parking looks like. I don't know if Chris has reached out to him but that would be a question for the university. With university permits, it's first come first serve for anybody whether you're a student or a faculty or a staff. So if you have a car, you need to make sure that you and you want to permit, you can, you could pick a permit immediately across the street from where you live or you could be done by the football stadium. We just continue to think that this is, you know the last remaining privately owned parcel in the RF zone. Our previous project was used as a model to up zone the whole district to effectively allow for the exact project that we're bringing for you to move forward. All right, thank you, Kyle. Doug, can I have a follow up to that? Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. That's helping me get a little further to the understanding. And I think we're going to, as a board, be asked and maybe as a town to trust an understanding and your argument that because of the unique history of the way this place was created and has evolved, I think I understand that your argument is an understanding that's been working based on your previous project for some years that we should trust that is carries weight. But my next questions would be because I understand that there is buses and that bus route is very convenient and that most people will probably choose to use that. But from what we've seen of this development it's going to cater to quite well off student, the well off fraction of the student body. And they're certainly going to drive there with vehicles I think because it sounds like that they would be, it looks like they would be the kind of tenants that would be wealthy enough to arrive and depart from Amos with vehicles which they're going to want to park. So I think we shouldn't be confused about the buses so far as at least meeting somewhere for people to park. I think it's interesting that this site is so far away from everything else that maybe we can reasonably trust to this that because if they can't get parking it's not like there are immediate residential areas that are going to be impacted by this. So this is a very unusual situation. So I'm looking now at your neighbor. How many parking permits, because I think with your rental agreements you track parking permits. If people have cars that you asked them to report or you track their parking permits that's the case you'd be able to know how many of your 57 Olympia Drive or Olympia Place have parking permits and how that's evolved. So what percentage of your Olympia Place tenants have permits let's say this past year and has that changed percentage wise from the beginning in a significant degree? I would say a couple of things. One, I wouldn't equate wealth and bus usage. I think that's a bit antiquated and I think that picture I sent shows a broad adoption of the bus. I think that 57 Olympia we have no control with people choose to buy a parking permit and don't tell us and use their home address or 57 Olympia or whatever address they might also use. I've asked UMass if they could find that it's a little tricky to get that information. I have not received that. I understand that may be complex because again they might not use 57 Olympia as the address for the parking. Again I think it's a unique situation and if we were serious about trying to build this type of housing in Amherst this would be the exact spot to do it and I think that working with the university to work with a system that's currently working that's not putting impacts on the university which would be the first to know if there was a problem with the parking since they managed it is again one of the reasons that we're seeking to do a waiver and put as much housing as we can on the site and use the existing parking and bus loops as best we can. Just to be clear I wasn't equating wealth with bus use. I was equating it with tower ownership. Thank you Bruce. So I'd like to remind everybody about Chris's suggestion at the beginning of this hearing. Let's try to focus on what else we need from Kyle in the next two weeks to have him come back with, you know provide us with all the information we need to. Mr. Marshall we lost you. You're frozen. If you can hear us. Oh, there you are. I was gonna say, should we get a comment from Karen since she's next in the queue here. Thank you, Tom. Janet. Yeah, I was impressed with... Oh, am I on? Yeah. Go ahead. I was impressed with how often that but the bus does not come from, you know in the semester break and there are plenty of students that are there. So I would like to see what space you have dedicated to bicycles if they're covered or not. And have you thought about this? This is a dormitory. This is now, you know, 2022, 2023. We're really trying to facilitate getting away from cars for all people and being a European I'm pushing for making bicycling more safe and more use of this. So I'd like to see what you have envisioned as a way of commuting with the bicycle. Sure. So the plan, the landscape plan, the plans that we presented to Concom include a bike storage along the north side. It is exterior. It's based on our experience at the project just north of here at 57 Olympia. We've seen there's two type of bike owners, those that bring the bike inside and those that leave it outside. And the amount of bikes that are stored outside is not that significant. The number of bikes that people bring into their apartments is also somewhat limited but there's space to do that. And again, what we've really seen in this location is a lot of bus usage. It is so convenient. It takes you to the center campus. You don't need to lock up your bike. I'm not, obviously, bike commuting is wonderful. I think in this very unique location, we're adjacent to campus and there's a bus loop that hits every 10 minutes. It has, it means that if you have an option of the bus or the bike, a lot of people are choosing the bus. All right. But the bus only goes in the semester and there's a month and a half or something of semester break too in the summer. That's true. The bus is less frequent when class is not in session. And again, we're trying to model this based on the bicycle usage we've seen at the property immediately north. Okay. Janet. I have a few questions, but my first quick one is how many covered outdoor bike spaces do you have? In this project? Proposed project? There would be no covered outdoor. How many uncovered? Let me pull it up. I'm trying to, I'm not sharing any more, am I? You can reshare if you want. Or you could answer that later. The Chris idea. If we could go back to the, oh, are you looking or? Oh, just looking on the civil plans. Go ahead. So if we go back to the map, the 1971 map, if you can put that up. And then I saw a map of the UMass parking lots. And I wonder if you could tell me where the parking lots are on top of that map. Cause I would love to see that. Cause it seemed to be like a huge parking lot kind of. And so I just wondered are they, are the current parking lots matching the lots that are available for parking and recreation? Yes, they are. I'll show you. Do you see the 71 map now? Yeah, so I don't know if you can draw it like in Andrew's magic pen. Let me, let me try to see what I got here. So the first base is the football shape in the middle. And that's the parking lot in front of Mathur building. No, that's the one that you drive. If you're going to Olympia, oh, she drive past. Okay. Then there's the, this slide here, which is the one in front of Mathur. Okay. There's also this one here, which is the one north of 57 Olympia. Okay. There's this one here, effectively. And there's this, oops, extra line there, but there's this little ear shape portion too. So. And that lot's actually been enlarged, I know. So it's outside the limits of that road at the moment that. Yes. That road doesn't, doesn't really exist. That all of that is parking. All of this is effectively parking and staging home. Okay. So that was my first question. So, and then, so there's more parking space areas than the actual dedicated lots to parking and recreation under the, so you know. The three of the lots got built on, there were 12 originally, some of the others have been subsequently allocated for parking and staging. When you say you have a right, your tenants have a right or residents to park in those spaces, to me, I'm like, okay, so they can just park their cars there as long as they're in those, you know, lots in the subdivision, they don't need to apply for a UMass permit, right? They have a right to it. So, you know, I, you know, with that in mind, I would be like, okay, how many spaces do we think the people that building need? You know, if you can guarantee them spaces in there, I'm fine with everything. But going through the UMass system as kind of how it works is what I understand about UMass parking from talking to some, to Tracy Zafian, who's the head of the Transportation Advisory Committee and for Amherst is when you go to UMass, when you apply for a permit, you say, I'd like a permit and I'd like it here. And maybe in five years, they will give you that one. And so you don't really have any control about what UMass can say that you're parking. And so without, I would, so, you know, okay, so I think your people can park in there and they can assert their rights and hope not get towed and get to a mess. But I also think you could talk to UMass saying, you know, my tenants for these buildings need to park here. Let's work this out, because we have a right to park. If they apply for a permit, they need to get a permit and it needs to be there. And so I think that would make me feel a lot better. You know, I'm not crazy about waving a parking requirement in the hopes that someone applies a permit and they get parking permit here and not over by, you know, the stadium. And so, you know, I've talked to a professor who said, yeah, it took me, you know, five years to get next to my building and, you know, where I work. And so I would love to see that tied down with some more agreements with UMass that anybody who lives in that building can apply for a permit and get a permit to park in those things, in those lots. So, you know, otherwise, I think you can just assert your rights. And, you know, and I just, I don't, I do think that, you know, we know that students have lots of cars. We know that UMass is maxed out for the last two years. I don't know, we know that's gonna be true in the future, but I think that, you know, people in that building are gonna have cars undergraduates more likely than anybody from what I can tell. So I'd like to see that tied down. Another question I have about cars is, you know, electric charging stations, are there any around there? Cause I think that's gonna be the, most people will be charging their cars close to home and are there charging stations in these lots? Kyle, any knowledge about that? I do not know if there's charging stations on the lots relative to asserting rights. I mean, we're trying to be good neighbors. We're trying to work with a system that obviously already works. If we had a big problem, I'm sure you would have heard about it or found it. And I think that we get housing or parking. Those are the two options that we have before us now and we're obviously trying to advocate for as much housing as we can. Yeah, Kyle, do your tenants in Olympia Oaks, I mean, Olympia Place know that they have a right to park anywhere in those lots? Have you told them that? Our tenants have, as ownerships, we have deeded rights to those lots. Maybe we could just talk through this, Janet. If we wanted to just say to our tenants, why don't you just go park? We don't really, even though we're the neighbor of UMass, even though the university is someone we wanna work with, why don't you just go over there and make John King's life completely miserable? Park wherever you want. And then John's gonna have to follow us and chase people down and say, are you 57 Olympia? Are you not 57 Olympia? Let's set up a separate, permitting, let's set up a separate sticker. Let's set up and do all these different things. We could do all that, but we've found to be most effective is to allow UMass parking to continue to manage this as they manage a vast majority of it and all our tenants to buy a permit if they have a car. Okay, so I'm not encouraging you to do that thing, but it seems to me if you have- But I think you are, that's what you're asking. You'd like me to solidify something and assert my rights and say that I'm gonna occupy this many parking spaces for a parcel that has deeded rights for amongst us and the university. We're trying to do it in a way that is working with the university is something that already works with university and I'd like to obviously continue to do so. And no, I'm not encouraging a path of conflict, but I do, I would like to make sure that people in those buildings have places to park and I know those plots are full already. And so- And I think that you should also see if the university is in fact full this year because- Yeah, I would question whether the, to my knowledge, they're not all full. Chris, can you get some information on that? I thought- It's just anecdotal. Oh, because I thought Chris got an email saying that they were maxed. Chris? Yes, I received an email from Nancy Buffone saying that this past year, the parking lots were full, were maxed. She did say that, yeah. So I would like to see a way to make sure that people in that building have parking. And I don't wanna tell you what to do, but I have, you know, that's a suggestion past the work it out somehow. All right, Janet. I guess in kind of in response to that, another way to think about this is it looks like Kyle is willing to put a whole lot of money into building this building, trusting that UMass will take care of the parking issue. And Kyle will be the first one to know if UMass is not doing a good job of providing parking for his tenants, if they need it. I mean, you could say he's building a building that's gonna require people to use the bus because he's not providing any parking. And so he's, you know, I think it's in the interests of the town for him to build these beds so that we don't have more students going out into houses that we'd rather have families in. And so, you know, I don't see the problem here at the moment. All right, I don't see any other hands at the moment. Board members, why don't you take one last thought about whether there's anything you want from Kyle for the next meeting? Hey, Mr. Marshall, you've frozen up on us once more. Does anyone have any last comments? I see, Karen, go ahead. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder, Kyle, if for the next meeting, if you could look at if there's some way to have some covered, maybe even solar covered bicycle stands, if you could somehow envision encouraging that too, just because it isn't done right now, there aren't good bicycle paths. You have to compete with on the road. It's not so safe. You need a critical mass to get this really going. And I think it would be a great opportunity. So I wonder, I'd like to know how many bicycle stands there are and if there was some way you could encourage this, if you could look at it, is there a good path? I guarantee if there's a wonderful path that isn't on the road to the university and great stands, you're gonna up the amount of people and you would take care of the times in between when there isn't so much bus traffic and that's what I'd like to encourage. I wonder if that's possible. Yeah, Kyle, maybe. And I know that there's a downtown, you've done some internal or interior bike storage areas. Just interested maybe if there's a number you can put out for us next time we meet. There's how many bikes might be stored inside, outside and that might be helpful. Okay. I hear both of those. Can you all hear me? Yes. Okay. I seem to be having trouble tonight. Thanks, Tom, for jumping right in. Chris, it looks like you're the next hand I see. I wanted to encourage board members to look at the emails that they've received in the last three days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday because there has been new information. Kyle has presented much of it tonight but I encourage you to look at that. We'll try to include it in your packets. Maybe Pam has included it in the packet for tonight but I just didn't want that information to get lost. So please look at those emails. Thank you, Chris. All right, Janet, what do you need from Kyle for our next meeting? Well, I didn't get the packet but I was interested in what the concom was requiring and we looked at that slide really quickly like where the buffer zone lines were and then I'm interested is the concom, do they want to keep people off the area in the back and then the covered porch access? I was just trying to think, I think that Andrew had thought that would be a nice place for people to go outside and maybe do some sitting or hanging out and you went really quickly through that slide. It might be in our packet, it might be late breaking news. I just wanted to just get a little, because that slide went by really fast and I'm speaking a little bit from, I don't have a full set of whatever's. Yeah, I think that one. So where are the buffer zones on that? I can't quite see that. So the red line is the 100 foot buffer. Okay. And then you have 50 foot buffer that is the one that just touches the edge of the property right there. Okay. And then did the concom want people not to be in the 100 foot or the 50 foot buffer zone? No, it wasn't about people. It was really about work. So trying to make sure that any stormwater was outside of the 50 foot, trying to make sure that any plantings within the 100 foot were all native, trying to make sure that the work for stormwater retainage, which these are the retainant structures that are below grade were managed properly and were planted over properly. It wasn't a discussion about access or, I mean, there's a trail through the center of the wetland. You know, there's a yellow trail that the town you park at right north of here and you walk down. Yeah, so I think Andrew had been interested in access to that trail from the back and maybe using that back as a seeding area. So I wondered if that was possible. And then there's a cover. I think that, Janet, real quick, the grading back here makes that a little difficult to make it accessible. And more so when we're working with stormwater and working with concomitants. And the covered porch is only accessible from inside the building, is that right? Yeah. Okay, how big is that? That's this lighter gray portion here, which is just a rough couple on our square feet. Okay, thank you. All right, Bruce. Oh, I am already unmuted. Oh, one of the things we received was a traffic study and very elaborate. And I had to say that, and this may be a question for staff, I think. I wasn't so concerned about traffic here because I thought that this was basically a place where hundreds of cars got parked and were coming and going. And what might change here, some of those cars might be used by people in this building, but most of them won't be. And the number of cars that comes in and out of this site would seem to be largely generated by the size of the existing parking. And so the question for staff is, would this building really have any effect on traffic? As I understood, the traffic study didn't seem to think it was going to be a big deal, but it seemed to me that this was one of the few times when you might imagine that a building would have almost no impact on traffic. Is my comments, what I might consider common sense, a flawed here, or is it broadly correct? Chris? I think that's what essentially what the traffic study said that there wouldn't be much impact on the traffic on East Pleasant Street. But you also have to factor in whether that parking lot is full or not. And it was full last year. So I think your surmise about, they're not being a lot of change in the amount of traffic. If the parking lot is full is right, but if the parking lot isn't full and this building is added, then there would be a change. So I think you should read the parking study carefully. There's just three pages that are really full of information. The rest of it is all parking counts and peak hours and that kind of thing. But if you read those three pages, you'll really see that there is not a significant impact based on this building to traffic at that intersection. And Doug, if I may, I also noticed, and I can't remember where I saw it because these things were flying around, but whether it was in Kyle's management plan or whether it was in your development report about low-flow plumbing fixtures. And to the extent that we have any control over that, which I don't know that we do, but if we do or encourage, if we're going to mention low-flow plumbing fixtures, if anyone's going to mention low-flow plumbing fixtures, I would encourage that it's be associated with numbers that say, well, I'll use those because low-flow is really a meaningless term to me because it's just, you can say it's just lower than whatever you want to compare it to when there's no standard. So can we substitute any reference to low-flow fixtures with numbers, which for gallons per minute for showers and gallons per flush for toilets and things like that. There's only four or five, so maybe not even that, three or four fixtures for which those numbers would be relevant. And I think we, instead of using a wave, arm-waving term like low-flow, we should, in parenthesis, put the proposed flow rates for each of the fixtures involved. Kyle, do you think that was in some of the material you provided and how would your fixtures differ from the flows that are required by the plumbing code? Well, I think we're fortunate that the plumbing code in particular, the stretch code, is forcing all these buildings to get better and better. And as of January, the HERS rating on new buildings has to be 45, which is less than the 55 and less than the 65 when the stretch code was implemented. So I think that code and efficiency are working hand-in-hand together. Obviously, when we go and seek lead certification for these buildings, achieving lead gold is based on having fixtures that have actual flow rates to them for each of the faucets and toilets and shower heads and so on. So we have to do that within energy star ratings, within lead and obviously in order to meet stretch code. All right, but your intent was not to do fixtures that were any better or used less water than the plumbing code. Your intent was to meet the stretch code and the lead requirements and that was it. I was basically interested in whether you were applying Californian standards or whether you were applying Massachusetts standards. We haven't, I'm not familiar with the California standards. I think that the low flow in our minds is the fixtures that we've installed in all the projects to, you know. So I guess I was just saying they're therefore code compliant low flow. But if you leave the code compliant off, my understanding would be that you're doing better than code and therefore you're probably stretching with the Californian standards. So it's just a matter of communication. So code compliant low flow sounds like what is intended here. Okay, that would be a better way to say it. Okay, good. Thanks, Bruce. Karen. Okay, Karen's was a legacy, okay. And I've just turned off my camera to see if this will stop getting my Zoom interruptions. So, Bruce, your hand is still up, is that a legacy? It is, my hand is up and my mute is off. That's right, so let's, okay, good. Any other board comments? Let's look and see if there are any hands. Okay, Pam Rooney from the public, please bring Pam over and let's get her name and her address. All right, Pam. Hi, thank you, Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. I would appreciate actually if the packet could include the updated floor plans and package that Mr. Wilson has provided. I've only seen earlier versions of it. So having current versions would be good. A question for Mr. Wilson, in the era of private public partnerships, I'm wondering if Archipelago is interested or could be asked to provide some benefits in the form of improving bike lanes on the stretch of Olympia Drive from his buildings out to East Pleasant Street to facilitate, in fact, the use of bicycles. And if Archipelago could also be asked or required to provide a couple of electric vehicle charging stations all in the name of, because he's not having to provide any parking spaces for his tenants and he's relying entirely on PVTA circulation, that there's maybe some quid pro quo that would be appropriate to help facilitate the transfer of students from his building to campus. And I think it's totally appropriate for that kind of contribution to the greater good. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Chris. I just wanted to respond to one of Pam's comments. As soon as we get a document in email to us, I forward it to the planning board members and I forward it to Pam and to Nate. And then I ask Pam to post it in the packet. And so almost instantaneously, Pam posts things. So if you wanna look at the packet for tonight's meeting, you will see the most updated information that has been made available by the applicant. Thanks. All right, thank you. All right, so if there aren't any more, oh, I do see Jennifer Taub's hand. Why don't we bring her over? Jennifer, can you give us your name and your address? Yes, thank you. I'm Jennifer Taub at 259 Lincoln Avenue. And I just had a small comment which was regarding students and bringing cars to school, you know, that why they would need parking, even if the Libya place is relatively close to campus and there's bus access, that many students bring cars to school because that's how they get from their hometowns to school and not even that they may not even be using the cars on a daily basis, but they do need a place to park them. So, you know, that's why we caution that even with, you know, transportation available that students will still need a place to park. And, you know, again, for students not parking every day, they may not need them to be as close to Olympia place as if they're driving to school. Although I would, you know, I would echo what Janet McGowan said in that I think it's important to determine where those parking spaces would be that the university would provide. But it's just, it's been my experience in my neighborhood and then, you know, just generally what I've observed that even, you know, again, if they're using the PV, the Pioneer Valley Transportation or even walking to school, that that doesn't mean that they're not bringing cars to campus, you know, with them when they come at the beginning of the semester. All right. I'll smile when we comment, thank you. Thank you. All right. Maybe that's the last hand I've seen from the board and the public. So maybe we can have a motion to continue this hearing. Chris, should we move it? Should we have it continued on the 16th? And maybe what do you want to do? What time? The 16th would be good. And you could continue it to seven o'clock, although you're probably, you know, gonna take it later than that. But just in case something happens with food and drink establishments, and it makes it vanish at night, it would be good to have Kyle back at seven. All right. Tom, is that? So moved. All right. Thank you, Andrew. Seconded. All right. Any more discussion for tonight? Not seeing any hands. All right. Let's continue to talk about vote to continue. Yes, vote is we will continue to November 16th at seven o'clock. Bruce. Yes. Tom. Aye. I also want to thank Kyle for his responses to all of our questions and probing about all of these different issues and coming back with answers. And I think it's fantastic. So thank you. So aye. Aye, okay. Andrew. Aye. Janet. Aye. Karen. Aye. And I'm an aye as well. Six votes in favor. The motion passes. Kyle, we'll see you in two weeks. Thank you for everybody's time. Appreciate it. All right. Good night. Good night. Okay. So we'll now move on to item six on our agenda. The time now is 9.52. Chris, do we have any old business topics not anticipated 48 hours in advance? No old business that I know of. Thank you. All right. Janet. You are muted. Oh, I'm back. So I wanted to ask the questions that Elizabeth Veerling asked about the downtown or Amherst Center design guidelines and then the banks parking lot engineering analysis and then is the planning department looking at other parking lots? Because I was kind of wondering that too. I didn't know about the grant that sounds good. So maybe Nate can answer that. Is he's most familiar with those questions? Sure. Yeah, the downtown design standard guidelines. As some of the staff I've discussed changing a little bit now with the grant, we may add that in. We haven't confirmed the timeline if the planning grant can coincide with when we wanted to have the project move forward. But it may be that we could augment our budget and services with this planning grant to do. What we had in the downtown RFP was some mention of streetscape standards and what we applied for was a more in-depth look at it. With the roadways, bike lanes, with the sidewalks, amenities, types of site furnishings. And so it goes hand in hand. So we just have to determine how that could be incorporated or not. So did the RFP go out? I guess that's my... No, no. After the last planning board meeting, there were a few really good points raised about how many meetings could be over Zoom or in person. And how could we kind of describe the scope? Was it looking at three different types of building typology, urban center, maybe transitional and then residential. And so staff has met a few times and we've been refining the language, but when we heard probably two weeks ago that we might be in this planning grant, we just waited to see if we could, what that would mean. And what about the garage? The garage, we were getting under contract with Desmond Design Management. They're an engineering firm that is often used with municipalities when they do garages. They're based out of Boston. They actually worked on the original garage as the design consultant. They helped Greenfield do their garage. And they're kind of one of the leading firms. And so we've contacted with them to provide a technical assessment of the existing boatwood garage, a visual inspection and then also a review of the existing, they have the drawings. And so the kind of do load calculations and co-compliance to determine if additional levels could be added. And so preliminarily, they think they could be, they have to examine it more. I mean, honestly, the exterior load bearing points of the garage are so close to the adjacent buildings now. I think their study will then help us ask the question, would we really want to do this? So then it'll look at like, this traffic circulation ramps, height of deck, proximity to building, and they're going to say if it's feasible or not. And then I think really it becomes a question for the town, would we actually move forward with something like that? We haven't looked at studying other sites. I think that would be after this study. All right, thanks, Nate. Chris, do you have a follow-up? Yeah, I just wanted to note that they're going to give us some concept sketches and they're also going to try to give us ballpark cost estimates, particularly with regard to cost of a space, for instance. If you build a space on a virgin site that hasn't been built on before, that's one cost. But if you try to retrofit an existing parking lot, that's another cost. So they're going to help us out with that as well. And there was one other question that Pam Rooney asked, and I had to do with whether we're looking at other potential parking lot sites, parking garage sites. And we have not had time to do that, but we do intend to, the staff intends to make a, what should I say? Not a very technical pass at that, but a kind of conceptual pass at that, but that has not occurred yet. All right, thanks, Chris. And Janet, I think that takes care of your questions. Okay. All right, so that's it for old business. And now we'll go to topic seven. The time is 9.58, new business. And Karen, you had a topic you wanted to introduce to us. So we'll have a, why don't you introduce it? And then we can have a short period for comments tonight. Yeah, thank you for taking this up. I thought Pam Rooney made such a good pitch to Kyle saying, could we have a quick quote, a contribution that you somehow work together with the university to facilitate a good bicycle path to East Pleasant, and then maybe through some of their land to the campus. I don't know what role the planning board can take to somehow facilitate the fact that we really have to move to a completely different way of moving around, especially students who are prime people for getting into alternative ways of transportation. If we had bicycle paths, as I know in Europe and in Berlin where I'm kind of my second home, the bicycle paths are not on the street very often. They share the sidewalk, they're a different color brick and as a pedestrian, I know my husband always pushes me out of the way and says, you're in the bicycle path and you have to sort of get used to that. But it really makes bicycle riders feel much, much safer than if they have to share the road. So that's something to look at. And what role does the planning board have? How can we move this along? Because I think it's a really important step that's coming. I see all the paths that are sort of delegated as bicycle paths downtown. I think it's great. I think the university does realize it has to move in this direction. But developers, especially this Olympia Drive, that's something that's happening right now and it's in the prime location. So can we make demands? I'm not quite sure. I'm such a new member, what we can do and I'd love to hear what other people think about this. Thanks. All right, does anybody want to respond to Chris? I just wanted to recommend that you talk about this in a very generic way because Kyle is not here right now. And so if you wanted to talk about this in relation to his project on Olympia Drive, you would really need to talk about it with him because it relates to that public hearing. So just talk about this in a generic manner for now. And then when the hearing is open on November 16th, you can bring this up in a specific way related to that project. Thanks, you're right. Bruce. Two comments. I'm broadly interested too in this and the other sorts of things that we might encourage such as for example, solving the problem of providing charging stations for apartments, I have thoughts on that. I'm not going to say them now, but it's the same sort of thing. But in the case of bicycles and pathways and so forth, I'd imagine we don't really have leverage except that we might if we think about it from the point of view of parking waivers and so forth. We're not obligated to ground parking waivers. But I know that we've been doing that creatively in many ways for many, many years for all sorts of reasons. And we could imagine that in the future we might on certain projects where it's appropriate, we could tie a parking waiver to some kind of gesture in this direction where it may be putting a roof on a parking bicycle station, maybe extending it, maybe making these bicycle storage more secure and sheltered. We might also seek to think of accommodations for probably what will be increasingly small electric propulsion for bicycles which are going to make those bicycles heavier and that's going to change some things about them which they're not going to be able to bring them up into their rooms, perhaps probably because they're heavy but they're going to be valuable. So we're going to be, people are going to be interested in different ways of securing them. So I think we should be mindful of all that and that's probably part of what Karen's thinking ahead to as well. So I think this is something that we can think of in respect of applications to come before us. All right, thanks Bruce. I guess when I heard this about this topic, the things that came to mind were that Karen or somebody might take the town plan and figure out where you would want to put bike paths. And then that would essentially prompt a conversation about how might the town get the rights to have a public bike path through what is now private property? And would that be eminent domain? Would it be attacks on real estate sales or how would you do that? But I think I would start by thinking about where are the lines of demand for a more convenient bicycle connection that isn't already served on a road or isn't already provided? And I will second Bruce's comment about electric bicycles. We just spent a couple of weeks in Europe and saw a lot of parking spaces reserved for bicycles. So, you know, if the town really wanted to encourage bicycles, I think there's some acts that the town could take to say, this is what we want to do. And then we might be in a position to say to a developer, look, your property's right next to a location that we want to do a bike path. Now's our chance to persuade you to help us build it. So, but until we have a vision, I don't know, I don't think it's going to be easy to be telling people what to do. Janet. Karin, I would encourage you to talk to Tracy Zapien, who's the chair of the Transportation Advisory Committee. I think following up on Doug's suggestion, I think they already have figured out where they want more bicycle use and better pedestrian movement. So that might be, she's like a, she has tons of information. I also think we really do need covered and secured bike things. And I think we could require that of developers because especially electric bikes, I have a friend who has one, she uses it as it's our only transportation and it is too heavy for her to carry upstairs. And she's very worried about it. She lives in San Francisco of having it stolen because it's worth thousands of dollars. And so I think that's a great issue. And then in terms of where to put the, how to get the access rights, like I have a 30 foot public right away. So the town of Amherst could always put a bike lane on my front lawn basically. And I think at this point in our climate crisis, I would invite that just to move things a little better. So I think there's a lot of public rights away on the main roads that are much wider than the road that you're, or sidewalk you're looking at. All right. Chris. I just wanted to mention that there is a pedestrian and bicycle plan that was done in coordination with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission a number of years ago. There's a text that was written and there are maps that are in a kind of incomplete state. The text is finished, but the maps are, as I said, incomplete the tack, the Transportation Advisory Committee has an intention to work with DPW to finish the maps, but Karin and others may wanna take a look at that. And if you email me, I can send you a link. I'm not sure I could tell you today exactly where to go to find that document. All right. It has it up already. Thank you, Chris. Bruce, go ahead. I think I'd like to try to close this conversation soon. So it's getting late. A question, I think a quick one, but if not, it can be answered later of staff, I think, apropos of a potential funding source for some of the things that you, Doug, were mentioning about bicycle lanes and so forth or creating them. I thought, well, the CPA fund sounds like a fund, but the question is, is the CPA fund restricted by Massachusetts statute to the four portals that currently is or could bicycle transportation be imagined to be something that could be supported through the CPA? Chris? I think if you could characterize it as recreation, it could be supported because that is one of the things that's supported by CPA. I don't know if transportation would be considered, but we're always looking for grants. And one of the grants that we just got was for work on Belcher Town Road, and we're hoping to incorporate some bicycle, which should I say infrastructure into Belcher Town Road. And it's always sort of in our minds when we're thinking about working with Department of Public Works on roadways. So just wanted to talk. And bicycle lanes could be part of the streetscape design standards too, whenever that happens. Okay, so why don't we, at least momentarily, there aren't any other hands. So let's close this item and move on. Time is 10.09, and Chris, is there any other new business for tonight? Just one thing. I wanted to let you know, and I could do this in report of the chair, but I'll just tell you now, we are very sad to be losing Ben, who has been with us for two and a half years. He's going to work with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. And he's been terrific to work with. He's really innovative, and he's got all kinds of skills, and we're really gonna miss him, but we wish him good luck in his new position. But in the meantime, we're gonna have a lot of work to do to fill Ben's role until we hire somebody to replace him. So Nate and I are gonna be working over time to try to fill Ben's role. Mostly Nate, but we try to not burden Nate too much. Anyway, yeah. I know, very sad. Yeah. Okay. Number eight, form A, A and R subdivision applications, Pam. No, not tonight. All right, ZBA applications? No, I haven't heard of anything. SP, SPP, SPR, SUB. Yes. There is one for, kind of think of what it's for. Is it Belcher Town Road? No, it's not Belcher Town Road. But we have a couple of them. They haven't been formally brought into the system yet. So we'll let you know about them next time around. All right. All right. Great. All right. Number 11, committee and liaison reports. Bruce, anything on PVPC? Well, I'm still not formally appointed, but I have been relying on Jack and his reports of activities of the commission have been forwarded to us all, I think. So basically my report would be what you've received from Jack. Okay. Chris, is there any way to expedite getting Bruce appointed? I did email the town manager. I don't know if it was last week or the week before, and I copied Bruce, I believe. And the town manager has been embroiled in other topics recently, but I will email him again. What's that? All right. Andrew, PV or CPAC? Yeah, thanks Doug. First I'd say thanks Chris for sending out the list of projects and would encourage folks to please send over any questions they have. I did get some already that I was able to forward on to the applicants and you can share them with me up until the last minute and I'll bring that forward. I don't know that I'd mentioned before. We have, right now we have about $1.8 million that that number could go up. We have a budgeted reserve, which we could tap into as well, but let's just call it 1.8 for right now. We have $6.4 million more than that in projects, right? There's over $8 million of projects that are being proposed, so we definitely won't be able to do all of that. Again, any questions you have that you would like me to forward on, please do the presentation start next Thursday and they will be held, I believe, over the next three weeks. Andrew, are there any particular projects that are being proposed that you think have close sort of impact are some things that we would be particularly interested in from the planning board? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know that they're necessarily is. I think the community housing, that's, you know, there's a lot of money that's being allocated towards that. It's something that we've talked about, a fair amount over the years in this. So that could be an area and you could take a look at some of the community housing projects that we have. Aside from that, there is an open space proposal, which we haven't had one for a while. And yeah, other than that, I would say, you know, take a look at the projects, which are of interest to you personally, as well as in your capacity as a planning board member. All right, thank you. Tom, DRB. Sure, I mean, I will follow up to say that I don't think there's anything of significant impact that we've been reviewing. I mean, a lot of it's just been signage and wayfinding within town. So there's, you know, it's cool that we get to see like new businesses and kind of where they're going and when they're opening waiting for everybody else does. But, you know, there's a juice cafe that we approve some signage for. There's a Chinese or Asian restaurant at 63 Main, so that's right downtown. They have some new signage and screens in their windows. The spoke has some new signage that we've approved. The, you know, it was pretty minimal, pretty clean. And then the drink has had several kind of iterations of signage that we've been reviewing and approving. So there's just been a lot of like, you know, really small, but let's just say maybe somewhat important revisions to the urban landscape from an aesthetic perspective. That's really it. All right, thank you. Janet, solar bylaw. And our last meeting we met briefly, the GZA associates were doing a solar assessment, which is sort of a technical look at where solar could work in Amherst, like rooftops and parking lots. And then there'd be limitations, not just physical limitations, but it might be legal limitations, like on certain types of land. And then also they'll be doing kind of a community outreach to figure out like what the value, community values of Amherst are. I don't have that much information on that yet. And then one of our members who is, she was giving us a talk about solar siding, like all the steps involved in siding a large scale array, which takes at least two years. And it seems almost a miracle that anything ever gets built between all the permitting. And then even if you get all your permits, you might not be able to like, be able to send your power to the grid. So it was brutal, but interesting. And then we're gonna look at the economics of arrays and stuff like that. So it's totally interesting. Great. All right, Chris, CRC, or Nate? Yeah, so well, the CRC has been looking at the flood mapping and they recommended all four aspects of flood mapping, the firm maps, the flood insurance study and the two things that you looked at tonight. So they've made positive recommendations on those. That was last week or two weeks ago. And then, or maybe it was last week, then this week they're looking at food and drink establishments tomorrow night, tomorrow evening at 4.30. So they're taking that up. And then in their spare time, they're working on rental registration. And that's kind of a big deal that they're working on with Rob Mora and his staff. So those are the things that they're doing. All right, thank you. Report of chair. I have no report tonight, given the hour. Chris, any report of staff? I don't think I have any further reports. Okay. All right, the time is 10.17. I guess we can adjourn. We gotta figure out how to do this faster. This is just brutal. I think we have too many agenda items. That's my feeling like two big ones would be good, not three. Yeah. You've done a great job of trying to manage all of it. I appreciate it. I hate to push you guys to be faster, but I know how long it takes to repeat something verbally.