 No, if you would wait and start in half an hour, I think you would probably just wait in this forum here, you know, 10 or 15 minutes and see what happens and if nobody, you know, if we can't get it going then give up. We'll save. All right, so I see Janet, she's actually calling in. So I'm going to try to move her over. There's Janet. Yeah. Is that the phone number I see. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right, Janet. Can you unmute yourself and tell you tell us that you hear us. Does someone have to unmute her. I just clicked ask to unmute you. Yeah. Janet. So for all you attendees who are in the public attendees area. We're trying to connect with our fourth member for attendance this evening, which would mean we have a quorum. And would mean we can proceed with the meeting. Chris, did she respond to your text. She said, yes, that she was in the attendees and she gave me her phone number. Yeah, which we know and we know she's here but she just can't seem to unmute herself. I'm still seeing her in the attendees list, which should she move over to the panelists list if you move her. I'm not getting that option and I'm wondering. Try star nine Janet, not star six star nine is what you do right Pam. Yes. So this is strange because I believe Andrew called in less, less go round and I just gave him the permission to talk. And he came over in the same way that Janet has come over into the panelists. But I'm not sure asked to unmute. Maybe she should go out and come back in again. I mean, Janet you could try that. I think Pam Rooney had a similar problem one time and she went out and came back in and she was able to connect. I think she just left. Okay. All right, so I can keep watching for her. Well should I go ahead and read the preamble and or we don't even want to go that far without a quorum. I don't think we should go that far without a quorum. I think there was one some one point maybe last summer or the summer before where there were only a couple of us and we just opened it and continued it and then closed it so. Yep, we might have to do that this time. Is a recording in progress I heard that. Yes, yes. Okay. Yep, this is all being memorialized for future anthropologists to analyze. There's Janet again and it doesn't look like she's muted. Oh yes. Janet, can you speak. I'm told that I'm unmuted finally. Yes, there you go. Yes, yes. Okay. All right Janet you are our fourth member. So we have a quorum for this evening. And will you be on the phone all evening, rather than on your computer. I'm having trouble logging into the meeting. So I'm trying to do that now. And in some for some reason I couldn't get to our, you know, our network and so my husband's trying to do that now. But I'm kind of, I'm wondering if I can try to do a zoom on my phone, because I'm not going to be able to really see anything as kind of a document or map heavy thing. I'm afraid to leave though, because I want to be able to do what I can. Well, why don't you stay on your phone until you see if your husband can help connect your network. You can watch it on television. Janet, watch it on television. Oh, that's a good idea is okay. I think you might be go but why don't we, why don't we start and I will find something to make this work somehow. All right, I'll do it either on my computer or or get your video from the TV channel 17. Okay. Okay, so I'll go ahead with the preamble. Yes. Thank you for waiting. I'm sorry about this. Well, we, we have to have you in order to meet. Okay, so welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of June 15 2022. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of Amherst planning board I am calling this meeting to order at 644pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media. This meeting is being taken pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 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. The zoom link lists the zoom link at the top of the page, no 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. This meeting will include 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 me. Maria chow. Here. Jack gem sec. Here. The meeting is absent. And we believe that Andrew McDougal will be late or entirely absent by Doug Marshall and present. Janet McGowan. Here. Thank you. And Johanna Newman is absent. So we have four members present for out of seven which is a quorum for this evening's meeting. So we have three members. 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. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak. After speaking remember to remute yourself. Public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment can also be heard at other times during the meeting when determined appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you 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. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If the board does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. All right, so the first item on our agenda now at 648 is approval of minutes. We have the minutes from our last meeting ready to be reviewed and approved. That was on June 1. Board members, do you have any comments on these minutes? I'm not there for the moment. Okay, I'm not seeing any hands for for editing or comments on the minutes. In that case, may I have a motion to approve the minutes as drafted by Chris and Pam. Maria. We approve the minutes as drafted by Chris and them. Thank you, Maria and Jack. Second, please. Thank you. Okay, we'll have a roll call unless there's other comments. All right. Starting with you, Maria. Thank you. And Jack. Janet. And I'm going to prove as well. So that's four members in favor. And three absent. Okay, the time is 649. And I'm going to move on to public comment period. And I will repeat what I said a moment ago. If you have comments on items which on our agenda are on our agenda listed on our agenda, please hold your comments until we get to that item. We will request public comments at that time. So at this time, are there any public comments on items, which I've not been listed on our agenda. I do not see any public comment. Any hands raised for this public comment. Opportunity. Okay, so the time now is 650 and we will move on to the next. Item on our agenda, which is item number three. A public hearing for site plan review and special permit. Which has been continued from May 18th, 2022. So the time is 650. In accordance with the provisions of mass general law 40 a, this 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 2022 dash 14 and SPP 2022 dash 05. This is regarding center east LLC dash 446 to 462 main street. Request site plan review approval under section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw to construct a 17,000 square foot 27 unit residential mixed use building, including three affordable units with site lighting and landscaping. And to request a modification of the total number of parking spaces required for the mixed use building under section 7 and 7.9 of the zoning bylaw and seek small car parking under section 7.104 of the zoning bylaw to co-locate with the existing mixed use building known as 446 main street and the mixed use building known as 462 main street, which was authorized by the site plan review 2020 dash 01 and site plan review 2020 dash 05 and any subsequent amendments. And request a special permit to extinguish all special permits associated with parcel 14B dash 66. And that is all in the BN zoning district on map 14B. Okay. Any new board member disclosures of the few members who are present this evening. I don't see any. Mr. Reedy, I'll turn the floor over to you for this revised or the presentation this evening. Perfect. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Excellent. Okay. Record Tom Reedy attorney with Bacon Wilson and Amherst here on behalf of applicant center East, John Roblesky and his applications. I'm going to turn the floor over to John Roblesky. I'm going to turn the floor over to John Roblesky. Plural as the chairman noted with me this evening, John Roblesky, Rachel Stevens architect, Mike Lou site designer. And so maybe a little bit of context. We were here. May 18th. We got a lot of great feedback. John went back in and with his professionals redesigned. Some of the project based on some of the comments. And I think he's, you know, as of today had some. And I don't know if, if the expectation is to close and vote tonight, I think it's probably a continuation to the June 29th meeting ultimately, but I think it's worth a conversation about the site changes and then probably about the parking and the parking waivers and some of the data that John has, has got. So, you know, with that, I'll turn it over to Mike to have him, Mike, if you're, if you can share your screen, I'll be able to share it with you. So I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to share it with you. I'm going to share it with you. I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to share it through. Some of the site changes. And you're muted, Mike, in case you're going to talk. Okay. Let me get caught up here. Let's see. We can now hear you. Okay, great. So. I'm going to share. Whoops. That's your, there you go. Okay. You got the rendering. So there's been some back and forth today. And I think we're still like Tom mentioned in the midst of some modifications, but this rendering. More or less represents. Changes from the initial submission for the site plan. And I will just highlight the major. Things that were changed is that the new building, this L shape building here in the center was pushed back or pushed further to the north away from the existing. Building at four 46 Main Street. I believe we're going to see a lot of changes in the midst of some modifications, but this rendering. More or less represents changes from the initial submission for the site plan. And I will just highlight the major. Things that were changed is that the new building, this L shape building, this L shape building was pushed back and further down into the new building. In the center of the street, I believe initially it was a 13 foot setback from this main wall here. And 13 foot setback from the east wall. On this wing here. Now this is a 20 foot distance. To the new building. The distance from this kind of like shed. Entry vestibule. And the new building is 12.2 feet. over one foot to the east, so the setback is 14 feet from the east end of the existing building here. This essentially squeezed this northern portion so that we basically changed the parking to an angled and one-way exiting the site. We felt we didn't have enough room to do 90 degree parking and a proper aisle width. So this is basically 48 feet wide. These are all proposed compact spaces, 16 feet deep, a 16 foot one-way lane and another 16 foot deep parking bay. So 48 feet total of pavement. It did shrink from the original layout, obviously. A little bit narrower. There's still 47 parking spaces proposed. Again, these are all compact spaces. These are existing compact spaces in the existing lot. We did add, we put the, we had located the accessible parking space here at the south. There were, there are three existing spaces here. These need to get repaved. So we added one space down here. We did end up losing the space out of this area. So we moved it down here. Right now, these are labeled as full-sized spaces, nine feet wide, 18 feet deep. It did push it closer to the Main Street sidewalk, adding that one space and then increasing the width to nine feet. We hadn't, John and I hadn't really talked about that, but we, I feel that with the request for a waiver on the parking requirements and the dimensional size, if we can make these compact spaces, we can push that back a little bit, give the sign a little bit more kind of room to breathe. But I think right now we're at 26 or 27 compact spaces out of the total 47. I have another exhibit that shows some gathering, outdoor gathering spaces, but basically you can see in the rendering all the green space around the buildings and parking are lawn areas. Obviously we've got the, oops, gosh, I don't know why. For some reason I can't pan. We've got the, a 20 foot wide yard in the back and this kind of blends with the development here at High Street. It's all grass here, but basically this is essentially private, I think of it as private yard space for the ground floor dwellers in this building. There's a really kind of a nice green space up here to the north of the parking area that could be utilized. Excuse me. Again, we do wanna keep the Southern lawn space at Main Street open and not change its character. We are putting the underground detention base in here. It's about the only place it can go on the site where it won't disrupt the existing trees, where we have the proper clearance to high groundwater. So this area is gonna be disturbed but restored is lawn. And we can talk about gathering spaces later if and when that's a proper time. I don't know if you wanna maybe go through that now or we don't really have a format set for this presentation but maybe I could touch on all of the site issues. And then John has some presentation and some figures and stuff about parking. And then I'm sure Rachel has some updates on the building and the design and of the building and color scheme. So let me do jump over to that plan exhibit here. Again, okay. And I apologize if this is a little bit hard to see. Hold on. So basically what this plan shows is some proposed changes to the plan. And again, this is in progress but it's highlighting existing lawn spaces that I mentioned here in the back of existing center east building phase one. I guess we're calling it there's the open lawn space above the existing underground detention base in here at the kind of southeast corner. This red line indicates adding two, I guess it's referred to as shadow parking. I understand that these were proposed shadow parking spaces with the original project for center east. Obviously they can still accommodate space there. I've highlighted this as an open lawn area with some stone benches here. We are proposing to do a small paved patio gathering space centrally located between 446, the existing building and the new L shape building here. This would kind of provide a nice central usable kind of gathering space with, I understand that there's some granite coping that's been salvaged from the demolition of the existing building that used to be in this area. It would be wonderful to be able to use that material on site for all or any of the benches or gathering spaces where so we're, we have either one or two benches in this area. There's some additional areas where we can put benches under some mature trees. So again, the patio, there's grass here in the main and gray street corner. There's grass lawn in the southern part of the site. There's existing grass lawn here for people to kind of sit out. Again, there's private space and then our more private lawn space in the rear of this building and then a nice gathering space here, which could be grass. It could accommodate a small patio up there as well. Further, this plan also shows there was some comment about wanting to know where the air conditioning units would be located. These little orange rectangles represent blocks or concrete pads, which would house these small air handling units. They are stackable, but really they're kind of like a suitcase size if you've seen those and they're quite efficient and quiet actually. We've seen these installed on a lot of housing apartment type projects that we've worked on throughout the Valley. They basically can sit on either even patio block set on the ground. Some of them are on metal legs, stackable as I mentioned, but there's a set to be located along this wall, the new building, the south wall here north and then a couple on the north wall. And I hope you can see that. I'll blow it up just a little bit, but again, I'm having trouble. I don't know why I can't pan. Sorry about that. Well, anyway, I hope you can see those and make out what we're trying to show on this plan. This is very frustrating for some reason. Oh, there we go. Now I've got it. So those are some things that, we're willing to provide as additions to the plan for gathering spaces or to have more formal gathering spaces. This widened space is suitable for people to sit and gather. We also are indicating some screen plantings here at the corners of the two buildings. We don't wanna create a solid wall or fence or solid wall of like a hedge because that might invite people to kind of like, hang out there and we don't want people entering the site and looking in the windows and things of the apartments there. So we do have some ever, or maybe our provide these proposed here that would provide a little bit of screening but still allow an open view into that space just to keep it more, allow it to be more safe. I think is the way what we would like to maintain so that there's visibility into that space from that side. We've also updated the stormwater report which was submitted to Jason's skills. I don't believe we've heard any comments back. We haven't received any comments back yet. So we'll have to address any concerns that Jason may have but having worked with Jason many, many, many times before, I think that we have a pretty good rapport and can accommodate any comments, concerns that he might have. And I'm sure he'll find that the stormwater calculations are accurate to meet the Massachusetts stormwater regulations. I don't wanna take up any more time right now. I guess at this point I'll invite John or Rachel to talk about their respective items. Thank you, Mike. I don't know if you wanna come back if you have any questions on the site or do those now also. It's up to you guys. Why don't we, why don't you guys go through your, what you wanna say tonight and we'll come back. John, do you want me to present? Rachel, I think you should probably go. Okay. Can everyone see the renderings? Yes. Okay, great. So I agree with Tom, Riddie that we got wonderful feedback from the board and we really appreciated it. And we have actually been going back and forth with Chris and Rob Mora in the town offices as well in the past couple of days on getting some more feedback. So this has been really helpful in the process. We have some new renderings for you tonight. I believe they went out to the board this afternoon but I'm not sure if anyone had time to look at them. And we're looking at reducing the volume of the building on the South Main Street side of the building to two stories similar to the approach at phase one, Center East Commons. It's still a three-story building in the bulk of the building, but at the Main Street level, it mirrors the two-story look of that streetscape and that also changes the relationship of the buildings to each other. I also really loved Doug's comment of suggesting that we paint the existing building to match the color scheme so that it all blends in as one complex. I think that really helps a lot. So we have Photoshop painted it for now. Good luck to whoever is in charge of painting over that dark red trim. And we are looking at a couple of other views here where you can see the two-story buildings that marched down Main Street and the three-story buildings behind them. And you can see that from across the street from the VFW parking lot here. And then we have a similar view to before with the three-story first phase and the three-story second phase book ending each other across the parking lots. The other new thing that we have that we sent you a few weeks ago was an update on the sign. Oh, this is the wrong sign plan, sorry. We sent an update of the plan so that because there was some comments so that the sign would look better or more immersed style. So that other version was a monument sign, monument style sign that was closer to what the Amherst media had proposed next door. But this is something that is closer to the existing sign, a wooden sign on posts. And it's using some graphic language that mirrors the gable style of the building to bring that into the signage and to welcome people to 462 Main Street on this sign. So, John, I don't know if you wanna speak further to the details of this approach or if you wanna leave it at the sort of overview for now, this does reduce the number of units. It's now 23 units and 25 bedrooms, but it gives the whole complex a different view and so that's the purpose to invest in that look for the building as a whole. Yeah, I think we did take the comments seriously from the short meeting we had yesterday. After the May meeting, we kind of got the impression we kind of wanted it to look a little more like 446, not necessarily width-wise or height-wise, just in general appearance. So that's why we submitted the first rendering. But yeah, I mean, this is a great look, I think here. It blends the whole property together, it ties the corner together, maintains a lot of the screening that's there and the trees in the front and screens the parking. I think from that parking space in the front, even though we made them nine foot by 18 foot spaces, I think we only added like two or three feet to the actual width and it's still like 12 feet off of the property line in the front, which is more than the 10 foot setback required in the BN zone. And then regarding the parking along the North end there, where we made it one way, and my thinking there was everybody's looking for 462 Main Street, so you drive an upper down Main Street. So now we have a nice sign with the street number on it that supplies to all three buildings and they drive into the Main Street driveway. And then once they're in there and want to leave, they have an option of going out to Gray Street or back out to Main Street. I think that just makes the flow a lot better and keeps it far enough away from the neighbor to the North of the parking lot who requested that he would rather have parking near his property line. In fact, both the neighbors to the North, we had a meeting July of last year, I met with them on their deck and asked them specifically, would you rather have a building fairly close to your property line or parking and they adamantly said parking. And the buttocks of the North of the parking lot just requested that he have enough room for the Main Street crew to trim the hedge. So he's got probably four to six feet all the way along there for trimming the hedge and so forth. So I think in general, the layout of the parking works really well for the site. And reducing the build in the way we did. Went from 27 units to 23 units. We configured a couple areas. We're still kind of working on that for the fine details but the exterior from what you saw in these renderings probably not gonna change a whole lot. So looking for the board's comments on that in case you do want some changes and we can certainly work those in before the next meeting. Okay, thank you, John. All right, board members. I mean, this is the time for comments. And at some point this evening, we'll need to decide how we wanna leave the conversation this evening and or whether we wanna continue it. Maria. Thanks, Doug. Thanks to the team for this presentation. I'm so thankful that there's like a real great collaboration on this because the project I think looks a lot better and looks really like it fits the context quite well actually. So thank you so much for taking the comments and getting help from the planning department, building department because I mean, this is exactly how the process, well maybe not in some people's minds but I think that it should work. You get a lot of really good designers together and then get input from public and from the people at Town Hall. And yeah, I think the view from the south is just fantastic. And I appreciate that you pushed the L-shaped building a little further from an existing building. It's still tight but it's like, in order to get enough parking on the parcel and circulation, it's just, yeah, it's without tearing down that corner building, existing building. It's kind of like the very best you could do without just having inadequate parking. And with its location so close to town and to bus stops, I'm pretty comfortable with the number you've landed on and still providing enough green space for the people who will be using that property. So, yeah, thank you for your effort this last month in making these improvements. And only thing I'm not too clear on is exactly the before and after as far as the site work. I do have the version in our packet of the architectures but not of the landscape. So it's hard to know exactly what has changed other than like the one-way aspect in some spaces added here and there. But right now nothing jumps out in years like being like a big problem area. But yeah, overall, I think it's working really well with the scale of the neighborhood. So yes, it's great. Thank you, Maria. John, I see your hand. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to make sure everybody understands that the rendering you're looking at here and the ones that Mike has don't reflect the change to the front of that building. It still shows the old footprint. So just keep that in mind that what you're seeing here is gonna be a little bit smaller in the front. Yep, right in that area. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Jack. Yeah, I concur with Maria. It looks really, really good from the view from the south. But I had a question, because stormwater, I know there's no incentive within the Amherst bylaws, but are permeable pavers just, I think permeable pavement has its issues because of clogging, whatever, but permeable pavement or yeah, pavers seem like a decent thing. And I'm just wondering are you implementing that at all, Mike, in projects? Rarely, and you're right. I mean, they tend to be more maintenance heavy, especially in this climate where people are putting sand down and stuff. The most common method that we've seen are those open grid concrete pavers. Yes. If you're familiar with the research drive. Well, I'm very familiar with research drive. Okay, okay. Well, that building that Mickey Marcus was involved with, I believe has that type of open grid paving. I believe that's been the example of the longest permeable paving for parking in town. I don't know how many years it's been in, but it's been close to 20. I know there's some at UMass. We did some at the Common School. There is issue, there's obviously issues with getting vegetation to grow in there. More likely than not, you're not going to have lush grass. You will have some vegetation, but it will end up being clover or weed species, quote unquote weed species. Like my lawn? Well, it's how much care you want to put in it. The other thing we've seen is actual permeable asphalt. That's been being used a little bit more, but I can't remember what the cost differential is. It's something like four times the cost of just regular asphalt. And then you have to put in a deeper layer of crushed stone in there to act as a well, if you will, under that. So, but both of those obviously can get clogged with fine sediments and it does take vacuuming. It's a newer way of doing maintenance on those or keeping them free draining. But it is like a brand new as for permeable asphalt patch or whatever. It's quite incredible. You can pour a bucket of water on it and it just disappears. Obviously over time, if it gets clogged, you're just, in this climate, I just feel it's not gonna last forever. And then what do you do? Peel it up and do it again, you know? So we don't have any of that on this project, right? No, we're not proposing permeable pavers on this project at all. And in fact, it just wasn't considered. Yeah, well, my observation on Research Drive was like the permeable pavement was a no-go. It's just with the clogging and the need for the vacuum drive. But the pavers seemed intriguing and they're not part of the drive that just worked the parking. So they're not overloaded. And is it something I just wondered if you considered? Yeah, I mean, I just went by, I just drove through the Common School yesterday on my way back from like Belcher Town to Northampton just to take a look. And if you're familiar with the Common School, the parking spaces around there are heavily used. We also use the permeable paver, the open grid concrete pavers on an emergency drive that goes up to the north side of the school kind of. And there is vegetation growing in those because nobody drives on that or it's rarely driven on. So that is also an issue. It doesn't look great, you know? If you try to grow grass or something there and it's constantly being driven on, it just doesn't survive. Or it has a very hard time surviving. It eventually will become like weeds is my experience. Okay. Anything else, Jack? No. All right, thanks. Thank you. Chris, I see your hand. So I wanted to note that Janet sent me a text saying that she was having trouble hearing. The sound was going in and out. So I wanted to know if others were having that same problem. Janet seems to have her problem corrected. And if anyone is having that problem, they can listen to the video of this, which will be posted. I think it'll be posted on Friday. So if people are missing part of the video or part of the sound, they can listen to it when the IT department posts it on Friday. Thank you. All right, thanks, Chris. I can say my experience has been that I've been getting consistent audio quality. Janet, did you have any comments on this? Yes. So I was wondering if you can go back to kind of towards the original screen showing the changes, because I had sort of the same questions or about what's changed. And then just, so in terms of the kind of alley, between the old house, the north side of the old house to the south side of the new building, that was as small as five feet. And then I think at 12 feet originally, and what, yeah. Yeah. Janet, we're losing your audio. Yeah, on that. And then what is it? Try it again. I think it's like, I think it's like, just say that sentence again. I'm wondering what, if you can do the two alleys between the buildings, what the original distances were and what they are now. All right, John. John, do you want to answer that or do you want me to? So John's muted, now you're not. Michael, yeah, I think you got those exact measurements. So originally, is this your screen we're seeing, John? No. Okay. It's Michael's. Oh, well, from the furthest north wall of the existing building, the little shed in what I consider the kind of like shed vestibule to the new building right now is 12.2 feet. And what was it a month ago when we first saw it? It was 12.2 minus seven. So it was 5.2. A little bit less than that, that shed dormer in the back, that houses the ramp and the candy cap entrance, that's seven feet, 10 inches. So I think it was somewhere around five feet, two inches or something. Like, yeah, it was five feet and about that. So basically, we increased that distance seven feet. Okay. Seven feet more space in the north alleyway. And what about from the east side of the building to the south wing of the new building? Originally it was 13 and it's just moved one foot more to the east. So now it's 14 feet. Okay. Some of our thinking on that, just to give you a little background, before we had the gas in the water lines coming in the north end of the building, so to be underneath the parking lot. Yeah, they swung in from the north. Yeah, so we looked at that and we were a little bit concerned about if we could move things farther north and give the tenants on the south side of that building more sunlight, that's a big reason why we did it. And then we were able to run the water on a gas line straight from Gray Street right through that 12 foot area directly into the mechanical room. So it worked out pretty well. And having the gable roof on the north side of the existing building, they do get a lot of sunlight there. And this time of year when the grass has grown, I don't foresee any issues with having some shrubbery back there or lawn area. I think they're gonna get plenty of sunlight just put a different kind of grass seed in there like a fescue or something. And it gives the area a nice area for somebody who wants a little private area for sitting out there and just reading or sunbathing or whatever, it's kind of a enclosed area. Yeah, it's definitely a more private space. All right, Janet, your hand is still up. Yeah, so another question, I like the idea of putting some greenery there instead of just kind of a gravel. Another question I had was about driving. So the two-way driving, so to me it looked like it was just you drive in and you drive in on Main Street and you drive out on Gray Street, but the Main Street entrance would still be two-way. And I'm wondering about car movement, like how would a car pulling in turn around and come out? Everything looks so tight on this site because of the size of the building. Okay, Mike, are you assuming that any car that came in and wanted to go out on Main Street, pulled into a space and then backed out of that space and came to reverse direction? Right, if, yes, that's correct. Most people would be pulling into a parking space and then obviously doing their maneuver to turn around and head back out when they left the site. If, for instance, let's just say all the spaces were full or something and they came in Main Street and drove up to the North, they could still do a three-point turn or a turnaround by pulling left into that one-way lane then backing out and then heading back south toward Main Street if they wanted to get out that way. But really, if somebody was coming to the site and they decided, oops, I wanna, I need to go, I forgot to go to stop and shop or whatever and they wanted to get back out, they would just drive through the one-way lane and exit on Gray Street and then get back to Main Street, doing a basically a big loop or a horseshoe or whatever. Yeah, I'm kind of wondering what would be the downside of just making the Main Street entrance entry only? Why, what's the big problem with having people exit, everybody exit on Gray Street? I'm thinking that too. John, you wanna think about that? No, not at all. I think the design that you see on Main Street, that was built according to the building we did last year. It really had none of these thoughts in mind at the time. So that is properly designed for both entry and exit to and from Main Street. There's enough spaces from the parking area to where the porch actually used to be is right along that curb line. I don't think you can see my cursor, right? Now moving it around thinking you can see it. But anyways, the parking spaces are designed to be used or and they have been used for almost a year now. There were no issues. I think just having the one way out to Gray Street and the fire department kind of like that too, in case of an emergency, they would certainly come in that way if needed. So it just kind of works out for everybody at this point. But the Main Street site is the entrance driveway, there's 18 feet wide, which is a requirement for two way traffic. Are you gonna drive there? The exit out to Gray Street now is 16 feet wide, which is actually six feet wider than required. And Mike, I think it's only a 10 foot one way. Yeah, I believe zoning requires a 10 foot egress, 10 foot width on an egress for one way. Yeah, but the other nice thing about this design is initially we were gonna take out one of the nice maple trees that is on the Gray Street property line there. Right. And the way this works out now, it actually fits perfect between the maple trees. We do lose that stone planter that's there, but that's gonna, the stone will be reused somewhere else on site for little retaining area or whatever. And then we'll have those new post lights there. And I don't know if you want to talk about those quickly about the question that came up regarding why there's a different type of post light versus what we used on the other site. John, I wonder, can I just stay a little bit on the traffic circulation? Because I was thinking the same thing that Doug was, that having two-way traffic in that section might be getting kind of busy for people walking back and forth, like traffic from both directions. And if people entered on Main Street and exited on Gray Street, it'd be sort of more simplified for the pedestrians. But also I think it would give, maybe give you some room to pull the new building a little further away from the little building, which is still kind of dwarfed, in my opinion, dwarfed by the extension and kind of the new building seems to sort of crammed in a little bit on the lot. And so I would just say, consider that for the future. It might give you some more space for the building to move the building. It might give a little more simplicity for people walking, not having to look both ways. If you're carrying a bag of groceries, have a crazed toddler or a dog, or you're just a visitor and you're a little confused and trying to figure out what building. So I think it might be simpler just to have it one way. So that's one observation. I do like the reduction in the front of the new building because it did really, it did reduce that feeling of there's like a little building and then there's this really, really big building. I'm not, I would again, just ask for more detail on the new building to kind of match the pretty details or just the level of detail on the old house. I don't know if it's just changing the siding. So it's on some parts, a little more detailing on the window. I do still think the new building really kind of dwarfs the little, what it doesn't seem like a little house to me when I'm there but when I look at this picture, it does seem little. The new facade goes a long way to making it more integrated. So that was one feeling. I had a question, I may have other questions, but a question about the sign. If people have offices, I know they're gonna want, businesses are gonna want their name on that sign. So when you look across the street, main street, there's just, there's a sign that announces the address, but there's a whole, often a whole series of names underneath. So I was wondering if that was part of the sign. As businesses come in, can they put their name there so they can get some advertising and locate people? There could be a separate directory and some, but why don't you, John, what was your plan for directing people to different businesses within the complex? Well, it kind of works out because each of the office spaces are right in the front of each of the three buildings and shared parking spaces that we intend to use are all right there in the front, including two handicap spaces, one being a van accessible. So I think we need nine spaces to be shared with the offices based on the square footage. That's another thing that we haven't talked about. Is that office in the front of the new building? We deleted the studio unit that was in the front there. So now it's all one big office right across the front of that reduced area. So it's like 620 square feet or something versus 330, I think the other one was. So we have more office space and I think having that is kind of the anchor in that main building all across the front, makes it nicer too. But each doorway for the offices will have a sign with a light. And I think that's the personalized properties that you see on the bottom there. It's kind of what we went through with Crossman properties when they were going to go into unit one over at the first building. So there'd be a light over the sign area and just identifying, but there could be enough room I think to have just the series of little signs underneath where it says downtown residences and office spaces for like a short, the old sign had that but it was kind of took up the whole sign and they had separate placards that they just threw it in as the tenants changed. But yeah, that's certainly something to think about. And I think we have enough square footage or I don't know if that qualifies as like a temporary identification for a business or we could actually take out the downtown residences and that little green circle on a bottom and mount something there. So will each of these three properties have its own street number? No, no, they're all intended to be 462 Main Street. I talked with the fire department on that and my experience through the years as far as responding to emergencies when you went through a complex you're looking for sequential numbers. You know, you don't want to be looking, okay, this building, what number is this building? You know, how come there's one through 20 on that building one through 20 over here? I think from a public safety standpoint it makes more sense to have it all sequential. So you see on a door units, you know, six through 20, 21 through whatever makes it a lot easier I think for first responders. So then we'll be three or however many business suites there are just be part of that sequential number system. Correct, yeah. So unit one on the building we did last year is the office space there. And I believe the office space in the proposed building will be 26 and then the new building or the existing building these are going to be renumbered a little bit because we lost four units. Initially the first floor of the now 446 was going to be unit 54. So that'll probably be unit 50. And then in the house, in the house it'll continue. You'll have 51, two, three. No, there's only one apartment upstairs in the house. So that probably will be 51. And what is there a business downstairs in the house? There's nothing there now. It was pretty much empty when I bought it. And I said, well, it doesn't make sense to try to rent that to a business and have all this construction going on all around it. So that'll be our construction office is herring construction and see what happens after that. And that's unit 50 that he was talking about. So that would be unit 50 on the first floor for that commercial unit. Unit 50 is on the first floor of the house or of the new building. Of the house. Of the house. Oh, okay. And then the unit, okay, fine. Yeah, right. That would be easier for deliveries. That's fine. It's sequential through the whole complex, so. Correct. Okay. Rachel, I see your hand up. I just wanted to point out that because all of the commercial spaces at the front of the main street side of the property here, I really like having the two way entry here because then all of the commercial parking can enter and exit from the main street side and leave this whole area for the residences and guests. So I do like how that works out. And personally having visited the property, it feels really easy to move in and out of that driveway the way it is, even with the behemoth van that I drive right now. Thank you. Janet, your hand is up. So just to clarify, because I've so many changes. So on the new, the current new building, you are increasing the office space or not? I mean, I'm looking at a little red. Yeah, I think he said it went from 300 and something to 680 or something. No, the office, unit one is the office space in a building we built last year. That is not changing. That's 550 square feet. Right. Unit 26, where the cursor is now or was, that's going to be all across that new 32 foot front of the building. Instead of having a studio unit and an office space, it's all office space now. So that'll be about, it's 32 by 21, I think, so a little over 600 square feet. But that's in the new, in the proposed new building. In the current new building. So just like Janet had talked about, okay. So just to give some, I don't know, maybe a hot tip or advice. When I went through the red barn, just to look at offices, they have very, very tiny spaces. And a lot of them, and a lot of them were rented and I know a fair amount were empty. It looks like there's a lot of people providing either different kinds of therapy, massage therapy, emotional therapy. And the building on the second floor, particularly, but on the first floor, obviously they're having terrible traumas with sound. They're not very soundproofed. And there were a lot of white noise machines in the hallway and the sound of, at one point, I thought it sounded like a river was running through one of the halls. And so I thought that if, setting up some office space for therapists, that a few cubicles with a common waiting space or something like that, that would be a really good use of this space. I think people would really want that. But just in my marketing tip of the day, but I'm glad to see that there's more space in the front because that was going to be one of my suggestions because just to make it more of a commercial, to keep the vitality in the area, there's just a lot of small businesses and small seems to be working, even in this kind of tough time. And then I'd like to talk about parking, but I don't know if you want to do that later or Doug, what do you think? Like kind of you- I think we ought to talk about it some now. I mean, let's give John our comments and assuming we actually continue to the next meeting, you'll have a chance to respond to him if he hears him tonight. So basically, this is like half the amount of, looking at the whole project as a whole, which I know is not how it was born. And so we have half as many or less than half as many parking spaces as our by-law set out as the standard. And so I've raised these concerns for the buildings in the area, the residential buildings in the area have much more parking per unit. I'm not sure about the bedroom count. And so I went back and found notes on something that I, I know John was going out on Tuesday mornings. I was going out on Sunday mornings around the same time. And at Spruce Ridge 22 High Street, it had 12 units and 28 cars on a Sunday morning in the parking lot. There were 13 cars across the street in a building that had six apartments. I think it was either 513 or 531 Main Street. The parking lots of those buildings on the south side of Main Street were really full. And so to me, it, I think having one space per unit, knowing that there's some two and three bedroom units in these buildings is just too little. And so, you know, and so my concern is, you know, there's not, it's in the focus in the by-law is on the needs of the tenants in the peak parking uses, not on average use and not on, you know, the need to put as many units or as big a building on the site as possible. And so I'm trying to, I'm struggling with that dilemma where, you know, on one hand, I think this building is too big for the site. We're kind of cramming in, you know, there's a little bit of open space here. You know, some of the places that, you know, Michael has pointed out, like the lawn in the back is really just too little. Like I went out there today. Unfortunately, people behind the new building can't really get access to it and aren't using it because they don't have doors to it. And so I was very encouraged to see the idea of putting, you know, using some publics, you know, putting together a patio or some seating to create some kind of cohesion or some kind of sense of community. But, you know, there's not enough spaces and the building, the size of the building is creating all sorts of pressures on the site. And so I was thinking about conditions that would handle these problems and I could go into those if people wanna hear it or if people have responses. One of the conditions would just be to reduce the size of the building and increase the number of parking spaces. And I think it would be more, the building would fit more with the look of the street and fit more with the smaller building and the other buildings around it. I really am almost vehemently against restricting the amount of parking that tenants can have because it seems kind of a contradiction to say to tenants, you don't need parking because I'm not letting you have it. And so, you know, obviously tenants who have two cars will have to, can't go here. And so, you know, that's not really what the bylaw is saying, you know, to restrict it. So I wondered if you wanted to stay with this amount of parking spaces or a few more if in the manage, in the conditions is, you know, not restricted tenants saying you can only have one space per unit lifting that restriction and if tenants actually have more cars, a commitment to find spaces for them elsewhere. It could be at the Red Barn parking lot at night. I don't know what the plans are for the VFW. There's a lot of nighttime parking across the street and it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to arrange. I'm trying to think, let me just read my notes for a second. You know, and also maybe a commitment to some kind of van service, which we see at one of the, I can't remember if it's, if it's Aspen or the new one on Route nine, the student housing thing, they have a regular van they run or vouchers to make sure people can get places. But I think we have to recognize that people have cars, there's gonna be more than one car per unit. And the fact that there isn't that many cars is because the tenants aren't allowed to and either the people there either have no car or one car per unit. So I'm just looking for some way to make sure that these tenants and future tenants have a place to park, just like I do, and we all do here. Janet, I'm hearing two issues. One is you're uncomfortable with the mass of the building. And I don't think that's something we would do as a condition, you know, we'd have to just get it, you know, work with John to have it smaller by the time we approved it. Yes. And then in terms of future parking accommodations, Chris, what kind of leeway do we have to, you know, guide the future of parking provision on a project? I mean, I would assume it's pretty limited. It is limited. And if you were to suggest that John make an agreement with a local property owner, that local property owner would need to get a permit to allow parking from elsewhere to park on his property. So it's not unimpossible, but it's a little complicated. It would involve a permit for the other landowner. Okay. So I will say that I actually share some of the concerns that Janet has with the mass of the building. I do appreciate how you've reduced the size of the frontage on Main Street, but it hasn't really done very much in terms of the mass that's behind the house to the north of it and is looming over it. My recollection is when you did the first building on site, you know, last year or the year before whenever that was, you had a rendering of how the project looked from farther to the west on Main Street, looking down the hill, kind of from the Dickinson homestead. And I would be interested in seeing that because I think this is still an awfully big project. And I particularly in light of the fact that this is right next door to the future home of Amherst Media, which is in historic district and went through an extremely onerous approval process to come up with a very consensus, you know, sensitive architectural design. I think this project here is frankly, it's relatively undistinguished. You know, it's not a particularly sensitive assertion onto this area, which is right next to a historic district. So I have, I'm sort of, I'm a little bit conflicted about it. I support more housing in town. So I don't have any, you know, I'm not opposed to that, but I am worried about this project and that it's likely to be poorly received, just, you know, despite your best efforts. So in terms of the parking, I'm actually not as worried about the number of spaces as I am the fact about the fact that more than half of them are compact cars. I just don't think that that's a realistic mix for people today. And that you'll end up with a lot of tenants parking in your commercial spaces out front, and then the commercial people won't know where to go to park. So I am hopeful that if we continue this this evening that we can see the evolution of the design in the next meeting. So I have four hands that are up. And I think Nate, yours is the last, but you're a staff member. So maybe you want to comment on something recently said. Oh, no, sure. Thanks. I was, you know, just asked the board to, you know, their thoughts on the four parking spaces out in front, as we can see on the view from the south, you know, I do find that the parking space is encroach onto the street, you know, and just the overall kind of site plan and layout. So, you know, there hasn't been some comments about, you know, the open green space, or is it usable? Same thing with the, you know, the HVAC units will create some noise. And if they're stackable, they'll be pretty high. And so, you know, if there's 30, you know, if each unit has their own outdoor unit, that's quite a few units in between those two buildings. And so, you know, staff, I consider it, could they be located, you know, on a roof area, you know, and be hidden from view? Or are there other ways to situate those? So, you know, it will be visible for Main Street from Gray Street. So, it's really not, you know, even with some screening with vegetation, I think that, you know, it could be that it is quite noisy in that area if they're all running, if that's, you know, if that's energy, you know, heat and cooling for the unit. So, those are just some additional comments. All right, thanks, Nate. You know, I guess I do wish that those parking spaces near Main Street were not there. Of course, I think that would probably result in reducing further the number of spaces, which is already pretty marginal. So, Maria, I see your hand. I think I'm just trying to write my notes down. Let's see. So, back when we were talking about, way back when we were talking about the circulation, I had thought from the drawing, that all the drive-outs looked about the same. So, now I'm hearing it is still two-way, 18 feet at Main Street, and then it goes down to 16 at Gray. So, I misunderstood, I thought it was all one way. And at this point, I would say probably for that issue, just make sure you have really good signage about what is an exit and what is two-way, because I misunderstood, I assumed it was one way, just from this drawing. And to that point, it is kind of hard to know what is being proposed, because there's so many versions in between. So, I guess for next time, we'll have the final definitive landscape and architectural. But, and yeah, like Nate was just saying, I didn't understand that those would be stacked. I think I heard it, but I didn't realize that they would all be stacked on those red rectangles. So, I guess I just, you know, a little more clarity on what's been proposed would be great to be able to give useful feedback. It's just hard because I've been trying to listen, as well as take notes and look at the tiny screen. I don't think, I mean, I agree with you, Doug, that the building does feel large, but the L shape of the massing in the back actually fits with the project that John built, I forget, to one or two years ago. That scale feels right to me. And then what they've done to the main street scale, I think fits with the existing and the building they built last year. So, the scale of the massing, I think actually was pretty good. I think what the problematic issue is still is just, yeah, the proximity there is the kind of creating this sort of valley-like public space in a way between the existing and the new. So, that's really tricky because they chose to keep that house is just where it's landing. But I feel like the scale of it, having the higher stuff in the back towards the other building, which is also three stories, I have a less of a problem with it architecturally and from the public realm side than I did last time. And I'm not sure that it should really mimic the historic, I mean, I appreciate the colors, but I think having it mimic what they built last, the first piece that's more linear, that helps tie those two together better than having like, these two, the existing and the new, they're not gonna match that closely because one's historic and got a lot more detail and the new one, I think making it look more like the other new project that was already built makes more sense. So, yeah, I mean, without, these projects are by right, what we're supposed to be doing is posing a lot of conditions. So, you know, we can't, I don't know, maybe Chris can correct me, but I mean, we can't say, can we, we can't say redesign at all. We've got to like keep honing in and giving, you know, constructive criticism to get this project more to what we think the town would be amenable to. And I agree, we so desperately need housing. And so I guess the conflict is in amount of parking for the amount of need that the project is asking for. And so I'd like to hear, I think John had a lot of research maybe on some parking. I would just like to hear how that is being handled as far as the need of the site's parking versus what they could fit on site with parking. And I also wanna just reiterate that it is really close to downtown and bus lines. So to say, you know, to point to the zoning and say, this is what's in black and white, you always have to look at the project's context and look at where it's located and look at the type of user and the type of uses in the building and take that all into consideration to just blanket, you know, say, it has to have this number of parking spaces every single time is unreasonable. And that's why their zoning boards and planning boards is to review these projects, you know, parcel by parcel, parcel by parcel then used by, used to really, you know, not make it unreasonable on the building. So anyways, yeah, I'd like to hear more about. I just lost your audio, Maria. Something, oh, now you're back. Okay, so anyways, I just would like to hear more about how the parking is being handled as far as the proposal, the newest latest proposal. Yeah. All right, thanks, Maria. John, I see your hand. So John, your hand. I got it. All right, yeah, well, so just a couple of the comments that the massing of it, they can understand somewhat where you're coming from, but you gotta keep in mind, the future of the corner of Gray Street where Amherst Media is coming is probably about eight or 10 feet higher grade-wise than where this building is. So you're gonna have a 27-foot tall roof peak at Amherst Media coming down from the center of town looking. You probably won't see a lot of this area. You're just gonna blend in. And to that point on the corner of Dickinson and Main Street, there is already a three-story grade building there that has a one-story addition to it, next to a two-story building and a two-story building to the south side of it. And further up Gray Street, there's a building that had a third story added to it, actually probably about 10 years ago. Again, with a two-story on one side and a two-story on the other side. And you talk about trying to make things blend into the neighborhood here. And yes, you only looked at the option and tearing down the old building there, but as I told you before, my thought process is to have this blend in with the neighborhood. And I think coming into the cultural district, having a building like this and the existing building there, just kind of makes sense to me to have it blend into the neighborhood. And the fact that we're not disturbing any of the screening along Main Street or Gray Street, you know, it is what it is. So we've made the front of the building look more presentable. I think it blends in fine. We gave up units, we're giving up square footage, we're giving up bedrooms. I think the parking issue, nobody's really talked about 462, the building that we did last year. I know I've mentioned that there's 16 cars for 32, for 35 bedrooms there, that's less than 50%. And there's very little foot traffic up and down Main Street other than to catch the bus or to walk uptown. I just think some of the issues you're looking at kind of from a dark cloud perspective, worst case scenario, you have to look at, here it is, this is the way it's been for a year now, it's kind of a proven thing. And there's other developments, newer developments, some of which I use the data on. And the newest one, I checked with the rental agent at South University Drive, which are all one-bedrooming studios there. Their units are already rented, fully rented. And she said for 40 bedrooms or 40 units there, she has 26 cars. It was actually 45 units, but they haven't held a lottery yet for the five affordable units. So she took those five units off of the total of 45. So that's a 65% bedroom to cars ratio, which is pretty much what I've been saying all along here. I think my data says 0.67. So I think a lot of things to play into the wider fewer cars now, especially now with gas going up, who knows what that's gonna be, but this is kind of a non-transient development where we're trying to get people to use the bus, get people to bike, get people to walk where they need to go and plan ahead and carpool and that type of thing. It just, you need the housing more toward the downtown than on the outskirts. And I just really put a lot of thought into creating this. And as far as the AC noise, that's really an issue of old. These new heat pumps, and I was trying to find the decibel level, you go behind the back of the building that we've done last year and those heat pumps are larger, you have to look at which one is running to figure out which one's making noise. And it's not a noise, it's just a gradual hum. You really gotta look at them to see what the fan is turning. So I don't think the noise part is really an issue. The compact spaces, that data that I did those couple of mornings I went out, I got a sore neck turning in my head trying to figure out which kind of car it was in marketing down and it was going by. But of the 239 cars that I documented in those spaces during those two times, 72% of those 239 cars are 15 feet, six inches or less in total length and an average of 71.79 inches wide. So they fit fully into a compact space and even the largest car that actually happens to be at 462 is a Mercury Grand Marquis which is 17 feet something long and 78 inches wide. So it's only like three inches wider each way compared to the average. So it's a whole different ball game and the vehicles that are out there nowadays, I mean, facts or facts, you've looked at any stoplight you come through, you drive through any parking lot, you don't see big cars, you're seeing small cars, you're seeing smaller SUVs that are very popular now. It just, it is what it is. So I would appreciate you're not kind of looking at this through a dark eyeglass and see worst case scenario type thing. I mean, facts or facts, these are what people are driving now and a lot of younger people aren't driving because they don't want a car, they don't want a house, they want their own space and that's it. In fact, those South University Drive, they've got a mix of some undergrads, they're about 25%, the rest are grad students visiting scholars that are here for a year and they don't have a car and professionals. So this is the demand that is out there for housing, especially near downtown. So I just asked that you kind of give it a little leeway in this overall big picture. Thank you. Okay, thank you, John. Jack, I'm gonna call on you next. Janet, I see your hand. Yeah, and again, this is my last meeting on the planning board. It's a little bit of my swan song, but I have to say that I don't think there's any part of the planning board that is a parking expert. It may seem that way, but I am quite confident that's the case. I thought John presented a very strong argument about how, given a particular living arrangement, people know that in advance and they choose to live there or not. If you're living on a farm and you have 10 spaces, you may have two cars and a truck and a motorcycle or whatever, it is really, you know what you are as a tenant, you know what you are getting into. And John had presented some examples where there's 100% occupancy with the parking situation that he's presenting here. And I know the former Drake there on Amity has zero parking, fully occupied. So I'm just a little tired of the parking, being that parking drum. And I know we have new bylaws that speak to that. I'm not sure if they're in effect yet, but maybe Chris can help me with that. But I thought John really tied it up there in his discussion. Okay, so it sounds like you are satisfied with the amount of parking. You're willing to approve it as proposed. Yeah, especially with the bus line there. And you know, it's just, yeah, I mean, we kind of went through this all before, but. All right, thank you. John. Can you hear me now? Yes. The other thing that really hasn't been mentioned is, there's actually about 20 to 25 parking spaces available along Gray Street. And I think this was brought up during the Amos Media video that I happen to watch part of one time. So there are other parking areas fairly close by that. In the event that I don't see for C happening, but there are other options for people to park. We've had delivery trucks, you know, Amazon and FedEx and UPS coming through 462 for the past year. And I mean, nobody's had any issues. And again, a lot of the students that we're seeing coming in, in fact, the Board of Health had a presentation by some UMass students done on May 5th. When we had a hearing with them in their presentation was kind of about COVID and the mix of the character or the makeup of people in town now. And they said that there's more international students coming in to Amherst than there ever has been. International students usually don't have a car either. And they're used to walking, they know what they gotta do and they get on a bus and do whatever they do. It just, especially in this location, I just think this makes a very nice site that complements the town and complements a need. There are results in partially filling a need. And it's just a good spot for it. And again, I've really put a lot of thought and I don't look at just little things. I try to figure out. That's why I looked at the Amherst media to make sure I wasn't duplicating colors and stuff like that. And so I try to think it out anyways there. I guess that's my point. Thank you, John. Janet? So John, I totally appreciate how much effort and time you put it in there into this project and collecting data. I think in a way we're birds of a feather in terms of, I'm surprised we haven't run into each other early in the morning counting cars and stuff like that. So I do appreciate the changes to this. I appreciate the effort to it. Just on the parking front, I think the board has to follow the bylaw. And I spent a lot of time looking at the new bylaw language and it gives flexibility, but it also talks about the ensuring adequate parking for the proposed use. And this building will be around for decades. And so we have to make sure it will happen. The people who live in this building will have facilities that will work for them for decades. And so when I look around, it says, look at 800 square feet, 800 feet away, which I'm not sure what that is. But when I have looked around the street and the apartment buildings be a large or small, they're full of cars on weekends. And so that's part of the peak utilization. Sale and place is almost always full. The six plexes and four plexes across the street are full on the weekends. Even that fitness together thing that the board permitted, there's a couple of apartments there. That parking lot has a lot of cars at night. During the day, the cars are away. So that's good for the people using the commercial spaces. So the data I think supports that people are driving. I mean, I think COVID actually has boosted the amount of students driving. I don't think that's gonna last forever. But I think we have to do is follow the bylaw and do what it tells us to do. And so I do think there's not enough parking, but the bylaw also says, gives you an out. It gives you six different outs. And I think one of the outs is gonna be a real easy fix, which is the lease parking. Yeah, you need a permit, but it's site plan review permit in the BN. And so I think, just getting that permit, talking to somebody else, I'm sure somebody at the Red Barn or whoever owns that complex would be happy to get a little extra income, that parking lot is almost empty at night. It could be an arrangement of if needed. So if you don't need it and your tenants aren't restricted and not allowed to have cars or only have one car and they don't need it, then you're in the sweet spot, right? Like the miracle has finally come, Americans have gotten out of their cars. It just hasn't happened yet from what I'm seeing on the street for housing that's for undergrads, regular folk, grad students. There's just a lot of people, cars parked in lots in the different apartment buildings. So I've said that about that, but I'm trying to figure out a way to make it work for you and also to make it work for people who live there a decade from now, there's two and three bedroom places. They could be families. We know family life goes up and down in terms of needs for cars. So that's my thing I wanted to say. Getting back to future pictures, I wonder if we could see the buildings without the trees in front or the leaves. The trees can stay but without leaves because I think that's part of the view from the different streets. And I know that six months a year we have no leaves, deciduous leaves on trees. I always hope that April will be more leafy than it is. And so I would appreciate because I think that will give a sense of what it looks like from Gray Street, from Main Street and the massing, which I think is kind of intense. So I just, I think that's it. Thank you, Janet. I appreciate it, what you're working on though. John, by the way, it's after eight and we usually take a break at eight. So I'm thinking we are probably gonna wanna basically put an end to this conversation this evening. Continue this hearing to June 29th. So I'm hoping in the next, let's say 20 minutes we can wrap this up for this evening. John, go ahead. Yeah, just Janet, I wanna address one parking area that we both agree is usually full is Salem Place. You gotta realize a little history there. Salem Place was built as condominiums to be sold as individual units, which they were. Then when the people tried to resell them, they couldn't resell them because of the market or whatever. So now all of those owners said, well, I'm just gonna rent it to the undergrads. So they jack up the rent and that's why there's so many cars there. I don't tend to do that and I don't foresee anybody owning this in the near future besides us. And so it's just a different scenario, I guess. And as far as the options on a new parking bylaw, I think under section 7.000, the permit granting authority shall determine the adequate number of Austrian parking spaces based on the criteria. And another section says that we have to design it for adequate and the language. Adequate and appropriate for the proposed use. Now, the basic use here is residential. And that's kind of why I went out at 4 a.m. figuring, okay, the residents are sleeping at 4 a.m. If you have a car, it's outside. But all of those criteria under 7.00 fit the site. And also peak parking needs, proximity to the downtown public transit, other modes of transportation, all that. It just fits just like to a T, I think. And just ask for some consideration on all that. All right, thanks, John. All right, I don't see any other hands. I guess I will make one last comment, which I think Rachel had mentioned that she remembered that I had asked or suggested to paint the historic house to match the new building. And I'll just say, I don't remember making that statement. And if I did, so be it, I don't feel strongly about it. That was Chris. What's that? That was Chris that I think suggested that. Oh, okay, all right, good. Then my memory is feeling me. So maybe the red trim could stay from my perspective. Chris, go ahead. I just wanted to make a comment about the issue of who is going to be able to vote on this. And we do have three members who are absent tonight, Johanna and Andrew and Tom. And if they watch the video of tonight's meeting, they can be eligible to vote. So I just wanted to make that statement in public because if people see them come back next time, they may wonder why they would be eligible. So if they watch the video and they submit a written statement that they've watched the video and read the material, then they will be eligible to vote. Thank you. Certainly Chris. And I think I heard Jack say that this was his last meeting. So it's likely that on the 29th, we'll only have six members. Maria. I just wanted to quickly put it on the record that I am supporting this project with a number of parking spaces shown because of the presentations tonight and of previous projects that had come before us based on where this is located and the type of user for the project. Yeah, I think I agree with Jack and what was presented by John. I think that this project will work for its site and we can't predict the future. None of us on the planning board are parking experts. So I feel like a lot of things have been said, but that I'm just giving my own opinion, but we just want to be clear that things that are said aren't necessarily facts all the time. So all I'm giving is my opinion, which is that I support this project with the spaces shown. But I would like more information for the next go around just to see what is being proposed exactly because it was hard tonight. But again, I appreciate the effort from all of the team. Okay, thank you. So I'm not seeing any more hands. I think at this point I'll ask if there are any public comments on this project. All right, I don't see any hands raised from the attendees. So in that case, I'm going to make a motion to continue this hearing to June 29th. Chris, should I make it at 6.25 p.m. or some other time? You are muted. My, my. Okay, so please make it to 6.45 because we have the Amherst dog park coming back at 6.35. And I would like confirmation from Pam that I'm saying the right thing. You are saying the right thing. Okay, so my, my motion is that we continue this hearing to June 29th at 6.45 p.m. Would anyone like to second that? Maria? I can. All right. Any further comments from the board? No. So in that case, we'll do a roll call. Maria? And Jack? I approve. And Janet? Hi. And I'm an I as well. So that the motion passes four to nothing with three members absent. The time is 8.18. Actually, before we, before we break John and Tom and Rachel and Mike, thank you for your work and your presentation this evening. We'll see you in two weeks. Thank you. And I'll stay. Thank you. Thank you all very much. All right. We're all next. Thanks. Have a productive night. Good night. Okay, so now the time is 8.18 and we'll take a five minute break. Members, please mute yourself, turn off your video and we'll see you back at 8.23. All right. The time is 8.25. We've had seven minutes since we broke. All right. So we were, it looks like all the board members who are present are back. And, oh no, Jack, Jack, there's Jack. All right. All right. You're muted, Jack, but we love you anyway. I'm just saying, I never eat dinner. So that's why I don't want you to see you guys, you know, me eating. So I'm on, yeah. All right. So Chris, can we go ahead with the next item on the agenda? I see that Nate's not back. Do we need Nate? Oh, yeah. There's Nate, we need Claire Bertrand and Ron Laverdeer to be moved over into the panelists, please. Right. Okay. I'll go ahead and read the intro. So the time is 8.26 and we're going on to item four on our agenda, which is a public hearing which has been continued from June 1st. In accordance with the provisions of Mass General Law chapter 40A, these public hearings have been duly advertised and notice here of has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested persons to be heard. Ron, you are not muted. Would you mind muting? I'm trying to do that here. All right. Well, we can do that for you. I thought we could do it. You're so set. Okay. So is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding site plan review 2022-10 for Amherst Office Park, LLC at 463 West Street. This is continued from June 1st where you're requesting a site plan review approval to rebuild a retaining wall, deck and walkways on the south side of the building resulting in an increased lot coverage. The project also includes new plantings and new pole mounted site lighting at the front of the property. Map 19D parcel three in the BVC zoning district. And the second hearing is for a special permit 2022-04 at the same property address with the same map parcel and zoning. This is a request for special permit to extinguish previous special permits, ZBA FY84-00085 and ZBA FY85-00094 as zoning has changed. And mixed use building is now, is currently permitted by site plan review. So first, do we have any board member disclosures? I do not see any hands raised for disclosure. All right, Ron and Claire, would you like to go ahead and make your presentation? Welcome. Good to be here. Let's see. We had a failing retaining wall at the 463 building on the south side. We decided that it needed to be replaced. And at that time, I thought, since we were gonna have heavy construction backhose and excavators there, it'd be nice to build a deck at the time for the benefit of the tenants in the building. And so we added the, and then I thought it would be nice to have a sidewalk that connected the deck to the existing sidewalks. And we began that process. We were requested to do a site plan for this site because we were gonna be adding some coverage, approximately 695 square feet. So this building sits on actually a parcel with three other buildings. And so we ended up working with Eaton and Associates to calculate the exact square footage that would be under coverage to include all the other buildings, all the parking and the new 695 square feet. And so we're here now. We've had plans sent to the town. And we're looking for an approval on that. All right. Are there drawings that you want to have us put on the screen for you to show us what is happening? Well, the site plan drawing would be a good start. Pam, do you have any drawings available for this? I think Nate can share his screen. He's the most familiar with this project and he could probably, unless Pam's got something ready to go. I have the packet, but I thought Nate had other things that he was gonna share. Is that true, Nate? Well, I was gonna start with the survey that was in the packet. So like Ron said, this used to be different properties and over the years, this used to be different properties and over the years it was combined. And so it's actually a few acres. There's many buildings. And so as part of this review, I'll share my screen in a minute, but plenty more is also approving this new survey site plan. So the previous one was from 1989 and it was modified in the early 90s for some permits in the mid 90s. But really there hadn't been a survey to show existing conditions since then. And so it was, you know, what was included in the packet and what, you know, what's visible on the screen, you know, this is the entire site, right? So the building we're looking at, if my purse is visible is right down here in the, in the corner. And then, you know, the, but this entire site is what, you know, the planning board would be approving. So as part of the approval, this becomes the existing conditions plan. So we, you know, the building commissioner and staff met with Ron because the law coverage was very close to the maximum. And so we just wanted to confirm that everything, you know, the number of parking spaces, everything was being approved. So, you know, included in the survey was this, you know, you know, the parking is fine. The law coverage is, you know, 69.37% or percent, you know, it's below the 70% maximum, but it's been, you know, verified by survey. So, you know, we're satisfied that the dimensional, those dimensional standards in the parking are satisfied. And so, you know, what Ron mentioned was this part of the building or, you know, the back deck. I'm just going to zoom in a little bit. The, you know, there's an existing retaining wall here and an existing deck and that's getting removed. So the new, the new wall is coming further out. It's a terrorist wall here. So, you know, there's one retaining wall in this section. It's almost eight feet in height or seven, seven feet over some feet. And then it, you know, this retaining wall, there's, you know, there's two retaining walls here, a terrace, so a flower bed with plantings around it. The wood deck is being replaced. There's a sloped walkway to meet the deck. And then, you know, what's changed recently is that this existing ramp down to the back of the building was found to be too steep. Even though it's existing, if you're fixing it, you have to bring it up to code. So what's currently there is, I think over 20% Ron's mentioned it might even be a, you know, 25% slope, which is too, too steep. And so, so what's being proposed instead is, you know, there's here the site plans. I'll zoom in. So what's being proposed is actually a set of stairs. Going down this ramp. So instead of a ramp or a slope walkway, it's a, it's a set of stairs. So, you know, 15 stairs with, you know, equal tread and height and they'll be railings on either side. So, you know, from when this was proposed originally. Really the only change has been this addition of stairs. And is it, is it, is it correct that the lower level, the basement where these stairs lead are not, and will not be a publicly accessible space. So they are not required to have an accessible path to them. Correct. So you can see in the image here, you know, there's an entry here that will be served by the stairs. And then, you know, where the retaining wall will be will be in here and it becomes, you know, a small space. And a small space. And it can be, you know, it can be a small space. But that is only used by the tenants of the building and not by the public or for delivery. So. It can, it can be, you know, exceed. You know, the ramp can be steeper or it can have steps, but it doesn't need to be accessible. Okay. All right. Board members, are there any questions about this? Janet. I knew somebody would have questions. I have like macro questions and small questions. So these other permits that you're asking to extinguish. Are these, these special permits just for this building or the whole complex that you've built or acquired or whatever. So when this was permitted, those original permits are only for this building. So it was in a limited business zone. And then it was in a limited business zone. And then it was in a limited business zone. And then it was in a limited business zone. And then the ECU building required a special permit. So the first permit was to construct this building. And then a year later, there was another permit to modify it to just change a few things about the spaces in the building. So those two permits are only for this building on the site. Okay. So that, so that is not all the, what you just showed us. And then I don't think I've ever seen those original permits in my packet, but I think it's just not enough to be a public permit to do that. I think that's the only way to use it. So, so, so, so if we haven't gotten it, my question is. You know, we're, you know, I've seen some draft findings. I see a draft permit. Is this the same thing? Or, you know, as the previous stuff, like I, it's hard for me to extinguish a permit. I haven't seen without knowing what was in it. It's like, are. Did you just move everything over into this new one? If you see my question. I think that, you know, the previous permits, I think it may have been in development application report, you know, they had just only a few conditions, you know, you know, six conditions between the two, you know, I said that, you know, the, you know, there's only four apartments on the upper floors, the commercial tenants needed to stay on the ground floor, that the businesses needed to be approved by the commercial, you know, commercial tenants before, you know, how to go before the planning board or permacraining authority, you know, it's kind of standard hours of operation. And this was also before the zoning bylaw said that, you know, now the use category allows for, you know, tenants to live there and for then for visitors, you know, commercial visitors to come to the site. So before it said something that visitors needed to be by appointment only or something at first. And so the bylaw covers that the building commissioner and I also thought that the permit requirement of having any change in business go to be pre-approved by the permacraining authority is also excessive. So, you know, a tenant can change if there needs to be a site plan because of that in terms of outside changes, that's fine, but the way, you know, commercial space changes we don't require necessarily every time that that be pre-approved by through a site plan or viewer special permit, which is what they had originally done back in the 80s. They actually wanted to be another special permit every time a commercial tenant changed. Okay, that's a great answer to my question. My smaller question is about the deck. And is this deck just for use for the commercial tenants or can the residential tenants also use this deck? And if so, could you make it bigger? And that's not for you, Nate. Well, it's basically just a little spot. I wanted a little spot out there. So people could go out and have lunch. You know, the first floor is AFIS, which is a federal agency. And, you know, they just, they don't really have an outdoor space. So, you know, without actually leaving the front area of the building and walking across the parking lot and out to where we have a little patio area between 447, 445 and 451. So when I was doing this, I said, boy, it'd be really nice to have a place with a couple of tables and a spot for people to just sit and have their lunch outside. It's also, we're seeing an extremely competitive market and it's the amenities that make the commercial space more desirable. And, you know, that's one of the reasons we even added the deck from just being, we increased the size of the deck already. The second thing is there are some windows down below and we've got this set up so that it goes above the door but stops at the second set of windows. And that could be seen on the existing walkout area looking east. So the idea was not to darken those windows when we chose this deck location and size. Aren't those windows just a storage unoccupied space? Well, you know, the government will often be, you know, they'll move things down there, they'll be down in the space, gathering, moving. It's not a, it's not just storage. I mean, you know, the guys will go down and they, you know, might be working on traps down there or whatever it is that they're prepping for the agency. So, you know, I just think that the sunshine coming in is quite nice and darkening it would be, you know, I don't think would be as nice for, you know, for the folks when they're down in that space. All right, thank you. So the tenants could use that deck at night. And then did the tenants ever use that gravelly area? Like, you know, I noticed in your other buildings there's like balconies that people can sit on. And I was just kind of hunting around your site for spaces for the tenants to use. Well, obviously the tenants on the second floor can go right down and the set of stairs between B and C and there's a set of stairs there that enter and then the door exits right outside. So, you know, the tenants do and can go down and use that space if they choose. Okay. I mean, that's, you know, it's up to them, but I, the reason the deck was, you know, shortened to that size was, you know, the natural light going into the basement. Okay. Great. You know, it's still 12 by 14. So it's still a pretty good size deck, you know, certainly enough room for a couple of tables and perhaps even an umbrella. If we could keep it, if people keep remembering to shut it before nighttime and, you know, wild thunderstorms, otherwise the umbrella ends up somewhere else. All right. I don't see any other questions. Maria, you haven't spoken and Jack, neither of you have spoken. Do you, do you have any comments pro or con or you're good with this just the way it is? And we should go ahead and go to a vote. Janet, okay, Maria, I see your hand. All right. Do we need to review conditions first and all that stuff? And then, I'm fine to do that. I don't have any questions. Okay. I will ask for public comment. I just wanted to get through everything with the board. Chris. I just wanted to note that Nate provided a development application report and he may have had suggestions in there for you to think about certain things and also that there was a site visit and I think Janet and can't remember who else came, may Doug, Doug came. Yes. I think Tom arrived too. Tom, so you may want to report on the site visit. Thank you. Okay. That's a good point, Chris. Janet, you want to do the site visit or do you want me to try to remember what we saw? I would love you to start because today I was hoping Tom would because he had a bunch of very specific issues. All right. Well, my memory is a bit dim but Janet and Tom and I did meet out there must have been a little over two weeks ago since it was right before our last meeting and we saw the existing conditions similar to what was shown in the photo on that slide that we saw a moment ago. We did hear from Mr. Laverdeer that long-term he was thinking it might be nice to have a sidewalk from the existing public sidewalk that went west between his property and the, I guess it's a slope of the property to the south. And might link up eventually with some housing if that were to be built to the west of his property. We did talk about the deck and we talked about the existing ramp. We looked at the lighting fixtures and in particular he had a sample of the luminaire for the site light that he's proposing. So we saw that it looked like it was consistent with some of the other lighting that he's got on the site. And I think there was some concern about the level of light in the area of this new work. But he did point out that there was a fair amount of light from a flood light that was coming from the adjacent property and he has plenty of lights on his site. At the west end of his building and around toward the north side. So that's my recollection off the top of my head. Janet, if you have anything to add, I'd be happy to have you fill in the blanks. Sure, there also were, there's two other, there's the lights that Mr. Lavertier wanted to replace was one that was on the east front corner on 116. And I think it needed new wiring. And then I think he wanted to run an underground, why am I blanking, wire to set up a new light where there's supposed to be a bus stop built when they do that big roundabout project. I noticed that around that area, the ground was sort of uneven, at least like towards the back. And then also, I don't know if we can see that on the plan. Right, so here's the structure, the building. And so here's one proposed light pole and then another one, right? So these are the two out front, here's 116 or West Street. Yeah, and then when we were looking at the ramp it is quite steep and just in the retaining wall is in terrible shape being eaten by termites. Tom Long was interested in having a light pole put on the west side down near that ramp area or now stairway area, because he was concerned about whether people who are parking at night or leaving at night or residents would be have adequate lighting. And it seemed, I think we talked about that for a while. On the building in that corner is some like very harsh safety light. And then there's an apparently even stronger one on the building next to it. And so it seems kind of overlit and not really meeting our lighting guidelines. And so I could see the good sense of putting in a more temperate pole, but I didn't quite see the need myself at the moment. I'm trying to think of anything else. And then there was talk about landscaping and putting a fence, I mean, not a fence, something along the stair, the retaining wall so people wouldn't just like drop off. On this plan, there is a railing that runs along the sidewalk that connects to the deck. Okay, that's it. So that railing has been added and then loops around and then follows the stairs down. The lighting next door, unfortunately, we have to live with that and federal protective services actually requested the light on the west side of the building that lights the parking area. It's all 9-11 related. After 9-11, federal protective services got very concerned with government agencies and they actually required the installment of that light above the parking area. And I agree 100% if in the future, the tendency on that first floor changes and the federal protective services doesn't have control over the lighting above that. I would love nothing more than to have another post light just to the east of the walkway and stairwell, no, just to the west, excuse me, of the walkway and stairwell. And I think it would be as good a time as any to run the wire and the underground conduit for that light. It just wouldn't do anything right now, but certainly in the future, if AFIS were to move and other tenants occupied that first floor, we could remove, at least we could remove one of them that are under my control and then put up a post light that has much softer and I think just a much better feeling. So that's the best I can do on that. All right, thank you. So, Chris, you mentioned that Nate did for develop or provide this development application report. And Nate, do you wanna take us through that or do you want me to see or ask the questions you've suggested? Well, you could ask, I mean, I looked at it quickly. You know, I just, you know, my questions were, there were many, you know, basically would the landscaping be maintained? Is the lighting down lit and is it adequate? So, you know, other than the maintenance of the landscaping, it seems like most of the issues that consider have been addressed. I don't, Doug, you may have, may see some others. No, I did not see this as a particularly controversial project and it seemed pretty complete in terms of its proposal. Janet, your hand is still up. Is that legacy? No, I wanted to do one add to the conditions or on the lighting. So, you know, I agree that the lack of controversy is definitely here. I mean, it looks like, you know, just improving the whole situation and the more you looked at it, the more you saw it to fix. And that's what we're looking at. And it's very cohesive. I would request that the light at the bus stop go off a half hour after the last bus. The one, the light pole near the building makes sense to keep on at night for tenants coming in. But I think just, you know, we basically, after business hours, and it'd be great not to light up the sky or interfere with natural life when we don't need to. So I figured a half hour after the last bus leaves, I don't know if that's 11, it'd be great to turn the light off. And, you know, someone might get picked up or walk out, but it wouldn't be needed anymore. So that was my one condition. Suggested. Ron, how do you feel about that? Well, I mean, you know, I don't know what the last bus stop is. An awful lot of people from the multitude of buildings we have at the Amherst Office Park area will often walk over to the moan and dove and then vibe or go get, you know, go get a coffee late at night if they're studying. And anything that improves the lighting that walks, that follows along the sidewalk, I think is a good thing to have it. I just think the best thing we could do, given the fact that the ready mart there is open 24-7 and that the, you know, oftentimes people won't leave the moan and dove until one or one 15, I don't see any reason to be turning the light off at that spot when it would only be improving the safety on the sidewalk. I forgot about the moan and dove. Okay. So that's, you know, if the last bus was at 11 o'clock, I just think it would be, I think it's just given the fact that even somebody who might be cramming for exams or, you know, whatever leaves the buildings north of this site and would walk across the public walkway and go get a coffee at two or three in the morning at ready mart. I just think it makes a ton of sense to have it just go on with a photo cell and go off with the photo cell. Can you remind me, is there a sidewalk on that side or will there be one? There is a sidewalk on that side. That's where the sidewalk is and where the bus stop is proposed. Okay. So, you know, I just think the photo cell system works great. I mean, they don't use a lot of power. I mean, these LEDs are, it's like running a 45 watt bulb. Okay. All right. So let's see. Nate, do we have, or do we need findings and conditions this evening? And I'm not sure I'm seeing them in my packet. They were emailed on, I think a few occasions, I have them, I can pull them up. All right. Well, I think it sounds like we would be ready to vote on this this evening. And so if we can plow through those, that would be great. All right. And then I don't know, Doug, if there's any public comments. Well, we can ask at this point, sure. Anybody want to make any public comments from the attendees, from the public? I'm not seeing any hands. Ms. Bertrand. Yes. Hi. I just wanted to share with board. My name is Claire Bertrand. I have been both a resident quite a few years ago and I work here. I work with Ron Lavertier and I have seen this building for many years and seen it interface both with residential tenants and commercial. And while your site visit might have shown you not at our best with the plan to replace that wall, the landscaping hasn't been given any attention. But if you did look around the property, we have seven office buildings here as Amherst office park. The park like setting is our goal. So having well maintained, beautiful, healthy bushes, flowers, clean beds, everything is well cared for. So that has been the tradition for 30 plus years and it would no doubt continue because you want to continue to have a building that welcomes commercial tenants and residential tenants alike. So I just wanted to share that, that the building will be enhanced and go back to the good condition it has always been in. Thank you. And you say when you say that you work here, here is your part of the property management or development group that Ron is in or not that you are a part of the federal agency in the building? That's correct, Doug. Thank you. Yes, I actually contract as a property manager for Ron Laverdeer in the Amherst office park. I will say though, however, a little over 20 years, I did actually 20 years ago, I did live in that building when I was newly married. So it's a good example of mixed use and how it can work. Yes, so that's my relationship. Okay, thank you. Okay, let's see. All right, Nate, do you want to go through findings and conditions? Sure, if this is visible, these are the draft findings. Yep. All right, so we're ready to move forward 11.2400. The project is in conformance with all appropriate provisions of the zoning bylaw. The applicant has applied for a site plan review approval for mixed use building in the BBC Business Village-Centered Zoning District. So it's a allowed use. I'll just keep reading until I hear comments. Is that, Doug, is that there? Yeah, and should we clarify that these are findings and conditions for this site plan review and that we are not talking about the relinquishment of the special permits yet? All right. Yep. 11.2401, town amenities and abutting properties will be protected through minimizing detrimental or offensive actions. The current and proposed use of the property is unlikely to create these detrimental or offensive actions. 11.2402, abutting properties will be protected from detrimental site characteristics resulting from the proposed use. Exterior lighting will be downcast and are shielded and will not shine onto adjacent properties or streets. Landscaping will be used to buffer adjacent properties. 11.2403, provision of adequate recreational facilities, open space and amenities has been addressed. The project provides an outdoor deck, flower beds and green space for passive recreation. The applicant is proposing new site lighting to accommodate the plan bus stop. 11.2410, unique or important natural historic or scenic features will be protected. The site does not have such features. 11.2411, the product provides adequate methods of refuse disposal as described in the management plan. So there was a complete management plan provided and nothing's changing there. 11.2412, the product will be or is connected to town water and sewer. 11.2413, the proposed drainage system within and adjacent to the site will be adequate to handle the stormwater. The minimal changes to the site do not impact stormwater. So that's a waiver request. 11.2414, provision of adequate landscaping has been addressed. The project includes new plantings on site adjacent to the building, deck, entertaining wall and existing mature trees will be retained. 11.2415, the soil erosion control methods are considered adequate to control soil erosion both during and after construction as there is limited erosion from this project. 11.2416, adjacent properties will be protected by minimizing the intrusion of various nuisances. The proposed uses do not generate nuisances. So there really isn't a change in use there. 11.2417, adjacent properties will be protected from the intrusion of lighting because a condition of the permit requires that exterior lighting be downcast and are shielded and not shine onto adjacent properties. 11.2418 is not applicable. The property is not located in the FPC district. 11.2419, again not. I guess I have a format question. Sure. There was an earlier one that was not applicable and you didn't have a NA at the beginning of it. Which one is that the? It was farther up, maybe 2410. All right. Thanks Doug. Is that a funny name? And what about 2413? Is that? Sorry, I just lost my formatting. 2413, the proposed, the stormwater, is that not applicable or there are some changes but they're minor? There are no proposed changes, so. Well, I guess that's your call. Right. But in terms of the floodplain conservancy it's really just not in it. So it's not applicable at all. So there could be potentially stormwater changes that's just not being proposed. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, I can look at 2416, I mean. I know. I feel like there's a number. So it's like maybe this is unimportant but it. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few questions. I don't know if I wanted to make it my call that there are no nuisances, right? So if the board finds that, then that's great. I don't want to assume that there aren't any. So 11.2419 is not applicable because there are no wetlands on the property. 11.2420, I'm saying that the board did not refer this to the designer view board. So it's not found to have a significant impact on the surroundings. 11.2421, the development is reasonably consistent with respect to setbacks, placement of parking, landscaping, and entrances and exits with surrounding buildings and development. The applicant has demonstrated that the product meets setback requirements and parking will be served by the new walkway. 11.2422, here's not applicable. Building sites will avoid to the extent feasible the impact on steep slopes, flood plains, scenic views, grade changes and wetlands. And so there are no steep slopes or flood plains on the site. 11.2423, not applicable. There are no changes to the buildings on the site. 11.2424, screening has been provided as appropriate, HVAC equipment is screened and vegetation will be used around the deck. And so for here, we're approving the new site plan for the entire site. And so there are a number of HVAC units and those, a condition of previous permits for that they be screened and they appear to be screened. And so that's there. 11.2430, the site has been designed to provide for the convenience and safety of vehicular and pedestrian movement both within the site in relation to adjoining ways and properties. There's adequate drive aisles and sidewalks to keep pedestrians safe when using the site. 11.2431, not applicable. There are no changes to the proposed location and number of curb cuts. 11.2432, location and design of parking, bicycle racks, drive aisles and sidewalks provides a safe and convenient use of the site with parking spaces adjacent to walkways and crosswalks are provided where necessary. 11.2433, there is access to adjoining properties as previously permitted for the Amherst Office Park. So on the north side of the site, there's a pedestrian connections to 417 West Street. 11.2434, not applicable. There are no changes proposed for driveway locations. 11.2435, there is joint access driveways between adjoining properties as part of Amherst Office Park. So in the entirety of Amherst Office Park. 11.2436, not applicable as there is no change in use to impact the traffic generated at the site. 11.2437, again, not applicable. No traffic impact report will be required. All right, and then you had some waivers, a list of the waivers, I guess. Right, so the applicant proposed to waive, the requirement of a sign plan. There's an existing sign that remains so you're not proposing to provide any traffic impact statement. We request lighting. They're proposing two new light poles to match existing, and then a soil erosion plan wasn't provided because of the minimal nature of the project, same with construction logistics and pollution and hazardous material. All right, board members, I haven't seen any hands. So I'm assuming that these findings were acceptable. I'll just put these on one page. So these draft conditions, some of these, they'll apply to the whole site and they also, Janet, your question earlier, they also carry over some of the conditions from the previous permits that, so we can walk through these. So draft conditions, there's 11. The project, including landscaping, shall be built substantially in accordance with the plans submitted to the planning board and approved on June 15th, right? June 15th. The walkway from the parking lot to the deck shall meet accessibility requirements. You know, that's pretty standard. All lighting shall be dark sky-compliant. This one, I was typing, as you're writing the pole light adjacent to the bus stop will turn off within an hour after last bus service. And I'm not sure if that's something the board wants to consider. Yeah, I mean, my sense was that Janet pretty much accepted Ron's explanation for why you didn't think it needed to happen. Yeah. All right. And so this was a previous condition one of the residential units shall be reserved for the on-site manager. So within that building, one of those units is reserved for the on-site manager. And Ron, has that worked out all right in practice or has that been a burden? I agree. You are muted. That condition was put in when my dad built the building and he was the on-site manager. He subsequently has left and completely forgot about the condition and rented his third, it was the third floor one bedroom apartment. He rented that and it's been rented for probably the last 10 years. So, we were hoping to extinguish that since it was part of the condition of allowing the fourth apartment on the third floor of the building. And that was one of the ones we wanted to extinguish. Any board members object to eliminating this condition? I do not object. So, Nate, why don't we go ahead and remove that? All right. So that's easy. There should be no office or commercial use on the second floor. Again, that's something that was from the previous permits and the building was constructed. So, I guess why would we, I mean, I assume the building now has residential units on the second floor. Is there any particular public interest in prohibiting commercial use on the second floor? Nate or Chris? No, I mean, we actually, you know, the way that mixed use bylaw is written now, it's, you know, it can be on any floor, so. Yeah. Now, to be mixed use, I assume there needs to remain some residential in the building, but it sounds like there's now residential on both the second and the third floor. So, do we need this? I think not, but, you know, I mean that's, it's highly unlikely in my lifetime that it would switch back to commercial given the, you know, given the fact that we're all, we've all learned to work remotely. Well, and I assume if it changed use from residential to commercial, you'd have to make some level of public accessible route to the second floor. Yeah, you'd have to put it on the building. And you probably would find that, you know, prohibitively expensive and complicated. Yes, exactly. But I don't know why we need, why we would need this condition I guess is. Yeah, I mean, some of it was, like I said, this was from the previous permits and I think it was just, you know, for discussion. So if that's, if it's, I can remove that. So now the, so I removed that condition that, so now the fourth condition is the survey data May 20, May of 2022 shall become the approved site plan for the property. So that's what was, you know, was shown earlier during this discussion. So how is this related to the extinguishment of the special permits? And are we combining the two, the two? No, so this is, you know, so the original, so this is still for the site plan review. So this is just saying that the new survey becomes the new site plan. Okay. You know, just to clarify, so that if someone's going through the records, they don't find the 1989 survey on, you know, on record and say, wow, here's the site plan. Okay. All HVAC and utility shall be screened with plantings. The plantings along the perimeter of the retaining wall should be maintained as a safety measure. So, you know, there were use and plantings around the retaining wall. All landscaping shown on the plans and survey shall be continuously maintained. So that speaks to what Claire had mentioned in a lower level entry and associated say stairs. Shall be for commercial tenant use only and not for the public. So don't we want to say that that level is has to be part of a lease with a commercial tenant who's on the first or other floor? I don't think it needs to be in terms of meeting code. Just needs to be a commercial tenant. Okay. Janet. Do we have a site plan that shows stairs, not the ramp that we're approving? So I'm not finding, I'm looking through my packet for the new staircase. That was a late change and it didn't make it into the packet. Okay. But I thought I saw on the screen this evening a site plan that did show stairs. I would reference that plan and the date. So people looking back can figure out what we were approving because there's other pictures plan. Okay. Yeah. So that was the revised origin date of June 13th. So maybe on the first condition, the project shall be built substantially in accordance with the plans dated June 13th submitted to the planning board and approved on June 15th. Perfect. All right. So I guess I'm a little bit stuck on the last one because it's my understanding that the Massachusetts Access Board regulations apply to commercial space, workspace. And so if that's, if the lower level was leased as a standalone commercial space, it would have to have an accessible entrance. And it's only because it's sort of non-public ancillary to some of the upstairs space that it doesn't have to have an accessible entrance. Is that, am I making sense? Yeah, yeah. So I guess, yeah. I think maybe when you first said I didn't quite, well, you just explained it, it made sense. Yes. So I don't know exactly how to put it, except that the lower level needs to be non-public support space for the commercial operations upstairs. Chris, what do you think? I don't have an opinion, but I think Rob Mora is here as an attendee. So he may be useful to us. I see the Rob. All right, Rob, I think we allowed you to talk. I'm still muted. Hi, Doug. Yes, with agreement with what you said that the space if changed to a standalone commercial tenant then with access available to the public, it would need to be put, an accessible would have to be created in that area. Would it be possible to have a commercial tenant use that is not public? Yes. Oh, really? So it could be rented as a standalone commercial space that's not public. As long as it's used by employees only, that's right. But in that instance, wouldn't it be required to be accessible? Not for the employees, only if there were public to visit the space. Okay, so in fact, that means that the text that's here is fine. Yes. Okay, all right. Thank you for walking me through that. Janet, you have a comment? No, okay. All right, Nate. So we've been through the conditions. I don't see any hands. I'll offer additional public comment to any attendees if you want to make some now. Not seeing any. Okay, would anyone like to move these findings and conditions for this site plan review? You're going to make me do it. Jack, I'll let you go this time. Let's say some mood. All right, this may be your last motion. Second. Thank you, Janet. All right, any further discussion? Chris. Are you planning to approve this? And why don't you roll it all into one where you say, close the public hearing, approve the application and approve the findings and conditions and waivers as discussed? That sounds very efficient. And then there's also the hearing for the waiver of the special permits. Is that will be a separate vote? Yeah, why don't we do that as a separate vote? So, Jack, can we amend your motion to accept the findings and conditions, approve the site plan review and close the public hearing? Is that right, Chris? I got all three. That's right, yep. Very good. You accept that amendment, Jack? Okay. And Janet, you accept it as a second? I second it. All right. Okay, we'll have our vote. Let's start with you, Maria. Approve. And Jack. Approve. Janet. Aye. And I'm an aye as well. Passes four with three absences. Thank you. So the time is nine, 18 and we'll move on to the second part of this hearing to extinguish the special permits. And this is because the parcel has changed. Zoning and a mixed use building is now allowed with site plan review, which we've just approved. So, is there any discussion about this? Nate, is there anything you wanna say about this? No, I think that the findings and conditions you just made apply, right? So, with those new conditions and everything, I feel like they would satisfy those special permits from the 80s. Okay. Let's see. I guess I'll ask if there's any public comment for this particular issue. And I do not see any. Okay. Hey, Maria, do you wanna make a motion to extinguish the site plan for the special permits for this property? No move. Sorry to put you on the spot. Chris. To close the public hearing. And to close the public hearing. And these are the two special permits, ZBA FY84, number 85, and ZBA FY85, number 94. So the motion is to extinguish those two permits and to close the public hearing. All right, then we'll go ahead and vote this through. I'll second it. Okay, thank you. Thanks for jumping in, Janet. Maria. Prove. And Jack. Prove. And Janet. Prove. And I'm gonna prove as well. Okay. 921, Mr. Lavertier, I thank you for coming. Thanks for your presentation. Good luck with your project. You are muted, but I know you have a smile on your face. Now you're not muted. Good evening, everybody. Thank you. All right, the time is 921, we'll move on. Item five, the first item in old business is the subdivision 1989-9 with the Meadows, definitive subdivision plan. And we were expecting Mr. Flower from Tofino Associates. I don't see him in the attendees. Chris, do you wanna introduce this? Yep, Mr. Flower was the original developer of this property, that that and the original subdivision approval was given in his name. And then Tofino or coal construction took over the property. And we have several people in the audience tonight who might wanna speak about this item. One is Felicity Hardee, who's the attorney for the homeowners. One is Doug Donnell, who is the president of the Homeowners Association. And another one is Connie Krueger, who is a resident there. And Ted Parker is also representing Tofino, and he's in the audience as well. But I can just give a little bit of an introduction, which is that this is another one of those subdivisions that took a really long time to build, not quite as long as Amherst Hills. And I think all of the properties in the Meadow subdivision have been developed. I could be wrong about that and somebody could correct me. But the problem that they're facing is the same. The problem is that the roadways have deteriorated over the years and the roadways, I don't believe have their final top coat on. So the residents are coming to you to see if there's anything that the planning board can do to make sure that the roadways do get completed and that eventually the town will take the roadways. And as you know, in Amherst Hills, the roadways have been completed and the developer and the town is currently talking about the town taking over those roadways. So that probably isn't gonna happen for a while, but the project has moved in a positive direction. So seeing that, I think the people who are in the Meadow subdivision were hoping that a similar process could help them. So you may wanna let them speak for themselves. And can you say, maybe it's a repeat, how many of the lots have been sold? I think all of them, but I'm not sure. So we can ask these. Okay, all right. So should we move any of them over into the panelists? I think so, yeah. Felicity Hardee is the attorney for the group. Doug Donnell is the president of the Meadows Homeowners Association. And Connie Krueger is a former planning board member, former select board member and she is a resident there. So, and Ted Parker is also in the audience and he may or may not wanna speak, but you might wanna ask him if he wants to be moved over as well. Okay. Well, let's see, Pam, while you're moving the others over, Mr. Parker, would you like to be moved into the panelists and so you can speak more? Oh, you've been moved. Okay, great. Okay, I don't know which of you to start with, so I'll just, maybe I'll start with Doug since he raised his hand. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I should probably ask you to give us your name and your address since most of the time that's what we do with public comment. Okay. Thank you very much. My name is Douglas Donnell and I live at 46 Hopbroke Road. I'm the current president of the Meadows Homeowners Association. Just a couple of points to clarify, I have a little statement that I'd like to read. I don't do a lot of public speaking, so I thought it would be better to read from a prepared statement, but we do have a top coat. This development has been finished. To my understanding, the last home was completed in 2004 and the roads and all of the construction has been completed for 18 years, something like that. I was not living here at the time, so I'm not 100% sure on the exact dates but something in that time range. So it's a little bit different than the Amherst Hill situation. So that said, I'd like to just kind of go present to you what I've written as a way to clarify what we're asking the board tonight. I've asked to be on your agenda tonight to one, present our situation and two, request any assistance that you can offer within your jurisdiction and three, place in the public record a request that Tofino and the town work together to finalize a punch list and a timeline for completion of that punch list so that our roads can be presented to the town council for taking. I've indicated, excuse me, I've included a brief chronology of the last 20 years in our letter to the board. I did this to help give you a better sense of the history of our process of trying to have Kestrel and Hopbrook taken as a public way by the town. This has been the plan since our development was accepted by the town. We all purchased homes in this neighborhood with a clear understanding that our roads would become public streets. We have repeatedly contacted both the town and Tofino in order to expedite this process. As I said in my letter, it's been a long, it has long been our intent to work collaboratively with Tofino associates to accomplish the shared goal of completing the work on Hopbrook Road and Kestrel Lane. However, the lack of clear communication combined with the lack of follow-through has eroded trust into Tofino's willingness to finish this process. We would like your support and any assistance you can offer to facilitate this process. Currently, we have no basic, we have no recourse to basic maintenance of our roads. Indeed, several catch basins are collapsing and the US Postal Service has submitted a hazard report referencing one of these catch basins. Several potholes have developed. We find ourselves in kind of a no man's land. Tofino ignores our requests to fix the catch basins. The town can't because the town does not own the roads and we can't have them repaired because we don't own them. The town did provide warning cones for the collapsing catch basins, which we appreciate, but this is not a long-term solution. As the road ages, these issues will continue to increase in frequency and severity. It is our hope that these repairs of a punch list and a clear plausible timeline for the completion will be presented to us in the coming weeks. If this is not the case, we will return to the board and request that you require Tofino to put up assurity with clear conditions and dates for the completion. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to present for the board and thank you all for your service. Thank you, Douglas. Felicity or Connie, do you want to say anything at this time? Mr. Chairman, yes, thanks very much and thank you for taking on this extremely old business. I think I want to reiterate some remarks of Doug's and suggest a concrete step that we think the planning board can undertake that would really help. We're really interested, we're not interested in having an argument about like what's happened over the last 20 years, but we are really interested in getting these roads accepted as public ways. And in order to do that, we understand that Tofino needs to make some improvements to the roads that were identified by the town of Amherst. About a year ago, there was an agreement and a meeting between members of the Homeowners Association and Mr. Parker representing Tofino and the town. And there was an agreement about the need to develop a punch list of tasks that needed to be done for the roads to be in a condition that the town would accept them as public ways. But unfortunately, nothing has happened with that punch list. So our request tonight is that the board direct the town and Tofino to come up with that punch list and then bring it back to the board in 30 days or whatever reasonable time would be required. I don't think that there's any real dispute that some things need to be done, but what we need is an actual concrete plan for the punch list and the continuing involvement of the board so that everybody understands what needs to be done and then we can determine how much it's going to cost and whether or not the bond that Tofino has previously posted for the completion of the work is adequate. We don't even know if the bond that the town is holding for this work is adequate to do the work because we've never been able to even get the punch list. So again, our request tonight is that the board direct the town and Tofino to meet or collaborate or do whatever it is they need so that we have a punch list. The punch list is brought back. Hopefully we'd get a copy of it and then at a sort of a meeting a month from now, the planning board could determine what the next step would be. Thank you. All right. Thank you Ms. Harding, Ms. Krueger, you are muted. Okay. Good evening, everybody. I just wanted to add a little perspective in a few other details. Our situation is not as extreme as Amherst Hills, but still a lot of work was never completed out of the original subdivision and it's a real concern for the homeowners. I'll just give you a little example. One of the street trees in front of our house was split in a storm maybe two years ago called the tree warden said, can't help you. That's not a public way. You're on your own. So we paid the freight to have the tree removed because it was really unsightly. That's just a small thing, but not having our roads accepted as a public way is a real detriment to living here, quality of life and the assets that we have invested in our homes. Myself and my partners, Susan Tracy, have lived here. We're the first occupied dwelling on Hot Brook. All the lots have been sold and built on as Mr. Dinell had told you. My understanding from a prior meeting with the town planner a couple of years ago was there's about $23,000 held in Escarot. There was a vote, I forget the dates, I don't have it in front of me. It was sent to you prior to your last meeting showing that the planning board had voted to ask for it was $20,000 for each unsold lot and then that would be released as each lot. So that never happened. So I feel like the town has not really, I know that all of you are not those members. This was a long time ago, but we're really looking for the town to step up a little and get the punch list, get the dollar amount. And if what the 23,000 isn't adequate, which I very much doubted is to do something, we would just like to trust DeFino, but our trust has eroded, as Doug said, because we've waited years, we'll have a meeting and another year we'll go by. Now we're worried we're gonna miss this construction season, there'll be even more deterioration. Just as I was thinking about this on your agenda, I think we really should have been listed under old, old, old business. So with that, I'll conclude and hoping we can hear a little more from DeFino about what their intentions are at this point. Okay, thank you, Connie. Chris, can I ask you a couple of questions? I see that the 2001 Planning Board approval, this is from Mr. Donnell's notes, was for $130,000 to be held, but only 20,000 was received. And then I assume that has expanded to the 23,000 that Ms. Kruger just mentioned. Was the town remiss in not collecting funds each time a lot was sold? So I can explain that to some degree. In the past, the way these things worked was that there were lots that were held in a covenant. And I've never seen the covenant for the Meadows subdivision. So I'm not sure about this, but typically what happens is that lots are held and then at a certain point when 50% of the properties are developed, I should back up. As lots are requested to be released from a covenant, the staff goes to the town engineer and says, is there enough infrastructure to support the construction of a house on this lot? And if the town engineer says yes, and that would be sewer and water and paving to get to that lot, if the town engineer says yes, then the staff would advise the Planning Board to release that lot to be sold and be developed. So the way Amherst has worked in the past is that they do that up to a certain point, which is about 50% typically. And then after that, they start asking for surety to be paid to the town. I was not here when much of this happened back in the past. And so I don't know what was asked for as lots were released. And according to, I guess it's Connie Krueger, that never happened. There was never an amount that was paid for each lot to be released. So I don't know why that happened, but that's what one would expect to happen. So then there would be a pot of money available at the end to presumably pay for or assure that the roadway could be fixed so that we don't have that money. And there may be Felicity or Connie may be able to explain a little bit more about the history of this, because as I said, I wasn't really involved back then, but that's kind of the way it normally should work. And the money for each lot would have come from the developer as he received the payment from the buyer. That's correct. And then that money is put in an escrow account in the accounting department in the town. And then I guess the other question I am gonna ask before I call on the two people who have their hands up, the punch list that was created back in 2019 with by Jason Skeels, do you have any idea what the value of the work was at the time? And if you don't, that's fine, Chris, and we can see if somebody else does. I don't know and I don't know if there was a value put on that punch list, but I can find out. Okay. All right, so Janet, you're the only one with your hand up at the moment. Thank you, Doug, your questions for my questions, I'm wondering what document or when the planning board approved the 130,000 surety, was it just a vote? Was it a document? Was it part of a permit? Like what's, was it an order? Like what, so I guess we don't have that paperwork now, but like what was, what did the planning board do and how do we know they did it? And then also, does anyone have a punch list? Okay, Ms. Krueger. Yeah, I'll take, oops, I'll take a shot at that. I was just rifling through my folder. And of course, I can't find that one piece. It's minutes from that planning board meeting when that was approved. And I think the planner working on it was Nils Lacour, who's no longer with us. We had gotten that in a meeting a few years ago from Ms. Brestrup, so it's in the records. I have it and Doug, you had it because that's the one I brought over that we sent over to Felicity and I just can't get my hands on it, but it's from minutes of the planning board meeting. In terms of the value for the punch list, we don't have that. And what we met with DPW with Tafino in the fall of last year, and there was a negotiation going on about what was gonna stay on the punch list or not. So we're really in limbo because we don't know what the town has agreed to accept from Tafino for that punch list. So we're kind of in the dark about the value. Okay. All right, Mr. DeNel. Yeah, just to clarify. So that was approved by the board on February 7th, 2001. And it's from the minutes of February 7th, 2001 for the approval of 120, basically $10,000 per lot, and it doesn't give a lot of detail, but it's $10,000 per lot and $130,000 total. And would that, the topic that the board was discussing at that meeting, was it approval of a subdivision plan? You were releasing lots. You, I shouldn't say you, the board, excuse me. The board was released. The board was releasing lots. We are institutional. Okay. Yeah, so the, I can read it. The board received a request from Tafino Sissietz, Inc. for the release of lots eight, 20, and 23 at the Meadow subdivision. Mr. LaCour explained that the developer needs to provide surety for the remainder of the work to be completed. Estimates for the amount needed were provided by Tafino Associates in the Town Engineer. Ms. Ellen Stutzman, Representative Tafino Associates said that their estimate was probably higher than the Town Engineers because they included some extras. Frankly, what caught our ear having listened to the meeting several, about a month ago was this was almost identical language that we heard at that meeting. And when Tafino was asking to release lots for Amherst Hills. And it just, it really struck us in that moment, which was why we acted when we did. Unfortunately, you didn't receive a letter from Attorney Hardy at that meeting when you released those lots to Amherst Hills. But we were just struck by that. And here we are 18 years later still trying to get our roads approved. Just actually still trying to get a punch list that both the town and Tafino agree on so that we can estimate the cost and then schedule the roads to be fixed so that then they can go to town council and go through that process to be approved. So we recognize that this is not gonna be a quick process but it hasn't moved at all in 15 years. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna, I'm finally, Mr. Parker, I see your hand and I'm very interested in what you have to say. So this situation is regrettable and it is in some ways significantly different than the Amherst Hills situation. And I think that some history, it bears, it would be useful to recount some history. The last lot was sold in the early 2000s and Doug Cole who was the owner of Tafino along with Gloria McPherson who was a staff person for Tafino completed the road unlike Amherst Hills where the road was never completed. This road was in fact completed and there was a punch list that Jason's skills gave to Tafino and Tafino addressed all but three items on that punch list. Doug Cole and some of which was some pretty significant repairs to the road. The crossing of the brook at the beginning of crossbrook had to be repaired, the guardrail had to be repaired. There was a bunch of work. I was not involved in that at the time, I worked for Cole Construction but I was not an employee of Tafino and I only knew it by the fact that it was happening out of the same, in the same office. I don't know, I can't speak to why the ball was dropped because none of the people who dropped the ball are around anymore. Doug Cole died in 2010 after the financial crisis of 2008. I didn't learn about this. When Doug Cole died in 2010, I stepped in to try to clear up the unfinished business that Doug had going which was significant, not just in Amherst but in other towns as well. And I've been doing nothing but trying to finish the projects or do what I can to, that Doug was a much beloved developer and had really good intentions and clearly there was a lack of follow-through in some areas. So I didn't learn about this problem until I wanna say 2013, 2014 maybe, it came to my attention. I met out there with Jason, he told me the three items that were the remaining punch list items. I presented them to the owner, to the Doug's heirs. Other priorities, there were other crises, other priorities happened and the work never got addressed. I know that there were, I remember clearly what those three items were. And there were also some missing items on the as-built drawings that Jason wanted which is another task that has to be completed in order for the DPW to feel comfortable in taking the road. So time passed, the road, the completed road is approaching it's the end of its service life. I mean, the service life of a road is 20 years. I mean, there are roads, there are a budding road. I live in Amherst Woods, old farm road has been repaid twice during the time that this road has existed and old farm road has deteriorated twice. So I met in the fall with Connie and Doug and some other homeowners. And I agreed that we would, that I was knee deep in trying to get Amherst Hills roads completed and get the punch lists established. And as you all know, it's been a big problem. So I've been trying to deal with that problem. And I said to them that I needed to get one thing done at a time. And I would certainly, I'm very interested, Tafino is very interested in finishing the work. But the question of whether or not the road, the punch list should contain, should include the deterioration of the road is another question altogether. I met with the DPW, I discussed it in broad terms with both Jason skills and with Gilbert mooring. And we agreed that we were revisited this year and discuss whether or not the DPW was comfortable accepting the road and a less than pristine, brand new condition. Because otherwise we're probably talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of, it could very well be hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work. Admittedly, I have not, I also commissioned a lawyer to start drawing up the deeds to transfer the ownership of the open space and the right of way to the town. And I have not followed up in any more concrete way since then. I have discussed it with Jason in broad strokes but it's very hard to get at this moment, it's very difficult to get the turnaround time for any information on DPW is very long. After the last meeting about Amherst Hills, it took me four weeks to get somebody just to mark sidewalk repairs in Amherst Hills which is one of the punch list items. So I think it's a capacity issue as much as anything else. I intend, Tafino intends to follow up and to do our part in doing what we need to do in order to get the roads accepted by the town. We have said that to the owners. We said it sincerely. I can only apologize for the length of time it's taking. I am sympathetic to their frustration. Tafino doesn't have a staff. I want to just Chris conflated Tafino and coal construction, separate owners, once they were owned by the same people but they're no longer owned by the same people. I worked for coal construction and I managed Tafino's properties and I'm trying to, one by one, I'm trying to tick them off and clear up the unfinished business of Tafino. I'm committed to finishing the work and I'm committed to finishing the work in collaboration with the homeowners. I had hoped that we would get to a point where we would all come together and make a collective request to take the roads. And I think that a useful meeting, a useful revisiting of this issue would be for us to reconvene with the planning board and have Gilford and Jason here so that we can talk publicly and they can commit publicly to what they've committed to, I think to me privately, that they're willing to accept the road in a less than pristine condition. The road will, there are some components of the road which will need to be repaired. But I think that this discussion needs to happen with DPW in the room so that we can all share the same set of understandings and we can all understand what the commitments are. I've had some meetings, the owners have had some meetings. We may have heard slightly different things. I think we should all share the same set of information. That's what would make me happy. All right. Ted, do you have the punch list that was created that had only three items remaining to be completed so that- I don't have it with me. I don't have it now. I can dig it up. Okay, I think- It was three items, there was a- If you would send that to Chris and identify the three items that you agree were remaining to be done and were never completed. I think that would be a good place for us to start. And I do understand that the road's been in service for a number of years that if in fact, DeFino had gone ahead and finished the punch list and maybe a year or two later the town had accepted the roads. The road, the town would have been maintaining these roads for a decade or something. So I think that's a- It sounds like accepting the roads in less than pristine condition might be a reasonable thing for the town to do from my perspective. I don't know how others feel about it. So, Ms. Krueger, you are muted. Out of practice. I just wanted to say the pristine condition is not the agenda of the homeowners per se. That's the negotiation between DeFino and the town. And the town has also been very slow and seeming non-responsive at different times. And I have a lot of loyalty to the town of Amherst and to my former colleagues in the planning department. So, these things do happen. We'd be happy to have the town take it with less than pristine. Either DeFino owns it or the town owns it. We will never be the owners. And at this point, we just want to see movement and we can't seem to move that negotiation, that discussion off the dime. And this has been just the last three years trying to really activate it. And I know that Mr. Parker has good intentions and he'd like to take things one at a time. The Amherst hill's out of the way and then the meadows. But it's just picking so long we've lost patience. All right, thank you. Chris, based on what you've heard tonight, do you think you could connect with Jason and Guilford and at least get their perspective on this? Sure, yes, I can try to do that. And do you think it would be useful to have them in a meeting in a board meeting here or maybe you can talk with them about that? And we can put together the agenda as we think makes sense. Right, it'll probably take a while and some talking to figure out what needs to be done and how the planning board can be useful in this situation. That took a long time in the Amherst hill situation too. The planning board doesn't really have the power to order to do anything to the town to do anything, but you can be a forum, a place where people can come and talk about this and try to figure out what to do about it. So that's what I would say. Yeah, I see, let's see, Ms. Hardy. Mr. Chairman, I would just observe that the status, the status right now is that the planning board directed Tofino to do something with respect to the surety that it has not done, okay? And that was in anticipation of work that needs some last minute work, there were whatever was on this punch list that was gonna get done. And then we could be in a position where the roads could be accepted. I don't think the planning board doesn't have any jurisdiction or any role to play the do, okay? And so it's really the board's role to make sure that the subdivision is completed in a manner that was consistent with what the planning board required whenever it was that it required it some 20 years ago. So, again, my suggestion about this is that the current status is that we are waiting for a list of things that need to be done in order for the roads to be in a place or in a condition where we can present them to the town council for acceptance as public ways. And what we're looking for is a hearing or a meeting within the next 30 days or so where we can establish what that is and move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Janet, you look like you're the next hand. Thank you. I would recommend that we put this on the planning board, the agenda, not maybe, obviously not into next week or in two weeks, but maybe sometime in July, just to get, hopefully that meeting will take place or just to gather information. One question I had after reading the packet was that the question of like, where are we as a planning board? And so I don't have the answer to that, it's legally. And so my question is, are there possible planning board actions under the state subdivision law, under our bylaw or on regulations or a permit that we have issued? And so, I mean, that could be, that requires looking at documents and perhaps the town attorney, town council could do that and advise us if there's any hooks or handles to hold on to, but I don't, I feel like I'm just right now floating, I don't know where I am legally in terms of the board and I don't know what the documentation is. And so that I need to sort of, I need that information. I think we need that information as a board. So I would recommend putting it on the agenda on a date certain with enough time for people, given people are busy, and then also get some more information about documents and where we are and if the planning board has a role or what we could do. So where are we legally? Thank you. I will note that it's just about 10 o'clock. Maria. I just want to say really quickly that I'm just looking out for the planning board members and unfortunately a lot of the new ones aren't here, but I have to say at Amherst Hills hearings were the most unpleasant planning work experiences that I have in my history of being on the planning board because it was very contentious. It felt very much like a lot of attorneys, sort of barfing. I just want to warn you, I don't know what's going to happen, but I just want to warn you that those hearings were the most unpleasant experiences that I've ever been through here. So not to say don't do that. I'm just saying if you can arrange it in some way where there's a real clear path forward, that was a really, you know, having, I don't know, it was like 50 some neighbors take their turn yelling at us. That was really unpleasant. So I'm just putting that out there. I don't know, Jack, if you remember that, I really hope you guys don't go through what we went through. Thank you. Chris? I just wanted to say two things. We can put this on the agenda for July 20th. That is the meeting that you're going to hold in July. You're only having one meeting in July. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to say is this is a little different from Amherst Hills in many ways, but one of the ways it's different is that the planning board actually had some what should I say, some mechanisms, some tool to use in the past in Amherst Hills. And the tool that was used was to request that the building commissioner not issue building permits for the lots that were, that had been just recently released, but hadn't been built on. And the planning board doesn't have that kind of tool in this case. There may be some tool that I'm not aware of and we can investigate that, but I'm just putting that forward because even though we had that tool, it took a long time to get there. It took like a year of meetings with everyone to get to the point of being able to do that. So it's not going to be simple, but we'll try. We'll do something and we'll talk about it again on July 20th. Yeah. I mean, it sounds to me like we potentially could facilitate something, but we're not really in a position to force something to happen. At least that's my relatively uninformed opinion. All right, Ms. Krueger. I just want to say we are not Amherst Hills. We have followed that closely and I sympathize with Ms. Chau's concerns. We're trying to be cooperative, but we would like the town to help resolve this, whether there's actual mechanisms or not, I think bringing DPW in to get the punch list established with Mr. Parker would really help. And I really believe that could happen in a much more timely way. So that's our first ask, but we don't want to escalate and we're not planning to take that tax. So Ms. Chau, I think you can be assured, at least at this point, that's not our route. Thank you. And Mr. Parker, you're the next hand. I just want to say that we're committed to collaborating with the owners of In The Meadows to get this done in a much less contentious way. Just FYI, I went in September of 2019 to the folks in Amherst Hills and explained to them where we were and what our intentions were. And their response was to come to you and start that process. And it was so full of vitriol that it made no sense for me to come to a meeting and speak civilly like I am trying to do tonight with these folks because the folks in Amherst Meadows, In The Meadows, I have been much more collaborative and much more respectful and much more willing to have a conversation about it. And I appreciate that on everyone's part and I look forward to getting it resolved. Thank you. Jack? Yeah, I just want to say the lesson that we learned from Amherst Hills was a very good presentation by Jason Skeels, the town engineer with regard to how pavement when it goes, it goes rapidly. And so there is a time element to this. And I encourage the town to acknowledge that it needs to get solved or it's going to get a lot more expensive for everybody. Thank you, Jack. We'll miss both you and Maria on board. Okay, I see Chris walking away. Oh, she's back, good. I wanted to make sure that I put this on the agenda for July 20th. Okay, so we don't really need a motion this evening to continue anything. And I think we've discussed this enough. We, you know, Chris, if you can follow up with the DPW and we figure out whether we need to have them in a meeting or if you can do your magic without the board present, I think that would be great. And Mr. Parker, I think you were gonna send the last punch list you had that listed or at least identified the three items that were remaining to be completed at one point in time. If you can send that to Chris, that would be great. I will do that. All right, thanks all. And thanks for staying for a relatively late hour at this point. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, board members. We really appreciate your time and thank you, Ted, for attending. Okay, so the time is 10.06. Chris, the next item on our agenda is planning board fees. And I saw that you sent a letter or a proposal to us for how to collect those at least as a trial, I believe. Yes, and may I speak about that? Yes, you may. Nate and I have had several conversations about this and I've talked to Pam and I've talked to the building commissioner. And I think in the end what we're deciding is that something different from what was in the memo and something more akin to what Doug proposed at the last meeting where we discussed this, Doug had made a motion to charge $500 for each applicant to pay for the legal ad. And at that time I thought, oh, $500 is really high. So after talking about it with Nate and the building commissioner and Pam, I think we've landed on $300 as a flat fee. And the reason that we're doing this instead of what we had proposed in the memo is that what was proposed in the memo actually takes a fair amount of staff time to organize and keep on track with and it also will require us to kind of follow up with applicants if they don't pay the legal ad and we have to kind of keep bugging them or not giving them their decision or not hold a public hearing or some action that we have to take. So it's gonna be a constant aggravation. So we think that the potentially more fair but also easier method to deal with this would be to charge $300. And that's gonna be four times what we are currently charging as I said in the memo, the average legal ad cost is around $400 to $500. It's really actually more between 500 and 600 is what we're finding out now. And so 300 seems like a reasonable cost to have the applicant pay roughly half and have the town pay roughly half and not to have to have staff trying to keep track of all of this and chase applicants who may not be paying it. So I think what we'd like is a vote of the mining board to support our proposal to charge $300 for the legal ads and see how that works going forward. And if you need a memo about that, I'd be happy to write one, but maybe you can just make a motion and vote for that vote to support that move. Okay, thank you. Board, any comments? I mean, I can go right into a motion that we support the staff's recommendation too. I don't know, it's not like we approve it, right? Or we're just on board with you, right? We're not really doing a legal vote for this. You have to vote for application fees. So if we decide to increase the application fee for site plan reviews and different things like that, you have to vote for that. So I would say, yes, this is a good thing to do as an actual vote that you are voting to increase the fee for legal ads for planning board applications to $300. So we are setting the fee. That's the verb I think makes sense. That's right, yep. So, okay, so I'll take a pass at the motion. I'm not seeing anyone. Oh, Janet, do you wanna say something? So it sounds like this is kind of a compromise between the town heavily subsidizing applications to subsidizing less. So we're gonna lose less money but not burden applicants with the full cost or the staff. So it's sort of like a middle ground that you've reached for. That's a good way to describe it, yes. The town will still be paying part of, okay, it's like half the ad, okay. But this steps us up closer to covering costs. And it might be easier to get to 500 from 300 rather than from 50 or wherever we are now. Jack. Yeah, I guess I wouldn't move that. We accept the proposal as stated by Chris for increasing the fees. All right, thank you, Jack. I'll go ahead and second that. Board members, any more votes or any more discussion at this late hour? And I only see one attendee, Ms. Mara Kean. Do you want to make any public comment? Raise your hand if you do. And I do not see her hand raised. No, okay, we'll go ahead and vote on that. Legal fees being set at $300. Maria. Approve. And Jack. Approve. And Janet. Approve. And I'm going to prove as well. All right, Chris. Thank you. All right, all right, the time is 10-11. Chris, do you have any old business topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance? No, no old business. Any new business, not anticipated. New business just as to announce that we will not have a July 6th meeting and we will go to July 20th, but we will have a June 29th meeting. Right. We just continued something to that date. All right. Form A, A&R, subdivision applications, any of those? No. No. And ZBA applications. No, nothing new. We did add maybe two meetings ago, there were a couple of ZBA applications we were interested in seeing. There were, and they were supposed to come up on June 9th, which was just a couple of days today. Today is the 15th, so it would have been last Thursday. And I did send a memo to Maureen Pollock to ask her if those hearings were continued, if the planning board could hear a presentation. And I didn't hear back from Maureen, so I will get back in touch with Maureen and ask her if those hearings were continued. Okay. Upcoming SPP, SPR, and SUB applications. No, nothing. Nope. All right. Committee and liaison reports. And we'll start with Jack, PBBC. Yeah, so an email was forwarded to you and that was from the annual meeting which was sparsely attended, strangely enough. But I think that's the artifact of ongoing Zoom meetings for this particular group. But I have expressed my interest to continuing as an alternate commission because I can't be a full commissioner because I'm not going to be on the planning board, but I will, if I'm an alternate commission, I'll be able to serve on the executive committee moving forward, but someone from the planning board will have to be the regular commissioner. So it's kind of an odd situation, but that person appointed by the planning board won't have to do a lot of heavy lifting as I'll be more active as the alternate commissioner. So just some clarification there, assuming that I get appointed as alternate commissioner. And who appoints you as an alternate? I think town council. Okay. Yeah. All right. So Chris, will we be selecting new representation to committees probably toward the end of the summer? It depends on what you wanna do. You'll have your new members as of July 20th. So you could conceivably have an election and reorganization on July 20th if you want to. Right. So maybe Doug, you can think about that and decide whether you wanna do it then or whether you wanna go into August. And August you have a few, you have, at least you have three meetings scheduled in August. I don't think you'll hold all of them, but. Yeah. And I would add that like half the executive committee seem to be alternate commissioners, including the director of planning in Belcher town and then some other former planning board members, I guess. But so it's not an unusual sort of thing. Okay. Thank you. Yep. So Andrew is away, so we won't hear about CPAC. Tom's away, we won't hear about DRV. Janet, any motion on the solar biola? Yes, the committee is meeting for the first time next week. All right. And those are publicly noticed meetings and I assume that public can attend. I believe, I think, well, I think Stephanie Chickarello is in charge and I'm sure Chris is nodding yes. And I do believe they're all gonna be public and posted and hopefully get a group involved. Okay. Jack is in the group too. What's that? Jack is in the group too. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. And then CRC, anything you wanna say, Chris? Yes, the CRC will be discussing Article 14 and its potential for being extended as a permanent measure for certain types of uses. So we're gonna be talking to them about that at their next meeting, which is what is today? I think it's June 23rd. Yes, June 23rd, we're gonna be talking to the CRC about Article 14. And would this be the time to at least put in the record the two new members coming for Planning Board? Yes, of course. I'm sorry for not thinking about that. Yes, we're happy to have two new members that have been appointed. They were just appointed on Monday. Bruce Coldham is a former Planning Board member. He's an architect and he's been around town and doing things with the town for a long time. He's currently a member of the Local Historic District Commission and he is very interesting and active. And I think you'll enjoy working with him. And the other person is Karen Winter. I don't know a lot about Karen but she's also a member of the Local Historic District Commission. And I think she lives in the neighborhood west of Kendrick Park. She was involved with the planning of the playground at Kendrick Park, not as part of the working group but she often spoke up at meetings and she was very interested in that. So I think she's really interested in planning and you'll meet her. Those of you who haven't met her yet, I'll meet her on the 20th. Okay, thank you. Report of the chair, I have no report. Report of staff, Chris? I don't think I have a report. What time is it? It's 10, 18, no, I don't know. What is it? It's 10, 18 and it's time to adjourn. Okay. All right, in that case, it's 10, 18 and let's adjourn. Thank you. Thank you all for... Well, it's Jack's last meeting so I'd like to thank him for his many years of service. Goodbye everyone. You know, I won't be gone, obviously I'm on some other things. So yeah, I appreciate it. We'll miss your sunflower, Jack. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I have some new ones. I have a new crop this year. So I will see if I can approve on the photo. So. And your sunny personality, we'll miss that too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. All right, goodnight everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Oh, I should probably stop.