 Okay. The appointed hour is six o'clock being reached. I want to welcome everybody to this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, General Laws Chapter 30A, Section 18, and the Governor's March 15, 2020 order, imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather at one place. This public hearing of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on a link on the town's web page. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40A and Article 10, special permitting granting authority of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. My name is Steve Judge. As chair of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals, I call this meeting to order. We will begin with a roll call of the regular members of the ZBA who will be in panel for the consideration of the comprehensive permit. I'm Steve Judge. Mr. Langsdale? Here. Ms. O'Mara? Here. Ms. Parks? Here. Mr. Maxfield? Yep, is that Mr. Maxfield? In fact, I've arrived. All right. And the associate ZBA members, Ms. Sharon Wellman? I'm here. Mr. Barrick? Here. Mr. Greeny? Here. And Mr. Meadows? Here. Also in attendance is Marine Pollock Planner, Christine Brestrup, Planning Director, Dave Zaumek, Assistant Town Manager, and Nate Malloy, Planner in the Department of Planning, and John Whitten of the KP law firm who's assisting the board in this matter. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 48 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, convenience, safety, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. Each petition is heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits. And the board is not ruled by precedent. The subject of tonight's public hearing is ZBA 2020-39, a request by Valley Community Development Corporation for a comprehensive permit to construct a multifamily building containing 28 units located at 132 Northampton Road, Amherst. This is the first of several public hearings and the public meeting that will be held on this request for a comprehensive permit. Tonight's agenda is as follows. We're going to note the submittals received by the board from the applicant, town boards, committees, as well as the applicants themselves will give a full presentation up to the public. We'll review the June 23rd site visit. There will be an overview of the 40B comprehensive permit process, which is a little different than the process we use for special permits. We will discuss and consider the town's subsidized housing inventory and a motion to invoke a safe harbor. The assistant town manager, Dave Zimeck, will give a presentation on how we got here. The applicant will give a full presentation of the request for a comprehensive permit. And the unpaneled members of the ZBA will ask questions. We will also set a deadline for responses to questions that could not be answered tonight. After discussion with the applicant and questions from the board members, we will schedule subsequent public hearings and meetings to consider this application. The board will conclude its meeting by 9 o'clock tonight. It is possible that there will not be enough time for public testimony tonight. There is already a public hearing scheduled for July 2 at which the public comments will be heard. And we will have other hearings at which public testimony will be taken. I want to review the ways in which the public can be informed about and comment on this application in addition to these public meetings. Residents can be notified of any additional information recorded by the town concerning this application through the notify me feature on the 132 Northampton page of the town website. Also, all copies of all submissions can be found on the town website. Public comment can be submitted on the town website or through an email to Marine Pollock planner at pollockm at amherst.amherstma.gov. This meeting will be broadcast by Amherst Media on Channel 17. And of course, there will be public comment tonight if time permits and certainly at future public hearings. Tonight, the board is holding the public hearing on ZBA FY 2020-39, Valley Community Development Corporation, 132 Northampton Road, requesting a comprehensive permit under Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 40B, to construct a new two and a half story residential multifamily building containing 28 small studio apartments and related common areas on an approximate 0.88 acre property located at 132 Northampton Road, map 14C parcel 8, general residence, and educational zoning districts. Before we begin, are there any disclosures by any members of the ZBA? If not, I want to remind the applicant, board members, and others to seek recognition from the chair if they wish to speak. You can do that by using the raise your hand feature in Zoom. When recognized, unmute yourself. And when you have finished, please place yourself back on mute. We have received the following submissions from the applicant, comprehensive permit applications, check for applications fees, project summary, development team biographies, a butter list request form, locus maps, zoning maps, a table of community concerns and responses, and a table of zoning waiver requests. In addition, we've received a plan set of approximately 30 different plans, which I'm not going to run through all of those different. They're all done by Austin Design, Teague and Bond, and Berkshire Design Group, and Stevens and Associates, and dated May 8, 2020. We've received a stormwater management report, a management plan, form, and narrative, a sample lease, a sample residential tenant handbook, housing management resources, book, a household member resident policy, bed bug policy, tenant charge list, parking study, a traffic study, site control, including the deed, site approval letter, and finding of no adverse impact by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, dated January 2, 2020. In addition, we've received submittals from municipal boards and the staff, a letter from the town council president, Lynn Grismire, on behalf of the Amherstown Council, dated February 24, 2020, a letter from Amherstown manager, Paul Bachleman, dated February 24, 2020, a letter from Christine Brestop, on behalf of the Amherst Planning Board, dated February 21, 2020, a letter from Chair John Hornick, on behalf of the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, dated January 23, 2019, a letter from the chairman, Michael Burkhart, on behalf of the Amherst Housing Authority, ordered commissioners, dated February 27, 2020, and another letter from the Amherstown Council, dated June 15, 2020. In addition, town staff has submitted the following, a project application report, dated June 23, 2020, comments from the Amherst Fire Department, dated June 9, 2020, additional comments from the Amherst Fire Department, dated June 18, 2020, a letter from Christine Brestop, on behalf of the Amherst Planning Board, dated June 18, 2020, comments from the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, dated June 17, 2020, comments from the Amherstown Council, dated June 15, 2020, and comments from the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development, chapter 40, be subsidized inventory for Amherst, Massachusetts, dated June 2, 2020. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, June 23rd, we have received 31 public comments. Maureen, are there additional comments since then that we have received? Yes, so the Amherst Health Director submitted comments today, June 25th, 2020, and additional public comments were submitted as of this afternoon. I don't have the total list of submissions of those public comments. If you give me a moment. As of... Does it all be available on the website? They are, they're all available on the website, and those are, there's 20 public comments that have been submitted between June 23rd and four o'clock today, June 25th. So we have a total of 51 public comments that we received as of this afternoon, 20 plus 31. Okay, good, thank you. We conducted a site visit on June 23rd at the site. In attendance were most members of the ZBA town staff and representatives of the applicant. We visited the site, we saw the existing property, the existing building, and we walked the property and saw the outlines of the, where the new building were proposed to be cited. I'm going to, because we need to relay each question that was asked at the site visit, I'm going to go through those briefly and we will also have to ask those questions during the questioning period. So we asked questions about which trees would be removed. We asked questions about the grass paver. There was interest in knowing what planting the plans for tree removal along the property with the abutting house and what plantings were going to be put in their place. There's questions about the placement of the fence and to the bike path, to the bike shed. We also saw the bike shed, the placement for the bike shed. There was, we talked about the car parking situation and walked through the layout of the parking and the site. We asked about alternatives to asphalt pavings. We reviewed where the ADA compliant rumble strip would be on route nine. We also had questions about the timing of the sidewalk, construction on route nine, questions about the demolishing the existing building, the cost of the building per unit, landscaping potentials to a shelter noise from route nine to the new structure. We saw the location of the smoking pavilion. We asked a question about whether the apple tree at the back of the property near the fence with the Amherst College football field would be removed. We had questions about the height of the new building and we measured the eight foot, how much an eight foot fence would shield the abutting property from the newly constructed property. In addition, there was questions about whether some trees would be left and if there's any consideration given to planting between the trees on the border of the property and the abutting property rather than removal and planting them new trees. We asked about the cost per unit, total budget for the property and we looked at the locations of the proposed buildings. Those are the questions asked at the, that I remember that were asked at the site visit. Do any members of the board have additional questions that were asked at the site visit which should be noted at this time. The statutorily mandated process and procedures for consideration of a comprehensive permit is significantly different from the process we use for special permits and variances. Because this is the unique process, I've asked John Whitten of the KP law firm to provide a brief overview of the comprehensive permit process required by Massachusetts General Laws 40B and chapters 44 and 53G. John, can you please give us a brief overview of the comprehensive permit process. Sure, thank you Mr. Chairman. Good evening members of the board and members of the public. So as the chair stated, a application or an application under chapter 40B is very different than what the board typically does as a reviewing body for special permits or variances or appeals from the building commissioner. So here we're operating under a different body of law than chapter 40A and it's chapter 40B. The sections in chapter 40B that are relevant are sections 20, 21, 22 and 23. And then we are operating under a set of regulations promulgated by the Department of Housing and Community Development. And those regulations are found at 760CMR 56. These are all available online. The regulations and the statute work together. There is or there are some conflicts that we don't need to discuss at this point in time but they do work together and the board will be working with both set of statute and regulations during the entirety of this process. One of the most important things which I know the board is going to take up in just a moment is the town of Amherst status being consistent with local needs. And the phrase consistent with local needs is a phrase found in the statute and in the regulations. And in a nutshell, it allows a municipality that has achieved certain standards, certain production standards to protect itself from an appeal of its decision. Amherst has achieved one of those standards and the board has the right to protect itself from an appeal of your decision from or by the applicant. We'll talk about that in a moment. The other big difference though between chapter 40B projects, Comprehensive Permits and the Garden Variety Special Permit or Variance is that the rules governing comprehensive permits really are elastic. The board can grant waivers from local regulations. The board can grant waivers from local bylaws. The board can grant waivers from any local permitting process. The board is guided in those waivers by two really important functions. One is, but for the waiver, would the project be rendered uneconomic? Another phrase found in the statute. And or, but for the waiver, would the project not be buildable? When an applicant is a nonprofit, such as the applicant before you this evening, the standard really is not uneconomic, but will the project fail? Will the conditions imposed by the board or the failure to grant waivers render the project a failure? We can talk more about that as the board goes through the process. The other important thing to remember is that the elasticity that the board can apply to a comprehensive permit project is guided by health and safety standards. The statute chapter 40B specifically calls out health and safety of the residents of the proposed development, health and safety of the abutters to the proposed development as a general theme. And provisions for open space is explicitly called out for in the statute. So the board is operating really under two principles. One is, we don't wanna make the project uneconomic or render too many conditions such that it fails if the board wants to approve it. And the board is balancing all this by the need to protect the health and safety of the occupants and the general community at large. All of that is diminished by the fact that Amherst is consistent with local needs. So a crude way of phrasing it would be the board of appeals could really do as it saw fit with an application under the comprehensive permit statute because the board has achieved this consistency with local needs. But of course it's much more complicated than that. The board needs to entertain this application and the board needs to review it and decide ultimately whether it should be approved with conditions or denied. But being consistent with local needs means that the applicant cannot appeal your decision. And we will get to that piece in just a moment. So Mr. Chairman, I'm happy to talk further, but if that's sufficient, let me stop there. I think that's good, just a good overview. Massachusetts cities and towns are in a safe harbor from the statute and regulations, governing comprehensive permit applications such as the ones we are hearing this evening. They are entitled to render a decision on the application without the applicant being able to appeal an unfavorable decision by the board. These safe harbors referred to in both the statute and regulation as being consistent with local needs includes a city or town containing at least 10% of its year round of housing stock being defined as low or moderate income housing. Amherst has well over 10% of its year round housing stock qualifying as low or moderate income housing. Therefore, Amherst is consistent with local needs and is entitled to the benefits of this safe harbor. In order to take advantage of this safe harbor within 15 days of the opening of the public hearing in a comprehensive permit application, the Board of Appeals must vote to assert the town's status as being in safe harbor and therefore notify the applicant and the Department of Housing and Community Development of the board's vote together with supporting documentation. The applicant has the right to challenge such assertion and if it does, the board's requirement to close this public hearing within 180 days from tonight will be told while the parties await a decision from the Department of Housing and Community Development. Given Amherst's status as consistent with local needs, it is presumed that the applicant will not challenge the board's assertion should the board vote to do so. It is important to note that Amherst's status as consistent with local needs or being in a so-called safe harbor does not require that the board deny this application. Rather, being consistent with local needs means that the comprehensive permit applicant has no legal right to challenge a decision of the Board of Appeals, whether that decision is a denial or an approval with conditions. Finally, due to revisions to the regulations that govern this process, although in conflict with the statute, the board must assert the town's status now in order to obtain the benefits of being in a safe harbor, putting it otherwise, if the board does not assert safe harbor tonight or within 14 days from tonight, the board will not be able to assert it later and any decision on this matter would be appealable to the State Housing Appeals Committee. The town of Amherst currently has 12.59% of its housing stock qualified as low or moderate income housing. As such, I think that, as such, it's evident that the town exceeds the 10% threshold for safe harbor. I move that the Board of Zoning Appeals declare the town of Amherst is consistent with local needs as the phrase is contained in general laws, section 40B, chapter 40B, section 20, and 760 CMR 56 as the town of Amherst has over 10% of its year-round housing stock deemed as qualified or moderate income housing. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? No. Hearing no further discussion, the vote is on the motion. All votes must be by roll call. I vote aye. Mr. Langsdale? Aye. Ms. O'Meara? Aye. Ms. Parks? Aye. Mr. Maxfield? Aye. The vote is five-nothing. The motion is approved. Next order of business is a presentation by Assistant Town Manager, Dave Zymec, who will talk about the progress and the history of this applicant and the town's involvement in providing for the affordable housing in Amherst. Good evening and thank you for having me. I just wanna make sure everybody can hear me. Yes? Yep, it's good. Great, thank you very much for allowing me some time tonight. I'll try to be brief. I will be happy to share my remarks with staff and they can be put in as part of the record. My name is Dave Zymec. I'm the Assistant Town Manager and I oversee the Department of Conservation and Development for the town. That department covers a range of projects as the title indicates from conservation, village-centered development, and also affordable housing. And I'd like to give a little background on this project from the town's perspective this evening. As you know, there's a long-standing recognized need for housing for low income and homeless people in Amherst. This need has been well documented by several studies including the Housing Production Plan from 2013 and the Housing Market Study from 2015. Craig's Doors at the First Baptist Church was opened in 2011 as a seasonal shelter for homeless people. In 2019, it housed well over 100 people throughout the season. In July of 2016, the town held a public forum on homelessness that was attended by over 100 people. Representatives of several service providers spoke about the region-wide need for shelter and housing for low-income people. Residents came together to address issues related to housing for low-income and homeless people. The town has been successful through the years partnering with many organizations, both public and private, to provide affordable housing opportunities for individuals and families. Some examples through the years, if I could just go through a few, Olympia Oaks, 42 units, Butternut Farm, 28 units, San Whalen Apartments, 88 units, Chestnut Court, 48 units, North Square in the Mill District, 26 units, Presidential Apartments, six units, University Drive Mixed Use Building, four units, Aspen Heights on Route 9, and recently 11 units in their under construction right now. My staff and I continue to look for ways to build or incorporate affordable housing units into current and future projects. Our master plan in Amherst contains a chapter on demographics and housing. Among the statements contained in the master plan are, encourage the development of economically diverse neighborhoods, partner with local community development corporations, nonprofit organizations, and other groups to expand affordable housing. The master plan also states to improve housing and services for people in areas, in the area who are homeless. And many other statements that are supportive of developing affordable housing throughout town. This project, I just wanna talk specifically about this project and how staff and I have looked at it. The location of the project is a good one. It's on the busy connector road within walking distance of bus stops. The project is within walking distance of downtown Amherst and shopping areas along University Drive. An estuarine and bicycle improvements are planned for this stretch of Route 9, which will make walking and biking on Northampton Road safer and easier. The project makes sense in terms of infill. It is a property that has already developed in the neighborhood and has already been developed for many years. Specifically the history of working with the town. Valley CDC has been talking to Amherst about this type of project for several years. The Valley CDC went through an extensive process of looking at other properties in town and dismissed many of them because of cost, location or unsuitability. A few years ago, Valley discussed a possible Northampton Road location with the Amherst Homeless Systems Group and the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust. Support from Amherst for this project has been consistent and strong. Valley has already received funding from our CDBG program for site assessments and feasibility studies to identify the site. In January, 2017, Valley discussed the supportive housing model with the Zoning Subcommittee of the Planning Board and discussed a change in the zoning bylaw to allow same size apartment units in an apartment building if all were affordable. In the spring of 2017, Amherstown Meeting voted overwhelmingly to approve a zoning amendment that would allow apartment building to have one size units if all units were affordable. In 2019, the town included 200,000 for Valley CDC in its CDBG application for architectural fees and energy consulting for this project. And in 2019, the town council voted to approve a CPAC request for $500,000 in support of the project. So in summary, this project meets many of the goals and objectives of the town for sheltering and housing, people of low income and people who are homeless. The town has been talking to Valley CDC about a similar type of project since 2017. This is a good project that meets many of our goals and objectives and we encourage the ZBA to carefully consider it. Thank you for your time this evening and I would be happy to submit my comments for the record. Thank you. Thank you. The next order of business is the presentation by the applicant. So the applicant is now recognized for a presentation on the requested comprehensive permit, including the plans for the building, the perceived needs for affordable housing and other matters that the applicant believes will aid the board in its consideration of the comprehensive permit request. I want to remind the representatives, the applicant and any consultants to state their name and address before they begin to speak for the record. Also please note that you should seek recognition from the chair before you speak. I also want to encourage my fellow board members to limit any questions during the presentation they may have to clarifying questions. If you think of a substantive question during the applicant's presentation, please make note of it so you can ask that after the applicant has completed its presentation. I will assure you that there will be ample opportunity to raise any questions you may have after the presentation. But I think it works best to allow a flow of the presentation to go forward. So who is going to begin the presentation for the applicant? I'm Laura Baker, the real estate project manager. Hi from Valley Community Development. And I will begin it. And I will be the one trying to manage our PowerPoint presentation, although we will have several speakers during the course of the presentation. Is this a good time to introduce the theme? It's a good time to introduce the theme. You and everybody should name and give us your name and address for the record. Business address or home address? Business address is fine in this case. Okay. I'm from Valley Community Development Corporation. We're located at 256 Pleasant Street, Suite A in Northampton, Massachusetts. And I'll turn to Rachel. Rachel Loeffler with Berkshire Design Group at 4 Island Place in Northampton. And I'm a resident of Amherst. Tom, you're muted. Tom, you're muted. Right, thank you. Tom Chalmers at Austin Design, located at 2 Mead Street in Greenfield. And Felicity, who we have by phone. Felicity, you're muted. Ms. Hardy, you're muted. Felicity, you should be able to speak now. Yes. Yes. Can't hear her. Ms. Hardy, is there any way you can speak louder or turn up the volume on your phone? Not much. Well, it's very faint, but do your best and project as much as possible. Unintelligible. So I will introduce Felicity. Felicity Hardy from Felicity Hardy Law Practice, her law practice is based in Springfield. Okay. So I am going to share a screen now and see if we can get our presentation to come up. Benny Locke, are we seeing a... Yep. Yeah. See ya. Awesome. We're here with you. The Amherst owning board of appeals, June 25th, presenting the Amherst studio apartments project, which is a single person studios with supportive services. We will note, as the chair has, that the full zoning permit application and the full plan set are available for review on the town's website. Web page is given there below. I'm going to move pretty quickly because I feel like I'm following what Dave already presented, which is namely that the town has identified the needs that led to the development of this project in a number of town documents, including the town's community development strategy, which its first priority is to create affordable and fair housing options for the chronically homeless and extremely low income, low and modern income families, individual seniors, et cetera. The housing trust strategic plan, sites that smaller affordable units for individuals, including persons now accommodated in the shelter is one of their high priorities. The town's housing production plan names production of housing for at risk and special needs populations, as well as people at risk of homelessness or who have special needs that require supportive services. Again, I'm going to move pretty fast. This presentation I can make available to people. It takes us through some of the history that Dave mentioned. Valley actually partnered with the town beginning in 2008 on trying to respond to the need for housing homeless individuals. So the town issued an RFP to study creating enhanced single room occupancy units with social services to house homeless individuals. Valley responded and was selected. We completed a feasibility study in 2009 and made an offer on a property. The property owner refused the offer that we made. Dave mentioned the town form on homelessness, which had allowed the large crowd in 2016. In 2016, also the town planning department organized and conducted a tour for several affordable housing developers, including Valley and public funders to try to spur interest in the creation of supportive housing for homeless individuals in Amherst. 2017, the initial planning grant, CDBG planning grant was awarded to Valley for just over $50,000 to conduct site search and site feasibility analysis to create six between 16 and 40 units of supportive housing, including units for homeless individuals. Town groups have held a series, actually, forums on affordable housing that highlight the topic of housing needed for homeless individuals. Zoning subcommittee and planning board have held hearings, as Dave mentioned, to change the zoning to allow for one type of size of unit in an affordable housing development. In 2018, we, Valley, me, looked at perhaps two dozen potential sites using the CDBG planning funds and ended up selecting 132 Northampton Road, which was then acquired in January of 2019. Also in 2018, the CDBG advisory committee held a public hearing, including information about our site search and this location. 2019, the CDBG advisory committee following public hearings recommended another $200,000 grant for planning and pre-development for this particular site at 132 Northampton Road. In 2019, as we heard, the CPA recommended $500,000 for project implementation. The town hosted an open town meeting with over 80 attendees to discuss the development. And there were many letters and newspaper articles written about the project around that time. And following this kind of flow of public input, the town council approved the CPA recommendation for $500,000 and the town council provided letters of support, which you've seen as attachments. We have met specifically on this project with quite a few town boards, including the planning board, advise CDBG advisory committee, CPA committee, disabilities access advisory committee, the housing trust finance committee and the town council. We have met with quite a few other non-municipal groups and members, including property butters and neighbors, the Amherst affordable housing coalition, the interfaith housing corporation, Amherst college administration and campus police, Amherst housing authority board of directors, the local Amherst homeless systems group, Amherst community connections and the Craig Stores board of directors. In putting in this particular application, we've consulted with the planning and zoning department, the tree warden, the public work superintendent, the building inspector, the fire department, the town engineer, mass DOT and mass historic. We've used a variety of methods about keeping the community informed about the project. The main one I would say is the town's webpage, which is a large repository of information, the town forums and meetings. There are over 30 articles, opinions and letters published in local newspapers and we also did some radio interviews. Community input, it sounded like you had 51 letters just for this opening hearing. So in addition to that, more than 60 letters were written in the past and written comments were provided. We've had dozens of speakers, both pro and con who've participated in public meetings and there were some PowerPoint presentations prepared by neighbors and butters that were shown at the open meeting of residents. The housing program that's being proposed is 28 small studio apartments. Each apartment would contain its own bathroom and a kitchenette. Common areas, including a lobby, a multi-purpose common room, a shared laundry, two onsite staff offices, one for property management and one for resident services coordinator. Some of the site features that we'll show you visuals of in a little while are 16 parking spaces, screen dumpsters and outdoor shed covered by storage gardening areas, a designated smoking area and robust new landscaping. An overview of the building is, as follows, it's one single building. It is two and a half stories. It is three full floors. The half story is a partially below grade story. It's 28 units. They're all studios. Two of these 28 are handicapped accessible. The average gross square foot for the units is 235 square feet. Some are a little bit smaller and some are bigger. And the average for the accessible units is quite a bit bigger at 393 gross square feet. And the total square footage of the building is just under 12,000 gross square feet. In terms of the kind of technical aspects of who qualifies to live in the proposed housing, we are proposing 10 studios with a homeless preference for very extremely low income people earning below 30% of the area median income at a proposed rent, which is actually the current fair market rent with a subsidy, an in-house subsidy, so that these folks would be paying one third, approximately one third of their income for their housing costs. Two studios, again, with a referral from Department of Mental Health for their clients, also extremely low income individuals, again, having their own project-based subsidy. Eight studios for low income residents earning below 50% of the area median income with a fixed proposed rent of $740 and eight studios, sorry, I have a bad typo. This should be 80% AMI who are moderate income and the proposed rent is $795. Rents tend to go up and down a little bit with the median income and the standards that are set by the state and the federal government. Currently, these are the income restrictions at these different income tiers, just to give you a sense of what the maximum income for this one person household would be. If that one person household was paying 32% of their income for rent, this is what they could afford to pay for both rent and utilities. And so this is the range of people, income range of people who could afford the particular units that are being proposed. Who will live here? The majority of studio apartments will house low and modern income employed persons who are equally likely to be male or female. We continue to have some misinformation circulating that this property will be only for men that has never been something that we've proposed. It's based on application. We're not allowed to discriminate based on sex. So it will be a mix of men and women. A few quick statistics about Amherst housing and income in general. An individual working 40 hours a week for minimum wage would earn just under $25,000 a year. The median per person income in Amherst is lower than that, it's about 20,000. The median single person household income is 28,000. The median rental household income for all size households, singles, doubles, triples, squads is only $28,290. 42% of Amherst renter households are severely cost burdened which means they pay more than 50% of their income for their housing costs. So within this proposed housing, eight studios would have an income cap of just under 30,000 which is 50% of the area median income. And as you can see from the numbers above, a large proportion of Amherst renters would be income eligible, including service workers, laborers, maintenance staff, healthcare aides and teaching assistants. Eight would have an income cap of just under $48,000. Income eligible persons might include associate level administrative staff, paraprofessional social workers and adjunct faculty. Two studios for tenants referred from the Department of Mental Health with this lower income cap who may be employed full-time, part-time or unemployed. They will receive regular and ongoing clinical and support services from the Department of Mental Health. And then 10 studios with a homeless preference and again a very low income threshold. So for our definition for this property, homeless persons are those who lack adequate permanent affordable housing. And in addition to people who might be in a shelter or living outdoors unsheltered, homeless persons can be defined as those who might be fleeing domestic violence, living doubled up somewhere with family or friends, living in a building that doesn't meet code, paying more than 30% of their income for rent, which as we saw applies to 42% of the renter households in Amherst. Sorry, no, it's an even higher number than that. In-housing that was damaged by fire and natural disaster are needing to move due to a disability or are separated or divorced and cannot remain in the family home and cannot afford a second home. The development is not limited to chronically homeless persons, which is defined as those who have a long-term or repeated homelessness coupled with serious mental illness, substance use disorder or disability. And nationally about 24% of homeless individuals meet the definition of being chronically homeless. I'm gonna talk for a minute about the subsidized housing inventory. This is in no way to disagree with what Attorney Whitten told you. In fact, Amherst does have more than 10% of units listed as eligible on the state's subsidized housing inventory. So according to the town, it has 1,211 units that are eligible for listing. I updated the total housing units from the most recent census data available, which is 10,294, putting just under 12% of affordable units. What a lot of people may not realize is of these 1,211 units, about 356 are market rate units. So for example, only 26 of the 130 units at North Square are actually restricted as affordable the rest are market rate. Yet all 130 are counted on the subsidized housing inventory. Of the 204 units at Rolling Green, only 41 are restricted as affordable. The balance are market, but all of the 204 are counted on the subsidized housing inventory. The ratio of these truly preserved affordable units to the total units in Amherst is 8.3%. The Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development currently has a funding priority for communities with fewer than 12% of the housing stock listed on the subsidized housing inventory. Local preference, within Massachusetts, cities and towns may request local preference from the Department of Housing and Community Development for up to, but not exceeding 70% of affordable units within the initial lease up lottery. The state defines local preference, current residents of the town, people employed for business in town are working for the municipality and people having children enrolled in the local school system. There are pros and cons to local preference since housing is both a regional need and a regional resource, and there may be people who feel local, for example, someone who grew up in Amherst, who do not meet the state's definition for local preference. And just a note, during the lottery process, the local preference pool must be balanced with minority applicants from other areas to match the percent of minority residents within the statistical area. This is so that a local preference doesn't become a de facto racial barrier. If there are not enough local preference applicants, units can be filled from the open lottery pool. We've had a lot of comments about, you know, why build housing at this location for individuals and why not build a mix or why not build housing for families? So I just wanted to address that briefly. In Massachusetts, there's a legislative mandate to shelter homeless families. There is no similar mandate for homeless individuals, creating dire need for individuals. Amherst has made strides to create family affordable housing. Both of Valleys, my agency's prior developments in Amherst benefit families. They're located on Charles Lane and Main Street. Other 40B projects approved by Amherst contain affordable family units, for example, Butternut Farm, Olympia Oaks, North Square, as does Rowling Green, Presidential Apartments, Mill Valley Estates, Village Park, and several Habitat for Humanity properties. In contrast, there has been no single-person supportive housing created in Amherst, nor any housing built that is dedicated to homeless individuals. The site at 132 North Hampton Road was selected in response to an extensive site search specifically to meet the need for single-person supportive housing, including homeless individuals. It is proximate to downtown and to services. The power of the single-person occupancy model is that it provides a home for persons who may lack social or familial supports. The proposed building has the potential to stitch together an extended family fabric for individuals who might otherwise be isolated. As I've mentioned, this is a project development that is intended to provide on-site supportive services for residents. These are voluntary services and some people will use them and some people won't. Some people will need them and some people won't. The elements, the key elements of this service plan are an on-site dedicated resident services coordinator, approximately 27 to 30 hours a week. The functions of this position include connecting tenants and residents with community-based services, helping with any kind of daily logistics, coordinating on-site group functions, helping to resolve tenant conflicts, coordinating and providing transportation and serving as a community liaison. Other aspects of the supportive services plan includes signed memorandums of understanding with other community agencies. For example, Elliott programs, Amherst Community Connections and the Veterans Agent to support tenants on an individual basis at the site. The Department of Mental Health referred clients will have ongoing regular clinical and service supports kind of wraparound supports through the Department of Mental Health. The selection process for homeless tenants will include a referral from a local agency and that agency will commit to provide support for at least the first nine to 12 months of occupancy, potentially longer as needed by individual tenants. As these agencies exit, after that kind of critical first stabilization year, they will link tenants as needed with ongoing support services available through community-based agencies. The management staffing plan includes property management by a company named Housing Management Resources. They are estimated to be on site of approximately 20 hours per week. Their functions include rent collections, compliance, maintenance, upkeep of the property, enforcing terms of the lease. Asset management will continue to be provided throughout the duration by Valley Community Development. We'll oversee the property management, we'll manage capital and operating reserves and major capital repairs and we'll contract for the resident services coordinator position. A little bit more about the characteristics of the particular site. It is a central walkable location, four-tenths of a mile from town center and then closest bus stop, six-tenths of a mile from major shopping centers and walking distance to multiple service and healthcare providers, including the Museumty Health Center at the Bang Center. It's on a main road on a state highway, route nine, and it's connected to public water and sewer. It's a large buildable lot. It's cleared and fairly level for its location. It's in a mixed residential area. The butters include single and multifamily residential and institutional uses. It's cited at the junction of three different zoning districts, the ED, RG and RN districts. The other types of dense housing uses that are nearby include a six-unit condo, which is all rented, that's across the street. Three residence halls that are on Northampton Road and a 78-unit assisted senior housing development. This is a map showing the property location. It is here in this light green color. It's approximately halfway between the town center and town common and university drive down in this direction. As you can see it is adjacent to the athletic field, the track and the Conway Field House that's owned by Amherst College. The property almost surrounding it all the way to over here is owned by Amherst College. This is a two-family rental owned by Amherst College and this is a single family owner occupied house. In terms of proximity, we're trying to highlight here the various things that are close to this property site of note is the rail trail is very close by. There's an urgent care center that's here. This is a senior housing development here. There's a church here. There's a lot of things that are close to where this project is cited. As you move toward the center of town, you can see from the project site the number of bus stops that are within walking distance. And then I'm not gonna review it because I think you all probably know all the things that are in town center. There's a blow up of the town center, Craig's Doors, Amherst Community Connections, the pharmacy, fire department, the library is close by, bus stops, bank. There's a bike share location, town hall, New Zealand Community Health Center, the bank center, post office, et cetera. If you're moving toward the west down toward University Drive, again, there are bus stops. There's another bike share location. There's two large grocery stores, post office, some other pharmacy, et cetera. Here, we're illustrating that this is the section of North Hampton Road that's intended for improvement by Mass DOT. And that would include improving and adding five foot wide sidewalks, multi-use paths on either side, both sides of North Hampton Road, that would be handicapped accessible. It includes adding two crossings across North Hampton Road that would have blinking lights. One is at Hazel Street and one is at Orchard Street. So from our project site, either walking toward town or away from town, there will be much safer opportunities to cross North Hampton Road. So the planning board was interested in seeing how the scale of the property related to other properties nearby. So if you imagine this is North Hampton Road, this is toward Hadley and this is toward North Hampton. This is 132, the property in question. If you were standing across North Hampton Road looking at it, this is how it would appear, partly because it's set about 100 feet back from the edge of the site. This is the neighboring property at 126 and then this is how these properties appear if you are kind of right in front of them. Same treatment here with the fields house and then with other houses as you head up toward the town center and then properties on the opposite side of the road as well. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to Rachel to talk about site plans. Rachel, you're muted. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. As Laura mentioned, this is the location of the property North Hampton Road next slide. And this is what the proposed project would look at. Like one of the nice aspects of this design is that the massing of the building relates really well to a lot of the other buildings and neighborhood which you can see from the air hall. The footprint is really similar. Okay, next slide. So this view has rotated a little bit from those previous views. So North Hampton Road is on the right hand of the page and Amherst College is to the left. So this is the view and orientation that I'll be talking here for the next slides. Okay, next slide. Oops, sorry. Okay, this is a survey of the site with a little bit of color to help it be a little bit more legible. The existing house is really set back far into the back portion of the property. It's within the setback. It is also the parcel which we found out later in the process has two zones within it, partially the ED zone and the RG zone. So the green area shown there shows a little over 1500 square feet of the ED zone that's in the parcel. Utilities coming into the site, as Laura mentioned, fully served by the city. The waterline which is shown in blue on this plan actually goes through an easement through the neighbor's parcel. It is not sufficient to support the future building but we'll talk about that later. The overhead electric also comes through the neighbor's parcel as does sewer line that the project connects to. And then on the left are pictures of the existing site. Today, the view at the top is a view of the driveway looking back towards Northampton Road. The view in the middle is looking at the west side of the existing house between the house and the field. And the bottom picture shows a view looking towards the back of the property. Next slide. So in the process of the construction, we will take great measures to make sure that we are managing the site and construction. And this is an example of the demo and erosion control plan that we would typically provide. We call for silt sacks and silt fencing around the perimeter, downslope areas, construction fencing, a tracking pad, and we itemize everything that's being removed. But for the next slide. And then on site, we are using a variety of different materials, mostly for durability and then also what the final experience might be. So the driveway today is gravel. It would make it more stable and firm, paving a majority of the driveway, which is shown as Laura's pointing out in the lighter gray color. It's a 22 foot wide access drive. We have eight spaces that are paved with asphalt, two of which are ADA accessible with an access aisle, bringing you into the main entry of the building. We also would be using grass pavers, which are shown there on the right. The idea there is that we really want to kind of preserve the open feel of more Hampton of this property and minimize the view of paving into the site. So grass pavers are something that we're going to use. And we also suspect that this community may not need the full 16 spaces. We're also looking at using really durable sidewalk materials. So there's a pedestrian sidewalk five feet wide connecting the building to North Hampton Road, shown there in a light beige color, and also a concrete walk connecting to the parking area. In the back, we have a dedicated patio area, which we're using unitized pavers to really make it feel more homey. And then to reduce the amount of forest paving, we're using KBI or something called FlexiPave, which has gained a lot of popularity with trail designs. It's a porous material, it feels like spongy, like walking on a track and it allows water to go through, but it has a nice softer feeling on site. So we'll use that to connect the patio to other parts of the site. I think we're maybe in a slide before that one. But yeah, slides showing the different examples of grass pavers and paving strategies. There is quite an abundance of options of colors and textures and prices that we are thinking of. So the placement of the building on the site is something that we thought a lot quite a bit and it's moved around quite a bit through the process of design. So we're, the back corner of the building is a little over 27.6 feet from the back property line. So we're expanding that three foot setback that was there before to a little bit more comfortable space behind the building, which as Laura mentioned before, gives us about a hundred feet from setback from the front in the Northampton Road. Again, preserving that open feeling that's characteristic of the neighborhood. And then to the neighbor to the East, we have a little over 66 feet between the building and the neighbor. And then I should also mention that in Amherst, in addition to the RG zone, setbacks of 10 feet per side and rear, there's a clause for this type of development that we have to add two feet for every story to that side and rear setback. So we have a 2.5 story, so that's adding additional five feet. So we're still within the 15 foot side setback and 15 foot rear setback for that requirement. Next slide. This is a chart just breaking down what some of those requirements are and how we fit within those. The total lot size is over 38,000 square feet. The area of the lot that's in the EV zone is a little over 1600 square feet. The minimum lot size in RG zone, as you can see, is 12,000 square feet. We're well over that even after we subtract the EV zone area. We meet the minimum frontage. And as I talked to you, those are the rear and side setbacks. Building coverage in Amherst, there's a couple of points behind here at the bottom of the page that I pulled from the zoning specifically for building coverage and lot coverage in Maxite. Building coverage is the area by the main building and any structures that are enclosed by three sides. So we're well with underneath the max building coverage at 12.8%. And the max lot coverage we're seeking a waiver for. A little bit over 45.29%. I will say that if this is conservative in the sense that we included the pavers as an impervious surface, if we were to consider the grass pavers as forest surface, we would be underneath that max lot coverage. And we have 2.5 stories, which is less than three stories and Tom will talk us through more of the height things later in the presentation. Okay, slide. So screening and fencing on site. In terms of fencing, there's already an existing ornamental rail fence between Amherst property and this property, which will remain for the project. And then on the neighbor to the east, they had currently there is not a fence and there's a stand of evergreen trees, spruce trees. The neighbor had requested that we provide a 12 foot high fence between their property and in this project. But we are proposing an eight foot tall sear fence for screening and additional lots of plantings on both sides, which we'll talk about later. Also, I'll mention that there's a dumpster enclosure at the back of the property hidden from view by the sear enclosure fence six feet high. Next slide. And then I'm going to take you through in great detail all of the planting that we're proposing on this project. Next slide. So we're using a range of evergreen and deciduous trees and flowering shrubs. One thing that we've been trying to take in the consideration a lot now as things are changing with climate is to really think about plants that will do well in the future as it gets hotter and drier. And also a lot of attention has been given towards pollinators and the need to support them. So the example of the swamp white oak may support up to 300 or more pollinators in insects with it that they may over time in species like the black-toothed lobe will do really, really well as things can change. So those kind of provide the structure for the site. Also trying to, for the evergreen trees and evergreen shrubs really trying to have a variety of texture and color so that we're not just putting down arbor body everywhere. Next slide. And similar to the shrubs, we're looking at using some natives, some flowering, lots of seasonal interests, some color, lots of texture and habitat. Next slide. So now walk you through the different zones of the project. So this is the eastern border. The plantings there are going to span both sides of the fence, the eight foot high cedar fence that I mentioned before. Here we're using different types, different spruces and different false cypresses that will stay evergreen throughout the year. And we're mixing in a couple more natives like the red-toothed dogwood and sweet fern which are deciduous to provide a lot of love seasonal interests. Next slide. Moving towards the south, towards the Amherst College border. We're keeping some of the same plants for continuity, but introducing some new ones. So more of the Eastern second war and the small white oak. Next slide. And then on the western border, similar there, using evergreens all throughout the property really of different heights so that we won't have really tall evergreen trees with open juice underneath for planting smaller evergreen shrubs underneath those also with a mix of shade trees also and flowering. Next slide. And then the front area, still kind of that open pastoral feel but with the Black Tupelo along the front of the road, straight straight there providing more shade. And then additionally in our stormwater area more wet-loving species like the white oak. And then dappling the site with some understory trees like the Japanese tree lilac and the red bud and then mixing in just a range of different colors and textures like North Fowler Agilia and Kalmia and Mulheri and some sedges. Okay, next slide. Programming on the site, programming is a fancy word for activities that are planned outside. Outside, as I mentioned before, we have an outdoor seating area which provides a space for folks to get outside and take a breath of air and be outside amongst the vegetation or talk to other people living in the building. We're providing on our plans, we're showing five tables with up to 20 chairs that are all movable and rangeable. So whether it's pre-COVID or post-COVID social distancing. We're providing spaces for gardening. You're currently showing four by four plots, 16 of those both on the southern side and the western side of the project for a variety of growing areas. We're providing a covered bike shed structure. It can hold up to 16 bikes and right when we're thinking it'll be in the range of eight to 10 feet tall of the slope of the roof. And we are proposing lighting underneath it. I'll talk about the lighting a little bit. And then we have an outdoor pavilion seating area, prefab, that's a little bit over eight feet tall. It's made of cedar and aluminum. Slide. In terms of managing waste on site and trash, we've accommodated a space for two dumpsters, an eight yard dumpster and a six yard dumpster. That can handle trash recycling. And we've tested out a dumpster truck to make sure that it can turn around on the site. We're using grass paved areas to increase the paving apron for this area to accommodate those turns. Next slide. Also managing the site with a little bit at snow removal. The Valley CDC, sorry, the project will have, sidewalks will be removed either by shovel or with a snow blower. And then parking areas will be removed by a file company, either stockpiled on site, if it turns out that the parking areas are not needed or into the periphery. And then on really big heavy snow falls, they may take some of the snow away. Next slide. As mentioned before, we have 16 spaces, eight of which are grass paved spaces. And then two ADA and six regular spaces. Thank you. Accompanying this as a traffic study and a parking study, looking at this type of use according to the ITE report and the number of units, we anticipate that the weekly ADT, max ADT would be 188 for this total development. But sorry, we, excuse me, 188 total for this development. But looking at it in terms of what's happening adjacent on route nine, route nine has a much larger volume. And Mastio T did a recent study accompanying their proposed work. And their max ADT is over 14,000 vehicles per day. Once we take an account that we're removing the single family unit from the site, when we're adding between units, we have 178 total ADT that would be contributing to the route nine traffic. So it's a very small number added to the traffic on route nine. Additionally, peak hours and peak trips, Mastio T says that route nine peak hour use is a little over 1,300 vehicles an hour. And from our project similarly, the max, this is again, very conservative, the max number of trips from our site according to the ITE generator, trip generator would be 27 contribution. So that's one vehicle every two minutes. Next slide. So the proposed site utilities are cleaning up some of those relationships that the property has with the municipal services. So now instead of going through the neighbor's yard for sewer, for water and electric, we're connecting to Northampton Road as much as possible. So we're proposing an eight inch ductile iron new water main to connect to the Northampton Road service. And that would split off into a two and a half inch water line for potable drinking water and a six inch fire service line for fire suppression. So this, this apartments will be sprinkled. We also are providing a new fire hydrant to help with fire control with that need of a rise. And there's an FDC connection at the front of the building which I'll show you on another side. We're putting the electric utilities underground, hopefully connecting to Northampton Road and providing a transformer to the rear of the site. That's quite often that transformers would be required. So we want to move that out of the public realm, out of the public view and then the back of the site which provides for this into the building. And then the sewer line, we would have a six inch gravity sewer pipe that connects to the existing system and go to the south of the project site. Next slide. And telecom also providing a underground telecom line into the site. I mentioned a little bit about the fire suppression system and the FDC connection and the hydrant which are all supporting our service folks protecting this house of fire. In conversations with the fire department, it was requested that we provide a 25 foot turning radius for vehicles. And this is showing where that area would be located. Next slide. We also did a cut and fill analysis of the proposed work on the site and immersed anything over filling over, filling over to the 5,000 square feet, more than two feet of fill requires a special permit. And we are filling more than that. Yeah, we are in the 8,000 range. And this graphic is showing you what areas are over two feet of fill. And we had, we wrote, we raised the site up a little bit to promote accessibility and the connection to the parking area and also accessibility to the lower levels of the building as you walk out. Also the site has high groundwater and raising those portions of the site helped us meet all the stormwater challenges of the site. Next slide. And then this is the cut fill analysis of the entire site, not just what two feet of fill looks like. So we are cutting in places and filling in other places. The majority of the site, we're actually making subtle shifts of anywhere from zero to one foot. Next slide. So lighting, this is an illustrative version of a lighting plan. Lighting designers often will like grid out the site to show what, and they measure the foot candles in a model on a grid, how many foot candles are at any given point. And this is what we use to check to see and make sure that we don't have light trespass beyond the property line. What that usually looks like is a black and white mess of little dots and little numbers. So what I've done here is I've drawn shapes of yellow around any area that has more than zero foot candles. So the lightest shading is 0.1 to one foot candle. And then the next darkest shading is one to two foot candles. And there's only one or two areas that are above two foot candles. And that's right underneath the canopy at the entryway. Also, lighting can really change the way that a project fits within the neighborhood and also change the way it feels to live there. One thing that I think many of us don't enjoy is feeling like you're under a spotlight are the more cool lighting and the way we talk about color and lighting is through Kelvin and temperature. So up 5,000, it's very bright white light, blinding white light, and then the warmer tone lights are in the 2,700 to 3,000 range. So we've worked with the designer to make sure that every fixture is in the 3,000 range so the site will have really soft, warm light. We've also tried to keep the numbers down and keeping in mind this more has a more residential feel. So we did have to use some full-mounted lights and those are shown here on the left, what those fixtures look like with the shepherd's hook and a little softer feel. Those were needed to provide safe fee for the parking areas, but the pathways we chose to use really low allered lighting that are there's in the back we're using more of the 20 inch tall variety and along the front there are 36 inch light. All the fixtures are fully shielded and anything on the building is full cut off and it's everything is dark sky I should say. And then the lights will be dimmed at night on a timer and as I mentioned before the lights on the pathways are motion centered. So again, trying to minimize the amount of light on the site. Next slide. I'm just gonna add that these pathway lights are all solar powered lights. We tried to get everything solar powered but we needed a little bit more oomph over here but as much as possible we're using solar powered lights and it's all LED lighting as well. All right, we're gonna turn it over to Tom who's gonna talk us through the architectural plans. You there Tom? Yep, I'm here. Awesome. This sheet shows the views from the model that we did of the building. When we first started considering this project we thought of, we were thinking of a building that was more modern and contemporary massing similar to some of the newer buildings in Emmerse and that quickly became obvious that that was inappropriate for the site. So we worked towards trying to break the massing down make it more Victorian and sort of massing in roof and in details. The plan has, floor plan has broken up, it breaks the box out with a number of bays and recesses and those carry through to the roof which ends up having, so you have rather than having one mass of the gable you have a lot of dormers. So each of those bays carries up and you have a gable over them and there's some hip areas and that gives it sort of a more Victorian massing. We also have a stone base we're trying to stratify the building a little bit so horizontally, we have a stone base that is similar to the field house next door and the signing will be clavards it'll be all a hardy plank, it'll be a mixture of clavards and possibly some shingles in the upper levels and fairly wide cornerboards, freeze water table and things like that. And then also there's porches, a couple of porches is a porch that faces the street and then there's obviously a porch that over the main entrance and some of the other egress that have little corners over them. So just to orient you, the upper right image is looking across the driveway to the left is the main entrance of the building where you interact grade and then down on the right side is the porch that faces the street and the upper left image is sort of back to the other side of the driveway that's the main car parking. The facade on the left side there is the one that faces the back. And I guess I can say also right here it's a little bit clear that the grades are not completely accurate in this model but the part facing the driveway is really more like two stories and the levels facing the back and the west are three stories and the front is someone in between. Mm-hmm. Next slide. Here's a series of elevations. This is the front elevation. The entrance is in the center, the porch facing the street and that little box on the top is for the elevator. Next, that's the Northampton Road view straight on with the entrance on the left and the porch on the center. Next. This is the west elevation and on the lower right, there's a pair of doors that opens out at grade to the patio. And beyond that is on the right is a retaining wall that helps the transition to the higher level. And next. And finally, this is facing the south, the Amherst property. On the right, there's a little egress door and on the bay to the left, there's a little dark overhang also, that's another exit at grade as well from the side. Okay, next. This slide is, so we're trying to compare the height and massing of the existing building with the new. The existing building has a walkout basement and a first floor and a second floor. Similar to what we are doing, the difference really is that a couple of things, the second floor in their case is tucked under the roof, which we can't do. And then basically the floor-to-floor heights have to be significantly higher to accommodate mechanical systems and the ceilings in that house are quite low, they're more like seven feet, seven and a half feet by and large. So the top shows you back-to-back. That's the west elevation and that's the west elevation of the building and then just the comparison with the front as well. Next. So actually Laura, can you scroll down a couple of slides to get to the section of this? I think it's just to get you on this. So just continuing on the building height, the image on the right shows that the has floor-to-floor heights basic building section and it shows the medium building height as taken from the lowest level of the grade is below the 40 foot. The section on the left explains how the whole structure of the building works with the grade. So where the cursor is now, that's the outside entrance and then you come into the lobby, that's at grade to the parking lot. And once you're in the lobby, that's a mid, that's a sort of half level and you either go down to the ground floor which opens out at the lower level or you can walk up to the, what we're calling the first floor. That stairway right in the lobby is an open stairway. It connects the lobby and the two other floors. The third floor is accessed either by the elevator or by stair towers at either end. So if we go back to the plans, let's stop at the first, go one more down, one more slide, down. So here you see again, you enter in that entryway and there's the lobby and there's an elevator that can take you either down or up down to the ground floor or up two floors. And then there's an open stair that takes you either down to the ground floor or up to the first floor. If you were going, if you wanted to walk and you were going to the, to the second floor, you would go, you could walk up those open stair and then you would wind down the hallway either way to get into the egress stairs and go up. So you can go down and up that where you can go down. And alternatively you could enter from the path at the north, at the street side, the north end and come in and go right up the stairs if your unit was right there. So now let's go back down to the ground level. Sorry. So this is the ground floor. You come down the, you come down from the lobby downstairs and there's a sort of open hall on the left because of the common room, which opens out to the patio at grade. There's a common restroom for people to use and there's a resident service coordinator offices here as well. And then there is the laundry, common laundry services. And that's an electrical room there, utility room. And then there's also a stair next to the elevator. You go back up to the elevator. On the left of the elevator, there's a stair that runs down to a subbasement. And that subbasement is under the lobby and that's going to be more mechanical space and an elevator bit. And then the rest of the floor has basic units. There are a number of different types which we'll look at quickly, but this floor does not have the accessible units, accessible units upstairs. So now for your one, we have in that quarter above the common room, we have one of the accessible units. And then we have the property manager's office, which is over here. And that actually looks out over the lobby. So there's a window down to the lobby so you can see what's going on there. And then similar units. And if you go upstairs, let's go upstairs again. There's another accessible unit stacked. And then other units. So maybe I can talk quickly about the construction. Well, actually, I'm gonna talk about some of the safety features first. I think we have a slide for that. So we have the building is fully sprinkled, the fire hydrant, there's hard-wired smoke in CO detectors, and there are multiple fire extinguisher, egress and extinguishers. There's two main stairs take you, once you get into the stairs, it's a fire-rated enclosure and they both empty directly out into the exterior. The construction of the building or the security, the building is locked with the intercom to each unit. And this is security camera coverage of the entries and egress and common spaces and peep holes in the unit doors. So the doors are normally locked and you will come to the entrance and buzz the unit to be let in. The main entrance also has automatic power door opener for your accessibility. I don't have, let's see. In terms of construction, what's the next slide? I'm gonna go back a little. Let's go look at the units now. Sorry, I'm making you jump around. There's a number of, like every building, we try to standardize things and then what happens because of all different kinds of requirements is a lot of different solutions, but there's like three or four different unit types. They're all basically the same in that you come in the door, you have a kitchen, kitchenette, a little bit of storage. There's an area for a dining table and an area for sitting at a bed and then a bathroom. The big exception to that is the accessible units, which are just basically have much more space around those features. They have a roll-in shower and room to turn and more space access at the bed. And those are a few more units that are basically different just because they're found in different locations in the building, but they all have the same similar features. Do you want to look at the roof at all? The roof is, so in order to bring out the Victorian masking and character, we have a lot of dormers. So basically there's a two, the structure is mainly two intersecting gables and then gable dormers everywhere. That breaks up the massing very nicely. It makes it a little bit difficult since we're looking to put solar on it, but and the construction is a little more difficult, although it's built out of trusses. There's no occupied space in the attic, so it's just trusses and all the way around. We talked about this, talked about the units. How about this one? So our goal really is to insulate and bring a level of airtightness to the building that reduces our energy loss to the point that we can get a passive house certification and require very low energy expenditures to heat and cool the building. So we'll have an envelope that pays great attention to reducing eliminating air infiltration and adding high levels of insulation. Because we're reducing the air infiltration to such an extent, we're spending a lot of time bringing in fresh air and that's gonna be done by ERBs, energy recovery ventilators, which will provide fresh air to each apartment and ventilate air from each apartment. And they're energy efficient because they recover energy as the air is exhausted, it transfers energy from the exhaust air into the income. And those will be run all the time. And they will exhaust bathroom and kitchen air and provide fresh air into the living areas. Because we're reducing the energy costs, I mean, the energy demands so much, we're gonna have a small and efficient heating system, which will be an air source heat pump will provide cooling and heating, and we will also have heat pump hot water heaters. So there's no gonna be no combustion appliances on site, no electric, no fossil fuels. The goal, I mentioned a little bit of the problem with the roof, but the goal is to add some solar panels where we can to offset the electric energy bill. It's an efficient building, it's pretty compact. We have tried to limit exterior envelope as much as possible and still keep an attractive massing. So the building, the units are efficient. It's in a walkable location, close proximity to services, shop, medical facilities, and bike trail. And hopefully that reduces the number of tenants who own cars, which all contributes to its low carbon footprint. The building is fully accessible in its public areas, though all the walks are slopes that are less than 5%. All the entrances are accessible at grade. There's an elevator, there'll be two, two of the units will be fully handicapped accessible and they're larger, as we saw in the plan. There'll be one additional unit adapted for a tenant who may have sensory impairments. The other units will be adaptable in a design so that they're visible, I think you got all of that. Okay, is there anything else, Tom, that isn't here that you wanted to say about the building itself, I'm just scrolling back to see if you... Yeah, I think not much of it. Okay, we may get questions for you. I'm just gonna quickly highlight the zoning waiver requests. They're listed out in quite a bit of detail in the application, but these are what I would think of as some of the highlights, the number of units in apartment buildings, we're asking to have 28 instead of the 24 maximum, density of units to allow these 28 units parking about 0.57 spaces per unit or 16 spaces total. Maximum lot coverage we talked about being a little bit over the 40% normally permitted and to basically allow the comp permit to encompass all of the other town permits, water and sewer connections, site plan review, demolition delay, et cetera, with the ZBA consulting of the relevant town departments or boards. Want to share a little bit about next steps, assuming that the ZBA were to grant a hearing, we assume we'd have hearing and permitting during the course of this summer, might allow us to apply for funding in the winter. And if we were successful, we would hear about that funding next summer. We would work to select a general contractor and close on construction and begin construction in the spring of 2022. We'd have a marketing period, as well as a tenant lottery that would kind of coincide with while the construction is underway. Completing construction, maybe a little more than a year later than it was started about usually a three to six month period to lease up all the units. And then what we call stabilized operations is when you have a few months of fully occupied operations, the end of the year 2023. And I think we're at the end of our presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thanks for that presentation. One of the things that Massachusetts Open Meeting a lot of acquires is that questions asked at the site visit be introduced into the record in the public hearing. So what I want to do is go over some of those questions that were asked at the site visit, and then we can go through those. I will then turn it over to other members of the ZBA to ask their questions. I have some other questions which I can ask after other questions my fellow ZBA members are asked and answered. But I want to go through those, make sure those questions that were asked at the site visit are put into the record. So let's go to the trees, the landscape design first, Laura. Here, can we look at, I know there was lots of, there were lots of questions around tree removal, replanting and all that. So specifically, tell me what plan we should be looking at which piece of paper which we will help us with that. Okay, I'm going to ask for help from Rachel, but so in terms of what is being removed from the site, there should be a plan that's a demolition plan that would include demolition of the house as well as removal of any trees that are not going to remain on the site. The majority of trees that are there now are slated for demolition. So this demolition plan will identify each tree that's going to be removed or just shows the trees that are going to be replanted. It shows, it identifies the trees that have been removed. I believe it does, yep. Okay. I'll see 101. 101? I'll see 101, yeah. Got it. Okay, practically, so all the trees abutting the neighboring property are going to be removed, correct? At the request of the neighbor. Yep. Laura, I guess. Yes. Rachel, I'm having a hard time hearing you, so I'm just probably breaking up. All right. At the request of the neighbor. Yes. We talked about the grass pavers at the site. We understand that cement with spaces that grass grows at, correct? That's correct. Another question was why, you alluded to this a second ago, Ms. Laughler. You said that the trees would be removed at the request of the neighbor. And there was a question asked at the site visit about whether there was any thought given to planting trees between the existing trees to try to provide a screen instead of taking down how many of those, it's not listed here on 101, but there's a number of spruce trees there. There must be 10 or 15 spruce trees that you're going to take down. Laura, do you want to answer this one? We've had conversations. Sure. Yeah, we have looked at a number of different options. One of them was retaining those trees and putting a fence on our side of the trees and then putting some plantings there. You can plant things under spruce trees. It limits the type of variety I would think that you could plant because it's pretty heavily shaded there. But it's certainly something we looked at. We did get the request from the abutter to remove those trees and to provide something new, which was the eight foot cedar fence, as well as plantings that we would provide on our side of the lot, as well as potentially on their side of the lot, if they would like some plantings on their land as well. And what's the nature of those, what species trees are you looking at on that level, along that property line? Sure. So that Rachel went through that section and we can provide this whole presentation to the ZBA to be posted. I suggest that's probably the simplest way. So she broke out the different planting areas and gave pictures and names of the different species that would be on there. So which plan that identifies the species, the planting plan, Rachel, what is it? More important, the height. I think the height is more important for this question that was asked at the site visit, the height. The plants are also on LC-111 and there's a plant legend with sizes and quantities and the symbol. The symbol correlates to the scientific name and the trees that we planted there will grow to a range of heights, but what comes from the nursery is installed at a smaller height. So many of the evergreen trees come at eight foot heights, five to eight foot heights at install, but they will grow to 20 or 30 feet high. So at install, they range from five to eight feet along that property line, okay. There was a place, we talked about the placement of the fence going to the bike path and that seems to me you described that in your presentation. So I think that issue was mentioned already in the meeting. Do you mean the bike shed? The bike shed, yes. Excuse me, not the bike path, the bike shed, yeah. That'd be a long fence to the bike path, the bike shed, yes. Did you look at alternatives to asphalt pavings was another question. Yeah. So we did talk about that at the site visit whether we could use instead of asphalt porous pavement and we did consider that because of the high groundwater on the site, we did not think it was gonna be a successful application of porous pavement because it has to be able to percolate down and go somewhere. But as you've seen, we do have about at least half of the kind of stabilized parking and driving areas are the grass creek instead of the two minutes pavement. But the long run of driveway would be a two minutes pavement. Yes. One question was about the ADA compliant rumble strip at the end of the driveway along the sidewalk. You didn't talk about that in a presentation could you just describe that for us? Sure, those are standard to be provided when a sidewalk intersects a drive. It's a way someone who's visually impaired who might be using a cane can feel a notice that they're about to cross traffic with a vehicle. So those come in different sizes. Standard is like a two foot by three foot pad that's cast in the concrete and it has a dome and it can be metal or it can also be concrete papers but it needs to be a contrast in color. So we have two of those provided on both sides of our drive. What's the timing? We were asked about the timing of the construction on route nine. Now I know it's a state project. You can't commit to the timeline but what do you know about the state's plans and how would you represent the timing? Well, the state has just contacted us for an easement. I believe they are at 95 or 100% design development. I think they're looking at construction over two seasons. I think it might be next summer and the summer after. There's a lot going on in our economy and it could shift but they've at least designed the full system and they're queued up in the funding stream to do the work. My guess is they would begin construction before we would and our hope is to just coordinate the plans so that if we need to tie into the water line in North Hampton Road, which is our desire, they would stub that out across during the point of construction even if we weren't under construction yet. So I don't know exactly who's gonna finish first. My guess is they will but either way we would do our best to coordinate our work with their work. One of the questions was whether the existing building would be demolished that of course is the case. We did ask and that was that you represented that here in your presentation. The cost of the building itself and the per unit cost was a question that was asked as well. Sure, so when we look at the total budget for the project and we break it down by the units we're at about 265,000 per unit. That includes all the common areas, the offices, the elevator, the cost of the land, everything kind of rolled into one big what they call total development cost divided by 28 is 265,000. I believe we're budgeting about $250 a square foot for construction. So even though these units aren't large they are expensive on a per square foot basis because they all have kitchens, they all have bathrooms, we have an elevator. So it's this type of construction it's a little misleading to just look at it on a per unit cost. But we think it's pretty competitive on a square foot cost with other types of affordable housing cost in our region. So total cost of the building is someplace around $7.5 million. So not the building but of the project is about $7.5 million. Correct. Another question was about landscaping in front of the building to shelter the noise from route nine up to the building. Can you walk through with us how you're doing that on the landscaping? The use of trees and shrubs too. Yeah, we have a. Buffer noise. Immediately at Northampton Road we have four Mrs. Silvattica shade trees and then moving into the property we have Quirkus Bicolor, big oak trees and then we have some pines and we have some, just a mix of other shrubs like the Feathergillia and we got some Japanese tree lilac and some understory trees as we move closer into the building. We have a mix of evergreen and flowering shrubs. So there are lots of layers both vertically and horizontally. We could also densify that even further but that would change the character of that open feeling between the road and the building. I would add that I would, oh, sorry. Mr. Langfield. I think it would be, who of us while you're talking about these plantings if we can get rather than just saying we have an oak and we have some pines if we could understand what kind of pines like the pine trees along the driveway that they wanna take down are, I don't know 50 or 60 feet high but there are no branches for the first 25 or 30 feet. So they give no, they don't block anything. So if we could understand that with what they're going to replace all of these plantings they take out what they're going to replace them with their size, their height, how high they're gonna grow what kind of cover they're gonna give how full they are rather than just stating we have pines and oak and whatever else. Do you want me to try to answer that now or is that? I think that needs to be a further, Mr. Langfield, I think you'd agree that I think that needs to be an additional submission where we could go through because you could tell us to us now I think it'd be more helpful to have an additional drawing or an elevation of some way to represent that. But you understand the concern that voice by Mr. Langfield. Yeah, and it's something that informs which species we chose. We chose some little guys that stay low that max out around eight feet and we've paired them with the bigger guys that get 30, 40 feet high. So is the main question what will this landscaping look like once it's matured? Because it looks very different when it's matured than when you first planted. So is that what we should be aiming to show the board? Yeah, I think also the question is a couple of questions. Yes, what is it gonna look like when it's matured? What is it gonna look like when it's planted? How long will it take to mature? And what will it look like? Next meeting. I'm sorry, what? I think somebody was meant, that was just inadvertent conversation. Go ahead, Mr. Langfield. All right, and okay, well I lost my train of thought. But you wanted to see something for what it would look like for the first in initial planting and what we'd expect to see when it is fully mature. They're the two different representations, right? Okay, is that clear, Ms. Laughler? Yes. Good. Can I add one thing in terms of buffer and sound? There is a lot of traffic noise from Northampton Road because we're looking at doing a passive house building at least when you are in the building it will be extremely quiet. We'll have double triple pane windows we'll have very thick walls. So just wanted to share that with the group. Mr. Chairman, it appears Ms. O'Mara has a question. Oh, yes, Ms. O'Mara. Wonderful presentation. Thank you all for your very hard work. Just a clarification on those spruce trees again. Sorry. We have to consider a waiver on the eight foot fence. If we don't give that a waiver does the abutter still want those trees down? I can't, I don't know the answer to that. I think we need to have a consideration for that. And if there can be a dialogue with the abutter that if the zoning board doesn't agree to an eight foot fence do they still want those spruce trees down? That would be helpful for me. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. One of the other questions we had was a location of a smokers pavilion and you've shown it on the plan. We did have a question of removal of the apple tree at the very back of the property. Is that tree gonna go? It is shown going in the plans that we looked at the grading and we can tweak the grades to help keep it. It'll reduce the amount of usable space near the building but we can shift the grades for that. We talked about the height of the building. You've taken care of that in your presentation and we've measured the members of the ZBA went out to try to measure how an eight foot fence would shield the view of the new building from the existing abutters. And it looks like from the front door, if I remember right, it looks like from the front door with an eight foot fence you pretty much can't see much you can't see much of the house at all, the abutting house is that, so if you could provide some kind of a drawing that shows from a perspective of a person standing on each side of the property, how the eight foot fence shelters the or shields the existing house from the new proposed residents that would be helpful. So is the main concern, the neighbors look what the neighbors are looking at or is it the main concern what our new tenants will be looking at? Well, I think it's both, but it's more that I think it's both. I can imagine that the existing, that the abutters have that question and it may come up with your future tenants as well, but I think both. And I think that was all the questions that we were that were asked at the site visit that were not, we didn't specifically deal with yet. So what I'd like to do is turn this over to other people on the other board members to ask questions. And I'd like to start with Mr. Langsdale, if you would, if you have a question at this time. Yeah, I have a few. One of the things that is part of your presentation is concerns the walking distance to town and to the shops along Northampton Road. You have listed that the, wait a minute. That the walking distance to the shopping to the West is six-tenths of a mile. Is that a return trip? That's one way. One way? Yep. So it's over a mile down and back at least. Yep. And then to town, it's how long, how far is that generally? Four-tenths of a mile. To where in town? To, I think to the nearest bus stop, which is right around the corner, kind of across from the common. Okay, so right. So, but it's not to the shops and stuff. One of the things I think we need to see, and this has to do with the eight foot fence as well, is a discussion, a presentation, a representation of the difference in the levels of that area. Because you're on, that's a very steep incline that you're on on Northampton Road. So the six-tenths of a mile down to the shops is downhill. That's nice. Coming back, it's all uphill. It's uphill to town and downhill coming back. The eight foot fence that the house that's next to you is much more elevated than your property. So an eight foot fence really isn't going to block anything for them. Well, I don't know what it would be. But so I think it's important that we get a sense of the difference in heights of the terrain. That is not just your property, but what's next door and what tenants would have to deal with in terms of riding a bicycle or walking down or up. You also, at one point in your presentation, showed that the people, not the property management, but the other folks in the other office who are there to assist the people living there. One of the points you made was that they would provide transportation. What transportation is that? I think we would look for them to provide one-on-one transportation to a limited extent for tenants. I think more of their job would be coordinating rides. So there's accessible van service in town. There could be, there will be tenants who have cars, so there can be rides and trips that are coordinated with tenants. So I don't imagine them driving every person around every day, but trying to maximize people's ability to use different types of transportation systems. Okay. Let's see. You say also in your presentation that the occupants are not limited to the chronically homeless. Who then, besides the chronically homeless, what does, what encompasses the people who are able to apply for and move into your place? Sure. So the 10 units that have a homeless preference, someone may be homeless, but they may not be chronically homeless. The remainder of the units, essentially it's an income restriction. So you need to be within a certain income range to qualify. We do references, we do queries, you have to be a good tenant, all the usual. So would that include students? It does not include students. The funding that we're using is not intended for full-time undergraduate student housing. So there's a definition which I can provide to the board of what, who qualifies as a student who could live in the property. For example, someone who's a working adult taking vocational classes could live in the property, but a full-time undergraduate student could. How about a graduate student? Depends on their age and there's a number of criteria I can provide them to you. It's, the idea is that we're not trying to subsidize the housing of people who are dependents of other people who might have more resources. That's the concept. Nor are we trying to punish people who are adults who are trying to improve themselves. So it's trying to split that. Okay, the bike shed. The picture that you provide has a platform of, I don't know, four to six inches. And then it has a cover with some posts, I think it's four posts at each corner. But there's nothing inside it to, I mean, a lot of bikes don't have kickstands. Oh sure, there would be a U or a S or we would have a bike stand within it so that people could lock their bikes to something and keep them upright. It's an injury picture. And I also think it might just be on a pad on the ground so you're not having to lift your bike up. It was really just to give an impression of what scale and type of thing we were talking about. Yeah. I think it would be necessary for us to have a picture of exactly what you're talking about rather than a vague representation. Okay. The lighting, the pole lights, there are four lights for the parking. What are the heights of those poles? I think we know. Hang on. We are 15 feet high. 15? Okay. I would say that for a residential, you're trying to make this residential looking or a residential type place 15 feet is extremely high. I'm sorry, I looked at the wrong item. It was the product number for the meteor light. The pole mounted lights are on a 12 foot base. 12 foot. Okay. Well, we can talk about that. We've recently done a project that is an apartment building where the light poles are 10 feet and eight feet. Once again, to not give it a commercial look. 12 and 15 foot pole lights are much more commercially oriented. So I think we'd want to look at that. Mr. Langsdale, can I add something to you? Sure, sure. Long John, you provided the highlighted yellow, yellow highlighted lighted plan. And you mentioned how that it was difficult to read a normal photovoltaic plan with all the little numbers. But I think we should have that photovoltaic plan submitted to us and not rely upon just the representation that you had under presentation of varying degrees of yellow. So I think you should provide that to us. Okay, so it's called a photometric plan and it's in your packet. Yeah, well, I can hardly read it. Yeah, I know. I know, I can't read it. So we can make the numbers bigger. And then, but I think you need to adjust it for the other lights that Mr. Langsdale was talking about. A lower, for eight to 10 foot lights as opposed to 12 to 15 foot. Yeah, we'll revise the plan to accommodate an eight to 10 foot light and show darker tick marks in numbers. Okay. Also then, in terms of lighting, the windows in the building, how will they be shaded? Most often we do kind of mini blind. Okay. Just so that there's a way to block off for the nighttime, you know. And also, do the windows open? Yes, these are double hung windows, right? Tom, is that what we're thinking? Or are they casement? You're muted. I think a lot of them are gonna be, I think they're leaning towards casement. Actually. And better energy performance. So they'd have a crank to open them. Typically they only open a limited way for fall protection. But yeah, you can open them, they'll have screens. Okay, good. Let's see. Oh, the height of the building is 44, almost 12 inches. To the very top. Yeah. Yeah, they're, in the proposal, it was said that there would be three floors of apartments and other things. But originally I think it was proposed that the attic would have some living spaces, but now you're not going to have living spaces in the attic. What is the purpose of the, what will it be used for? It's, the attic is not occupying. It's basically what's left over to build the, you know, to move the building. Right. So what's gonna be framed with roof trusses. We'll have sprinkles in it and we'll have to have an access hatch to get in there but it's gonna have about 25 inches of cellulose insulation. Okay. Good, okay. I'll access. Okay, that's all for now. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Ms. O'Mara. Ms. O'Mara, do you have questions? No, I'm good. Thank you. Ms. Parks, do you have some questions? I do. Thank you for the presentation. You're welcome. If someone were to come who had a small child, is that something that you would consider someone with an infant? So it, a lot of it depends on the size of the particular unit. So the state sanitary code dictates so that if you have more than one person, you need 250 square feet of habitable space. So some of these units are literally just, they're not made for more than one person. Some of them are over that dimension and we don't have any right to tell people they can't come with an infant. We have had tenants living in this type of properties who've become pregnant or reunified with their children. And usually our approach has been to try to move them into some more suitable, larger size apartment that they can afford. And it may take some time to do that. But it's not designed really as family housing. It's really, I think it's highest and best use is for single individuals. All right. Oh, sorry. I was gonna say there's four units that are 266 square feet and then two accessible units that are just under 400. And then you were talking about having a property manager there for about 20 to 30 hours a week and then someone who would coordinate services. Is any, would anyone be there on the weekends? Not necessarily, although the resident services coordinator position, you know, could have weekend hours if there was demand for that. I think we'd have to kind of see where the ebb and flow of resident demand was. We could, I mean, that will be our contracted employee or subcontracted employee so we can set up whatever schedule seems to make sense for that position. And is there something like a 24 hour call number or something like that in case somebody's not doing well? Yeah. So well, there's two things. Property management has a 24 hour emergency call line which typically people call for property issues. Sometimes they call for other things and then we don't have a 24 hour person necessarily for a mental health kind of crisis although there are community lines for that type of crisis. Okay. And I'm sorry to go back to this but I also have a concern about that line of trees and I don't, I'm not, I don't, I'm not a good tree identifier. I don't, are those spruce? Are they hemlock? What are the, what is that line of trees? Does anyone know between the two properties? I do know. I think it's a type of spruce. I did talk with the tree warden and I can, I can find, he told me the name of them but I don't remember. Do you know where I told what those are? I want to make sure I get it right. So I'm going to double check. All right. I guess my concern is that because the property is sloped it seems like those trees actually would help with erosion and because it's a moist area in Amherst it also seems like they would help with moisture with taking up some of the moisture. And the other thing is today I drove up and down route nine and those trees really block that house, the neighbor's house from that property, from 132 and almost all the way down to University Drive as you look up, you see that stand of trees and I went all the way down to Lincoln Avenue and looked back and you see that stand of trees. And I honestly think that it will create a bald spot if those trees are removed. And I also, there's the kind of a mature apple tree on the property and other trees. I would just ask that preserve whatever trees you can. I did see that in that stand of trees along the driveway there's 35 trees there, 24 of them are very large trees and about 11 of them are really skinny trees. And so I do think, I wish that we could keep those trees. I wish that we could keep those trees. So I don't know if it's any deciding factor for me but I just wish that take another look at the trees and see if we can preserve those. That's it for me. Thank you. All right, Mr. Hart. Mr. Maxfield, do you have questions? Yeah, I just have one that I wanted to ask. So we're here asking you folks again to reach out to that immediate butter to the East there about that trees and alternatives to cutting them down what their thoughts on that would be. Also like to hear from them as well what their feelings would be on the size of those lights that are going to be facing the parking lot. What they thought is on a 10 versus an eight foot is as well as I think they'll be one of the residents seeing those lights the most. So I'd like to know if you can get what their thoughts on that are, I'd like to hear that. Okay, thank you. That's it, Mr. Maxfield, any other questions? No, that's it for right now. All right, I've got a couple of additional questions then Laura that I'd like to ask on supportive services as the extent of the supportive services that you intend to supply or to connect tenants with, either that you supply or you connect tenants with, has that been described other than the slide we saw tonight? Is that described in some of the places in this application? Yeah, so it's referenced in your application in the management plan, it references- Yeah, I saw that, yeah. Yeah, so on the- So it's been posted on the town's website since May. So if you go into the PEL, it was part of the PEL application. So if you go into that section, you'll see supportive services plan and the whole plan, the whole draft plan is posted and you're welcome to take a look at it. Okay, all right, so one first off, what's PEL? So the Project Eligibility Letter was the letter that came from the state that allows us to apply to you for the comprehensive permit. Okay, and then that supportive services plan, will you provide, can we get that staff, can we get that distributed to the members? So Maureen, can you get that from the PEL distribution? So I will submit that to the board. Yeah, so we can have that. We don't have to go looking for it. I think that's an important part of the application. So I know that the town, this is a question about the finances, I'm just not clear. The town has provided 500,000 of Community Preservation Act money and there was some earlier money than that as well. So it was around, is it 600 or $700,000 that the town has provided? 750. 750, and is that used for planning and preparation? So if this doesn't... Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, it's both. So the first 50 is spent and gone. It was really to identify a site and do very early feasibility analysis. The second 200 we've only used a little bit of, it's for design and planning. The last 500 is for construction. So if we don't succeed in obtaining all of our financing and permitting and going under construction, the town never spends that last tranche of CPA money. If we keep on the financing issue, there was a reference to a state fund for financing at some point where you, on the timeline, you just thought how you have to get approval from the state for financing. Can you describe what that would be? Sure. Most affordable housing in Massachusetts at some point goes to the state. They're the main distributor of both state bond money and federal funds. They have an application round, it's called a one stop. The idea is you go in and you can ask for multiple state and federal sources in one gigantic application. And it typically happens only once a year. It's usually sometime in the winter that they'll announce that round. And if we are ready, we will go in and apply for those funds. And we'd be pulling from probably six different sources within what the state is able to allocate. The largest source is called the low income housing tax credit. It's actually not public money at all. Well, it kind of is, it's tax credits. It's equity that comes from investors in exchange for tax credits at the federal level. So that's the single largest source of financing that we would be seeking. And your hope is to get $7 million from that fund or for, and to add to the $707,000, you're now having more stuff. Okay. So in the, I will just tell you in the project eligibility letter, there are budgets also that identify all the different sources. We have committed a bunch of local money, which is great. It makes us much more competitive when we go to the state. They would look very, very favorably on a project like this that is for a low income vulnerable population in a nice community to live in. So we don't doubt that they would support it. It's really just having all our ducks in a row so that we have a clear path and then we can go and seek funds from them. And the 265,000 per unit is extremely low relative to what the per unit cost is in the state. They're not seeing much below 400,000 these days. And they're trying not to go above 500,000. So most projects are coming in between four and 500,000 per unit for affordable housing development in Massachusetts. And there's, of course, it's incredibly expensive to do these very small units. It is expensive. You have to use a bathroom, you have a bathroom and a kitchen bed for 250 square feet where it's on a one bedroom. You may just have one bathroom for 600 square feet, right? Right, yep. Those are the cost intensive features. Those are cost intensive using the state and federal programs are cost intensive to be honest in terms of for attorneys fees and other kinds of design costs. So it Massachusetts is a heavily regulated state and it's a housing, it's a state where housing and construction is expensive. Yeah. Is the role of the residential services coordinator described fully in the supportive services piece that's connected with your PEL letter? Yes. So if I get that, I will have a description of the supportive services residents supported, the resident services coordinator's job. Is that correct? I believe it's fully described. So there's a description of the duties. There's actually a job description in there. So if you look at that and you still have questions, please let me know. Well, we may talk about that in one or the other. When we get the information, we'll review it and we may have questions about it in future hearings. Sure. Let's see. Will there be supportive services provided at the site or just will they be, will you just meet and match client tenants and with supportive services off site? Both. Both. So the plan, the plan is really about linkage. So some things like, seeing a dentist, you're gonna probably need to go to. Other things like we had the public health department offer to come on site and do some clinics, they can do flu shots and other kinds of clinics. So there's some services that it makes sense to bring on site. I would say the majority of services people are gonna need to probably go somewhere too. And then social workers and therapists, it's a little bit of both. Especially for homeless folks, often the providers end up coming to people because they have no transportation. And it's just easier that way. So it will be both. One thing I didn't see on the drawing is, and maybe I missed it, is the distance between the new structure and the closest wall of the existing house, the existing of butters. And I'm not sure that I saw how far away you are from, the new building will be from the existing house. And can you provide that to us? The new building from our neighbor, that one 26. Right. Through the trees up to the house, to the south, I guess. We can figure that out. Okay. And then you mentioned this in your presentation, you provided a snow plan. I always am happy when people think about what to do with snow. But what I saw is that you're going to push it up around the tree. It looks like you're gonna push a lot of it up around the trees. And I'm not the expert. So I think Ms. Laughler, you probably are the expert. If you have chemical, salt, ice melt, other kinds of things. Is that going to, is pushing the snow up around the trees appropriate place to put it or will that leave the damage of those trees and plants? And should we find another place to put that? Some trees have different salt tolerance than others. I think what we were thinking is that the, the grass paved area, probably wouldn't be actually used for parking. And that might be a place that we would be putting the majority of the snow. And then there were some other areas of the periphery for that. I think we can probably provide more detail and more, and I should talk about what, what chemicals, if any are being used for de-icing and come back to the full description of that. That would be great. Thank you. Is there any story, I noticed the units. This is probably a question for Mr. Chalmers, but the units have very little storage. I mean, if there's only 265 square feet and many people who are likely to be tenants, especially those with less than 30% of area median income are unlikely to have a lot of stuff, but is there any storage for tenant goods beyond that little closet? So is there storage in the basement? Is there storage in the attic? Or things that are, that they may want to seasonally store or not? And how much storage is there in that closet? Is that nine by six or, or a nine by four, I mean, something like that? Yeah, there is limited storage. There's no access, there's no storage in the attic. That is not accessible, there's no way to get there. There's probably about, well, it varies per unit, some have a little more storage, but it's probably about three, three feet, three little feet by full seeming height of storage in the, that might not be straight kitchen related in each unit plus the closets. So we don't have storage, we don't have area in the basement or storage. So storage, storage is a closet, it's cupboards in the kitchen and often will do some kind of cabinet or little linen closet associated with the bathroom. But we don't allow tenants to put stored items in common areas based on our experience that it piles up and it gets abandoned. You have to be, you have to be thrifty. And then of course we have bike storage outside and that's the only kind of outside storage that we have. Is there room for a dresser or have some in the, there it is. So you can see furniture layouts that Tom has provided. He actually used what size beds, full-size beds, Tom? Double beds. So if you went with a twin bed, it gives you a little more flexibility. I've seen people actually do loft beds in some of these units. So they're sleeping up above and they might have a desk or dresser below. People get pretty creative with it. And where is, what's the sheet for that? Is it here? The detail. The detail. So there's a couple of unit details. Actually they're, I think most of them are full actually. This is the excessive. If you look at, in our presentation, it's a 8.10. But we don't have that in our, in our, your submission. Or you can bring it up. If you can bring it up and share the screen, that would be helpful. You have it in your packet. It's a 8.10 and a 8.20. They're kind of blow-ups of different. Also, I think I, do you see that? Yep, I see that. That's helpful. Okay, so. So that closet, these are hard numbers to read. That one dash O one, that clause up above is how many feet wide? Is that six feet wide? Yeah, it's a little over six feet wide. Okay. And then you. So some of the smaller units have a closet that's really part of the kitchen cabinet area. If you look at the bottom 105, but most of them have various, sometimes it's built in as almost kitchen cabinet closets and sometimes it's actually framed by. All right, so I can see the challenge that you're gonna have trying to keep people from storing a lot of things. You try to minimize the amount of stuff that they're gonna be bringing in. And that could be a challenge, but that's something you've taken on. Mr. Langsdale. Yeah, on that, I have a question. I guess, first of all, the question is dealing with the use of the use. The use of this is housing for people of different income strata. Of the 28 units, you have five that have a closet. The rest of them all have kitchen cabinets and maybe a vanity in the bathroom, but there's nowhere to hang anything. What is your expectation for the people who move in there? Is this just a way station? And how long would they be staying there? So I'm looking at unit 105, which has a double closet next to the refrigerator. That would be a full closet. Those are cabinets. Yeah, it would be a cabinet closet. I mean, it's basically to save. So you can hang coats and things in there. Yeah, we fit it out for hanging. So it'll be basically a closet, but build out of cabinet material. And we'll have a closet pole in it and a shelf. So what then for the kitchen, what cabinetry is there for the kitchen? There's base cabinets, there's overhead cabinets. So there'll be a sink base and there can be a cabinet, so the same unit to the right of the stove. Usually there's a little cabinet over the fridge. It's not a ton of cabinets, but for a single person, it's a basic usable kitchen space with a full refrigerator, a sink, a microwave, a cooktop and an oven. We do not at all see it as a way station. We've owned properties similar to this with smaller apartments for 30 years. We've had tenants stay for 20 years in those tiny units. So for some people, this is a great place to live. And in cities, we're seeing a lot of micro units like this that are, again, smaller than this, that are super popular because housing has become so expensive. So no, I would see some people are coming here because and it's a stepping stone and a housing ladder and they're starting kind of out of a shelter into this and then maybe they move on to one bedroom apartment if they have a good job. For other people, they're living on a limited fixed income and this is a great option for them because they don't have to share a kitchen and bathroom with someone. And a lot of adults don't wanna be living in shared situations like they did when they were students. Okay, let me ask you then in terms of the income, you say that the lowest rent is basically 30% at 30% of income, which at the top is 17,950. And that rental then is 737 a month. For the 50% which comes out to 2,999 at the top, the rent is 740, it's $3 more. Why is there such a, why is it so close? Why is the 30% even close to the 50%? Sure, it's the last column. So the 30% units have what's called a project-based subsidy attached to the unit. So those folks who are very low income are not gonna pay 737. They're gonna pay a third of their income for rent. So it could be $200. The balance to come up to 737 is gonna be paid by the subsidy. The folks in the 50% and 80% units have a fixed rent. They have to come up with that much. They have to have enough income to be able to afford these units. By the way, all of the utilities are included in these rent levels. So it's heat, hot water, electricity, central air conditioning, et cetera. So some people choose this because there aren't other options anywhere near this price range in Amherst or Northampton. And if you only have so much money, you might want a bigger place, but this is what you can afford. And we have a lot of people in that situation. Okay, thank you. What is the, what are the initials MRVP stand for? The Massachusetts rental voucher program. So it is the state equivalent of what's called the Section 8, which is federal. Yeah, this is the final Section 8. State version of that. Yep, I understand. Okay, that's what it is. I'm just was unfamiliar with the... Part of the reason we're seeking those is the state will provide a little bit of supportive services money for these previous, the homeless preference units. And that helps us pay for the resident services coordinator position. It's not the whole thing, but it helps. So in the case of somebody who is at 30% of the, the max of 30% of area income, with an income of almost $18,000, they will pay $479, about $250 will be, you'll get $250 from the MRVP bring you up to your 737, which is your economic rent that you need, right? Right. Okay. Exactly. And you don't have any subsidies for the, well, couldn't there be a Section 8 for a 50 or an 80% of median income? Or are there any of those available anymore? Yeah, they are. And so in theory, there could be. We are responding to comments that we had from, especially from neighbors and also the housing trust that they really wanted to see a mixed income property. It didn't want a property where everybody was desperately low income. And we agree that it's a healthier social environment to have a mix. And so to have people who have jobs and need, have enough money to pay these rents, we see as a good thing for the overall social health of the building. And one last question. Help me with 40 hours per week, Massachusetts minimum wage, 50 weeks, probably 52 weeks a year. What does that give you for an annual income again? It's in here. It was just under 25,000, I think. Just under, so that, they would be in the 50%. They would be within the 50%. So you could have people working minimum wage jobs, 40 hours a week, and they may not be subsidized. Right. They may not be subsidized at that. So they could be paying $740 a month for, he or she could pay $740 a month for their housing. Right, and utilities. So there is, in essence, there's a subsidy because the capital to build the project is subsidized. And the trade is we give the town and the state a guarantee that will hold the rents to these lower levels. So $740 for a studio apartment with all utilities in a nice location at Amherst is below market. So when we did a market study in Northampton for this same kind of unit, the market comparable, I think it was around $930, believe it or not, for the value of this unit. So even though there's no subsidy in the unit itself, someone is paying below market rent. And that's at the point. Yeah. One other question I have is, in terms of supportive services, and we'll talk about this, I'm sure, in subsequent hearings. But what is the plan? What struck me is that you have people there during daylight hours and maybe during the week, but there's nobody there 24 hours. And so what is, and you don't have, and you have a management office where they can call to your management team, and normally they deal with a broken water pipe. But what if there is a mental health crisis during the middle of the night? What if there is something, other than what calling the police or calling some service themselves, what do you provide or what do you anticipate would be the role of your company or your staff to help out in that situation? Yeah. Well, part of the role I see for the resident services coordinator is to make sure that people know where to get emergency resources. So for example, CSO has an emergency 24-hour mental health crisis line. And that's the local provider in our area. So what I picture in the common room is having a resource directory that will help people navigate when they need that emergency resource and it's after hours. What we find is that people don't come to crisis just all of a sudden. It's a progression. And so the value of having a resident services coordinator is what we're trying to do is preventative so that we see that someone is decompensating. We see that they're not leaving their room. We see these things and we can get some assistance to them before they have a crisis. And it won't always happen that way, but it's much better to have someone who can observe because it's usually a long time coming. Honestly, people don't just suddenly break. Those are my questions that I have at this time. I don't know if any of, can we eliminate the share screen so I can see the gallery view? Oh, yep, sorry. That's okay. There we go. Thank you. What I wanna do is see if any of our, yes, any of my board members have a question. Mr. Maxfield. I got a couple of questions here with this. So for the homeless preference there, it says it's gonna be, they pay a third of their income is what they pay in rent, of whatever that is. And if their income is zero, do they pay zero? I think actually now the minimum rent is $50. But if someone has no income, usually they're eligible for at least SSI and it's just really a matter of getting them some income. So there are a lot of people who are living just on SSI, which is it could be, you know, seven to $800, $900 a month. And so that's it. They can't afford housing in our area. So if that is something like that where the case where they were saying, getting them, sorry, you said something like SSI, they're getting 800 a month. Does that then mean that they would then be turning around and paying $260 a month in rent? Correct. Got it. And then what typically, how often would you say you folks deal with evictions of tenants and what's the type of thing that usually triggers eviction for you folks? Sure. I think like most landlords, non-payment of rent can be an issue anywhere you look. I would say both our property management and other staff work really hard to try to not evict people. But certainly if someone's breaking the lease, if they're making persistent noise or doing something that bothers their neighbors, they will eventually get evicted. Okay. Is it safe to say that typically it's not financial reasons that people are being evicted from low-income housing in your projects? Is that correct? Sometimes it's a mix of both. I would say generally that's true, although if people aren't compliant with various program rules, they can lose their benefits. And so then it becomes financial, but it started with some kind of behavioral issue that then translates into a financial issue. And if you don't send in your paperwork, you don't show up for your annual inspection or your voucher, you're not gonna have a voucher pretty soon. So sometimes they're kind of wedded together. So we go the extra mile with tenants because we're all about people having housing, but there's no perfect housing for all people. I mean, there's no perfect system. And people do have difficult times even within a supported structure. And that policy of one third of income is that based on some type of voucher program, how that works or that's your policies that state or local policies at your policy? It's not our policy. It would be the policy of whoever's providing the voucher. So the mass rental voucher program would set their standard. It tends to be about a third of income. Sometimes you can exclude some medical bills or they have a whole verification system that they do with tenants to determine what their contract rent will be. But I can tell you in general, it's gonna be between 30 or 35% of their income. Yeah. That's all my questions for right now. So one thing I would add, Mr. Maxfield, is that 30% has been a number used to, 30% of income has been that number used to determine rent for people on subsidized housing for years in the federal programs going back. And so it's been adopted as kind of a benchmark for decades as the appropriate amount that people should pay for subsidized housing. Right. So when I show this slide about 42% of Amherst renters paying more than 50% of their income per rent, that's where we're at. It's not 30% and it's not even 50%. It's more than 50% just to afford housing. Yeah. Are there any other questions that people have? Well, I noticed that there were several questions that we, there are lots of questions that we had and I think we're all taking notes on requests for additional information and requests for further work on your part, whether it's the photometric plan or a better, a more complete landscape feeling for what it's gonna look like once the trees are removed. Some ideas about the height of the trees when those trees are planted, what it would be looking like at maturity, 15 years from on or whatever maturity would be in an architect's world. I don't know what that is, but we looked for that and some of this, I'd like to have as much of this possible for our next meeting as well as some kind of a parking management plan for our next meeting. Whether you have, are you gonna use stickers or do you have, how are you gonna make sure that the parking, the cars that are parked there to the extent there are cars parked there belong to the tenants. So I'd like to have as much of this available by the second, July 2nd, I know that's quick, but you can do some of it by then. I would like to have a lot of it as much as you possibly can. We're trying to move this as quickly as possible. I also don't wanna have a lot of time between this meeting and when there's gonna be the majority of the public comment. So I don't want it to go stale. I really do wanna have this be fresh in everybody's minds when they talk. So let's look at the, if it's okay with you, I'd like to look at the second for presentation of a lot of this stuff. And we'll work and please work with the staff with Maureen, especially there may be other things that we just didn't identify tonight that we didn't specifically identify, but which we talked about and should be part of a subsequent more fulsome presentation or documents on your part. Okay. Yes, would it be helpful for the board? We have a property that's similar that's just finishing construction now in Northampton. And I could provide photos of some of those units, including the kitchen area. It might help you visualize what's in the kitchen, what it would look like, things like that. You've read my mind, I was, you know, you read my mind. One of the things I was apt to ask about is if you've managed similar properties with the similar income groups. And if there was any way you could show us some of the, some pictures from some of that. So that would be very, very helpful. And also your kind of your history with very low income, very low income people and how you've managed that property. And I think we'd like to hear more about that in subsequent meetings. Okay. All right. We've got, we're almost at nine o'clock. I don't think it, in my determination, it doesn't make sense to begin the public comment with just eight minutes where we just get one comment. So I think we'll hold off public comments until next week when we have the next meeting. Let's see, what else do we have to do? That's it. So what I'd like to do is move that we continue this public hearing on this matter to 630, not six, but 630 next Thursday, July 2nd. And we continue the public hearing. Do I have a second? Second. Is there any discussion on the motion to continue this matter of this public hearing till Thursday, July 2nd? Nope. All right. All in favor. Oh, it's gotta be a roll call. I'm sorry. I gotta get used to this. It's always a roll call with Zoom. So I vote aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Ms. O'Mara. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Motion passes five to nothing. So the last item on the agenda on the agenda for this meeting is the opportunity for public comment on any matter that is not the subject of this public hearing. So anything before the ZBA that's not a subject of this public hearing. And we always make that public comment available at our meetings. So Maureen, could you help me see if there's anybody in the attendees that wish to speak on something that's not about this particular application? Yes. So if anyone from the public has any comments about items that are, as the chairman said, items that have not been discussed tonight, you would have to click on the button to raise your hand to indicate that you have something to say. I am not seeing any hands being raised. I am not seeing any hands. Okay. So the, with our meeting next on July 2nd, I anticipate that there will mostly be public comment. We will take, we will update the board members with the material that you provide that the applicant provides to us. Make sure that we all have that. I mean, there'll be some short discussion about that, but July 2nd meeting will be principally public comment and we will meet at that point. So with that, unless there's any further discussion, I move that we had, we've continued the hearing. So I move that we adjourn this meeting for tonight and that we meet again in next Thursday. Do I have a second? All right. All, I agree. I vote aye. I really want to do these voice votes. It's so hard. Mr. Langsdale, how do you vote? Aye. Ms. O'Meara, how do you vote? Aye. Ms. Parks, how do you vote? Aye. Mr. Maxfield, how do you vote? Aye. Aye. The motion passes five to nothing. We're done. Thank you everybody for all your work. Thank you to the applicants for your presentation. Thank you for your time. And thank you to the public for participating. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thank you all. Talk to you next week.