 All right, good evening. My name is Christian Klein. I am the chair of the Arlington zoning board of appeals calling this meeting of the board to order. I'd like to confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present. The members of the zoning board of appeals. Roger Dupont. Here. Patrick Hanlon. Here. Kevin Mills. Here. Aaron Ford. Here. Steve Revlak. Present. John O'Rourke. Here. Perfect. And then from the town, Rick Valorelli. Rick, I know you're here somewhere. Yeah, thanks, Christian. And then I don't believe I've seen either Doug Hyme or Jennifer Rait. I'm not sure if either of them are coming. They may be coming a little later. The person's appearing on behalf of 69 Epping Street, Derek and Emine Kelly. Okay, they're here. Perfect. Person's appearing for 64 Brattle Street, Stephen Doherty. I'm also here with Mac. Oh, perfect. And there are others too, so. Okay, they thank you. And then for Thorndike Place, Paul Haverty. Here. He's here. Marta Nover. I am here. Thanks. Greg Lucas. You'll probably join in a little bit. Okay. I see he's on the admitted list, so. Okay, yes. Yes. He's planning on joining. Definitely. Stephanie Kiefer. Don't actually see her on the list. Scott Thornton. Present. Mr. Chairman, I believe that Ms. Kiefer is joining but probably a little later. Oh, okay. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. So this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020. The order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom app with online and telephone access is listed on the agenda posted to the town's website identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it is being broadcast by our ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference, other participants are participating by computer audio or telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care not to share personal information. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you please maintain decorum during the meeting including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. This chair reserved the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. We're starting this meeting this evening with an administrative item, the approval of minutes from the January 5th, 2021 public hearing. This is item relates to the operation of the board. We will be conducted with limited discussion by the public. The board will not take up any new business nor will the introduction of any new information on matters previously brought before the board. After this introduction, I'll go down the line of board members providing each to provide comment, questions or comments. So with that, I know that we have comments submitted by Steve Revlak and I had some comments on the minutes. Rick, did you receive all of those? I did, Ms. Chairman. Thank you, much appreciated. I'll make those edits and get them loaded up to the permanent minutes. Are there other items regards to the minutes from the board? Looking around everyone, I see no one. With that, can I have a motion to approve the minutes as amended? So moved. Second. Thank you, Kevin. Just quickly do a world call vote on that. Roger? Aye. Patrick? Aye. Kevin? Aye. And Sean? Aye. Wonderful. You're now turning to the first public hearing on tonight's agenda, some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. After I announce each agenda item, I will ask the applicants to introduce themselves, make their presentation to the board, then request that members of the board ask what questions they have on the proposal. After the board's questions have been answered, I'll open the meeting for public comment. So the first question is, the first item on the docket for hearings is docket number 3641, 69 Epping Street. So if the applicants could go ahead and unmute themselves and introduce themselves and let us know what you're looking to do. Sure, it's Derek Kelly and Amina Kelly, 69 Epping Street. Our architect is here as well, Mr. Greg Legault is on the call as well. So what we're looking to do, we have an application for a special permit to build a vestibule in the front of our house. Currently right now, there's no overhang for when we go in the front door. So this will allow us that overhang and also a front porch. Currently, when we enter the house, we enter right into the basically the front stairs that go upstairs. So we have no privacy either when we open the front door. If we're walking down the stairs, it's you're basically right at the front door. So this would just provide us a few feet of extra privacy. And so we're not walking right into the living room. And I see from your application so that the request it's under section 539A because you can do up to 25 square feet by right, but because it's larger than that, you need to have a finding from the zoning board of appeals. All right. Did have one question, which I'd like to actually ask Mr. Valarelli. So the combination of the new mudroom and the new porch extends 11 feet from the building, from the existing building. Yes. And under in the bylaws, under the next paragraph, which is 539B does unenclosed steps, decks and the like, which do not project more than 10 feet in the front yard or more than five feet in the side yard, may extend beyond the minimum yard regulations otherwise provided for the district in which the structure is built. So my question is the front porch limited to 10 feet from the building from the main part of the house or is it limited to 10 feet from the front of the enclosed entryway? Mr. Chairman, without having that section of the zoning opening, I believe that a 10 open porch is allowed by right. An enclosed vestibule greater than 25 square feet encroaching on the setback is allowed by special permit. I was gonna quickly share the... So it's this paragraph B. So I'm saying that unenclosed steps, decks and the like. Right, which does not project more than 10 feet in the front yard. So my question is it, does that 10 feet start at the house or does it start at the front of the proposed entryway? It starts at the house. At the house. Yes. So apologies, it's sideways. So the new mudroom is six feet and then there's five feet for the new porch. So it's 11 feet, which is a foot beyond what the zoning by-law allows. So I think we need to request that you either reduce the dimension of the front porch, reduce the dimension of the new mudroom or some combination of the two to bring that back to 10 feet. Would you agree, Mr. Valarelli? It's a little bit ambiguous with respect to the projections into minimum yards. Okay. A vestibule that exceeds 25 square feet projects more than what's allowed by right is allowed by special permit. I'd have to dig into the zoning to see if there's any exceptions to that fact. Okay. So are you suggesting that if we're, because we're 11 feet, then we would need variance as opposed to a special permit? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to understand because the request is specifically for section A, not for sections A and B. I see it. Apart from that, I have absolutely no concerns whatsoever. Are there, gonna open up to other questions from the board? Mills, no, Mr. Dupont, no. Mr. Hanlon, any questions? No, no, Mr. Revillac, hope you're on mute. Sometimes the keyboard shortcut works and sometimes it apparently does not. I shared the question you raised earlier with respect to the 10 foot projection and the 11 feet, that's the combined mudroom and front porch. Mr. Rourke, any questions? Mr. Ford, okay, I'll now open the, the meeting for public comment. Public questions and comments should be taken only as it relates to the matter of hand. It should be directed to the board for the purposes of informing our decision. I'll first ask members of the public who have identified themselves by logging in through Zoom, who wish to speak to please digitally raise their hand by using the button on the participant tab in the Zoom application. They'll be called upon by the meeting host. Your audio and video should be unmuted and you'll be asked to give your name and address and you'll be given time for your questions and comments. All questions should be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly in a way to help to generate accurate minutes. We'll then request that those calling by phone please dial star nine to indicate who'd like to speak. When called upon, we'll follow this name procedure. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed the public commentaries will be closed. So I am looking at our list of attendees. I see none with their hand raised. Going once, going twice. All right, so we will close public comment. So for the board, how should we proceed? Mr. Chairman, can I offer some clarity in that section of the zoning bylaw? Yes, please. Okay, sure. I think the applicant is going for five, three, nine, A which involves enclosed spaces. Five, three, nine, B addresses unenclosed spaces such as open decks and alike. The unenclosed spaces are restricted to 10 feet projecting in the front yard. Yeah. So is it just a matter of adding the second B to the application to get approval or is it would we have to refile? No, I don't think you need to refile at all. I think we could administratively just indicate that if you wanted to leave the new mudroom at six feet, if you wanted to reduce the porch to four feet then I think we're fine. Mr. Chairman, not to interrupt, but I wanted to ask one question as I was looking at the drawings a little bit more. The 10 feet is from the face of the building. Is that right? That is correct. If you look at the building section, I could see how it could be argued that it's 10 feet from the outer extension of the face of the building, which is the second floor which projects beyond. And so if it was measured from the second floor, which is an overhang. Yeah. It probably stays within the 10 foot threshold. That's correct. Yeah. Under, so going back to section B, unenclosed step stacks and the like, they do not project more than 10 feet in the front yard and more than five feet in the side yard beyond the line of the foundation wall. Yeah, okay. So unfortunately it does say foundation wall. I have no, I got nothing else there. I think we could approve with a condition that the confined depth of the mudroom and the porch comply with the restriction, in section five, three, nine B. And then we just, we leave it to the applicant to work with the building department to determine whether they want to reduce the depth of the mudroom or they want to reduce the depth of the porch or split it between the two. I just, just so I'm clear, the, you know, since we're in this process already we can't, you're saying if we left it at 11 we would need a variance as opposed to a special permit. That's why we can't add that. That's the way I'm seeing it, yeah. Okay, so we wouldn't be able to just say, change it right now from a special permit to a variance. No, and because of the variance requirements, there are much more stringent requirements than their first special permit. I think you'd have to come up with an argument for specifically why you're unable to comply with this section of the zoning bylaw. Okay, okay. So I don't want to speak for Derek and Amina, but it seems like, you know, cutting that front porch back to four feet would be, you know, amenable and we could just definitely appreciate your suggestion. Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. Okay, so with that in mind, so then we would, one of the conditions with that would be that to comply with section five, three, nine, B, B, new porch reduced to four foot. And then I think the board, we would have, there was a memo that, Rick, do you know if the memo from the Department of Planning and Community Development was distributed to the applicant? We did not see an opinion for either of these cases tonight, Mr. Chairman. No, there was one posted for Effing Street, excuse me. If we could check with Novus, I was trying to chase that down and did not come across it. Mr. Lee must have gotten that correspondence and posted it. Oh, okay. Mr. Chairman. Yes, please. May I direct a question to Mr. Valorelli? Please, Mr. Mills. Mr. Valorelli, as proposed, would this be in compliance or is it the 10 feet just for open deck or is it for a combined open deck and enclosed area? May I answer him, Mr. Chairman? Yes, please. So projections into minimum yard addresses two situations. One situation is for enclosed spaces such as vegetables, porches, that sort of thing. The other part of 5.3.9 addresses open decks on enclosed spaces. So according to projections into minimum yards A, which the applicant is seeking tonight, I don't see any language restricting that to what the board is entertaining with a 10 foot maximum projection. I see that only entrances greater than 25 square feet and a couple of other conditions such as the projection off of the foundation wall would be allowed by special permit. Daddy, answer your question, Mr. Mills. Yes, thank you, Mr. Valorelli. So the Department of Honey and Community Development, their memo is in favor of the proposal. They had one concern which was in regards to one of the forms that was submitted which is the, pardon me, I say scroll, the dimensional and parking information sheet was only partly filled out. And they just wanted to confirm that by the creation of this new addition in the front, whether that it would not cause any other unforeseen non-conformities because the form wasn't complete. So I think all we would ask is that when you submit your final application that you submit an updated copy of the sheet with the additional information included and then you would also include a revised floor plan with the modified dimension. So I would make a motion. I would defer. Mr. Klein. Yes, please. Just to clarify clarification on what you just said in terms of the missing dimensions and unintentional non-conformities, we're really talking about open space here, I presume. We are. And it certainly just looking at it appears that they're not in any danger of encroaching on anything, but I think we just, the document should be updated to include all information. So for conditions, we have three standard conditions. The first being of the plans and specifications provided to the board. Further permit shall be final plans and specifications submitted to the building inspector connected with the application for zoning relief. No deviation during construction from the approved plans and specs without the express written approval of the zoning board of appeals. Number two, the building inspector is notified to monitor the site and proceed with appropriate enforcement procedures at any time if there are violations present and inspector buildings shall proceed under section 3.1 of the zoning bylaws under provisions of 40, excuse me, chapter 40, section 21D of the state statutes and institute non-criminal complaints. If necessary, the inspector of buildings may also approve an institute appropriate criminal action also in accordance with section 3.1. And number three, the board shall maintain continuing jurisdiction with respect to this special permit grant. In addition, as we discussed, the applicant is to provide, excuse me, number four, the applicant is to provide a revised and signed dimensional and parking information and open space, gross floor area sheet. Correcting any deficiencies discussed to hearing to the special services department for review. Number five, the applicant is to provide a revised construction drawing, documenting changes discussed at the hearing to the special services department for review. And number six, to comply with section 539B, the new porch, we reduced it to four foot. Any other questions or concerns from the board? Seeing none, may I have a motion to move? Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. So a motion to approve, to do it by a roll call of the active board members. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Yes. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. O'Rourke. Aye. And the chair votes aye. That is the unanimous decision. You are approved. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Appreciate it. Hello? Yes. Well, this brings us. Thank you. Can you call me back? Yeah, I'm in the meeting right now. Can you call? I'll call you tomorrow. I can't, thanks. This brings us to the next item on our agenda, which is docket number 3642, 64 Brattle Street. Mr. Mack. Good evening. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is David Mack. I'm an attorney at O'Connor, Conrithon and Mack in Burlington, Mass at One Vandagraph Drive, Burlington. I'm here today in support of FTO Realty Trust, which is the owner of 64 Brattle Street. I believe on the Zoom meeting, Jim Mackey as the builder representative of FTO Realty Trust is on. And I believe also Cliff Rober, who's a surveyor is on. We're here with regard to an appeal of the determination of the building inspector that the demolition of the existing two-family structure on the property would render the lot non-buildable. We respectfully believe that that is not correct and that this proposed project would be governed by section 8.1.3 of the ordinance as a reconstruction of a non-conforming structure. A little bit of background, the properties as mentioned is in the R2 zone, it's 64 Brattle Street. There's an existing structure that's been in place as we understand since somewhere around 1920. And it's on a lot that has frontage on Brattle Street that is approximately 20 feet of frontage. Access has been always been by Brattle Street. It has together with an easement of an additional 10 or 11 feet, a fairly wide driveway. The building is set back pretty far from the street. Back when the building was constructed, as far as we can tell the structure was always within or less than 10 feet of the side property line was 60 to 62 Brattle Street to the, I believe that's to the west. And I just didn't know it in our submittals, but I believe there's also a non-conformity in that it's less than 20 feet from the rear property line to the north. This property used to be part of a bigger lot that had about 100 feet of frontage on Summer Street. It never accessed this, the property again was never accessed by a Summer Street. It was always by Brattle. Sometime in 1963, the lot was broken off to make another lot, which is known in the plans as K-4 that had frontage on Summer and that rendered the existing lots, 64 Brattle Street with its house on it, having frontage only on Brattle Street and as mentioned about 19 feet of frontage. That was approved in a subdivision that was approved by the zoning board in 1963. And I think that decision is attached as exhibit D to our appeal papers. So what Mr. Mackie on behalf of FTO proposes to do is to demolish the existing two-family structure and build a new two-family structure in its place and eliminate both non-conformities, meaning the side setback would move from eight feet from the side yard to a little bit more than 10 feet and from 15 feet or so from the rear setback to a little bit more than 20 feet, both eliminating those non-conformities. The proposed, and I believe that is at exhibit B or excuse me, C of our submittal shows the proposed plan. We submitted that to the building inspector and the building inspector was of the view that we cannot demolish the building and that by doing so it renders the lot non-build and this is sort of an exercise in the interplay between two sections of the zoning ordinance and the statute by which they're modeled, section six of 40A, section 8.1.3, which deals with alterations, reconstructions, extensions of non-conforming structures is modeled after what's known as the second accept clause of the first paragraph of section six, which essentially says that if you have a non-conforming structure, you can extend it and you can extend it as a right if you don't increase the non-conformity and if you do increase the non-conformity, you can do so but you need a special permit from the zoning board to determine that the extension of the non-conformity is not substantially detrimental to the neighborhood. That's the section we believe this is governed by and because the proposed reconstruction after demolition would eliminate non-conformities that we believe that it's a project as of right. The building inspector determined that section 5.4.2.B which is modeled after the fourth paragraph of section six of the statute applies. And that section basically says that if you have a lot, you can build on a lot as long as there is 50 feet of frontage and 5,000 square feet of area. We have the area, but we don't have the frontage. And so we believe that the critical point about the ordinance is that in section 8.1.3, which governs non-conforming structures, it allows the reconstruction of such structures and doesn't merely allow renovation alteration. We believe the case law that interprets these two sections of the ordinance, excuse me, of the statute, meaning the second accept clause of section one, of paragraph one of section six and paragraph four of section six provides that if you have a non-conforming structure and you demolish it and the ordinance allows reconstruction of demolished buildings, then as long as you are not increasing the non-conformity you may build as long as you don't wait the abandonment period of two years. So that's where the dispute is. We understand that this might be the way that the ordinance has been interpreted for quite some time. And obviously that is what it is, but we believe that that's what the law provides. And we are requesting that this board determine that the building inspector aired in holding that the raising or demolition of the non-conforming structure would prohibit building on this lot at all. So that's kind of academic and exercise. And I hope I was as clear as I could be and I'm happy to take questions. Thank you. Are there questions from the board? Mr. Ford. I'm not seeing it in the documents. The size of the house before and after, what is it right now and what does it propose to be? I believe Mr. Macky might be able to answer that quickly. If you give me a second, I can find that answer. I got to turn off my camera and go to a different screen. Let's see here. Oh, I think I got it here. So the existing, I believe it's 1246 square feet per unit, I believe, and it's proposed to increase to 1680. I believe that's correct. I don't think that it exceeds any floor area ratio. It's all compliant with the side and setbacks. The height would be increased by two feet, but still below the 35. The open space is increased. Essentially it turns to the two units that are one on top of each other to two that are side by side. It makes it a little taller. And Mr. Roper is also on the line too if you have any questions on that. Okay, thanks. Questions from the board? Mr. Chairman, I have a question. Please, Mr. Dupont. So Mr. Macky, did I hear you say that you believe that the ordinance provides for or allows demolition and then reconstruction thereafter? Yes, I believe that if you look at section 8.1.3, which going to it now on my screen I can share my screen if it would help. I have that in front of me. I just, I'm looking for some reference to demolition. It says no alteration, reconstruction, extension or structural changes to a single or two family residential, et cetera, et cetera. I'm saying that as interpreted by the courts and I'm in particular focused on the dial away decision that the significance of the word reconstruction means that you may demolish and rebuild a non-conforming structure. And that if this ordinance had simply said no alteration, extension of or structural change to then we'd have a different issue. But because the language reconstruction as the court found the dial away is included it means that you may demolish and reconstruct a prior non-conforming structure as long as you do not increase the non-conforming nature of it or if you do you get a finding from the board that the reconstruction will not be substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood. So it doesn't say specifically you may demolish but the use of the word reconstruction when construed in conjunction with chapter 40 to section six and the first paragraph and specifically the second accept clause which grandfather's these structures where you get to piece it off yet. So I have a couple of observations. One is that I do believe in the past when we dealt with reconstruction and if someone has a different memory of this I'd be happy to hear. I think we've thought of it in terms of damage or destruction. And I think that if you go when you look up the word reconstruction you'll find that that's part of the definition of this sort of includes the concept that something was damaged or it was destroyed. And so my memory is that at times when we dealt with reconstruction there's been some sort of a loss such as a fire. And then the second observation is that this would seem to me to say that anybody who has a lot that wants to demolish their building in its entirety even if it doesn't meet those requirement minimums of 5,000 square feet and 50 feet of front page they can just do so. And that seems to be contrary to the way we have looked at these types of cases in the past. Can I comment in the order that you've mentioned? The first one is I believe that there's a separate provision in section 8.1 that deals with reconstruction after a casualty event. So I believe that there's a separate provision that governs that and that's not this one. And I believe that in your scenario that that would be true but it only applies if you have a non-conforming structure that's on there. If you have a conforming structure that's within the setback and you then demolish it I believe that you could rebuild it as long as you're fully compliant with zoning. But I think what this does is this is grandfather because of the section six of the zoning ordinance because I believe that I don't know when the side setback limitations came into effect but I know that I believe that the zoning ordinance as a whole didn't come into effect at the late 20s. This building was already in existence and in proximity to the side lot line as of that time. So I think the later zoning rendered it non-conforming. And so I think the provision that the building inspector is applying upon applies to vacant blocks. So that, and I believe that's how the court is interpreted. So you wouldn't accept the proposition that if you demolish a property that you've ever built in a lot. I do not believe, if you have a property that has a non-conforming structure on it and you demolish it, if your ordinance allows reconstruction of non-conforming structures, which your ordinance does then I believe it's allowed. If your ordinance read something different which is what was that issue in Dialaway didn't have, it noted that it's the importance of that language that if it just said alteration or extension we wouldn't have this argument. That's my point. Thank you. The question I have is what do you consider the difference between construction and reconstruction? I think construction is something like an addition. I think the words here is alteration, reconstruction, extension or structural change. That's the language that's triggered. So alteration is something where you're changing whether it's making and you're changing the, perhaps you're changing the location, but not raising it. Reconstruction is you're taking it down and rebuilding it. Extension is adding, is putting an addition on whether it's by height or by width and structural change, I guess you're taking down a wall and changing a wall to it. But I don't believe the word construction is part of the ordinance. It's reconstruction or alteration or extension. And again, this is tailored toward that section of the statute. That's what it follows. Because to my ear and I think this reports are alluded to it as well as reconstruction makes it sound like you are constructing it again which would be that if you had the house and you took it off and you put that house back, that would be a left. You could extend it, you could alter it, you could do various things, but it's still effectively that building. But what you're proposing is redeveloping the site. You're proposing removing the existing building and doing an entirely new project on the site which to me does not sound like reconstruction at all. It sounds like redevelopment which is not covered obviously under this statute. Yeah, I understand that and that that could be a different word that's used, but if I'd be permitted to share my screen for a moment, I can put in the language that I'm reading from this dial away decision which was a mass appeals court decision that says the first paragraph of section six and the second accept clause addresses reconstruction. And it says and the demolition of existing buildings in erection of a new building for the same non-conforming use was not permitted where the bylaw contains the word alteration and extension but not reconstruction. So the use of reconstruction means you can demolish and rebuild that's what reconstruction means according to this the court, the appeals court has it construed the applicable provision of the statute and the ordinance to the extent that it didn't include reconstruction is a different ordinance than Arlington. If Arlington had did not have the word reconstruction, we would be limited to an extension or alteration or whatever other words were used in the ordinance but because it has reconstruction, we believe we're permitted to raise the building and rebuild it as of right as long as we eliminate non-conformities or keep them the same. Now maybe that the proposed project when we look at it in more detail with actual plans may require a special permit but I don't believe that the demolition of the building makes the lot non-buildable. That's the issue that the building inspector and we differ on. Mr. Chair. Mr. Abel. Yes, I also fought with the use of the word reconstruction in our bylaw. We do not provide an explicit definition rather we refer all undefined terms to Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary and Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary essentially provides the same definition you gave to build something again. So just with that in mind the idea of reconstructing a house would more or less entail building it within the same footprint in the same place on the lot. And I'd like to ask through you Mr. Chair I'd like to ask Mr. Mack if the dial away decision involved a change in either the two-dimensional envelope of the building or where it was situated on the lot. Mack. I believe, I think the dial away decision is points out the significance of the use of the word reconstruction. That case did not actually involve the demolition of a garage and then the owner waited for many, many years before trying to rebuild. So it was an issue about abandonment. So that's not, you know, but what the court did was evaluate or analyze the language of the statute and point out the significance of the words alteration, extension, reconstruction and the significance of those in terms of demolition. So I pointed the dial away decision for that purpose. It was not a case involving demolition and reconstruction within the abandonment period. That was the issue in that they demolished a garage and then I think it might have been decades later tried to rebuild and there was an abandonment issue. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I wonder if Mr. Mack would be permitted to put the relevant provision of the dial away decision on the screen. I can try. Do you have the green share screen? I do. Option? Okay. Let me see if I can do that here. Testing the limits of my capabilities, but let's see if I can. Mr. Chair, well, Mr. Macky does that. I mean, the other thing that I- Does that show up here or no? I don't see it yet. I think I have to, I have to share the screen. I think you have to- Mr. Valarelli, can you assist Mr. Mack in that? Mr. Chair, Mr. Mack has had the ability to share a screen from the- Oh, I think I got it now. I think I got it now. Let me put it over now if I can find it. Now or no? No. Now we're seeing hours zoning by law. Oh, okay. I just got the wrong screen up here, wrong side. Okay. Now you're seeing the dial away? Not yet. Still the, it hasn't changed. No, I'm sorry. Let's see. Let's see if I can figure this out. I'm sorry about that. You would just wanted to bring up the dial away decision? Yeah. Okay. I can do that. Okay. Thank you. I thought I did it right? I didn't. Yeah. Okay. So Mr. Mack, if you could direct us to the language, the passage that you're just- Sure. If you look at the, let's see. Yeah, right there where I'm hovering, the first paragraph of the 40A is set forth in the margin and the second is set right there. Yep. Whoops. Yeah. That's exactly the language right there where it cites the planning board decision there versus Miller explaining planning board or Reading versus Board of Appeals of Reading. So what I'm trying to get at is the, in what way is, what is the importance of, what was the importance of whether or not what a reconstruction was in that case? What was the question the court had before it that made that definition important to it? I think what they were trying to determine was the which provision in section six, either paragraph one or paragraph four apply. Paragraph one being applying to prior non-conforming structures and paragraph four applying to vacant lots. And what paragraph, what the court dealt with was said that paragraph one applies to project, to properties on which a structure exists and paragraph four applies to vacant lots and that paragraph one applies even if you demolish a building as long as the word reconstruction or rebuilt is part of the ordinance. And that's the provision that's set forth here. And was that true in that case? Again, I think that what happened in this case was that there was an abandonment issue because of the length of time that passed between the demolition of the garage and the request to rebuild. So I'm trying to figure out in sort of old law school of thinking whether or not the court's comments on reconstruction are part of the holding of the case or whether essentially it's dictum. Could you explain why it's part of the holding of the case? Right, so if you scroll down a little further in the decision, there's a provision that's that, right there, application of section six paragraph one to reconstruction of a single and two-family residence. I see, okay. Because in this ordinance, it didn't have the word reconstruction in it. So could the court assume that if it did have the word reconstruction in it, that the result might be different, but it didn't. And therefore the result is what it was. So in that case, it was not, they were not really required to wrestle with what reconstruction might mean because it wasn't present in the ordinance at all. Well, I think it was important. They didn't have to deal with it because of the abandonment issue. They ultimately ruled that there was an abandonment, but I think it's the holding is a holding that was essential to the court's decision. And I think it's since been applied. And certainly the case is cited for the proposition that section one applies to existing lots with a structure on it. And section four on which 5.4 of your ordinance's model that applies to vacant lots. And what I'm trying to do is see what other authority is there besides this case? And the various other ones that you've cited that require determining what exactly a reconstruction is. One account, your account really is that if you have a building and you remove it and replace it with another building that's more or less in the same place or that's on the same lot, but that's a reconstruction. And there have been other ideas of what a reconstruction is. Most of what seemed to me to be consistent with the Dailaway case that are narrower than that. And our practice has always been to apply something narrower than that. And so I'd like to see what other authority there is that takes the very broad and takes in the sense that it's important that it had to focus on that as opposed to one of the narrower ideas that has been used in Arlington before that sort of forces us to take a broader view than we're used to. I think the other decision that is commonly cited for this is the Willard decision, which is also, I think it's referenced in Dailaway. In your brief, I think. Yeah. So I mean, those are the two decisions that squarely hold in my view that section one applies, section four upon which this 5.4 is modeled applies only to vacant lots. And that you have to look at the specific language of the ordinance to determine what you can do after you demolish a building. If you demolish it and reconstruction is allowed under the grandfather clause paragraph one of section six, then you're allowed to do it as long as you don't increase the non-conformities. And so- The problem is that that seems to sidestep the basic issue of what a reconstruction is. And Mr. Revelag, for example, suggested a narrower definition of that. What is it in these cases that would be inconsistent with Mr. Revelag's view of the statute? Well, I think that my point is that the Dailaway, I think the plain meaning of reconstruction is that you put something back up that you destroy it. And I think that's the way Dailaway defines reconstruction. It's not in the ordinance. The ordinance doesn't define it. And I believe that when you don't have a definition, the board needs to be guided by the court decisions. And it's clear in my view in Dailaway and the Willard case that reconstruction means rebuilding after demolition. I don't think it, I think the issue of the location of the building has to do with the non-conformity and whether you're increased in non-conformity or not. Mr. Chandler, was that, was that you, Mr. DuPont? Well, I did, I didn't want to trouble you, but where you started, where you originally scrolled to in the Dailaway case, there was a reference in what was being cited to a non-conforming use as opposed to a non-conforming structure. You'd be able to put that up because I'd like to have that explained. Not a non-conforming use is, is when you're using a property for use that is not allowed in the district. No, if you had, if you had like a, you know, a hotel there. I understand that, but there's the reference in what you were citing, I believe to a non-conforming use. And I'd just like to go back and see what that language was because it caught my eye and then we moved on. Could you just quickly hear? This is the, what you were referring to. Yeah, so it says, and I haven't processed this, so I don't know exactly what to make of it, but it says the demolition of an existing building is an erection of a new building for the same non-conforming use. So we're not dealing with a non-conforming use here. I'm not sure that this is really determinative in any way, but I think that that needs to be read and considered at least to see if this is really applicable. Are there other questions from the board time? No, Mr. Chairman, I don't have a question, but I guess it's a comment to maybe to respond to how Mr. Mack is using reconstruction. I think if you were to say that you were gonna demolish the building and reconstruct it, moving it over to, you know, give it the dimensions needed for the side and the back, but build it in basically the same shape and size that was there, I would agree that that would be reconstruction. I think the problem that some of us might be having is just that it's taken some liberty with the use of the work reconstruction. And I'm not sure how to wrestle with that one. So I feel like it doesn't follow the meaning either of reconstruction, at least as you're proposing it. Mr. Chairman? Yes, Mr. Jopan. I would just like to point out that under the statute, we feel itself does not have to be decided for 100 days. And so I do think that if it is the sense of the members of the board that we need more time to be able to process this, we should take that time to make sure that we're getting what we need in terms of information and interpretation. I just want to point out. So I was gonna recommend at this point that we do open this up to public comment because I know there's at least one person who's been waiting considerable amount of time to speak. So with that, I will open the public comment period. Again, if you are participating by Zoom, if you go to the participants tab, there is a raised hand feature there that you should be able to access. If you are calling in, it's star nine should activate the same on the screen. And so the first raised hand was Chris Loretty. Chris, you can go ahead and unmute yourself then. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chris Loretty, 56 Adams Street. Can you hear me okay? I can, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I've heard a lot of talk this evening about non-conforming structure. It seems to me the discussion missed the bigger point and that is that you could have grossly non-conforming lot here. And that has like serious implications. I don't think I've been fully discussed. I'm not sure what your board was doing 60 years ago. And then I certainly don't hold any of you responsible for it, but it sure seems to me by allowing the subdivision of the lot that fronted on Summer Street, they engaged in infectious invalidity as it is so called by creating a non-conforming lot. And the fact that the board approved a lot of the time does not make it conforming. It is a non-conforming lot because of that absence of frontage. It's less than 20 feet. And also it's non-conforming of the existing by-law both for the existing house and the proposed structure and that it doesn't meet the minimum 50 foot lot width from the front property line up to the face of the building. So in both those cases, you know, you've got this non-conforming lot. And so this isn't just a matter of rebuilding a non-conforming structure. Certainly if you have a buildable lot with 6,000 square feet and 60 foot of frontage, you can tear down anything and build a new house as if you're building from scratch on a lot that has never been developed before. That's not the case here. And I would also suggest that the board needs to look more broadly at some of the legal decisions. For example, Bjorkland versus EBA of Norwell, which I believe is a more relevant example of case law where you had a non-conforming lot and you had a family or developer who wanted you a complete tear down and build a much bigger house. That's what we have here. And you can call it reconstruction. You can call it anything you want. But the fact is it's a complete tear down and what the developer or the attorney wants to do is claim that you've got this grossly non-conforming lot. You can remove the house. You can move the foundation and build as if you've got a completely conforming lot. Well, that has never been the way the bylaw has been interpreted in this town. And I think you need to also seriously consider the implications of that approach in places like Rylev and East Arlington where the vast majority of lots are non-conforming either because of frontage or lot area or both. I just don't see how the proponent can suggest that building on such a lot can move forward with no relief from your board. The bylaw has never been interpreted that way. I believe the building inspector must have earned that exactly right. And so did those he consulted with. So I will leave it at that. But I certainly hope you don't move forward to approve this as the applicant is recommending or requesting tonight. Thank you. Mr. Loretty, if you could just repeat the name of the court case you cited. I believe it's pronounced Bjorkland, B-J-O-R-K-L-U-N-D versus ZBA of Norwell, 450 mass 357. Thank you very much. You're welcome. The next hand I saw was Mr. Don Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer Irving Street. I'd like to call the board's attention to the fact that there's precedence for just this sort of thing in Arlington. First, there's 89 Robbins Road, which this board reviewed three years ago. Very similar situation. It lacks the required frontage. It has non-conforming yard setbacks. And a third strike against it is that the lot area was non-conforming, was insufficient for an R-1 district. And this board gave approval. I don't know if it was a special permit or of every answer what, but it gave approval for the owner to completely demolish the existing house and build a new one, which didn't fall into the same footprint of the previous one. The second precedence is much more current. It's 11 Arnold Street. This one is non-conforming because it doesn't have the proper front yard setback. It has insufficient lot area. And far more serious than all of these is it's a non-conforming use. It's putting a duplex into a R-1 zone. I haven't been able to find a record of a ZBA hearing on this. Apparently this was simply approved at the building inspector level. Now to turn to a little bit of a U-turn getting back to 64 Brattle. I've noticed that there's another serious non-conformity which hasn't been mentioned this evening. And that has to do with parking. I don't know if I have it correct, but I don't believe that front yard parking is allowed that the required off-street parking has to be either the side, the rear yard, or in a garage underneath the building like the present structure has. And instead, they have created a large parking lot area off to the side in the front yard, which looks like it's probably 25 or more feet wide. It certainly isn't a driveway leading to a legal off-street parking spot. So just a few more things to throw into your deliberations. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. I believe on the parking, of course you don't have a specific project in front of us, but there is a garage there and there's a, there will be two garages on underneath this structure. And there's a turnaround now right with ample parking. So we have not addressed the parking issue because there's not a specific project on the table only the issue of whether it can be raised and reconstructed. Okay, thank you. Next I see David Damon. Hi, David Damon, 54 Brattle Street. I just have a few brief comments. First, I support those who are concerned with the term reconstruction. My comments are, are there maximum sizes allowable for reconstruction? If I look at the FIR, it's almost double, quite 34% to 61%. And with that, and if any additional site coverage, I'm concerned about the impervious surfaces and maybe developed on the lot. So I'd like to know if there are maximum sizes allowable for reconstruction. Mr. Chair. Mr. Revlak. I can take that if you'd like. Please. So basically with regards to building a new building, I think the part of the bylaw that's probably that may be most relevant to section five one, it's just one sentence, so I'll just read it. No building or structure shall be erected and no building or structure or land or water area shall be used for any purpose or in any matter, except in accordance with his bylaw. So the size limits are effectively dictated by the table of dimensional and density regulations. So if you're, because definition of reconstruction aside, the more general is how big of a building can you build as big as the bylaw lets you build. Once you tear down a building and you build a new one, it's generally the current bylaw that takes effect. And regarding impervious surfaces, there is nothing in our zoning bylaw that regulates the amount of impervious surface on a lot. There is a stormwater bylaw, which applies when the impervious area is increased by 350 square feet or more, but that's essentially it. And I don't believe that any of the, if constructed in accordance with the preliminary proposed plans, although they are preliminary, they do not violate any of those limitations. Okay, thanks for the definition. It just, in my closing, I'll just say that it does seem that, you know, if you're increasing the size of the buildable structure by 2000 square feet, if I read that correctly, and you're going from a fairly narrow West facing facade to something that's 50 feet long, it's redevelopment. It's not reconstruction, but thank you. Thank you very much. Any other public comments or questions in regards to this application? Okay, now I'm going to go ahead and close public comment. Oh, hello? Yep. Oh, sorry, I didn't know. There you are. Please go ahead and if you could introduce yourself on name and address. Yes, Lauren Hooks about 60 Bradel Street. I think most of the questions. I mean, first of all, there's no particular proposal other than preliminary plans would be the garage each unit underneath two sides by side of each one. I don't think the parking would change, and I think it's all the, so again, if we go through, I mean, if we are permitted to go forward versus the decision of the building, we would then have to, of course, set up a building permit that would cast all of these plans and that, if it doesn't, then we'd have to consider other relief would be needed so that the permit would be issued, as we believe is at the table, is whether the raising of the building would render a lot of non-building. Okay, so the issue of extending the parking. I'm not sure I'm following, but I don't believe that there's any non-conformity related to parking, at least that I've made clear of and there's no extension of that. So I just want to make sure that your proposal for the 1680 square feet, that is, does that include the parking itself or not? I think that's the size of the square footage to be used, but again, specific plans would have to lay that out. We're building parking, if any particular, we haven't even applied for a building permit yet. We had a preliminary permit. So they're, I believe it's 1246 square feet and you're proposing 1680 square feet? I believe so. Maybe Jim, you could answer that. You can unmute yourself or Cliff. The current house is 963 feet per floor and the proposed house would have 1500 feet per floor, I believe. So I believe that would give you the numbers you're looking for. Is that into your question, sir? Are there any other, no hands raised on the Zoom participants will have, and I see no one waving vigorously. So with that, I will close public comment. To Mr. DuPont's point, I know there's some questions that I would have for council before we render a decision. So, unless there's an objection, I'd like to continue this for two weeks to have an opportunity to speak with council. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Hanlon. I think that we have, we have at least by statute more time than that. We could do it for two weeks and see what happens. Mr. Heim is a busy person and I just wanna make sure that we allow sufficient time to actually get an answer rather than have serial extension. Certainly. I believe I do need to continue though to a date certain, is that correct? Your knowledge? I don't actually know in this particular case. Mr. DuPont, do you know? I don't know for certain, but I was just gonna add the 100 days that we have and somebody can check my math brings us to Sunday, March 21st. So I realized that that wouldn't be the hearing date so that we would at the latest have to do it somewhere in March. And I do agree that I think that we should give ourselves enough time. And I'm not sure two weeks is sufficient. So I'd prefer to see something more in the vicinity of four and see whatever the next meeting is. But I do think that we would have to give it a date certain how long we're gonna continue. Well, we do have a hearing scheduled for February 9th. So June 26th would be, we have a hearing scheduled for June 26th and it had hearing scheduled February 9th. So it'd be more comfortable requesting February 9th? For me, the answer would be yes. Okay. Me too. Okay. All right. Then I move that we continue this hearing to Tuesday, February 9th, 2021, 7.30 p.m. Second. Okay. Mr. Ork, DuPont? Aye. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Mr. Mills? Mills? Aye. And the chair votes aye. So this one is being continued. Rick, can you handle the paperwork in the background? Yes, I will, Mr. Chairman. I will send the continuing swam by a docusign. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you members of the board. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank everyone on the call for their patience. Now turning to the comprehensive permit here at the Tharn Dyke Place. If there's any members of the board who need a minute or two to grab something to drink, please go ahead and do so. I'm just gonna quickly go through the, some ground rules for effective and clear contact for tonight's business. This evening's discussion will focus on the traffic impact study and related issues and reviews. Submitted documents are available as an attachment to the posted agenda under item number five. The impact study was discussed at a public meeting of the Arlington Transportation Advisory Committee on Wednesday, December 9th, 2020. I will ask the applicants to introduce themselves and make a short presentation to the board. To be followed by a short presentation by the board's peer review engineer. I will then invite the Transportation Advisory Committee to comment on the study and the review. Members of the board will then have an opportunity to ask the questions they have on the information that's been presented. And after the board's questions have been addressed, I will open the meeting for public comment. So what was that in mind? Ms. Kiefer. Hi, good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. As was just stated, we are here this evening to present to you our traffic impact assessment. And pretty much without further ado, I'm going to turn over the presentation to our traffic engineer, Scott Thornton and Derek Roche of Vanessa. And we can take your questions if you have it at the conclusion of that or if you want to wait until the conclusion of the beta presentation. However, the board prefers. Thank you. Thank you, Kiefer. Mr. Chairman, this is Scott Thornton with Vanessa Associates. Could I share my screen, please? He's good to go, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Rick. You're all set, Mr. Thornton. Thank you. Okay, can everyone see that? Yes. Great. So Mr. Chairman, members of the board, thank you for hearing us tonight. My name's Scott Thornton. I'm with Vanessa Associates. I'm here with Derek Roche from my office and we prepared the traffic impact assessment for the project. As you mentioned, there have been a number of hearings for the project, but this is really the first one to focus on traffic following completion of the traffic study. We've been in consultation with the town, with the town's peer consultant. As you mentioned, we appeared in front of the Arlington Transportation Advisory Committee and we've received comments from both peer consultants and the tech. What I'd like to do is provide an overview of our findings to date, present some aspects of the traffic assessment and let you know what our next steps are. And then, as you mentioned, we'll hear from the town's peer consultant. I thought it'd be helpful to provide an overview of the process, which is identified on this next slide. The standard process for traffic impact assessments or TIAs involves the collection of data from current or existing conditions, projections out to a future design year, in this case, 2027, to create a no-build scenario, an estimate of project trip generation, development of the future 2027 year conditions with the project, which is the build scenario, which includes the project traffic volumes and analysis of traffic impacts and delays at intersections, identification of mitigation and measures to minimize the project's impacts and then review by town staff. In this case, Arlington is fortunate to have their own traffic committee, as well as review by a third party peer consultant, who is a traffic engineer working for the town, but funded by the applicant. The next slide shows the site plan with vehicular access provided at the intersection of Little John Street and Dorothy Road. Development is proposing 176 units with 239 parking spaces. In addition, there's 144 covered bicycle spaces provided in the parking garage. Pedestrian access and circulation is shown on these paths that connect out to Dorothy Road. No access is proposed across the undeveloped areas to either the Minuteman bikeway or to the Route 2 pedestrian overpass. This next slide shows the site plan in context with the study area and in relation to area streets and transportation facilities. You can see the site borders Route 2, which is just to the south of the site in the neighborhood with Dorothy Street, Little John Street and Market Street. To the east is Alewiper Parkway, to the south is the MBTA Alewiper station. Also south of Route 2 are some residential developments in Cambridge that were recently constructed and occupied, including the box onto development, which is located in this area. And we'll get to more discussion of the box onto development on another slide. So this next slide shows the study area that was selected for the project. And you can see the locations on Lake Street that were identified for study, which were recommended by Bata Group, the town's peer consultant. This includes the ramps with Route 2 and Lake Street to the west, extending through Wilson Ave, Little John Street, Homestead Road, Birch Street with Alfred Road, Margaret Street with Lake Hill Ave, Minuteman Bikeway, Brooks Avenue, Altamass Ave, and also the intersections of the four centralized intersections of Route 2 with Route 16. These locations were chosen to measure the project traffic increases in relative effects of the project. There are peak hour turn restrictions at Wilson, Little John and Homestead. There are no entering restrictions at Birch or at Margaret Street. And there's no exiting restrictions at any of those locations. Just to be clear, we are not proposing or advocating for the removal of any of the turn restrictions that are present. These locations all operate with considerable delay for motorists exiting the neighborhood with queues of between one and four vehicles during the weekday morning and weekday evening peak hours. Can't find my cursor. There we go. I mentioned the estimation of project trips. And this is typically done using Institute of Transportation Engineer statistics contained in the trip generation manual. The trip generation manual is a collection of counts of similar facilities in different land uses that's been compiled by traffic engineers going back for at least 40 to 50 years. This manual is the standard source for estimation of trips for developments. And it's required use by most states and municipalities for development of trip generation information. For this analysis and this land use, the critical time periods are the weekday daily, the weekday morning peak hour and the weekday evening peak hour. The ITE trips are categorized based on a mode split which accounts for different types of commuting methods that residents may use. In this case, we have SOV trips which are single-occupant vehicle trips. HOV trips which are high-occupant vehicle or carpool trips. We have transit trips, we have bike trips, we have walk trips and we have other trips. And the percentages of these commuting types are applied to the ITE trips. Use of a mode split is appropriate in this case due to the presence of alternative transportation facilities including the bikeway, a life station, and proximity to other uses and also ongoing transportation trends in the area. This results in a total vehicle trip estimation of 27 trips in the morning peak hour and 33 trips in the evening peak hour. The peak hour totals are the most appropriate here as these are what the traffic analyses are based on. So the mode splits that we use are based on data from the VoxOn2 development. And initially we discussed the use of the VoxOn2 mode split data with the town's peer review consultant. The VoxOn2 development was considered by us to be a similar development, similar in size, similar location, similar access to the bikeway and to a life station as Thorndike Place. Mode split data for this development, for the VoxOn2 development is required to be collected by the city of Cambridge. So in this case, residents must submit surveys each year indicating how they travel during a given week for a number of different trip types work from home to work, from home to school, from home to shopping or medical visits. In terms of comparison with the census data for the same East Arlington area that the project is located in, the VoxOn2 data is similar in terms of single occupant vehicle splits, transit splits and bike splits. We have received some comments from the town's peer consultant and from the TAC questioning the use of the walk and bike trips. Given that there's a potential for some of the Vox walking trips to be made to the nearby Discovery Park office complex, so this may account for the total. In terms of biking trips, the bike trips, commuting by bike is pretty clear in Cambridge and it's clear enough that it's distinct from commuting the just transit modes. But in terms of making adjustments to the walk and other trip types for the VoxOn2 data to be consistent with what was observed for the census track data, if we do adjust those trips, those mode splits and apply the additional trips that would be, that would come out of the walking category to the vehicle trips, the single occupant vehicle trip type in this case, it results in a net increase of four trips in the morning and five trips in the evening, which is a minimal increase based on the totals for the site that we've calculated. In terms of the overall assessment, and I'm trying to move along because I know you have beta and possibly the TAC to present as well, but the project vehicle trips represent one additional vehicle every two minutes or so during the peak morning and evening peak hours. The project related traffic increases outside of the study area are between 0.1 and 0.8% during those same peak hours. The previous analysis, which was done for Thorndike, for the previous iteration of Thorndike Place in 2014, was for 207 units with estimates of mode split based on the census data at that time. And at that time, it was 2010 data that was being reviewed and there wasn't as much priority as I would say that was placed on alternative or sustainable transportation as is currently the case. So the current project at 176 units and smaller, more accurate mode split data based on these of the similar developments. We're looking at between a 60 and 64% reduction in vehicle trips between the previous analysis and the current traffic study. No changes in overall level of service due to the project and the proposed parking supply meets the town of Arlington requirements and is consistent with industry standards. In terms of project mitigation and worse, we are still working on this. But we were aiming it at TDM measures to try to continue to reduce the use of passenger vehicles. We think that the sites proximity to the bikeway and the alewife station are going to be really the main drivers in reducing vehicle trips. But we're also proposing a blue bike station on site to address project and existing demands for short term and shared bike usage. The covered bike parking located in the garage would be weather protected and secure. And both of those recommendations are consistent with the town of Arlington's recommendations for TDM measures. We're also proposing a non-site transportation coordinator to promote sustainable transportation and promote the use of or encourage the use of bicycle, pedestrian and transit services. Also looking to provide transportation information packets to new residents that'll identify what some of the sustainable and alternative transportation modes are in the area. And we're looking at providing a transit screen installation in the lobby, which provides accurate real time information for transit, the blue bike station and Uber lift services in the area. As far as our next steps, we're working with Beta Group to address their comments and concerns, some of which were echoed by the Arlington TAC. We have reviewed operations at the bikeway and Brooks Avenue traffic signals with Lake Street. We have provided some information on the mode split question. There's some other questions related to the walking path from the site to alewife station and some of the bicycle pedestrian volume adjustments just to name some of those outstanding items. We are also working with town engineering and DPW to identify potential mitigation measures to address existing access issues with those side streets of the neighborhood. And where we sort of have a part of the town staff is on board with the idea of what we're proposing and we want to make sure that the entire town staff that we're working with is in favor and supports our proposals before we actually show them to the public. And then any other outstanding comments that come up will be sure and address as well. And sorry for rushing, but that's it for the traffic presentation, but I know you have a lot to get through and it's been a late night already, so thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thornton. You had mentioned, I think also seeing the beta report and the report from the transportation advisory committee. There was also on Friday a memo that came out from the Department of Planning and Community Development that included some comments in regard to transportation. I just wanted to make sure you were in receipt of that. Yes, yes, sir, we are. Thank you. Are there any questions on the board before we have beta? Mr. Revlak. Yes, a question for Mr. Thornton on the slide before project mitigation. There was mention of a 60 to 64% change and I didn't quite get down. What does that change apply to? So that's just based on the trip estimation from the previous project compared with the current project. And was that change an increase or a decrease? It was a decrease. So- Okay, just to be clear. Yes, no, that's appreciate the question. So in 2014, when the initial study was prepared, they were looking at a larger development which generated more traffic just on its own. They also were looking at smaller percentages of traffic expected to use the transit services in the area. And again, that was from 2010 with the 2019 data that we have, the transit usage has gone up and also the development size, the development's been downsized from what was proposed initially. It's down 41 units. So that accounts for the 60 to 64% reduction in vehicle trips. Great question. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revlak. Other questions from the board? Seeing none, I'm going to, Ms. Nover, I don't know if you wanna take a little word. Hi, Mr. Chairman. Greg Lucas from Beta is gonna be presenting our comments on the traffic tonight. Perfect, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Marty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I don't have a formal presentation. I'll summarize where we're at at this point and echo some of the things that Mr. Thornton had stated. So we had an opportunity to provide review comments and we've had a couple of discussions with Vanessa, with the town, with the TAC, about some of the details of those comments. And I won't go through every single piece of that, but generally it fell into kind of three categories. One was making sure that we've accurately identified pet and bike connections between the site. It sounds like there isn't anything proposed that uses the undeveloped portion of the site that access would be via Dorothy Road. And also that recreational activity was accurately captured in the area. The other is the mode split question and Scott explained the initial discussion to use the vox on two mode split because it was similar in nature, similar in location, similar type of residential development. And as we look closer at those numbers, we realized, and some of that was explained in Scott's presentation, that the walk trips maybe aren't as appropriate for this site for Thornton Place versus vox on two, because vox on two is closer to other office to shopping. And so there may be a greater percentage of walk trips there that wouldn't necessarily occur from Thornton Place. And then the third was specific impacts to the Dorothy Road neighborhood, especially during construction. And we just discussed this recently with the town and with Vanessa. And there I think we still need to understand what kind of construction activity will be necessary, what kind of construction vehicles will be used, the size, the frequency of those vehicles to access this site, to build this, to do the earthwork that's necessary and what that impact would be, both specifically for trucks to be able to access the roadways connecting to the site and also what that impact would be on the neighborhood. So that's something that was in our review letter that still is outstanding. But otherwise, most everything, we've had an opportunity to discuss both directly with Vanessa and with the town and with the TAC and are coming to some agreement on those other outstanding issues. Thank you. Are there questions from the board at this point? Not that I'd like to- Can I ask a question, Mr. Chairman? Yes, please, Mr. O'Rourke. For either Mr. Thornton or Mr. Lucas, for those who don't understand these reports, but have sat on Lake Street and bumper to bumper traffic evenings from route two to Mass Ave. Is there anywhere in the data you can show us that supports that? I mean, if we can get a sense on what the baseline on these reports are to show the significant traffic that's already there pre-COVID, in terms of traffic counts or anything like that? Yeah, sure. I can jump in on that. So we conducted some, we had some data that was out there on Lake Street at either end that was older, that was pre-COVID. And then we didn't have any new data at these intersections of, say Homestead or Little John or Margaret or Birch. We had to go and collect that data. And we, there's procedures that have been identified by Mass DOT to adjust volumes that are collected during COVID to pre-COVID levels. And we took a look at those measures and found, and when we applied them, we found that they weren't really generating enough of an adjustment to make it reasonable. And the adjustments were actually too low, we felt. So we looked at Mass DOT permanent count station data from prior to COVID from last year, as well as this year, found adjustment factors, applied that to the traffic volumes that we collected and then balanced upwards to come up with what we feel is a representation of 2020 traffic volumes. And we did do the analysis of the traffic operations at those intersections. And it does show level of service F for which is as bad as it gets for movements exiting those side streets. And initially we had some information for the bikeway traffic signal, which was under construction at the time of our counts. And the signal at the new signal at Brooks Ave. And we had developed some analysis based on the timings that we had. And then we went in response to comments from beta and the tech, we took another look at that analysis and it really showed, because the tech in particular noted that the results in the traffic study for those intersections were too good and weren't really representative. So we went and took another look at the timing at the signal plans and found that when we revised the analysis, it actually did look, I think the morning was one of the time periods was much worse than what we initially had projected. And I think that's more representative of the conditions out there. But I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add on that. Yeah, I would just confirm that the study does accurately capture the existing pre-COVID operations of Lake Street. It does show level service F, it shows queuing and the one area, as Scott had mentioned that at the bikeway and at the Brooks Ave intersection where there was something that didn't quite seem right. And so it sounds like that's been worked out. But in general, yes, it does show, it does show traffic operational issues along Lake Street. If we're talking overall, and thinking of the uneducated questions, a minimal increase in traffic, is it fair to say that we're taking a situation that's already difficult and making it potentially worse, but just minimally worse? Is that kind of the bottom line if you would have generalized this? Yeah, and I think that in addition, we're trying to come up with other measures and other ways to address what's already coming out there with the queues and the backups. I think there's, to some extent, we're limited to what we can do. We can't widen Lake Street and we can't discourage people from finding alternate routes whenever there's congestion on Route 16 and Lake Street is always gonna be used as some type of cut-through route to avoid a lot of that congestion. But I think if we can work to make it a little easier for that neighborhood at least to access, get in and out of Lake Street, I think that would mitigate the impact that our project would have on Lake Street. Thank you, and one more question, because it's come up in the past, but a lot of people who don't come to all the meetings, I continue to have a question. Why hasn't the project been able to get some sort of separate cut in entrance from Route 2 to the project directly? Yeah, and I think that there's a whole host of issues that comes up with that. It's logistically, first off, it's going through environmentally sensitive areas. Second, there's design issues with elevation changes. You'd be decelerating to come into the site at the same point, you'd be accelerating to come from Route 16 onto Route 2. If you provided access from the ramp, DOT is not a big fan of that. So I think it's not as, just because we have bought the highway doesn't mean we can necessarily connect to the highway. Yeah, I would agree. Our expectation was that given the size of the development, it was unlikely that MassDOT would ever entertain a direct connection to the highway ramp or to the highway itself. Yeah. Thank you all for your speech. You're welcome, thank you. Mr. Revlak. Follow-up question for Mr. Lucas. When you said the development wasn't a size of a size that MassDOT would consider direct access to Route 2, does that mean size too big or size too small? Size too small. Size too small. I think it would have to be a much higher amount of traffic generated to justify a direct connection to the highway infrastructure. And again, that's just my speculation. I don't, we haven't had, as far as I know, there may have been discussions way back when with MassDOT, but none recently. And I think that although that was part of the 2014 study, it entertained that option as a potential. I don't think that it was a realistic option then that we're going to have to move forward now. I agree with that. Mr. Mills. Yes, I have a question for Mr. Thornton. In regards to demographics at a site, would you consider that apartments that included children would generate more trips per day? I think that's probably accurate, yeah. Okay, further question then. Has anybody assessed the populations in Allington's apartments for the percentage of families with children? I know that we don't have that information. Because I asked that question in my experience as a town meeting member, it came up in conversation quite some time ago that one of our members who was a member of the school committee at the time indicated that there had been an increase in the population of the demographics in the apartment house that included families with children. So I'm just wondering if this development could result in heavier traffic than we're anticipating based on that. And I think it's a fair question to ask if anybody can find out what the demographics are of the apartment houses in Allington. And if these include children in significant numbers. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Oh, I would. So, whoops, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hamlin. Just to understand where that information might fit. The basic traffic generation here comes from the ITE figures. And ITE figures presumably are based upon some kinds of studies or surveys that provide data traffic generation from buildings of certain kinds. So before we actually know what the implications would be of more or fewer children in Arlington apartments or in apartments near transit centers, which also might be systematically different from apartments generally. Don't we have to know what the assumptions were in the ITE numbers? Without that, how could you make an adjustment? Yeah, and I think that we don't know that. We don't have that information. That's not available in the ITE manual. The ITE manual is a collection of statistics and counts of similar facilities that have been reduced and compiled into equations or rates based on different variables. It could be seats at a restaurant. It could be a number of vehicle fueling pumps at a gas station. It could be a number of units at an apartment building, but it doesn't get so detailed as to say, there were 1.3 children in residence at each unit. But the best that we could do is really report on, and I think we'd have to contact the town planning staff to see if this information exists, but we would, all we could really do is find out what the numbers of children might be in these apartment houses. And from there, I don't know what we would do with that data. I don't know how we would apply it to the ITE numbers. Thank you. I would like to introduce the chair of the Transportation Advisory Committee. Ask him if he to address us with, in regards to the meeting that they held last month. You're on mute. I thought I had unmuted myself. Howard Muse, chair of the TAC. We conducted a review of both the TIA for the project and the beta review of the peer review that they did for the town. And our review is from our executive committee because the timing of how all this fell did not allow us to be able to take it to a full committee. The executive committee basically concurs with pretty much all of the comments made in the beta report. However, we did add a few of our own and I just like to highlight a few of those. We did suggest that the pro proponent consider providing subsidized MBTA passes as part of the proposed transportation and man management program. They can be effective in encouraging people to use transit rather than driving. We also raised a question about the number of parking spaces. By our calculations, there's 1.3 parking spaces per unit which the executive committee felt was awfully high for a project that's basically a transit oriented development. And we recommended that the Board of Appeals look into the possibility of perhaps reducing the requirement for the number of parking spaces. One of our other major comments had to do with the level of service analysis at Brooks Avenue and at the Minuteman Bikeway. TAC undertook a study several years ago of Lake Street and one of its major recommendations was to install the signal at the bikeway and coordinate it with the existing signal at Brooks Ave. When we did that study, we estimated what the impact would be on Lake Street in future conditions. And we found some improvement in chewing along Lake Street but nothing that matched what was in the TIA which showed that eastbound or going towards Mass Ave approach being at level of service A, both in the morning and in the evening with the signal installed and with the future build volumes. So we've strongly suggested that that needs to be reanalyzed because we never anticipated based on our recommendation that there would be that kind of improvement in traffic on Lake Street. And we also asked that the operation analysis be expanded to include a discussion of chewing on Lake Street at the bikeway and Brooks Ave. Level of service is one measure of what's going on but chewing is also another measure of the extent of congestion and the time that people might have to wait to get through the signal. We also have three comments that Beta made that we especially stressed and added our comments. One had to do with the turning restrictions which we've discussed on from Lake Street onto Wilson Ave, Little John and Homestead Road. The traffic analysis distributed or assigned traffic trips as if those restrictions did not exist. And yet the report does not make any recommendation with respect to changing those restrictions. We feel strongly that the report should be amended to show how traffic would get in and out of the site and be consistent with the traffic restrictions that those intersections. Those restrictions are there to prevent cut-through traffic through the neighborhood. And we think that we need to take a close look at that. We can't just say that people are gonna violate those term restrictions. We also endorse the idea of doing a detailed study of construction, particularly impacts on Dorothy Road and Little John. And in conjunction similar to that, we also thought it was important to look at the project impacts that is final traffic conditions on the Dorothy Road neighborhood and other streets leading into that area. The town did a test of some traffic calming measures on actually Dorothy Road and Mary Street. And it may be important that based on impacts from this development, that some consideration be given to installing traffic calming measures on some of the neighborhood streets. Thank you, that's it. Thank you very much. Additional questions from the board? Mr. Reveller. Just one, and this would be a question for Mr. Muse. And I'm just trying to make sure that I'm remembering things correctly. I, regarding the turn restrictions onto some of the side streets from Lake where the TIA showed turn counts where there was a turn prohibition. Am I correct in remembering that those were mainly, those that were just measured numbers? In other words, that's people returning regardless of the restriction. In looking at existing conditions, there are some people who make those turns if you do account at the location. It's not a very large number because there is periodic enforcement of those restrictions. But the distribution or the assignment of the project trips to the roadway basically ignored that restriction and had people turning from Lake Street onto Little John, despite the fact that that restriction is there. And I think that conflict needs to be resolved somehow. Okay, so you'd like the projections to, you'd like projections that assume that the turn restrictions are adhered to? If they're adhered to that means more of the traffic will travel further on Lake Street and then turn at either Burch or Margaret to get into the project. So it would have an impact on Lake Street traffic. Okay, thank you for the clarification. Mr. Chairman. Yes, please, Mr. Hanlon. I wondered if Mr, this would be a good time for Mr. Thornton to indicate whether he agrees or disagrees with Mr. Muse on the appropriateness or the need to take into consideration the existing restrictions on the right turn there for those turns. Sure, so the initial study looked at traffic. As I mentioned, we did collect traffic counts at those intersections where both the ones where there are entering turn restrictions and where there are none. And we found that some of the, whether there were restrictions there or not, vehicles were still entering those streets from Lake Street. And that was reflected in the traffic analysis. In the subsequent analysis, we have revised those traffic volumes to adhere to the turn restrictions. In terms of what is likely to happen, I would think that there will be some component of traffic that will still travel the most direct route, the most logical route, which would be to enter at Little John. I think that that's just human nature. At the same time, we understand the validity of the turn restrictions and the prohibitions for entering movements. We're not advocating the removal of them. And I think that the analysis that, or the revised analysis would be more conservative by adding traffic to directing that traffic to enter the site and travel further on Lake Street to get into the site. Mr. The issue, if I understand it, is that understanding where the people are going to turn and exactly where that flow is will have an impact on how one might design various measures to deal with the traffic going through the local neighborhoods. That I mean, it's essentially a question of understanding what the threat to the neighborhood is to understand where the defense is. Is that basically what we're talking about here? Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, I think it is. I think that there are some measures that can be implemented for traffic calling purposes. I think if we were to, for instance, identify some type of traffic calming devices for Margaret Street, I think that that could address existing conditions that may occur with traffic that wants to get back to Thorndike Field and could also address the impact of additional traffic from this development that may use Margaret Street. Conversely, you could have an increase in traffic on Little John Street for entering movements that you might miss, but by suggesting that that traffic isn't gonna enter at Little John and will instead obey the turn restrictions and come in at Birch or Margaret. I think it's just, I don't think it's an either or situation. I think it's something that we need to probably spend a little more time studying it with attack and with beta and with DPW and engineering as well to make sure that whatever designs we come up with there are appropriate and will address what people's concerns are. Mr. Chair, I have one more question. This is for Mr. Muse. I noticed that the attack hearing must be almost a month ago now. There was a few minutes spent discussing the possibility of providing some sort of access across the pedestrian bridge across route two. That came up subsequently in a conversation with the Conservation Commission. And I noticed that we haven't heard about that tonight or at least I missed it if we have. And I was wondering whether that's an idea that is in play or whether it's been resolved one way or the other whether that's possible or not. We did have discussion of that. A couple of issues involved is the condition of the overpass itself. I don't think it's in very good condition. It may be safe, but I don't think it's a pleasant way to cross route two. The other issue would be getting people from the site where the building is across to route two. Because of all the wetlands in there and other open space, it may be difficult to identify a pathway across there. And then it would be questionable about how many people would use it to cross over that bridge. Obviously bicycles would still have to use the Minuteman Bikeway. And I think that a lot of most pedestrians would probably can go down Dorothy to the Minuteman Bikeway. Yeah, and if I could just follow up on that, Mr. Hanlon. We're not proposing any access through those undeveloped areas either to that pedestrian overpass or on route two or two directly to the bikeway. Thank you. I did take a specific trip to the overpass to try it out last spring. And while it is intact, there are definitely holes and the steps are surprisingly steep. So it's really not a very, unfortunately not a very usable bridge. Question about the traffic counts and just sort of trying to figure out a little bit. So currently feeding Little John Street, you sort of go a half a block each way off of Little John. There's about 71 dwelling units that effectively feed onto that street. And then by the, if you have a using the no-build, in the morning that generates 24 people turning left off of Little John and six people turning right off of Little John on the lake. In the build condition that 71 units is increased to 247 units. And the counts are increased to 37 turning left and it's still the same six turning right. While the amount of units is almost three and a half times what it was before. And so I just wanted to get a sense from you as to sort of where this kind of an analysis doesn't, isn't an accurate reflection of how things should be because looking at it, if we're using the neighborhood as a sampling for how traffic moves and who drives and who doesn't drive, why is that not a good model? Yeah, and I think we assumed that some portion of traffic that wanted to head out to Route 2 and wanted to head to points West would make that left turn for Little John. Whereas traffic that wanted to turn right and head out towards Mass Ave would actually go through Dorothy and then out to Margaret Street and make the right turn at Lake Street either from Margaret or from Birch. And I think the idea there is that that's what traffic would do to avoid any queuing that might occur on Lake Street. So those excess trips are just moving through the adjacent neighborhood rather than coming straight out and on the lake? Yeah, and again, I think it's, every day might be a little different. You might have, there might be an increase in the right turn movement of zero vehicles one day and it might be an increase of 10 or 12 vehicles another day, but I think that in general, the traffic that would choose to get out to Route 2 would come directly out to Little John and traffic that would go out to Mass Ave would most likely cut through Dorothy Road to Margaret Street. And I don't know if this is a, it's not particular to traffic, but in a transportation thought, has there been any thought to on-site how to handle visitor traffic and visitor parking in particular? You know, the current allocation for parking is kind of high, but it was a high density of people and the expectation that at some point we're gonna be able to have people come over again, there will be probably a fair number of visitor trips and I just want to sort of get a sense as to whether the parking related to that is gonna be absorbed on-site or if it's gonna be absorbed back in the neighborhood. Yeah, I think that we'll probably, we can take a look at that to see if there's, if we should, if we can designate some of the spaces in the front of the building, for instance, for or visitors, but that's a good question. That's something that we can look at. Okay, I appreciate that. Other questions from the board at this point? Mr. O'Rourke. Either Mr. Thornton, in terms of when you do with these assessments, do you look at all on the ability of emergency vehicles to access the area based on the traffic data, particularly the peak hours? Or is that something that's kind of, you can extrapolate from the data you already have? Or do we get that information from some other source through this process on the ability of emergency vehicles to access, particularly during the peak hours? It's not something that we typically review or typically look at. We do note that the general physical dimensions of the road are, if they're large enough that the traffic in, in particular on a two-lane road, if traffic can move to either side to permit emergency vehicles to get through. But in general, there are some times when emergency vehicles really create their own path by moving congestion and moving traffic out of the way. I guess just one final point. When you do these assessments, you question if you, Mr. Thornton or Mr. Lucas, and you look at a situation like this with, you know, Lake Street feeding this neighborhood and getting congested, when you look at the traffic counts, and do you ever get to a point and say, you know, X number is just not feasible. It's simply not feasible in, you know, in what you do as expert work. And if so, is that number something that's calculable here? Yeah, I think, I think if you, if you get to the point where, where there's, you know, gridlock and congestion everywhere and traffic is not able to turn into any of the side streets, then, the location, the streets are at capacity. That where the increases from this development are, are, you know, a handful of trips, you know, trip every couple of minutes during the peak hours. We're not at that point with this development. Yeah, I would agree with that. There's, you know, in some instances, there's a sensitivity analysis that can be done to find that tipping point. This, the minimal amount of traffic that's projected to be generated doesn't, doesn't meet that threshold. And even in a congested, in a congested heavily traveled network, those relatively low numbers will be absorbed into that with little, you know, little discernible impact. I would also say that, that, you know, for developments that are, where the density is a little higher and where they're located close to alternative transportation near, you know, within a quarter mile of a, of a major transit station, you know, the development itself is the mitigation because just by locating, just by its location, that development is going to be reducing traffic outside of the area because traffic wants to come in. And, you know, regional traffic wants to come into this area. These, these residents and the traffic associated with these units doesn't, is going to have a number of options. It doesn't have to have, they don't have to use personal vehicles. They, they, they're going to, there's really going to be, I think, a draw for residents that are looking at alternative transportation that want to be able to bike to work, that want to be able to use transit, that want to be able to walk to, to the red line and walk the other way into shops in town. And, and that's, that's the type of, you know, those are the types of, of developments and the, the type of, of planning that really helps to, to reduce the, the regional congestion and, and starts to, starts to make a dent in, in the congestion on the major regional roadways. Other questions from the board? Mr. Revilech. A question from Mr. Muse. Earlier, you said that, the TAC had looked at the number of parking spaces and the number of units and calculated approximately 1.3 spaces for unit, which I believe you said you felt that it was rather high. Just out of curiosity, what, you know, what kind, what would you have considered a number that would be not high? The executive committee was thinking of something in the range of one space per unit. Given that there's a high percentage of people either walking, biking or using transit, I would, as Scott was saying, people would be attracted to living in this development if they didn't particularly have, if they didn't even want a car or certainly if they only wanted one car because they, can you, most people don't want to have more cars than they need to get around. And a quick brief follow up for Mr. Thornton. So trip generation is based on the number of units or the number of parking spaces. Number of units. You start, so the number of units is your starting point. Thank you. So another issue in this neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods is people coming into the neighborhood during the day to find daytime parking on the street and avoid paying the rates at A.L. White. And I don't know if it's necessarily really a question, but just to put it forward to the applicant that that's a known issue. And that is something that they may want to consider. Should the project go forward? Is how to address daytime drop-ins? That it's a good point. It's something that I've noticed when I've gone to the neighborhood for site visits. And it's something that we'll take a look at when we're evaluating how to structure parking and how to, you know, the parking is going to be reserved for residents. And like I mentioned, there might be some small visitor parking area, but that's it. Okay, other questions from the board? Mr. Mills. Again, in regards to the parking, there's a recommended from the traffic advisory committee of one space per apartment unit. Is that units or bedrooms? That's units. We don't know what, well, I don't think we know what the bedroom mix is in the development. I think that's a relative parameter. How many bedrooms are going to be constructed? Mr. Thornton, do we know that figure? I think we do. I mean, the, as my recollection is that the parking, the number of parking spaces provided was calculated to be in compliance with our current zoning rules, at which due base parking requirements for apartments upon the number of bedrooms. Thank you, Steve. At this point, before I open it up to public comment, I just want to address a topic that had come up earlier and specifically how we address it. So there was a question about whether we felt that there was a higher number of potential families with children living in the development and whether that would impact the traffic on the site. And just to reiterate that under federal and state guidance that families are a protected class in regards to residences. And so it is never appropriate to, you know, just to distinguish out families and in some way to make them feel uncomfortable in the development, but in regards to this discussion, I felt it was important that we discussed making sure that the traffic counts are accurate and that would be impacted by the possible mix of ages in the development. But in regards to other aspects of the project, the fact that there's families versus non-families in the residences is not a topic that we can entertain at all. So thank you. With that, if you are signed in through Zoom from the Participants tab, you can use the raise hand feature to draw attention to yourself. If you are calling in by phone, you can use star nine to accomplish the same thing. And if you are just on the screen, I will do my very best to try to find you waving frantically. But on the list, I do the first person is Jeff Maxidus. You go ahead and unmute yourself. Thank you. Yep. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm Jeff Maxidus. I'm also the vice chair of the TAC. So I was involved in the executive committee review of the project. So I just wanted to add on the parking issue why we commented on the 1.1 space per unit. Because it is the current thinking of MAPC. They have a recent study that was done within the last two years called the right fit or perfect fit parking. And it was done primarily for communities within the 128 Boston metro area. And Arlington was part of that study, which had a couple of sample sites within that study. And really the recommendation of MAPC for communities in the metro Boston area, particularly transit oriented developments that parking space shouldn't be looked at as minimums anymore, like a lot of parking zoning regulations are, but as maximums. And in this area, parking maximums of one space per unit, that should be the maximum or it could even be lower. A lot of people living in multi-family units these days don't wanna have many vehicles and don't wanna pay for parking if they're not using those spaces. So that's where our suggestion or recommendation came from. So it was based on our collective judgment and transportation working in the industry, but it was also based on the recent MAPC report talking about developments exactly like this development is. Thank you. Thank you. Do not see any other names on the board. I'm looking at the pictures, everyone, see if anyone's trying to gain attention. Lisa Friedman, go ahead and unmute yourself. Yeah, it's Lisa Friedman and I live at, not a problem. I live at 63 Mott Street, which is essentially in a butter to the development. And I'd like to make a couple of comments as someone who actually moved to this neighborhood because of the proximity to the T. I found out very quickly when I was working in Boston that it was unsafe for me to walk to the T at night. And so I ended up driving there or driving to the garage. I think there will be a lot of people like that as well. And what that means, and what my experience is, is that instead of turning right onto Lake Street during rush hour, you turn left onto Lake Street. You turn left onto Lake Street from Wilson, Dorothy, Burch, and Margaret. And then you speed up as quickly as you can to get to Route 2. It is a hazard to drive left onto Lake Street during rush hour. And at the moment, and I have a really hard time believing that there are only one to four cars that are in line to move onto Lake Street during rush hour, because before the pandemic, when I drove onto Lake Street, there were always at least four cars in front of me on Wilson Street, not on Dorothy Street. And people on Lake Street do not stop. So you are just a sitting duck, and I'm always concerned that I'm going to get rear-ended. And in fact, the comparison to Vox on 2 ignores the multiple traffic accidents that have happened on Route 2 since Vox on 2 was developed. And I think that that would be really important to notice. I also am kind of a little bit upset that the developers in the town haven't reached out to those of us who are neighbors, because a lot of us have been worried about this development. We've been participating in as many meetings as we can to give you our opinions. We understand that there has to be development, even though many of us are kind of appalled that it's going to be on a wetland. And so I would really encourage you to talk with us, because I think all of us can give you very personal experiences in terms of the traffic impact and the traffic experiences that we have right now. Someone said earlier something about the development being a threat to the neighborhood. I think it will be a threat to the neighborhood and it will be a threat to anyone who's driving either way on Lake Street. Thank you. Thank you. Matt McKinnon, go ahead and unmute yourself. Yes, good evening. I just wanted a clarification on what I... If you could just give your name and address directly. Sure, my name is Matt McKinnon and I live on Nine Little John Street. Thank you. And I wanted a clarification on what I thought I heard where they talked about not changing the existing signage on Lake Street, where there's an exemption that you may not turn right onto Little John, which is currently talked about as the driveway into the proposed development, but to continue on two more blocks to take our right onto Birch Street and then continue on into the development. Did I hear that correctly? Mr. Thurton? Mr. Thurton, can you address that question? Sorry, I couldn't unmute myself. Yeah, so right, so the current, the revised traffic analysis does assume that the prohibition would be in place. We're not recommending any changes to it and that traffic would head down to Birch Street to access the development. Okay, so then they would snake back down Mary Street before taking a left onto Little John Street or take some number of different spidery ways into the development? Yeah, yeah, they could come to Mary, to Dorothy or to some combination of streets to get back to the development. So it seems kind of like chaos to me if a bunch of different cars taking different routes. Presently there's no restrictions on parking on either side of the street, on any of the streets in the community, except when you get closer to the parking area for the soccer fields, where there is a restriction for parking if you're going to take public transportation, but nobody really follows that. We get people parking from, you know, coming to find parking to park there to either use the bike path or to go to air life without paying parking fees. So you get people parking on both sides and they're small streets that really cramps things. So I think having more people in the neighborhood, more cars, more vehicular traffic, parking, driving, both directions with people also wanting to go to air life without paying for parking, people who want to use the bike path. And if you have people parking on both sides of the road, you kind of have to snake through this neighborhood. If two people are parked on one side directly across from each other, it's very hard to snake through. And in fact, if somebody's parked in front of my driveway, I can't exit my driveway unless they give me some space. If you look at my little John and come out here and park directly in front of my driveway, but across the street and then have me try to exit my driveway, it'd be very difficult. So I'm wondering, are there going to be existing changes made to the streets that connect this development to say whether they're going to be one way, changes the direction of the streets or if there's going to be some limitations on whether people can park on both sides of the street? It just seems like there's a lot of traffic considerations that should be made that aren't being thought about. Well, thank you for that. I guess I would ask Mr. Muse, is that something that the town considers as a part of development sometimes the changes to either the directionality of streets or the on-screen parking access? I'm sorry, you're on mute. Sorry about that. That would be part of looking at whether excuse me, traffic calming measures might be put in. You might be able to allow people to turn on to, turn in, but then have traffic calming measures on like Dorothy Street or Mary Street, so people don't cut through the rest of the neighborhood. And part of that could be looking at making segments of some of the streets one way. Using parking does slow traffic down and a lot of times people like that when they feel the traffic is speeding through their neighborhood. There are a number of different measures that could be looked at. And we haven't done anything to suggest what those might be. Although there was an experiment on Mary Street earlier this year, testing out some measures that might turn into a more permanent approach to reducing cut through and cutting speeds through that area. Yes, can I comment on that please? Mr. McHen, please. Yes, so if the traffic calming test that happened over the summer were to be in place more permanently and people are coming to take a right off of Lake Street onto Burt Street, they'll hit that traffic calming setup, which would probably force them down the next route that they could take, which would then cause traffic to flow in a different way through the neighborhood than it usually doesn't, which would then impact neighbors that might not be used to that sort of traffic. We saw this happen when we put up that traffic calming thing. People would think the road was closed and they would go and flow down all the way down Little John Street when they were trying to connect up to not thinking of, when they're trying to flow through the neighborhood and bypass Lake Street and they see that traffic calming thing, they think the road is closed, they ended up flowing two more blocks down I'm sorry, I don't have a map in front of me, I'm forgetting the route name. Dorothy Street. So the traffic calming measures made the people on Mary Street super happy, but then people would be forced, you know, pseudo forced down Little John Street onto Dorothy Street and the neighbors on Dorothy Street were upset because they weren't used to that sort of traffic that the neighborhood residents on Mary Street were used to and had complained about a lot in the past. So would we need traffic calming on Dorothy Road as well and what kind of impact would that have on the development? Thank you. Robert D. Biasi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Robert D. Biasi, 29 Little John Street direct a butter to this project. I have several concerns, one of them being that my driveway is the one that's right there at the entrance, proposed entrance to this development. What is the impact going to be to my residents here? As well as Scott, you had mentioned earlier that there was a reduction in units of 41. By my calculations, it's 31 from 207 to 176. And I'm just concerned how we've got a drop of 60 to 64% change based on that. You know, as many of these neighbors in this area have stated, you know, getting on and off of Lake Street is a challenge during any time of the day in a normal type of setting, not in a COVID setting, in a normal setting. And you could be three, four cars back. And it is a challenge to get across to go East. My biggest concern, I guess you would say would be what's going to happen to this quiet little neighborhood with the kids that are usually in the street playing, whether it be street hockey or whatever, with Little John and Dorothy turning into a raceway of at least 250 to 300 cars, you know, given in an afternoon. You have concerns of the neighbors, the children and the impact to the whole neighborhood itself. We've been here for over 35 years, this home, abutting to this property. Nice quiet, peaceful area. On the last one on the street, I have one neighbor right now. That's it. And nobody behind me, nobody beside me on my left. And now I'm going to end up with, I don't know, 180 people plus visitors in cars in front of my home on a regular basis. And then during construction, I'm going to end up with trucks idling in front of my house from 630 to six at night. I have some major concerns about that. The property value of mine right now is going to drop like a rock. Other concerns obviously would be during the winter time with snow removal as it is. You know, you look at what's going on on this neighborhood as it is, they use that corner to pile all the snow. Now it's going to change into something totally different. I feel that this whole development, you know, you look at the Vox over there, they have route to access. Well, they picked up the property from the Martinetti family. Martinetti family had Faces Disco, they had a hotel, they had a gas station, and they had a Bola Drone. The hotel only had 60 to 80 rooms in it and it had its own curb cut from DOT. Faces Disco had its own curb cut from DOT. Bola Drone had two curb cuts and the gas station had one. The hotel to me wasn't that big. It was only 80 units. And now you're talking about 176 units. That's twice the size of the hotel. To me, it would seem like you would be qualifying for curb cut from route two. And in terms of the egress on route two, it's harder to slow down to get into those parking lots than it is when you're getting on route two to go west traveling at, I think it's about 40 miles an hour is the speed limit. To turn into a new curb cut. So in my eyes, I think that the curb cut for route two is actually going to solve a lot of these problems. Because as Vox has the curb cuts from route two, it also has the back passage of the access roads behind it. So the traffic is being mitigated in several different areas. Here we have the traffic leaving one entranceway past my home every single day. So I have some large concerns about this. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, just a reminder, our meeting times out at 1030, we have about 15 minutes. Oh, thank you. We don't have it till midnight? No. Okay, looking at images. Don't see anyone else clamoring. So not seeing anyone else looking to comment. I'm going to go ahead and close public comment for this evening. And I had a question for Attorney Haverty. So as far as write up of the decision, how do we include issues in relation to traffic and transportation where they don't specifically relate to waivers? Well, you can still have conditions in your decision that aren't related to waivers as long as they're the type of conditions that would typically be imposed in a site plan approval decision or subdivision approval or anything of that nature. What I would suggest is that you have, you instruct your peer review consultants to provide a list of proposed traffic conditions that it believes would be appropriate. And we can go from there. Okay, thank you. Welcome. Other questions or comments from the board? Chairman, I have one thing that's just in addition to what Attorney Haverty just said. One of the things that is striking when you read through housing appeals committee decisions is that individual conditions that are imposed assuming that in the ensemble, they make the project uneconomic which is not an assumption I'd necessarily make. But where that is the case, the town has a burden to show pretty specifically that there's a local need for those conditions and sort of saying generally everybody knows doesn't really cut it once you really focus in on that. And so I just like to encourage people as they think about ourselves and our advisors. As we think about that to think exactly about what it is you tell a housing appeals committee if you had to defend that, commission what the evidence is behind it and be really pretty thorough about what it is. There are a lot of things that are mentioned that are part of our hearings and so forth that if you think about them in that way, you realize that it never will enter into a defensible decision and other things where you may need to just do more thinking in order to be able to support them. So I just encourage all of us to be going through those analysis as we think about what the appropriate conditions would be to protect the local needs and how we could prove that they're genuinely necessary. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Okay. So at this point, given the hour, I think we will continue this hearing, the next scheduled date calendar. The next schedule date will be Tuesday, January 26th at 7.30 p.m. So I move to continue this hearing on the comprehensive permit for the Thorndike Place Development until Tuesday, January 26th, 2021 at 7.30 p.m. Have a second. Thank you, Mr. Rourke. I vote. Mr. Ravillac. Hi. Mr. Rourke. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Mr. Dupont. Hi. Mr. Mills. Hi. Mr. Ford. Hi. Thank you. Chair votes aye. So we are, that is continued at vote 26. All right. Well, thank you all for your participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting. I especially wish to thank Rick Ballerilli and Vincent Leith, their assistant in prepping and hosting this online meeting. Please note the purpose of the board's reporting in the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of the proceedings. It is our understanding that the recordings made by ACMI will be available on them and at acmi.tv within the coming days. If anyone has comments or recommendations, please send them via email to zbaatown.arlington.ma.us. That email address is also listed on the Zoning Board of Appeals website to conclude tonight's meeting. I would like to ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hamlin. Second? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mills. All those board members in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you all so much for your participation tonight. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you.