 The appointed hour of 6pm, having been reached, I call this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals to order. My name is Steve Judge. As ZBA chair, I wanna welcome everybody to this meeting. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access this meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. Additionally, the meeting is recorded and may be viewed via the town of Amherst's YouTube channel and the ZBA webpage. In accordance with provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 40A, in Article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. We will begin with a roll call of ZBA members and panel for tonight's meeting. Steve Judge, I'm present. Ms. Parks. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. Mr. Meadows. Here. Mr. Gilbert. Here. Also attending in the public hearing tonight is Eric Cochran, an alternate member of the ZBA, Maureen Pollack, Planner, and Dave Waskevitz, Senior Building Inspector of the town. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 40A of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw is section 10.38. Specific findings from that section must be made for our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair, if a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised hand function on their Zoom app. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address for the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where the information about the project and input from the public is gathered. This will be followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comments. If the board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of a hearing to file a decision. For a variance, the board has 100 days from the date of filing to file its decisions. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed in the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20 day appeal period for an agreed party to contest the decision with a relevant judicial body of the Superior Court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of D to take effect. Tonight's agenda, public hearing, ZBA FY 2022-11, Fearing Sunset LLC represented by Thomas R. Reedy requests a special permit to allow the construction of two apartment buildings, four duplex buildings with a total of 17 residential units, including two affordable units on approximately 2.04 acres of property. Under sections 3.01, 3.3211, 3.323, 5.10, 6.29, 10.38 of the zoning bylaw located at 164 and 174 Sunset Avenue, map 11C, parcels nine and 299. General residents, RG and neighborhood residents are in zoning districts. After that, there'll be general public comment and there'll be other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours and then we'll adjourn. The first order of business tonight is ZBA FY 2022-11, Fearing Sunset LLC. Are there any disclosures? I have one. I received an email when I opened the email, read the first sentence of the email, it was obvious to me that it was about this project. I stopped reading it, closed the email, returned, had a response to the sender saying that, I can't read this email if outside the scope of the hearing. Sent that email on to staff for notice. I don't think it affects the way in which I'm going to decide this matter or I can still be dispassionate about an email I didn't read. So that's my disclosure. Does anybody else have any disclosures? If not, we have a list of applicants submissions that I want to run through. Yeah. Mr. Chair, perhaps Mr. Meadows has forgotten he wanted to make a disclosure. Yes, I'm sorry. No, it's okay. I should disclose that Barry Roberts, the owner of this property and developer is also the landlord for my business in town. I submitted some information to Maureen and the town clerk. Yes. Yeah. I don't think it will affect anything as far as my judgment's concerned. Any other disclosures? All right. I want to review the applicant submissions. We have a cover letter dated February 22nd, a special permit application, project narrative prepared by Bacon and Wilson, a management plan, additional information required for apartments. We have received a complaint response plan, a construction logistics plan, a timeline schedule, a traffic assessment prepared by Sand Tech Consulting Services and dated February 25th, 2022, a copy of a residential lease agreement. We have a site plan set, set, prepared and stamped by Philip Henry of a civil design group that includes, I think 15 or 13, excuse me, 13 sheets. We have an L series of drawings stamped by Andrew Bone, our place alliance dated February 18th, that has six sheets. We have a building for building type A, one of the duplex units. We have a plan stamp prepared and stamped by Jonathan Salvon of Coon Riddle Architects dated March 5th, 2022, that has five sheets. We have a similar four sheet layout of type B units. There are four of those by Jonathan Salvon of Coon Riddle dated March 5th. We've had a, I guess there's nine sheets on the B4 units, not four, nine sheets. We have for the type C units, there are five of those units. We have 11 sheets of plans again prepared by Coon Riddle. We have rendered views prepared by Coon Riddle dated March 7th, model views, temporary sign plans, stormwater management report, operational maintenance plan for residential development prepared by the civil design group, proposed fence types and images, and proposed findings from the applicants. We have no applicant waiver requests from plan requirements, is that correct? Okay. And we have staffs, the following staff submissions. The project application report dated April 27th, draft application report dated April 27th. We have a town of Amherst local district, historic district commission certificate of appropriateness dated December 21st, 2021. Comments from the police department, the planning board, the fire department, the town engineer, the town tree warden and the public shade tree committed a committee all dated in various April dates. And we have one public comments mission by Connie Gillan. It's an email dated April 12th, 2022. We had a site visit on Thursday, April 21st. I wanna just review that briefly. All members of the sitting panel were at that site visit. We looked at the tree in the northwest corner that was proposed to be saved. We reviewed the site plan on onsite. We heard plans to relocate the current houses. We observed the current sewer line that is proposed to be moved. We clarified that the total number of bedrooms in the project were 59. We walked the property, inquired about the elevation and fill required. We observed where new buildings were to be located and the common areas were to be located. We looked at the proposed fence line. We inquired about snow removal, inquired about marketing of the rental units to families and the cooperation with the university to encourage faculty and staff. We asked about how that cooperative efforts were going to be pursued. We had questions about snow removal and we had inquiries about parking and driveways. Were there anything else that we talked about at that site visit that people want to raise and note here for the public meeting? Okay. And lastly, I want to announce my intention tonight for this hearing. I don't think it's going to be possible for the application to be fully covered. But I do want to accomplish the following. I want to hear the presentation. It provides time for board members to ask questions and seek clarification from the applicant. I want to provide sufficient opportunity for public comment and allow time for the applicant to respond to the public comment. And I want to allow board members time to raise any additional questions, seek additional information and suggest possible conditions for consideration by the board at the next public hearing on this matter. So that's my plan for this evening. Once we go into the applicant's presentation, I hope board members will hold off on questions until the end of the presentation unless something needs to be clarified for you to understand the presentation. Then please raise your hand. I'm sure everyone in the room or I will make sure to let you get a clarification of a matter, but I think it just flows easier if we have the whole presentation. Write down your questions and then we'll go through and give every member of the board more than sufficient time to ask questions of the applicant and to raise any questions and or clarifications you need. And I'll make sure that everyone has enough time to do that. So are the questions from anybody on the board about our plans for tonight? Okay, if not, Mr. Reedy, are you presenting for the applicant? It's showtime, Mr. Chair. Yes. Let's have your name and address. Sure, yeah. And then you may proceed. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I'm Tom Reedy. I'm going to turn it with Bacon Wilson here in Amherst here on behalf of Fearing Sunset LLC, which is the applicant for the special permit as the chair noted. With me this evening, we've got the whole crew. So we've got Barry Roberts, who's going to be the manager of the site. He's a manager of Fearing Sunset. I think his reputation probably precedes him as does his name. We've got Matt Leidner from Civil Design Group. He's one of the civil engineers on this project. We've got Jonathan Salvon from Cune Riddle Architects, the architect for the project. And then Andy Bone from Place Alliance. He's the landscape architect for the project. And so, maybe just drilling down a little bit, Mr. Chair, of our presentation, I think what we'd like to do is talk a little bit about where we are, where we've been, and then where we expect to go. Sight and stormwater, we're going to have Matt Leidner talk about, and then he'll turn it over to Andy Bone to talk about landscaping and lighting. We'll turn it over to Jonathan Salvon for architecture and then back to yours truly for some traffic management and marketing. And so that's the presentation. I know that you had asked the board to write down their questions. We're fine with that. If there are pressing issues, by all means, feel free to stop us and ask, but we'll try to get through it and we've got a PowerPoint. And we also, each of our professionals have their own design sets that I'll probably turn to to have them explain. And so, I guess, with that, we'll, I'm gonna start sharing my screen. Let's see how I can do this Maureen. This is probably good enough. Okay, so if you can see my screen, I don't know that I accomplished what I was going to to have all the other professionals share it. However, they have their presentations ready, so it'll probably be better for them to drive anyway. So first, I just wanna give a little bit of sight context. And so... Hey, Tom, you're just sharing your desktop screen. It's not showing any screens. Do you guys like the photo that's there? It's beautiful. Thank you very much. Yeah, let me try it again. How does this one look? Better? Thank you. Okay, thanks, Andy. It's like you have something in your teeth and one of your friends tells you, so I appreciate it. Okay, so just to orient everyone, the site is at the corner of Fearing Street, Sunset Ave, and Amherst. Part of the local historic Lincoln-Sunted local historic district. So this project was conceived probably over a year ago. We've had discussions with the town. We've gone through several iterations of the plan. Mr. Chair, Mr. Judge, are you raising your hand? Am I doing something wrong? Maureen, do you want me to stop or keep going? Yes, Steve, is everything okay? You raised your hand. We can't hear you. Should Tom proceed? Can you hear Tom? Lord, could you give us a thumbs up if you would like Tom to proceed or to...? I mean, Maureen, for public hearing purposes, we obviously want to make sure that he can hear. Yeah, I don't think he can because he would put his thumbs up or down. Okay, interesting. Well, please excuse this brief moment. Let me try to free this up. You can't hear. Perhaps my best advice for you, Steve, is to log out of the meeting and rejoin. And if that doesn't work, it might be you reboot your computer. Oh, he can't hear me, okay. Oh, smart. And Maureen, I'm gonna wait till he gets back just for Mullen's rule purposes, et cetera. Maureen, perhaps you should give him a call. If I... Well, for anyone just joining us, Steve Judge is having some technical difficulties. And we'll see if he can hear us now. He's smiling. I can hear you now. I can hear you now. Yeah. Well, perfect. The building commissioner just showed up. I think we're ready to start the meeting now. And I was the only one... Tom, take it away. And I was the only one that couldn't hear. I'm sorry. Okay, how's this? You can hear me. You can see the aerial of the screen. I got the whole thing. Okay, wonderful. Okay, where did we leave off? I just wanna make sure you get the whole presentation. Or I'll just... Perhaps start over again. I think that's a good idea. I didn't hear any of it. Okay, so there's the introductions who everybody will be introduced as they go along. So I'll save the balance of folks, the agony of hearing that again. And so I was just talking a little bit about context and site orientation. So the site, the yellow box here is 174 Sunset. The blue box just to the south of it is 164 Sunset. The project's location is at the corner of Fearing and Sunset. As you see, this is a dashed line. The dashed line is because it's actually UMass property. So the town right of way stops at the westerly side of that intersection of the Sunset Ab intersection. It's also part of the Lincoln Sunset local historic district. As part of this, we have to go through the local historic district commission to receive what's called a certificate of appropriateness to make sure that the design, the architecture, the materials, et cetera were appropriate for that local historic district. That's something as you'll see in your packet that we have done. We accomplished that. And this project is, the property was acquired at the end of 2020. And so this project was conceived, I'd say, shortly thereafter, maybe even a little bit before thinking about its location and the potential use for residential redevelopment. It came in a previous iteration when we first went to the local historic district of a 17 unit townhouse. Layout, and so there was a couple of strings of townhouses along Sunset. And then the whole back row was also townhouses. We had an above ground stormwater system, detention basin, and no amenity space. And so the project that you're gonna see tonight has certainly evolved from that initial project. And I'll give a lot of credit to the design team. Andy, Matt, Phil, who's his civil design partner and Jonathan Salabon and Barry Roberts for the directive to make this fit into the neighborhood. I'll make a point to say these sites, it's about two acres altogether, has additional density. And so if Barry really wanted to, he could put additional units there. But instead I think he's trying to be sensitive to this location as a transition between the higher density Southwest storms and those smaller lots properties to the Northeast of this property, you know, right over here. And the single family homes and there's some duplexes, some larger fraternities, larger houses to the South. And I think he wants to respect the existence of these sites or this site at the end of it as a transition. And so the project you'll see tonight tries to embody that through the design. We've also been through the shade tree committee and I think the upshot of that because there's a process and shade tree committee made a suggestion, there was an objection. So then it goes to the town manager, the town manager, then has to make a ruling. He has not done so yet. However, Barry has offered to keep the tree on that northeasterly corner of the site, which I'll get to in a moment and maybe I'll get to right now. So this is just a close up. You see the Southwest storms just to the north of the site. This is the Amherst Creamery building to the east. You've got a rental property just to the South. All this backland here is actually owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This is all owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And then you've got, you know, several smaller dense lots of condominium, non-unoccupied condominium here. And this is the tree that we're talking about. So you're standing in the middle of the intersection. Your back is to the northeast. You've got fearing to the right, which is the private way owned by the university and then sunset running to the south. So to get back to the public shade tree portion of it, this is the tree that hearing the neighbors talking with the town counselors for this precinct, Mr. Roberts has said that and with the tree warden, there is a way to keep the plans the way that they are, but to mitigate the impact on this tree by, no, I probably won't do it justice, but by adding certain fill, adding certain relief valves for the root system because the site is going to be raised in this area. There's another tree here that's going to be coming down. As a result of there's just going to be a sewer line upgrade. So the town, the DPW has asked for that upgrade. So as part of that, this tree here is going to come down. And so while we haven't got a firm letter from the town manager yet, it's our sense that this tree stays, this tree goes. So that's the second piece, not only local historic district, we've also been to the public shade tree committee. And then thirdly, we've been to the planning board and we thought it was a very good meeting. We got some suggestions. We had a great discussion with them. And I know that you have some of those suggestions or discussion points in your packet. And we're happy to address those later on. I don't know that we need to go line by line, but we can certainly address it later on. So now a little bit about the site. So obviously we were in the middle of the fearing sunset intersection. This is looking south along sunset. You've got fearing to the right, that's private way. This is about the property line. You've got a crosswalk here and crosswalk here. And then you've got, so this is 174 sunset with your back to the south looking northwest. You see, you've got the university of Massachusetts dormitories here. One of the things to note is that this house, we have to go through the historic commission here in town. We've submitted for a demolition application. We would be taking down this structure, but keeping this structure, there's a porch on the back that would be coming down. This structure would be relocated to 46 fearing street, which is literally just down the road from here. So this structure is going to be staying in Amherst. It is currently a single family home, not unoccupied, it has four tenants in it. A little further to the south is 164 sunset. Again, we've submitted a demolition application. The breezeway and the garage will not be coming with us, but this house will be moving and it's likely to be moving over to Hadley. And so both of these houses are going to be saved. It's also a non-owner occupied rental property single family home. And then we've got one with your back towards sunset. You've got 164, you can see 174 in the distance and then you've got the southwest dormitories above. So I'm not going to steal too much of the thunder from the design team, but I do want to show maybe three renderings. This first one, this is of the proposal. And so it's an aerial view. You see the southwest dormitories to your right or to the north of the site. You've got the creamery to the south and you've got a rental property not unoccupied to the west. And what we're proposing are 17 units broken up into six buildings, four duplexes. So you've got a duplex here, a duplex here, a duplex here and a duplex here. And then you've got what's considered under code as apartments. And so you'll have four units in this with a unit here, two units in the middle and a unit here. And then you'll have five units, another apartment in this building. You have a unit, so there'll be street entrances for one, two, three units. And then from the back, there are two flats, two bedroom flats that just take up that lower level. As I'm sure Matt will talk to you about with the grading of the site. You know, I like to think of this as like three different tiers. So you've got, as you'll see a sidewalk in the public way. You've got sidewalks going into each of these units. And then you drop down essentially a story to this next flat area here where you've got entrances to these units. And then in the back here, there are full basements. So not to get too much ahead of myself to talk about use, occupancy, et cetera. This is intended to be a multifamily mixed occupant development. And so what we've done is we've had conversations with the University of Massachusetts, with their athletic department. They endorse and what they're going to do is they can't enter into leases. It's the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But they are going to include this on their website. They're gonna include it in the packet that they provide to new faculty. Because as you'll see through the floor plan and through kind of the battle to the presentation, we've designed this for mixed occupants, but primarily families. And so, you've got 43 parking spaces in the middle here supporting all of the residential dwelling units. And then you've got, this is the second tier. And then again, there's a grade change down to this back piece, which is an amenity area. And so the proposal is for community garden space for a seating area, a shaded seating area for a natural exploration area, and then for some open space. I'll show you a view from the Northeast, again. And the landscaping here is the landscaping that Andy will talk about in a little bit. And then we've got one more above a little bit from the Southwest. So you've got the amenity space in the back, community gardens and gardens, natural exploration area. You can see that these units have backyards. They've got fencing, they've got screening. And then we'll get to a place where we're showing you the front yards of these units at the front. So I think with that, before I take too much of other people's presentations, I'll stop sharing and Matt, what I'll do is I'll ask you if you wanna... I've got the erosion in, or I got the demolition plan. I've got the site plan. I've got the grading plan and utility plan. If you want me to put those up or if you wanna drive by all means, I'll let you go and drive. Tom, thank you. Good evening, board members. Matt Leiden with Civil Design Group. Tom, I'll take you up on the offer if you don't mind sharing those plans. Matt, just give us your address just give us your address for the record. Absolutely, 21 High Street in North Andover, Massachusetts. Thank you. So Tom, if you wanna go to the site plan, maybe first that that's probably the most appropriate. So I know we have a lot to go through tonight. So I'll kind of just breeze through everything and happy in the end or along the way as appropriate to, if you wanna stop me I'll answer any questions, happy to do so. So I'll just kind of dive right in here. So as Tom explained, 17 units, two-acre roughly site just over two acres. The units are contained within six buildings. I think as Tom had mentioned, four of the buildings are duplex buildings and then two of the buildings are apartment buildings. There are two full access driveways proposed, one on Sunset Avenue and then the other on Fearing Street and a total of 43 parking spaces in the proposed parking lot. So as Tom had alluded to during the presentation, I wanna talk about the third dimension a little bit here, which is the grading. So the site as it exists today, it slopes from east to west. So Sunset Avenue is the high side of the site and then the rear portion, which abuts the Commonwealth of Mass Land is the low portion of the property. And so our challenge as civil engineers here in designing this was really to develop a layout that worked to the extent possible in harmony with the land. And so one of the main aspects of that was to locate the parking lot vertically in a manner that worked with both the grade of Sunset Avenue and a Fearing Street. And so optimizing the grade of that parking lot was really key to this design and sort of the rest of the pieces kind of fell into place after that. And so the kind of starting a Sunset Avenue working our way back, as Tom had mentioned, it's sort of a three tier design here. So Sunset Avenue's the highest part, the frontage is the highest part of the site and the driveway coming in from Sunset grades down into the site and the parking lot is at a lower level from Sunset. And in order to make that work, the foundations of those buildings closest to Sunset have been stepped down so that the parking lot side of those are a walkout condition, if you will, with the basement. So that's one way that we were really able to take this development and bring it into harmony with the grades that existed out there. And then the next set of buildings there close to the back of the site, again, the foundations drop down and the grade drops to the back of those buildings back toward the amenity area. So, all of this was done and the associated grading to try to work with this site to the best that we could. We feel that we really nailed that. We achieved it with this design. It really works well with the land. In terms of stormwater management, as you would imagine the stormwater system is proposed to the rear of the second tier. So back toward the amenity area, toward the western, yep, thank you, to the western edge of the site. The stormwater management system is designed to collect the stormwater from the developed area, proposed developed area and run it through a pretreatment system on its way back to the management system behind the units there. The pretreatment will do just that. It'll pretreat the stormwater prior to going into what is proposed to be a detention slash infiltration system. With an overflow at the northwest corner of the site used in some storms with some minor overflow. But for the most part of the stormwater from the proposed developed area will be infiltrated in that system. As you can see it's got a large footprint which means a lot of infiltration will be occurring. And that overflow is really just using the largest storms with some minimal overflow to that point. And that point of discharge of the overflow was intentionally selected in that location as that mimics the natural drainage pattern. So there's sort of a, the site does slope east to west but it does focus up toward that northwest corner in the existing addition. And so that's why we located that overflow from the system up there. So it mimics the existing hydrology. And in fact it decreases as is required the rate of runoff up at that corner. We did opt to go underground. I think Tom has mentioned earlier in the presentation at one point we had considered an above ground system. The underground system, so every site is unique. The challenges, the criteria is unique. And so on this particular site going underground really in the end made sense. From my standpoint as a civil engineer I like underground because particularly when it's relying on infiltration because that infiltration bed so the interface between where the water sits in the system and the infiltration soils below it that does not get clogged up over times where an open basin might do that. So it's more protective and it maintains that infiltration capacity in the long run better in my opinion. But also in this particular case on this site it allowed for a larger yard area behind those lower units to the west which allows for a quite robust amenity program as I believe Andy will be discussing after me. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions or Andy, I think Tom you said Andy would be next if you wanna take it from there. And maybe one of the things I wanna point out is it's a pretty thoughtful design and I'd like to point out like one particular area. So you've got trash enclosure over here. We do have a retaining wall because of what we have to do with the elevations on site to meet the necessary grades for driveway, ADA, pathways, et cetera. And so one of the neat features is this area here so that there is an accessible path to this amenity space back here. And so there are two ways back there. One of them is this stairway. The other one is actually a path, not serpentine but it's effectively working the same way to make sure that folks have an accessible path to this community garden space and to this public shade or the shaded area, the shaded sitting area. So we can get into whatever detail that the board wants about the little pieces that we think really makes this development special but that's one of the things that I know it came up during the planning board and we wanna just make sure to touch on that that there is this whole site, we're compliant with making sure that there's an accessible path where needed. And we've got one actually going all the way back to the amenity space. Andy, why don't I turn it over to you if you wanna talk a little bit about the landscaping. Sure, thank you very much. My name is Andrew Bone. I'm a landscape architect and principal with Place Alliance. Here in Amherst, Massachusetts at 37 South Pleasant Street. So as Matt and Tom have talked about one of the things for the landscape point of view that we really wanted to make sure we were very conscious of was making sure that the landscape fit in with the surrounding context as well. So understanding that Sunset has some unique houses on it it's got some interesting garden spaces. We wanted to kind of play that transition into the site design along Sunset. So we've created a streetscape setting along Sunset with some, with the sidewalk set back with a nice elegant tree lawn with some really large shade trees proposed kind of setting the stage and bringing that that context through in this transitional area. We've also looked at creating a little bit of a garden space and some lawn space for each one of the units. So at the same time providing kind of an open street to the front porches that Jonathan will talk about on the units facing Sunset. So you'll see these kind of little areas kind of carved out just lawn spaces, some nice low landscaping. So it's, when you're sitting down you'll still be able to see over the top of it and wave to your neighbors and really trying to create that kind of, that complexity in there. So that's this rendering is representative of what we're trying to do there. We're proposing some simple gates at the entry points to each one of the units but that's really intended to kind of show and delineate the demarcation from kind of the public sidewalk into someone's private garden space on the front of the units. Tom, if you wanna work back to the site plan, I'll work kind of from the sunset into the parking area and then into the back of the units and amenities spaces. So as we move down into the site, as Matt talked about is the site is really broken into these terraces. So as you move from the sunset outside you move down into the parking area which is sunken into the site and the second row of units, that's their front door. So creating some nice garden space for them on their front door but they have more room in the back so we really looked at the opportunities to provide some nice backyard spaces for them. The landscape areas around the parking lot we're really trying to do as much as we can to reduce heat island. So creating some large landscape areas for shade trees to really help kind of bring that down and help cool that area and then have some landscape and some small lawn areas off the back of the front row of units and also off the front of the second row of units if that makes a lot of sense. So in between the units we're really conscious of trying to think through how to landscape those areas since it's going to be pretty, it's going to have a decent slope through there. We didn't want to plug it all with landscapes so we really tried to be careful about our tree placements so that any of the windows that are looking out from one unit to the next unit will provide some screening but it still allows some openness and some separation in between the units was really important for us. So as we move from the second row of units to the back of them this is where we've thought about creating some outdoor spaces and the screening that we're proposing is really about side yard fence screening so that the back of the unit has a little bit of privacy from the unit next to it but all the plantings back here will be primarily really low-growing shrubs and perennials. That whole space that you're seeing kind of adjacent to the units is where the subsurface stormwater infiltration is so we're not proposing any large deep-rooted plants in that area. This is a good rendering that shows kind of that accessible route back around the units to the trellis area just a simple area for people to hang out, have their kids run around in the natural exploration area. A lot of those elements are similar to some of the stuff that's been done at Kendrick Park recently and it's just hugely successful and gives a really nice space. So we're also proposing some community garden plots that really will help the community that lives here have an opportunity to utilize their space in this landscape to its kind of highest and best use and this is a lot of what we had heard in our conversations with UMass and some of the families that are coming to UMass and what they're looking for. So a lot of that information is kind of played out in this site design. Tom, was there anything I missed on the landscape or should we jump into the lighting a little bit? I think maybe just talk a little bit about it. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, so as far as the screening of the internal parts of the site from Fearing, we were proposing a five foot tall installed height arborvite hedge along the edge of that retaining wall. The arborvites that are proposed in there mature at height between 12 and 15 feet. So they'll provide a decent amount of screening without getting excessively large and really trying to avoid getting too much into some of the existing trees that are along Fearing now. Yeah. So maybe now would be a good time to kind of jump into the landscape unless anybody has, or into the lighting, unless anybody has any questions about landscape before, jump through that. Okay, so the lighting is something that we really is an important part for what we do. And Tom always gives us a hard time, but it can really help set the tone in New England. We have a lot of dark early nights. So understanding how that can be utilized and it really sets the tone. So we've gone through and really thought through and selected a series of lights in a family ranging from low ballards to some sconce lighting that are placed on the building to some more pedestrian scale, eight foot tall stuff, to some stuff that's a little bit bigger around the parking area to provide a little bit more capacity for lighting up that area. They're all LED, downcast, dark sky compliant lighting. We worked with the lighting designer extensively to make sure that we're not bleeding off the property lines, but we're providing a nice ample lighting capacity. The amenity space does have some proposed lighting. Right now, we're currently proposing them to be on a motion sensor, but they could be utilized on a timer, but we were thinking it'd be more sense to have it be something that turns on when people are back there and goes off when people aren't. But we'll work through that as we kind of move through that process a little bit. I think that's it for the lighting. Tom, was there anything I missed on that or something you wanted to add? Is there a chance in showing us some of the, while we're on lighting, can you show us some of the fixtures? You have some cut sheets of the, what the fixtures would look like. A little, blow it up a bit so we can see it better. Sure, so we have the sconce lighting just on the right hand side of the screen. You see the ballard lighting on the left side. That's the ballard lighting that's proposed in there. And then we have a parking lot lighting on the top there and then kind of a pedestrian scale, eight foot pole kind of streetscape lighting in that condition. All downcast, all dark sky compliant. And with the lighting too, it's one of those things that it needs, we want it to be there to provide the purpose, but we also don't want it to be like a main amenity big clunky piece. So it's something that we want to make sure it does the job that it needs to do. It provides the safe lighting level and fits into the landscape without feeling super clunky, I guess. Thank you for my scientific terms. We can probably leave that and then head over Jonathan, if you want. Well, I've got to probably start with, this one which gives some materials and some of the details. Yeah, if we need to later, we can always bring up some of the floor plans. Floor plans and the elevations, yeah. So as Tom kind of discussed earlier, and we've been through a couple of... Jonathan, I know we all know you, but we need for the record. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm terribly sorry. I just died right here. Jonathan Savon from Dune Rural Architects Principal at Dune Rural, and we're located at 28 Amity Street in Amherst. So as you're welcome. As Tom said, we've been at this a little while and there have been a number of iterations of this project. And in our feedback that we've had from other bodies before we came here tonight, one of the things we really heard and which we were very responsive to, I think it was something we wanted to do as well was fit this into the neighborhood. And so we have tried to take the buildings and break them apart into pieces that really have the same scale and some of the same character as other homes in the neighborhood. So at the top of the sheet there, that's sort of what I'll call the street elevation along sunset that shows what we call the type C unit there on the left, which is one of the apartment buildings. And from this vantage point, it has three units. And then as Tom said, there's two flats that are literally tucked into the earth from the backside. And then adjacent to that are two of the duplex units. There's a total of four all together with two more in the back. But the intent was very much to make the duplexes look like a single family home and typical to the neighborhood and have the apartment buildings look like some of the larger homes, not necessarily in style necessarily, but in form and in scale as some of the other larger homes in the neighborhood. And so we've tried to break the forms down. So for example, again, on that type C unit, which is the upper left, we've played a little bit with the roof lines. Each building has porches and distinct entries and trim and window details that are very typical. Another thing we heard very clearly from the Historic Commission was that, what I shouldn't price them a back half step. When we first presented it, the buildings were much lower to grade while some of the units will be fully accessible, all the units by code don't need to be, but we still have them fairly close to the ground. And one of the feedbacks we had was that we were encouraged actually for the buildings in front did sunset where we didn't have accessible units in the front to raise them up so that you had that typical kind of, say two feet, 18 inches between grade and the first floor level that is more typical of a, say a 19th or early 20th century, a wood fring house. And then down on the other side is the sort of Fearing Street elevation. I should say that's kind of with the, this is highlighting the architecture. So it's, oops, Tom, you've cut off part of the page here. Oh yeah, yeah, I don't know what happened there. Uh-oh, it's not showing the dumpster because I was trying to highlight the street facade, but we've, Tom gets that back up. You give me 30 seconds. I'll do a little dance or something. Yeah, no, that's good. We know attention. All right, I got it. Sorry about that. What a night. There we go. Okay, sorry. And so that's the sort of side view, but without seeing the screening that you would get with the site wall, the plantings, and the fencing. It's more to kind of illustrate the architectural character from the side. That's, oh, there we go, thank you. And a little closer up just to give you a better sense of the architectural character of the proposed designs. We really are trying to mimic traditional New England forms and detailing with collaborative siding, probably some variance in collaborative exposure, certainly some variance in color to let each building have a little bit of its own unique form while still having a kind of cohesive language for the whole development. I think that's still an important thing so that it looks like a single development. We're also likely to vary that window pattern. So this example has kind of a six over one light pattern in the windows, but other buildings are going to be kind of a two over two bit more Victorian look. Again, the porches will by and large be kind of wood frame again to make them look like a traditional home as opposed to a more apartment style kind of concrete pad that you might see outside of the buildings. Well, there's a good view kind of into the site that also shows that screening that we're going to get along Fearing Streets, but also gives you a good sense of the, that that character of porches and doorways isn't just in the front, it's carried through the development into the interior as well. Are there other things, Tom? Maybe we want to show some floor plans, Mr. Chair, if the, I assume that the... That'd be, yeah, I think we should. Sure. Jonathan, if you have those at the ready, by all means, you can... Let me try and see what kind of damage I caused here. Hopefully this is... Unfortunately on the preview, it's hard for you to tell I have the right one. I think I'm starting with the A unit. Oh, is everyone seeing something at least? Yes. Yes, okay. So I'm going to start with the A unit. I'll do these alphabetically. These are the duplex units and hopefully you can see my cursor. The A units are these two along Fearing Street and kind of book-ending here at the back. And I should say that both the Place Alliance and Cune-Riddle use the same rendering software where we're working in two different packages. And so the design packages, so I don't have all of their plantings. So don't look at my images for the plantings of the gates. This is more focused on the architecture, but this at least allows us to kind of orient ourselves to which building type we're looking at. I won't dwell on these. I'll go right to the floor plans. So the duplex units are just that. They're two units side by side. Again, for the Fearing Street units, the Fearing Street would be here on this side. And please let me know if you can't see my cursor or if I'm going too fast and jabbering away too fast and I don't see a hand up. But so they each have their own distinct entries with an entry closet, an open living dining kitchen space, a full bath here at this level. Can I start for just a second? You said Fearing Street, you said this was Fearing Street? I'm sorry, not Fearing Street, it's Sunset. It's Sunset, okay, yes. Thank you. Or it would be pacing the park a lot if it's one of the rear ones, thank you. And Jonathan, could you zoom in? Oh sure, that was not zooming. That is something else. Let me see if I can hand then try to get a little bit tighter here. Are folks seeing the whole floor plan at least if not all the kind of dimensional text and whatnot? Hopefully, yep, okay. So again, an entry closet, kind of an open living dining kitchen space, a full bath at this level, some storage space, both units, actually all the duplexes, whether they're on sunset or facing onto the parking, have a back stair that goes down into the basement level. And then on the sunset side, those exit out back onto the parking. And the interior ones, they enter out into the little garden spaces and the amenity space beyond. I'll quickly kind of pan this over down at that basement level. That's where that stair comes down. There's a small sort of mudroom laundry space at this level as well. I'm gonna move now to the, pardon me while I, I'm just gonna put that on the sidebar there. I'm gonna move up to the second floor. The duplexes are four bedroom units. So the stair comes up to a central hall. There's again, another full bath living closet. This is the large bedroom with a walk-in closet. And then there are three smaller bedrooms kind of around it. And it's very similar in both units. They're, even though the entries are different, the floor plans are fairly much the same. These will not read quite as well as the colored elevations, but at least you'll get to see them a little bit bigger. Again, this is that front porch, either facing a sunset or facing the parking. Then this kind of illustrates down the right side, the amount of grade that we have to make up. Obviously there's gonna be a little bit of variance because it does kind of move a little bit, but this is a good average illustration of the typical kind of drop-off. There's the rear elevation with those two rear entries that go out either onto the parking or towards the amenity space. And again, then the left side view. I'm gonna move to building B unless someone has a specific question. So building B is the apartment unit in the middle in the back as Tom had alluded. We've got two floor units, very similar to the duplex units, kind of book ending, two flat units in between. And the first floor unit will be fully accessible. Skip through the accessibility details. Whoops, not too far. And I'll come back to the basement if it's very similar to the B type units, but at the entry point, so this is the parking lot would be up here where my cursor is, the entry to the two end units are very similar to the duplexes. There is a common kind of entry vestibule for the two flat units. One, then you go one way and up a stair to the upper flat, and then you go directly into the first floor flat, the accessible flat. And there is a common stair that could take you back down and out the back towards the amenity space. And so if I go back up the page, you can see how these stairs come down and out. The basement space for the flats isn't the developed space. Look, wrong way. Second floor, the two end units are very similar to the duplexes with four bedrooms, a larger bedroom here with a walk-in closet, full bath, three smaller bedrooms. And then the flat on the upper level is similar to the flat on the first floor level with open living dining kitchen space and two bedrooms at the rear with a bathroom and the larger space. Pardon me. This is the elevation at the parking lot side. So there's the entry to one of the two floor units. There's the other one. That's the common entry into the flats. And now that I'm halfway into my presentation, I'm going to need to pause for a second and get some water because I've got to tickle. So I apologize, I will pause and be right back. So my apologies. Jonathan, I think you're muted if you're talking. Oh dear. That's, now you're fine. Okay. The right side views again, showing that kind of grade drop-off. The rear with those entry or exit points towards the gardens and the amenity space and then the left side view. I think that's it for this building. Building C again is that second apartment building here in the Southeast corner on Sunset. And so here I am going to actually start in the basement. We have two flat units with two bedrooms each and open living dining kitchen space, restroom or bathroom, laundry facility. Again, these two units because they are at grade could be fully accessible. And so I'm showing them in a fully accessible configuration off a common entry hall. We could also enter directly into the units as well. There's a couple of different ways to access these unit types. Where's the front door on that unit? What does it face? It face the flat space, the parking lot. Yes. The parking lot. Yeah, because they're down here. Bear with me a moment. I'm just going to kind of spin ahead to the side elevations. I think it's a little easier to see. So here on the side, you know, this is the sunsets here, the parking lots here. These units are kind of entered at this level below the units that are above. So I'll return to that again. But, you know, this is the first floor for the units on the sunset side of the building. And so they're entered from that, you know, from the sidewalk that we're proposing along sunset. And as with the B units or the B building, the end units are very similar kind of two-floor units. But in this case, since our flats are below all of these units, we have a third two-story unit in the middle or two-story. Yes, a third two-story unit in the middle. These two units, the leftmost in the middle, are four-bedroom and the one at the far right here is a three-bedroom. So we'll go to the next floor. Again, we've got a large bedroom with three smaller bedrooms around it. And then in this center unit, the large bedroom is actually here with a different kind of multiple closet configuration with smaller bedrooms around it. And then the three-bedroom unit has the large bedroom in the front, with a nice walk-in closets, bathroom, and two bedrooms at the rear. Towards the parking lot side. So again, this is the front elevation, or what I should say more clearly, as the sunset elevation, the three entry points for the two-story units. This shows the gray drop-off. We're gonna have to have a retaining wall of some sort to gain us some light access for the second bedroom of the flats that are at the lowest level. Oops. Too fast. At this parking lot side, that's that common entry. All these, this portion of the elevation are the upper two-story units. These windows are all associated with the flat units. You know, these look into the open living dining, eating area, or kitchen areas. That's one of the bedrooms. That's another one of the bedrooms. And again, you can see the site wall that we will need on the second bedroom. We will need on the left side as well. And just details, construction details. Anything, Tom, that I, else I should hit? No, I don't think so. Okay. So there will be questions so we can come back to it. Nice job. Okay, so I'll stop sharing. Great. Then maybe I'll, you know, I'll talk a little bit about traffic. So we had Rick Bryant, who's an Amherst resident from Stantec, put together the traffic memo. Residential, as you likely know, is a pretty low impact use. It's not like a commercial space where you've got people coming and going all day. Through the IT Institute of Transportation Engineers, this is supposed to generate 124 vehicle trips per day. At that fearing sunset intersection, it's a 0.5% increase. So a really minimal increase. I think you're going to see an additional nine vehicle trips in the peak hour in the morning and 12 vehicle trips in the peak hour in the afternoon. So, you know, something that's not going to impact the surrounding roadway network. You know, as we've mentioned, there's, maybe I'll just bring this up so you can, you can look at a nice picture while I talk. 43 parking spaces. So there's 34, 17 units requiring 34 parking spaces. And then there's three ADA spaces. And so you've got 37 spaces there. So there are six spaces that we'd like to use for visitor parking. We think having that amount of parking, we want to be sensitive to no street parking, right? There's parking here on the UMass side, which are metered. But the point of this is to make sure that there's sufficient parking onsite for the occupants primarily, and then guests as well. There's also a nice loading area over here. So they can, Amazon deliveries, furniture deliveries, you know, Peapod, what have you, Whole Foods deliveries can use this area over here. We've got of those 43 spaces. So like I said, there's three ADA spaces. There are 18 compact spaces. And then there are 22 in our compact spaces. They're just a foot less than, in width, than a full-size space. So a full-size space is nine by 18. We have 22 of those. And then we have 18, eight by 18. So a true compact space can be eight by 16. So it would be two feet shorter, one foot less in width, but we're saying still the same length, but just the width will be a little bit less. But those are still considered compact spaces. So that's what we have for the 43 spaces, 34 for the unit six for visitors. And then a little bit about, I mentioned before, this is a mixed occupant development. And so it starts with location, and then it's really through design. And there used to be a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals who wanted physical infrastructure that helped to inform use. And maybe I've been around too long, but we kind of took that to heart in our discussions here. So we've got the amenity space, the community gardens, the natural exploration area. We've got those defensible spaces in the front of the units. We've got yard spaces in the back of the units. The entire site design, plus, and we haven't shown finishes, we can show you finishes next time if you're interested in it. They're gonna be very similar to what Barry has done at 70 University Drive and at one University Drive South with the type of counters, the level of finishes that you're gonna get here are higher end. So it's all of that, plus the floor plan, providing the differentiation of bedroom. We don't have bed-bath parity. So we don't have four bedroom, four bath, two bedroom, two bath. We've got four bedroom, two bath. We've got two bedroom, one bath, and we've got three bedroom, two bath. So it's the bed-bath parity. It's consideration of COVID. And like most of us, we're working from home. We're home right now, some of us are in the office, but many people working from home. So it's allowing the space for professionals to be able to have a den or a library or just a space to have their work if they're working from home. And so all of that thought went into it. And then next is marketing and advertisement. So not only do you have location and then design, but then you have marketing and advertisement. And Barry's already reached out to the folks at UMass and UMass Athletics. We've talked to them because they have two websites, right? They have an undergraduate website where you can post and people will go and that's for undergraduate housing. And then they have a faculty and staff website and that's what Barry has been talking to them about. And like I said, they can enter into leases to actually lease these, but they've been incredibly supportive and very interested. And I think it's frankly a huge benefit to their recruitment of the best and brightest to come over and work for the university. So it's thinking about who are you marketing to and that also is informed by design. And then it's tenant selection. And if you look at 70 University Drive as an example, you don't hear about that property. Barry does a good job at managing but selecting who's going to be occupying. And this is one of those developments that you look to get the right folks in initially and then it self-regulates to a certain extent. You don't allow it to become an undergraduate place. It's not good for, I mean, it's a headache for management. It's not good for the investment that you've made on the property. And it's frankly poor reputational and it's something Barry obviously prides himself on his reputation. And then after tenant selection, it comes down to lease and lease terms. It's, and if you've looked at our lease, you know, we've got a pretty restrictive lease. They folks can't do much where they wouldn't get the potential for an eviction. And so it's setting expectations for those tenants. And then it's also following through because then folks will know you're serious. As far as the management of the property, we provided the management plan. We talked about, you know, the dumpster area, USA waste is going to be in charge of that. Barry will be the contact person. There are snow storage areas on site here. We've got some down here in each of these islands. If it gets to be where it can't be safely pushed, whether it's impede site lines or we just had too much snow, then we'll truck it off site and we're happy to accept that as a condition. You know, there's a robust landscaping plan here. And so it will be through local subcontractors to work on the weekly mowing, the weeding, the upkeep, the maintenance. And one of the things I think a little out of sequence that I would like to mention is we're providing at the town's suggestion, I think it's an excellent recommendation, a water line back here. So there'll be a spigot, I think it's called the yard hydrant where folks who they have their shovels, their rakes, their water containers, they can fill it up here and then they can go to their plot and be able to get the water from this right here instead of schlepping it from their unit. So we're providing that, there's a lot of upkeep and maintenance, but we're also, we'll have a local subcontractor responsible for that. We talked about the lighting and I think a board in your packets that you should have or at least accessible electronically, all of these renderings that we're showing, because these renderings, if you'll see, I mean, so Andy Bone, his group put this together, you can see the taller light posts here. You can see the smaller, more pedestrian light posts there. I'm sure I can get to the, I can show this where you see the amenity space, pedestrian scale, light posts. And let me see. And then you've got more pedestrian scale, light posts in these areas here. So you can really go through and see the lighting all downcast. We've also submitted our sign plan. There's no name for this development yet, given how it is laid out. I don't know that there will be. These may have, and we'll have to talk to the building commissioner just individual unit numbers on them and be designated as sunset Ave. We can talk to the fire department of how that will work out. Let me think of what else we should touch on here. Surveillance cameras. So there will be surveillance cameras on the property. It's part of the lease. It lets everybody know, know none in the unit, but in the exterior of the property, just to make sure that it's preventative, but it also allows if something happens, whether it's a stolen package or an accident in the parking lot or somebody knocking on the door that you would prefer doesn't. No, we have the ability. We've got the surveillance cameras. Those are at 70 University Drive. They've come in useful. Barry can probably tell you for, not that there's been incidences, but as far as packages, purportedly getting delivered, but not getting delivered or somebody saying they haven't got delivered. So the surveillance camera is a nice, it's a nice feature. Let me see what else. We talked about snow. We talked about landscaping, trash and recycling, parking. We've talked about, overall, I think just maybe simply put, there's four proposed two-bedroom dwelling units. There's one proposed three-bedroom dwelling units and there's 12 proposed four-bedroom dwelling units. Two, so that's 17 units altogether. 15 of the units are proposed to be market rate units. Two of the units are proposed to be affordable units. And what we've said in our narrative as Barry's done on the 70 University Drive project and what he's doing at one University Drive South is while you're allowed to charge 30% of 80% of the area median income, he goes lower than that. I think it's called the voucher program. And so it really opens up these affordable units to more folks. We've chosen the two-bedroom units for that because we've talked to wayfinders. We're going through the process currently for one University Drive South, talking with DHCD, talking with other affordable housing developers. And the two-bedroom units are probably the most in demand of all the unit types. So that's why we've chosen those to have the designation as the affordable units. I think I'll go back to the beginning as I get to the end and I'll just talk about kind of the siting of it again. Southwest storms to the North, commercial to the East, you've got quite a bit of density. And even if I go back to this plan here, quite a bit of density here, rental here. And we believe that with the proposed design, the spacing with the help of the local historic district commission, with the amenities, with the defensible spaces in the front, with the enclosures in the back, with the yard spaces in the back, with the separation from UMass by this, there's a four-foot high rod iron fence on top of the retaining wall, which is screened by the Arbor Vities. You've got a nice transitional space from this higher density area down to the lower density area to the South. Folks have asked, are you gonna sell these units? And the answer is no, because it's much easier to manage. Now, even compared to what's there today, you've got two single-family homes, Barry will tell you, this is going to be easier to manage than two single-family homes because there's a more finite space, there's more defined spaces, you're gonna have higher finishes, you're going to have stronger leases, and it's going to be self-regulated to a certain extent, and that's where the effort comes in to find the right tenants for these spaces. So, I know we've gone on for quite a bit of time. There's a bunch of nuances to get into what the board wants, but with that, we'll be quiet and listen to any questions that you may have. Great, thank you very much, guys. I'll just start out with a couple of questions, and then I'll open it up to other board members and we can circle around with as many rounds of questions as we want and or as we need. Can we pull up the parking lot, the stormwater drainage slide that we had earlier, which there it is. So, talk to me about how that water is collected, is the parking lot sort of V-shaped to funnel it into that dotted line, which is, I guess, a drain that goes back out, or how do we prevent and how have you engineered this to prevent flooding of units, particularly the back units better facing the parking lot? And Matt, let me get to a better plan just so I can zoom in even more, because I think the chair would like some nice detail with this. So, let me get into one of your plans here. Do you want the grading plan or do you want the utility plan? I wouldn't know the difference between the two, but what is this that I'm looking at? Okay. Grading plan, Tom. So, this is the grading plan. Okay. All right, Tom, did that make? Yep. Thank you. So, that's a great question. So, we talked at length about how the site is sloped from east to west for the back. However, the parking lot, as I had mentioned, that was kind of the critical factor in the grading the whole site. And so, those units in the rear, which are the lower units on the site, they still have been designed such that the fronts of those units, so facing east toward the parking lot, have positive pitch away from the units to the parking lot. And then, as you can see with the contours where they vee along the western edge of the drive aisle, and that's where the stormwater trunk line is. So, there's catch bases on site that collect that water, which is focused to that that swale along the western side of the drive aisle. The water's collected there and then routed back through the pre-treatment unit and then back into the infiltration system. So, while the site generally does slope from east to west, if you took more of a micro look at the topography and the grading, there is positive pitch toward the east from the fronts of those units to that drainage system to collect the water, thereby preventing any flooding of or inundation of those units with water. Thank you. So, the round circles at the right there, that's the base and that collects the water and then it goes into an underground pipe, is that correct? So, where the cursor is right now, that's a catch base and that's collecting water. The round circle that in front of the middle of building five, which I think is what you had just mentioned, that's actually just a green manhole. And, but then the next structure to the north, so go north to the right, right there. That's another catch basin to collect water. There's also two catch basins on the entrance coming down from Sunset Street to collect that water that's flowing down that driveway. So, all these catch bases are located at low points that have very deliberately been designed and graded in the parking lot to collect that water and get it to that system in the back. And Mr. Chair, if you look at the, and you might not be able to see it here, and I'll try to zoom in a little more, there are small arrows, right? So, you can see the flow of the water. And so, I call this potentially a ridge line right here. And so, this water is flowing this way towards this catch basin. And then they get into that drain line. And that drain line then flows towards the north. For this, there's a drainage manhole. And then that flows towards the west towards this subsurface infiltration system. And if you look, you know, you've got top of curb here at 236, you've got top of curb here at 234. And then you've got the steps at 235 and first floor elevation at 238. So, just as you're thinking about, where the parking lot is in relation to those, you know, the first four of the rear units, there's, it's not all going to flow. And there's, there's curbing back here and not to sell any of Matt's thunder, but I've been around him and him and Phil for so long. You know, they, they purposefully designed the site. You can see the existing conditions underneath. So, you know, 233 elevation, 232 elevation, 231 elevation. And then you see here, we've got 237. And then you can see the water will, I would point it starts to go south because you've got a 236, 235 to get to this 234. And then same thing here, 237, 236, 235, 234. So what they do is shape the land so that when the water sheet flows, it flows to those catch basins when it's then collected, treated, and then sent back to that subsurface infiltration system. And so my, my last question, that makes sense to me. Thanks. My last question regarding this is that, you know, my last question regarding this is that you must have sort of a two, five, 25, or 100 year reign that you modeled this for, not only for making sure that this all, this shaping works and gets rid of the water, but also that for the, the infiltration in the back that it doesn't just lead to a swampy mess back there after a rain. So can you talk to me about what, you know, what is the assumption, you know, I don't know how many year of rain event do you look at to model this? Because if you'd have something that you can't handle, obviously, but what's the modeling for that? I can address that. Thank you. Great question. So part of the submission package to the board, I believe was comprehensive stormwater report that goes through various design storms and shows the modeling of the collection system as well as that infiltration system and what happens for the various storms. So we modeled the two year storm, the 10 year storm and the 100 year storm, which is what is required by the state in terms of stormwater design. And that report provides the comparison of the existing mission runoff versus the post-development condition runoff for each of those storms. And for each of those storms, the water, the runoff is not only treated, but also the runoff rate is mitigated for each of those storms. And in terms of the infiltration system itself, you can see there's sort of a checkerboard symbol right there and then there's one in the middle there and then one on the northern end. So those were test bits that were done in those exact locations, again, which is required as part of a typical stormwater design to evaluate the soils that directly underlie the proposed system. And in this case, based on the soil textures that were observed in those test bits, the applicable infiltration rate, which is a very conservative rate, was assumed for the infiltration capacity of that system. And that's all documented in the stormwater report, both in the narrative portion and the modeling output that's included in the appendices of that report. So if there's any specific questions, I'm happy to answer, but that's kind of an overview of how we handled the stormwater management component of the project. And Mr. Chair, I know the town engineer looked at it. He gave his, he said it, used to work. And then he said, and Matt, I don't know if you want to talk just briefly about TSS, because town engineer said it also it achieves the required TSS removal rates for the new impervious surface. Sure. So TSS total suspended solids, that's one of the stormwater standards that's required by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, one of the several stormwater standards. We talked about mitigating the rate, but TSS removal is also one of the requirements. And so the system here has been designed, as I've said a couple of times now to pre-treat the stormwater runoff and then infiltrate it. And that what we call treatment train. So it's a series of treatment devices that work in series to provide and knock down the total suspended solids loading from the development site. So the combination of the pre-treatment device which is a water quality unit up in the sort of the Northwest corner there before it enters the infiltration system. And then the infiltration itself provides the requisite TSS treatment before the infiltration. I'm not just trying to expand my knowledge of stormwater management, but I think it's really key that in order to maintain the kind of, and to attract the kind of tenants you want, the amenities have to be really well thought out and have to be high class in order to achieve what is the stated goal of the property. And so my interest in this case is that I wanna make sure that it's all engineered right so that you're not looking at flooding and units which would diminish I think the attractiveness, but also that the infiltration area remains, the ground above the infiltration area remains dry enough so that it can be used as an attractive amenity in the future. And because it was just a messy pit which I know you're not providing that but now you've told me how it wouldn't attract quality. The type of clients and tenants that you wanna attract. So that was the reason for my question not just to become an expert on stormwater management. And is that in the management plan that the stormwater marine or I didn't read that I'm sorry before the meeting, where do I find that in our documents that you handed out, the stormwater? So the stormwater report that was submitted which includes a operations and management plan was provided to the board only electronically just due to the amount of pages the report was which can be found on the town calendar for tonight's meeting. So anyone, any members of the public or the ZBA could find it there. So I didn't miss it. And on the side description of the stormwater management and how to providing ongoing maintenance of it. Good, thank you. Another question I had is can we bring up the landscaping plan? Yes. Here is that way. Yeah, and if we could expand that plan itself I don't need to see the legend at this point. Okay. Is there a particular area you'd like to... Well, I first wanna ask about the caliper of the trees out front. Are they, what size trees are you talking about planting to begin with and how big are they gonna get? And I mean, I'll turn it over to you but I know that through the discussion with the neighborhood and the discussion about the public shade tree what Andy might have specced for these might be a little bit smaller than what we're actually gonna plant. I think we're thinking about a three to five inch caliper and what are those gonna be, 10, 15 feet? So a five inch caliper tree is gonna be enormous. It'll probably be... I'm saying diameter of the grass height. Yes. Okay, thank you. So right now we're proposing between and we try to give a variation because of the landscape stock right now with everything that's gone in the last two years with COVID. So we don't wanna lock it in. So we have right now between a one and a half and a three inch caliper tree. One and a half inch caliper tree depending on the variety of it will be anywhere between 10 and 12 feet tall where a three inch caliper tree will be upwards of 20 feet tall on installation. And the intent for those are a nice red maple. So they'll grow to be a big mature red maple for those ones specific. Got it. And is it the same in the parking lot or will that be lower level, not quite as thick and not quite as tall? The ones in the parking lot are proposed of the larger trees that we're showing in there. They are proposed to be a installed height or installed of one and a half to three inch caliper tree as well, because we really wanna try to get that shade and get that context. So there's not like just small wippy trees going in right away. Yeah, I think that's important. And would you, is there any concern on the part of the applicant if a condition would be that we take that one and a half to three inches as a guide for the trees that you're planting as opposed to, I don't know what this, I'm not sure what that is. You said it might be different than what your intent is, but it would be an app. Updated it already. So yeah, if the question is, would you, we expect to back up and talk kind of holistically, we expect to build, if we're approved, to build what we're showing. And so if it says, if it calls out one and a half to three inch caliper, that's what we're gonna provide. If we can't find them, we have to come back to you. That's another story, but just like with Jonathan's architectural plans, when you see trim board, they'll be trim board. Where you see clavards, they'll be clavards. So what you see is somewhat, what you get here. But for the trees, I don't know what that size right now is on the plan. And it says one AR and I'm not sure what that means. Yeah, so that goes up to the legend and then on the legend, it highlights the species, the variety, the size that it's installed at and the amount of them. So you'll see the one and a half to two and a half inch caliper and then some of them are the. Thank you. Yep. That makes sense. All right. And then the other thing I had on the grounds keeping plan, the landscaping plan, if we look at the areas where, to avoid the heat islands or the pooling spaces in the parking lot, those are the areas where you're gonna have, you're gonna pile up snow as well. Sure. And there's plants underneath the trees. So number one, how do you maintain, again, this is about quality of life, maintaining this as a really attractive property and not something that has traffic islands that kind of get beat up during the winter and never really come back. How are you gonna maintain those if you pile up snow on that with grasses or plants or are you gonna have to replace them every year? What's the plan for that in the future to maintain the integrity and the attractiveness of the project? For sure. It's a great question. So the plants that are specified in there are the most durable plants that we can find that are native and they are naturalized. They intentionally are plants that can take a pretty severe punishment and also some of them are perennial. So during the winter months, there obviously won't be any woody stuff for them to get damaged by. They'll come up in the spring. But the intent here is that there's a full spring cleanup where the beds get raked out, new mulch compost gets put in. And then we do have notes in here that the maintenance of these areas needs to be monitored and plants that don't make it need to be replaced to make sure that that happens. So again, I haven't had a chance to look at the draft conditions that the staff has come up with that they have not suggesting them, they just put some out there. But one of those would be, for me, would be that the landscaping plan has to accomplish that each year, has to have a replacement of dead and damaged plants and continuous maintenance of those areas so that the attractiveness of the property remains. That's something we should try to achieve, Maureen, or draft up for the next meeting. You know, I wanna open this up to other board members. I have more questions who can come back to me, but I don't wanna take up everybody's, I don't wanna dominate the time. So I wanna open it up to other questions from other board members. And so I'd open it, go to Tammy next if you have questions that you wanna ask. Tammy. I was on the, I was thinking, having a lot of the same thoughts that you were about the driveway elevation. And I guess I just to be clear about the drainage, the lines that you showed that have a D on them, those are under the pavement drains, right? And then the two catch the places where the water goes in, that's the typical silt stack. Is that what those things are that are on either side? I'm looking at your drawing that shows this silt stack. Is that where the water is draining into? I think you're looking at maybe erosion control map is what she's looking at. Yeah, so on the plan on the screen here, those are catch bases. So typical catch bases, they have a graded inlet that allows water to enter into the structure to get collected. What I think you're referring to on the silt stack is that we provide a detail for during construction before the site is fully stabilized. Any structures, any catch bases would have silt sacks installed on the grate to help filter out any solids, any silt that's in the runoff during construction. But once the site's fully stabilized and built out, those silt sacks would be removed and then they would just function as standard catch bases. Okay, I guess I was just trying to get an idea of the size of the drain that the water's going into. So they're below ground, they're cylindrical shaped structures. The inner diameter of their concrete and the inner diameter is four feet. But what you see on the surface is only the grate of the structure. So it's a cast iron grate and they are two feet by two feet, which is a typical catch-facing grate. All right, that's what I was wondering. And then I'm just wondering if there are any pictures that show the elevation of the entire property. I see the elevation like from one building to the parking lot and then another building to the parking lot. But I'm wondering if there's something that altogether shows the elevation from the front all the way to where the woods begin. No, I don't think that we have one of those, but I'm sure that Andy can create one of those for the next meeting. Andy, fair to say? Yes, we can definitely create a cross-section. Jonathan does have in one of his elevation plans, it doesn't go all the way to the forested edge in the back, but it at least shows the relationship of the buildings to each other and the parking lot in between. But we can certainly create one that goes from sunset through the first row of buildings, through the parking lot, through the second row of buildings, through the amenity space and then out to the forest line for sure. All right, it would just help me see the flow of the sidewalks and I see that you have a wheelchair access that's behind the trash unit. And I'm just wondering what the grade is going to the amenities in the back. And so I don't, you know, it's hard for me to tell if it's, you know, sort of slowed down and leveled off, slowed down, leveled off. Yeah, Matt might be able to speak to it, but I think. If Tom, I don't know who's the controller right now, but Tom, do you want to zoom in somewhat to that area? So as I believe was mentioned earlier on the amenity space in the back is fully accessible. So there's an accessible route provided from the main area between the buildings, the parking lot area, all the way down and over to the amenity space behind the building. So there's, yeah, so there's that route right there which is behind the waste management area that that's serpentines around. And the reason it does that is in order to get the grades of the sidewalk to be accessible. So you need a, you know, it's all about, there's a fixed vertical dimension that we need to achieve. So you need a certain horizontal run in order to get the slopes and the grades of the walk to be compliant. And so that's what's achieved here. So you can see there's a lot of spot elevations all along that route showing that there'll be, so each leg of the, each of the three legs of that route will ramp as you go from east to west. So from back toward the amenity area will ramp down obviously, because the amenity area is lower. And at each turn, each corner, there's what we call a level landing. So you ramp down, there's a level landing five by five, you turn, then you ramp down again, level landing, turn, ramp down again, and then you're at that lower elevation of the amenity space. So, you know, I can tell you our office takes that very, you know, seriously. And as you can tell by the, just the sheer number of spot grades on this plan, we looked at that very carefully, very thoroughly. And that is an accessible route, you know, under ADA and Massachusetts AAB, Architectural Access Board requirements. It's fully accessible to get down to that amenity space. Okay, that's just, sort of why I wanted to see the elevation because it's hard for me, it's hard to tell. I mean, I can read the elevation numbers here, although it says, you know, 230.65 on the top end. It doesn't, maybe 229.25 a foot difference. I just visually, from what I've seen it, I would just like to see that a little better. And just one of the things, just so that we maybe don't disappoint you when we come back, it's, you know, we're gonna be able to show it like this, you know, where you have sunset up here and then kind of a cross-section. So, I don't know that we'll be able to achieve, you know, until we build it, showing you actually what it's gonna look like. And, you know, is this 5%, 2%, 5%, 2%, 5%? That's right. So, the maximum, when you have an accessible route, the requirement is that the maximum longitudinal grade, so the grade along the route cannot exceed 5%, so that's five feet in 100 feet, 5%, unless you provide a ramp. And then when you provide a ramp, there's other criteria that go along with that. So, we graded this route out, so as not to exceed the 5% so as not to need ramps. So, this is an accessible route, longitudinal slope, you know, at or slightly less than 5% with the level landings at the turn, at the 90 degree turns. Okay. I'm all set, Steve. All right. Mr. Maxfield, do you have some questions? No, not right now at this time. Thank you, Steve. Do you bet? Mr. Meadows? Yes, I've got a series of questions, many of them. Can you hear me okay? Because I've got my earbuds in and sometimes they don't work. I can hear you. Okay. Most of these are kind of inspired and follow up by the observations and recommendations from the planning board. The first one may be relatively simple. I noticed that they also have indicated a couple of times about the arborviety and I'm sure you're aware that Northampton and Greenfield both have got some requirements for pollinators. And it was mentioned that most of the trees are gonna be native. The arborviety are the only ones that I could see in that quick glimpse that aren't pollinators in the list. Wondering if there's a substance that could be functional rather than they, that are pollinators rather than they are arborviety. I don't know if you want all my questions at the same time or you wanna take them one at a time? I couldn't answer that one. So as far as like a real evergreen screening in the Northeast, there's not a large variety of plant material to choose from that check that box. What I will say is that the rest of the plant material really, really tries to pay attention to pollinator friendly fruit producing plant material throughout the year. So we have like the first early season stuff with some shad below service berry which you're seeing blooming around town now and stuff that will bloom all the way through the summer into the fall to really kind of elongate that as much as possible. But the evergreen screening in a tight area, there's only a few plant species to really choose from. And that's why the arborviety were chosen for that location. But the rest of the site has a pretty significant expansive diversity of pollinator plants. Maybe just one more point on the arborvities. I know in the letter from the planning board it was mentioned that they can grow quite tall. And I think with Andy's credit, we had forethought with that given the existence of those trees along Fearing Street on the university's property and shows the arborvities that only grow 12 to 15 feet tall instead of those that are going to potentially interfere with the canopy of those other trees. So we didn't have that answer for the planning board. It was more of a higher level discussion and the planning board didn't have all of the material that you have. And they didn't have the professional responses like Andy wasn't there. I didn't ask him to be there for those discussions. So just to kind of close the loop on the arborvities it was something that was thought about prior to its implementation. Okay, my primary was concerned was about the pollinators rather than the height of it. But that's, if there were a pollinator that could be functional in there, that would be great. Another question, the first thing you notice when you look at the plans is the amount of asphalt. I was just wondering if there had been given thought to a permeable or semi permeable surface in there. Wouldn't stand out quite so much. Yeah, that's a great question. And yes, there was. And they are quite a bit of a maintenance headache. And so for that we tried to offset it with kind of a robust landscaping plan in the amenity area in the back to say, okay, we could do permeable pavers where you have those little helical blocks that you're using and you're growing grass in between but just the maintenance of that snow plowing, et cetera turns into a real management headache for a project I think like this. So we thought about it, we thought it wasn't practical. We tried to offset it with the balance of what we're proposing. Another area that was brought up by the planning board that I was thinking of was the EV charging stations which I know are an extra expense but dealing with them in many situations that I am involved with, the extra expense is easily offset in some regards by the fact that a lot of people are gonna have EVs and want them and Massachusetts has got a multi unit and dwelling unit program for EVIP that allows up to $50,000 per address, 60% of the cost of the hardware and installation for it. So if that could be worked into the project I think it would be viable and reasonable to do so. Sure, and maybe a response to that. So we are going to run conduit for EV charging stations. Barry has an EV charging station at the 70 University Drive project. I don't know if the program that you're talking about didn't exist at the time but the EV charging station costs a significant amount of money and at least to date no one's used it. Now I think everybody sees what's happening with the news with the push for EV vehicles. And so I think we're probably in the same mind that they're going to become more prevalent and to that end we're gonna run conduit for it. I don't know that we will provide an EV charging station with the program you're talking about. I think we'd certainly explore it but we're at least gonna run the infrastructure for it so that if and when it does become necessary we will be ready for it. Well, if you need it I'd be happy to give the information to either Barry or Jonathan so that you know how to deal with that. Please. And the last thing is very similar. There was mentioned by the planning board about the cost for rental maybe higher than a young family can afford. I was thinking one way to offset that, Jonathan as you can imagine from me, residential and small-stale ground source heat pump rebate program again is available. And it is there to offset the cost of ground source heat pumps that could be entered into the project. There are some relatively significant returns on it from the state and the federal government. And I don't see any indication of what the mechanical systems are being thought of yet. We haven't made decisions yet on the mechanical approach. Barry has typically gone with air source heat pumps because they also have some pretty good rebates with them. Although you're right that the ground source that the state is certainly incentivizing but we're open to multiple approaches but in the end part of it will be driven by a cost decision. But certainly there won't be a fossil fuel component to the heating in any of these units. Neither was that was the case for both 70 University Drive and for University Drive South. As you know, air source heat pumps are not particularly efficient and they don't work below a certain temperature level. So the ground source heat pumps are certainly more functional than the air source heat pumps would be. Well, something we can explore. Take a look, yeah, for sure. Those are the questions I had. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Meadows. Mr. Gilbert, do you have some questions? Yeah, I've got a few quick questions. First of all, thanks for putting together a pretty robust presentation here. I think everyone's done a pretty good job of re-envisioning these two parcels here. Pretty thoughtful layout and nothing too aggressive with respect to an architectural approach. I think things fit in pretty well here and there's been a lot of thoughtful landscaping given to this. A couple of my questions revolve around the landscaping. Maybe you guys can just take me through a few things. One question I had, is there a bike rack anywhere on site? I was looking through a project application and mentioned that there is, but can you point that out to me? Yeah, it's right over here. If you're following it to my mouse, if you follow it, right here is where that bike rack is. One of the other things to note, all units, say for these units right here, have storage areas. They all have basements, right? Even these, the two over two. And so part of the thought is folks would likely bring their bike into their unit. One of the things that we'll probably look at, we haven't talked about it with the design team yet, is maybe putting a bike rack over here, more approximate to this unit, just because they're the ones that don't have the storage. So I can imagine somebody coming in the back door, leaving their bike, walking up the stairs, going to their kitchen, same thing over here. There's storage everywhere else, but we do have one proposed here. We may think of keeping that and adding one. Okay, yeah, great. That kind of pertain to my second question, is trying to understand what that landscape area behind the dumpster was in particular. So helpful for that. Yeah, I mean, it might be useful to add that other bike rack on that area of the site, just as you're saying, that those units not having lower storage, but I would agree with you most likely, because we'll be putting the bikes down in that basement area. Another question, I know you guys are providing, I think it's like nine additional parking spaces and required, are you considering those as partial visitor parking spaces or can you walk me through what you're thinking of with respect to the parking? Sure, so under the bylaw, there's 17 units, 34 spaces are required, we're providing 43, so you're right, there's nine, of those nine, three of them are ADA, and so the way we look at it is those are restricted, there may be a tenant who utilizes them, but there may not, so those have to remain open and you can't necessarily double count them. So assuming that they remain open, that leaves six and those six would be visitor spaces. Okay, okay, great, helpful, good to know. Is there a specific area that you would be considering those being located, instead of curiosity? You know, it's a good question, we haven't. I could see them, you know, so we will have a, and this is probably something I forgot to mention, so I'm happy that you brought it up, a parking registration system, so tenants need to, so each unit can have two vehicles and what they do is they present the registration, Barry keeps the log, he presents them with a sticker, they put the sticker in their window and then so, you know, who the residential cars are, we haven't talked about whether or not we're gonna have designated visitor parking, probably not a bad idea. And if so, I could see it dispersed equally throughout, evenly throughout the complex, you know, thinking one here, maybe one here, one here, thinking one here, something like that, so if that's something the board's interested in, then we can certainly, you know, have some visitor spaces demarcated. Yeah, I think it would be useful just to see what that looks like, especially, you know, with having like a sort of plus six number that you're providing, which I mean, honestly, I think it's kind of a good thing here, let me see, I had two quick other questions, one pertaining to the retaining wall along fearing, so that's six feet tall, is that correct? So it's, let me get back to the grading plan, so I think it's maybe one place, it is a little bit tall, it's about six points, six and change. Yeah. Okay. And then, so what, how does it slow down then? So right here, you'll see bottom of wall 222.50. Yeah. Top of wall 229.25. Yeah. And then as you move east, because we're going this way. Yep. You've got top of wall at 233, bottom of wall 231. Got it. Top of wall 233, bottom, so it starts here, and then it just, you know, you can imagine it just growing, so to speak, because we have to keep it level behind it, and so that's really, and there's the break between, you know, you've got, this goes down, and Matt, I don't know if you know off the top of your head, I want to say 10 plus percent to get on Fearing Street as far as how quickly that drops when you see it. And so that's why we're proposing the Arbivite, and then on top of this wall, we're proposing that faux iron fence. Yeah, yeah, okay, great. No, that's helpful. So one, maybe this is just an architectural question or landscape thing. It would be helpful to see just like a quick rendering or perspective from Fearing Street. Just to look, you know, kind of into the, into the like drive aisle area. I'm also just curious to know what the facades of those two buildings, building six, and I guess building one, just whatever south of it look like. So that would be, if you could provide that, I think that would just be helpful to orient a little bit more. But with respect to the question under the taining wall, that's pretty much what my concern was. I just wanted to make sure that wasn't like that. Is that block also? Actually, is that like see blocking the building? Yeah, I think it's going to be, oh boy, I'm blanking on what it's called. But yeah, I mean stacked block, not cinder block, but stacked block, it's- Okay. There's one similar if you drive by one university drive south. You know, if you're coming from the west in Fevelling East, there's a retaining wall. We would expect the same sort of retaining wall over here. Okay, great. That's helpful. Final question, transformer. So I was, I'm just looking over the site plan here. I know that's like, you know, sort of surrounded by ballers that's a requirement. I was going to ask if there was any thought to, you know, fencing that offer, doing something a little more decorative since that's right there on the main corner. But it looks like there's a privacy fence. So correct me if I'm wrong. It was like a privacy fence on the hearing side of that. Is that correct? I don't think so. Let me bring this, let me bring this up. It's like site plan four. Yeah. And what I was going to look at is the landscaping plan because I think that's where, and Andy, I don't know if you, and this might be, you know, one of those things that, so this tree that we're proposing was supposed to replace the tree that is, was going to come down, but now it's staying. And so frankly, I don't know. And we can have an answer for the next time, the interaction between the existence of this transformer and the retention of that tree. And if that tree is now being saved, if this transformer needs to be relocated, if it does, we'll show you an updated plan. If they answer your question directly, you know, I think what we're looking to do, and Andy, correct me if I'm wrong, we're just looking to adequately screen this. I don't know by code if you can put like a fence around it. I think they have to keep it open and accessible. So I think it's vegetative plant things. Yeah, no, it's helpful actually that you pulled this up because I'm looking at the civil site plan and, you know, it's, it's, it's calling it like ballads on a pad with a little fence. So, I mean, basically what I was trying to drive at is that this approach that, you know, we're looking at with the landscaping can certainly be preferred to sort of on the civil drawing, but you're bringing up a good point. I mean, it's worth consideration with respect to that existing tree. And, you know, if the transformer can in fact sort of exist there, but that withstanding, this is sort of answering what I was driving at if we can landscape that instead and it looks like that's what's being provided. So all good with me. That clears it up. Thanks a lot. Thank you. I just have a couple of points that I want to get to the public comments and we can come back and ask more questions, but we're getting on after eight o'clock and I want to make sure that we have enough time for public comment tonight. But I wanted to emphasize two things. Number one, I agree. I think the idea of a, of an elevation from Farring Street looking into the property would really be helpful to visualize the fencing and the Arborvites as well as how the driveway looks. I mean, because I think that would be a good, I agree with Mr. Gilbert on that. And the other thing is, if nothing else, perhaps for the next meeting, draft up what you, what it's going to look like if that tree is saved and so we can see it. Because we'll need to, if that tree is going to be saved and there's a different way we're going to treat the area around there, you have to have it on the drawing so we can say it built is submitted, right? So if you can do that by the next meeting, that'd be helpful and probably answer the questions that Mr. Gilbert had as well. And I'll put this up just if you have other questions but just we understand what you're asking for but I think this at least gives you a little bit of perspective. I think what we'll do is we'll get you something that shows a little bit more of the built in, built in the topography. Yeah. So what I'd like to do now is turn to public comments, Maureen, and so let's open it up. And I want to tell people if you're, if you wish to make a comment on this, please introduce yourself, give your name and address for the record. Please hold your comments to around three minutes. Know that we probably have several people that want to speak and we want to make sure we give everybody an opportunity to do that if they can tonight. And we've got, I've got to get rid of this, we've got 14 attendees. So why don't we, we have the first person up there is interested. Yep. Frank, if you could state your name and your address. 140 Fairing Street and Amherst. And Susan, Hugo's 140 Fairing Street and Amherst. We're together, sorry. Okay. Please proceed, Franklin Susan. My first question or concern has to do with, with the, with the drainage. We've had problems with our basement as close to Southwest area and so far as we are, sometimes being a little inundated. And I'm concerned with this new configuration of the landscape to directly to the, to the West of us that we might experience some feedback from the underground streams and the normal flow of the water into our basement. That's one concern. The other concern is, is environmental. It's depending on the ecology of the area. I understand the area down West of the proposed development is or at least at one time was protected wetlands. And I'm wondering what, what, what danger there might be to the remaining wetlands there if this program is approved. That's one of the concerns that I have. The other concern is parking, which I think in, in this neighborhood of the university is very, very difficult to find. And we find many, many people parking where they shouldn't be parking. And I'm concerned that people like and find the parking lot for the proposed development, a handy way to hand them, a handy way of parking their vehicles for the attending classes or teaching or something like that. The third is traffic since the, since the roundabout at the end of faring that is on the West side of Faring Street was finished. We have no tremendous increase in numbers of vehicular traffic coming past our house. In fact, it's actually rather difficult to cross Faring Street now some, sometimes during the day, I can anticipate this would only get worse with the development as we proposed it. And fourth, I'm concerned about the human, the human dimension of what's going on here. You have a 17 or I think it is 17 unit plan ahead. Have you in, I'm concerned that some of these might be interested in, shall we say, catering to Southwest students. We've had some experience with this before where houses around the Southwest corridor have been really, really helpful hosts to some of the party goers along Faring and Sunset Avenue. And I'm afraid that we're looking at another potential. And another potential problem with, with partying on geared to undergraduates that we might find coming to Southwest to our territory. And that's those are the questions that I have. My problem, I would like to chime in about what's happening with the basement. We have an understanding that Tan Brook is actually underneath our house. And what we're afraid of is that if you disrupt it, does that mean we get inundated with water? We have mitigated it very successfully. We also find if the town sewer system gets backed up, then we're in trouble again, the just the sewer for the storm drains. So we have very concerns about that. And when you start digging up and start doing all this stuff, we don't know what's gonna happen to our house. What, what guarantee do we have that we won't have major problems? I mean, I wanted to bring that up. Number two for the traffic, when we didn't have the four-way stop, we were at Lincoln, we were having accidents like you wouldn't believe. I mean, you sit down to dinner and the police were coming. The four-way stop has helped. They still run through the stop sign. I'm very concerned with the extra traffic going down sunset partially because it's a narrow street. They even parked the car to cars to keep the cars from parking on the street or even slowing us down. They don't even leave your residence, don't leave enough space, even for a fire truck to go through, which has been a big worry of mine for years. So that's been a real problem for me. Again, we are worried about the foot traffic for everyone. I agree that it's nice that you wanna do all this and make sure that it's faculty and whatever and whatever. But I think we have to worry about what's happening to the rest of the neighborhood, which I don't think the town has been planning for. Also, I would not put the electric box on the corner as you decide in your plan right now. I can, we already had an accident at this corner at sunset and fairing just the other day. I could see a car plowing into it. So we are very worried about the foot traffic. We are here on the weekends. We see tremendous amounts of kids walking down the street and there's no place for them to go, but actually go down the street at times. So those are our major things. Otherwise, I hope that they really do take care of the plantings around the area and keep it up because I can't see all that you're putting in there that the manager company is gonna clean it up and keep it that way. I have a real problem with that. But basically we're more, the thing we're really worried about is TAN go up going underneath the houses because they build a new house next door to us and they've had water problems, we know. Thank you. Thank you. You've each had three minutes. Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, can I, I don't know if you want us to respond, but I could show you one screen. You know what I, whatever you want me to do. Yep, let's do this. Let's have you respond to the comments after all the public comments are done. So we don't get into a back and forth. I think it's the best way to do it. Fine by me. Yep. I guess I'd go next to, is it Pam Rooney? Do we need you to stay? No. No. Okay, Pam, I'll set your name in your address. Excuse me, Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. Thanks for letting me speak. This is not as serious an issue as the previous speakers who have a real concern and I hope you address. This has to do with trees and drainage. So the existing tree that was shown that has been protected, I think I would agree with folks that are asking for a realignment of that sidewalk for the least disturbance. It would be too bad to have taken the time to save that tree, but have it damaged by construction which can easily happen. So, and also reiterate the removal or replacement of the electrical box. It, first of all, it's unsightly. And second, as the previous person just said, it could be a problem if somebody plows into it. So similar to the tree on sunset, the trees along Fearing Street are mature. They are in pretty good shape as far as I can tell. And I wonder if the board can order that their protection be maximized. The location of the retaining wall and the arborviety are seriously within the root zone of those trees. So if you can protect as much as possible, the root zone of those trees and order that the construction of the retaining wall is done from within the site rather than from the street side. And that the arborviety, I don't know how you plant arborviety and not disturb the root zone. So I'm not sure if that will be successful. The last item is looking at the drainage plan. I think when you zoomed in pretty closely, it was interesting to me, and I think maybe needs the second look that building number five seems to be located at the high point of the parking lot where you have the grades pitching to either side. Yet building number five is also the lowest elevation of the three in the back row and the exit doors to the west are very low. I think you should take a look at the drainage from those exit doors to the backyard and you may need to regrade so that there's more than, my quick calculations were that it was less than 1% slope from the back doors to the 228 elevation. So you may need to wrap that differently. I would also be concerned just given that you have a fairly steep slope between the buildings. Not a whole lot of runoff, but it will puddle around the back of the buildings. And I think given that there are concerns about site water already, I wouldn't want to exacerbate that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Rooney. We have Jennifer Taub is next, right? Yep. Jennifer, if you could state your name and your address. Hold on a second, maybe I didn't press the... Wait, did you disappear? The hand is gone. She's down on the list. Slide her down. Oh, I see her. Allow the talks, okay. Thank you. Am I unmuted? Here we go. Okay, thank you. My name is Jennifer Taub. I live at 259 Lincoln Avenue and I am speaking tonight, as a resident around the corner from where this development is proposed. If I heard correctly, 12 of the 17 units will be four bedrooms. Okay, and what concerns me about that is I appreciate that the developer has stated a interesting commitment in renting to families and young faculty and maybe retirees. I guess what I'm saying is year-round residents and not exclusively to undergraduates. So my concern with that number of four bedrooms is the way the four bedroom units will be priced, I think they will be out of reach to anyone, but for unrelated individuals or students each paying per bedroom. So I would ask, I don't know if the ZBA can request more three bedrooms than four bedrooms, but I'm very concerned about the success of attracting non-undergraduate households to be able to pay the rent of a four bedroom. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. So next is... Janet McGowan, I love to talk. Janet, if you could state your name and your address. Hi, my name is Janet McGowan and I live at 706 Southeast Street. I'm speaking as a resident and not as a member of the planning board, although I did see this in front of the board. I really applaud the desire to have this attractive multifamily mixed occupant development and that Mr. Roberts wants families and older adults and the neighborhood wants the same group of people and needs it for its own stability. The question is how do you make that happen? Because the rents for a four bedroom are gonna be close to $4,000, which would put it I think at a reach of a lot of families, as well as it's a great location next to UMass, but it's also next to the Southwest Towers. So my question is, if the goal is to have families and non-undergraduate students predominantly at the house, how do you make sure that happens? And what happens if it does later become, a new developer or a new owner decides to start renting to undergraduates, what's the impact on the neighborhood? And I think people would agree that it's not gonna be positive. And so my suggestion is that the ZBA attach a condition limiting the percentage of undergraduates that can rent, say 25% of the units can be rented to undergraduates. And I can speak from my own experience in my neighborhood which has some rental housing that I think that there's a stultifying effect of boring people on undergraduate students. Like our dull daily lives of regular adult folk and driving our kids to and fro or going down to the Cumbies, we have a tempering effect on undergraduates or younger people. And I think that I think it's an important condition to impose because the most expensive housing in Amherst goes to rental housing is primarily focused at undergraduate students. We see that downtown, we see that off of route nine and the new developments. And so if everybody wants it to be family housing, everybody wants it to be young faculty, everybody wants older adults, then why not just impose that as a condition that no more than 25% of the units can be rented to undergraduates. And we can bore them into good behavior. And if Mr. Robert sells his development in 10, 20 years, we know that that will still happen and it will spread through the neighborhood and be a new form of housing for Amherst. It's kind of a new model. So I would really encourage the ZBA to consider that condition and actually just add it to the permit. Thank you very much. Thank you, Janet. Next is Dorothy Pam. If you could state your name and your address. Hello, my name is Dorothy Pam. My address is 229 Amity Street and I'm a special as an individual and as a neighbor. Obviously a tremendous amount of work has been going into this plan. Just the whole thing about the water. I do hope that you do examine the questions that were brought to you by the nearby residents because the first, when I first heard that the parking area was down a slope, I immediately could see that there were a lot of problems that could happen there. But I mainly wanna support what has been said by Janet McGowan and Jennifer Taub about the four bedroom apartments. We talk of it as a family apartment, but let's think about couples as well. Students, graduate students who are a couple, old people who are a couple, that's two bedroom apartments. And that makes that the rent of that apartment much more affordable for actual people who might live and wanted to rent an apartment on that area. We need new housing. We need a variety of housing. We also need our strong neighborhoods. So this housing development must be something that helps but does not hurt the neighborhood that it's on the edge of. And I know that that's the goal. I know that's the aim, but I think that I agree with the two speakers that I mentioned before, that reducing the number of four bedroom apartments would really help that to be a reality. Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. Next we have Anna. You can state your name and your address. Hi, my name is Anna Schrader and I live on 155 Sunset Avenue. And I'm speaking as an individual and as a resident, of course. And I would just like to ask you if you could share a little bit about the timeline of this project. So what is your timeline regarding the project? And I want to second what was just said before about the really the need to attract really not undergraduate students to this project. I mean, yeah, there has been so many really important arguments been made already. So I'm really interested in the timeline. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. See here. Who do we have next to here? Michelle, if you could state your name and your address. Hi, it's not Michelle, it's James and I'm a resident at 60 Fearing Street. I've also lived in the Valley my whole life and I'm a landlord here in the Valley. I've been doing that for the past 20 years. So I have a little bit of a different perspective on some of this. And I hear the concerns about, well, before I get to my landlord bit, moving the existing house into the wetlands next to our place is going to create more problems with Tanbrook. The Hugues family were talking about that and we're very concerned about Tanbrook as well. So the ratio of parking to bedrooms is one of the things that caught my ear. Someone mentioned that there's gonna be more than one person per bedroom. That's almost inevitable when you get in the younger people and it seems like everybody has a car now. So I think the minimum ratio would have to be more than one to one with the bedrooms. The other thing is that the floor plans that I see, they are more similar to my daughter's and they're more of an undergrads suite than it is to a family apartment. And just as a practical matter, I don't know of any way to say that you're not gonna rent to any group of people without falling into discrimination problems. So you can't say no undergrads or eliminate, it's discrimination. So if these units are built in a undergrad friendly configuration, which they are and their price at a way where the average family is not gonna be able to afford it, which they are, then you're gonna have a lot of undergrads in there. And I think that we should just be grownups about this and say there's an undergrad shortage, undergrad housing shortage in this town and this contractor's coming in and doing something that, in many ways I think is quite good and quite needed. And if we can be honest and say, this is gonna be undergrad housing, when I interview families that wanna live in one of my apartments, they ask me, do any undergrads live in the building? Cause they don't wanna live next to that. They know what they're getting into. So this is not gonna be family housing. I just think that's a stretch, but if it is gonna be undergrad housing, can there be ways where it's managed as such? Having an on-site property manager, having a lease that limits sublets or excludes that, having a lease that limits overnight guests and some way of enforcing that so that some of the most egregious behaviors of the undergrads can be taken care of and they can become good neighbors. The other thing that I heard mentioned was about the waivers for some people with affordable housing and again, that's one of those things you can't discriminate against someone who has a waiver. They're treated like everybody else and they pay full rent. And then with the cameras, I'm just wondering if those are gonna be monitored 24 hours, if it's just gonna be something that goes on to a chip someplace and is reviewed when somebody has time, but I live next door to one of Mr. Robert's houses right now. And he told me when I spoke to them that it was gonna have undergrads in there and it doesn't. Excuse me, he said they're gonna have graduate students and it's full of undergrads. Okay, they need to live too, but at least let's be honest with each other about what we're talking about here and let's put in place some safeguards so that it doesn't deteriorate the quality of life in the neighborhood and protects all of our quiet use and enjoyment of our properties. Thank you. Thank you, James. I just want no other individuals have raised their hand. All right. Whoop. Pam Maroney has raised her hand again. The letter. Make a quick. Oh yeah. Pam. Pam, go ahead. Thank you, Pam Maroney, 42 Cottage Street. I don't believe that students are a protected class. I think we can, in fact, say no undergrads. Thank you. That's a, all right. Let's, if there's anybody else that wishes to speak who hasn't spoken yet, please indicate. If not, we're gonna go back to the hearing and have the applicant respond to some of those questions, concerns and questions raised by the public and to the extent that you can answer them tonight, that's great to the extent that you need to go back and gather other information. We can do that at the next meeting. So Mr. Reedy, do you want to try to run through some of those questions in the order in which they were in the order in which they were raised? And help us as I think they raise some good questions. Sure, I'll do my best. So first, this is 140 Fearing Street. If you have ready, can everybody see my screen? She's got Eric, right? So it's a topographical map from the Emirates GIS system. 140 Fearing Street, you got 260 as an elevation here, 255 as an elevation. This, everything down here is down here, right? It is lower than this property. And so when we're talking about stormwater, you know, water runs downhill. So, you know, I don't know how this property would impact something up gradient, severely up gradient, 20 feet up gradient from them. So I don't know that that's an actual impact of this project. So that's kind of response number one. Second, relative to environmental concerns. So we had SWCA, who's based out of Amherst. We had wetland scientists go out to the site. The conservation agent did a desktop review. We had that confirmed by a field review by SWCA and there aren't any resource areas on the site. So there aren't any wetlands. There may be some further west. I wouldn't doubt it if down by University Drive, because I think that kind of acts like a dam of sorts at the bottom of the hill. I would bet it's wet down there, but that's far from our site. And I mean, as Matt will tell you and has told you, part of the obligations under the stormwater handbook in Massachusetts is to make sure that you're not increasing and in fact, they're keeping the same. We're decreasing the flow of water that's leaving the site and that's what we've done. So as far as environmental impact, traffic impact, we talked about the traffic study that there's going to be a minimal, I mean, 0.5% increase in traffic at that intersection with nine additional morning trips and 12 additional afternoon trips added to the surrounding roadway network as a result of this. And then there's the underlying theme of use and management, I'll say. And I think that's where we start is it comes down to management, right? The idea here is we're not blowing smoke. We'd like to have families here. Will there be undergraduates? I bet. I'm sure that to have a diversified, mixed well-balanced development, you're gonna have a bit of everything. And I think that's what makes a good community. And it comes down to management and self-regulation and humanity of between and amongst folks and not prohibition or potential discrimination against folks because of the class protected or not that they're in. That's not what we're into. We're into a respectful operation, respectful inhabitation and respectful management of a place like this. And so, we don't get a second chance to build these units. You can build four bedrooms. And frankly, there's not a huge cost difference between a three bedroom and a four bedroom. And you can have a couple live in a four bedroom and they may be just as happy to have all that space. To have the space of a four bedroom, I think is important, especially given the society that we live right now. So we've been able to fit what we think is a really well thought out development here. And we hear the neighbors, but it comes down to management. And I think the board through their conditions, through the lease and through who's actually managing it, can see it to be well managed and alleviate those issues. I mean, I think those were, those were most of it as far as the trees on Fearing Street. You know, we'll bring in an arborist, a certified arborist when we're doing the work over by the retaining wall and the planting of those arbor varieties, just to make sure that we're minimally impacting those existing trees on Fearing Street. And we just also to note, I think it was James who mentioned it, we're not saying that more than one person per bedroom. So I mean, if a couple wants to stay in the same bedroom by all means, but we're not saying that there can be multiple double occupancy. That's not how we're planning this. I mean, and for the next hearing, Mr. Chair, I think what we'll do is we'll get you some finishes to show what the interior will be like. We'll show you some of the finishes of 70 University Drive of one University Drive South, which like I said, this is going to be just like. And I think the parking to bedroom ratio is like 0.7 something, 0.73 maybe, which is I think completely in line with what you see in other recently approved projects and it works. And that's what we're expecting here as well. So I don't know if there's anything else. Oh, timeline. Thank you. We're hoping to start in June. So to relocate the houses, start to decommission, I'll call it those houses and to relocate them in July. There is a process that we have to go through for the relocation, both the local Historic District Commission and what 46 Fearing Street, there are wetlands on site, but we can stay at least 50 feet away, which is the requirement. So there's a process that has to be gone through, but the timeline is about June of this year for hopeful occupancy. Everybody for tendencies works on an academic year. So hopeful occupancy, September of 2023. So it's a little over a year build, 14, 16 month build, site work, et cetera. The whole site will have a construction fence around it. There'll be a construction trailer on site and obviously Barry's gonna be the one who's building this. So he's gonna be the person to call if there's any issues. Great. Thank you, Mr. Riedi. I had some more questions. I'd like to open it up again for board members to ask questions if they have any or for us to discuss considerations after we pose any questions that board members may have. I have a couple of questions and then we can open it up to other questions as well. So for the next meeting, can we have estimated rents so we know what these things are gonna rent out for I don't know if you have that. You probably haven't said it yet. I don't know if you have that public. Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be market. But it helps us just with the market. I don't know what the market is without kind of that. And this is a year, I know it's a year out before you'll have it, but can you give us some kind of a ballpark estimate of what those rents are likely to be? Cause there's a lot of, I think everybody has an idea and whether it's right or wrong. So that would be helpful. Yeah, and what I'll say now is one of the things so I've done a bit of an analysis, considering housing prices, mortgage interest rates, et cetera here in the valley. And so if you have a four bedroom, you're probably talking between $550,000 to $600,000 for a four bedroom house in Amherst. 30 year mortgage at that amount, assuming no money down. So 100% finance, which you're probably gonna talk 80, 85, 90, 95% of a loan, but still let's just use it for an example. Plus taxes, plus insurance, not including maintenance. So if you had a home and not including your effort to snow plow to get a landscaper in there to cut the grass to buy a lawnmower, any of that stuff. At $600,000 per month, you're probably at about $4,500 without any maintenance. At a $550,000, you're probably at about $4,250 a month. And so even at $4,000, because I would expect the four bedrooms between $4,000 and $4,500, I don't know where that ends up, but you're about in line with what someone would have for plus for buying a house. Because here there's maintenance, there's a problem, you pick up the phone, you call the management company, you don't have to worry about snow plowing, you don't have to worry about shoveling, you don't have to worry about lawn care, you get the amenities. And like I said, if there's an issue, there's an issue with the refrigerator, there's an issue with the water, toilet, light, you name it. And there's a value to that that we haven't even factored in. So that's just to put into context with where we're at in the market. And then two bedrooms, let's assume a little shy of $400,000 for that. Even at, again, 30 year mortgage, taxes and insurance, you're at about $3,000 a month without any maintenance. And these rents will be lower, for two bedroom, the rents will be lower than $3,000 a month. I don't know what they'll be, but maybe between 2,500 and 2,800, I don't know, but certainly less than what it would cost for somebody to buy plus maintain a residence. And then you've got the affordable units and those affordable units will be less than the 80%, less than a 30% of the 80%, 30% of 70%. I wanna say it's something like $1,200 a month, versus market rate at 25 to $2,800 a month. So that's probably about as good of an answer because everybody sees what's happening with materials, with labor, I mean, there's a lot of cost that goes into this. And landscaping isn't cheap. I mean, there's a lot. So we're trying to be as sensitive as we can. We think that there is a family market given the numbers that I just said, there's also an attractiveness I think to families because what if they're just visiting for a semester? What if they don't wanna live? They want to live here yet. What if they wanna live here but don't find the perfect house? I mean, that's why I think given the corpus, the comprehensive nature of this, I think we're right in line with what, people may say families may not be able to afford it but families who maybe wanna live here may be living in a place with a lower rent where by them moving here to a potentially nicer spot, somebody who couldn't afford the 4,000 or 4,500 can move into 3,000, 3250, whatever it happens to be somewhere else. So it's a little bit of a domino effect but I think that's what we're looking at for rents. I'm looking at the planning board's comments and one they have on pedestrian circulation and they say building C should have an access path on the southern edge of the building leading from the parking area to the front entry. Can we pull up the schematic of building C? Yeah. So I can see what that is. Yeah, it's a really good suggestion actually. Let me get it up. All right, hopefully everybody can see this. So I think we're talking about this building right here. So every other building has access from the parking lot and it was something that they had brought up and we haven't changed the plans because we wanted to have these conversations before we go through the time and expense of plan iterations. So these units access from the parking lot, these units access from the parking lot here, there's no access from the parking lot. And when I say that, there's no, well, there is in the form of walking up this drive to here and then into the front end of these units. So there's two solutions, maybe three solutions. One of them is to stripe this driveway, you know, stripe a portion of this driveway because it'll be the inhabitants here. One solution is to put a sidewalk here but it's a little tight and the other is it would cause a change of the design of the interior of the building but to put stairs on the interior so that this would be kind of the common access to all of the units. So that, you know, these units would have access from here and then there would be some internal access but that's something frankly that we're talking about. And I probably gave you the hierarchy of the order that we would look at but this is where I think some of the conversation needs to happen and we just have to hear feedback. Tom, if I could just add on to that, the lowest tier kind of option. Right now there's access for the flats that are in the back. If we have the stairways from above continue down to the ground floor we wouldn't be able to do two bedroom units. We would maybe do three studio units or maybe we could squeak in two one bedrooms in the studio or something like that. It would change the unit next in the building. But it would seem to me that it wouldn't be attractive to have your parking behind the building and having to walk around the front to get into your unit. It would seem to me to be less than desirable. And boy, changing that driveway off sunset are you talking to allowing potentially allowing parking in that driveway and narrowing the driveway? No, no, no. When I say striping, I mean just, you know how there's like a crosswalk but just along the side here. I got that. I thought you were talking parking stripes. No, it's probably the practical path of what people would take if this was a design that was implemented. I would imagine people would come up, walk up here and then go into their individual units. But yeah, I mean, it's something that if that's a concern for the board because I've heard you, Mr. Chair, and I don't disagree with it is thinking about that corpus of the project and making sure that it's all attractive so that it's higher end where it's going to attract folks who are going to respect the property in the neighborhood. And so with that, maybe Jonathan and Barry, we take a look at what that looks like. And yes, it's gonna change the unit mix but let's see what that ultimately looks like. And I don't know if, and I'm not quite sure you would know better if that having two one bedrooms may be less, more attractive to a grad student or more attractive to somebody on sabbatical here for a year at UMass, as opposed to not very attracted to an undergrad. So I don't know the answer to that but I assume that might very well be. I know I never wanted to live by myself when I was an undergrad. So I don't know about everybody else. Any other questions from other board members? Yes. Yeah, Mr. Meadows. Question that the T in the corner at sunset and fearing is that the tree or is a transformer? Transformer. I would absolutely say that it cannot be in that location. That's a very poor choice. It needs to either be farther down Sunset Street or down fearing where there's less of a chance of an accident. And I think some of it's with the utility so we'll talk to them but I don't think we disagree with you. Okay. The only other thing I mentioned to Jonathan, air source heat pumps are not suitable for New England. Simple statement. And is there a possibility of, you're simply producing an indication of where Tanbrook does run in the neighborhood? Maybe simply curiosity on my part but it's been mentioned a number of times if we could just see where it runs that would be appreciated. I happen to have it up on my screen Tom if you, I've got the Amherst GIS on my screen. Tanbrook, I mean, we're... Just, yeah, you got to pan out a little bit. Yep, a little bit more. I like that. Looks like it's right over here. So Tanbrook and let me, so I'm gonna highlight the two, this is the project site. There's Tanbrook as the crawl flies, 1200 feet. Just satisfies my curiosity more than anything else. Could you also look into what Pam Rooney was talking about as far as the site creating this concern, please? Yeah, let me look, make sure. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, we'll take a look. We'll have Matt and Phil double check it. I trust their first iteration is fine but we'll take a closer look at it for sure. Thank you. And maybe one other point about, what I think you may be interested in Mr. Meadows, other roofs do have to be built to have solar. Jonathan, I guess that's probably a poor way of saying it but they have to be built in order to currently requires that we design for future rooftop solar. And that's something, so we're talking about what roofs there would be useful for a solar. So we can't say yes, we'll have it or no, we're definitely not gonna have it. The roofs are going to be built to support it and we're looking at it, we're actively looking at it. That would certainly make ground source heat pumps more viable. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Other questions for members? I guess the one thing I would say is I would encourage you to look into some kind of more robust way of filtering the tenants for the building. The buildings, then what we have, I understand and really support the notion of a diversified community and population amongst this. I do hear the concerns of the neighborhood about the potential for student housing, taking over, dominating this if indeed there's a sale of property and some other change in ownership or management. And I would like to keep to protect from that happening and one way to do that is through conditions that are applied to the special permit. And so I think it would be good to think through ways in which you can limit the number of undergrads that rent there, Tom. And I think that's can be, I know that's a concern and difficult, but I think it's something that we probably need to think about some way. And I wonder if you could give some thought to coming back with the next meeting and saying is there a number, is it 25 or 50? What is that number that would happen? I'll tell you right now, we're not gonna do that. That's walking into a lawsuit. I mean, we're not gonna put a restriction and if I don't wanna be brazen, but if the board does, then there's probably gonna be a lawsuit because you're putting the applicant at risk of discrimination, discrimination claims. I mean, if there's a quota or a number that we cannot exceed, I mean, I'm not gonna go down the path of positing all the different variations where it could come up, but I can appreciate, like we can come up with a marketing plan and we can suggest the marketing that we can do in order to avoid. But again, I'm gonna back up and say, it's all about management. And then I'll come back in and say we can talk about marketing. That's fine. We can talk about tenant selection. That's fine. But to have a number out there, I mean, we just can't agree to that. I'm sorry. And you know, I love working with you. You know, if we can do it, we can do it, but this is just something that- Yeah, well, maybe a discussion at the next meeting about that, the fact that the students are not a protected class, but there might be something we should ask our town attorney to take a look at and then you to respond to it just so we can have a discussion about that. I don't wanna put you or your client into a dangerous legal position. I don't wanna put you into a jeopardy that way. I need to understand that better, though in terms of the legal liability or the risky face, if you do that. And the risk we face as a town, if we would do that. And I think you're right. It does rely upon management, management, management. And while we hope that the current management would have a long life leading this property, nothing does. And we have to figure out a way to instill that permanently with the property. So it goes and that's through conditions on the special permit. So we have to look at something more than just good intent and marketing. So we have some work to do over the next couple of weeks to come up with something that works for everybody, I think. Yeah, and I don't disagree. I mean, to me, this is just like any other, it comes down to management, it comes down to articulation of the, in the conditions of the expectations of management, it's upon change of ownership, whether it's a expiration, if it's a new owner comes in and has a conversation, there's all those tools that the Zoning Board of Appeals has that I think are useful in circumstances like this. Because time and times change, we're at this moment in time and we're trying to say, here's how it should be for everybody in the future, which, if I was myself in the future and look back and say, you made that decision for me, what were you thinking? So I think we just have to be sensitive to allow reaction to the time and the place that people are in. And if we can set up the infrastructure through appropriate management, that carries with the property. And then, if it's battery or if it's somebody else, it's always managed appropriately and the Zoning Board has the opportunity to make sure because it's an area that should be managed appropriately. It is that transitional space between a higher density and a lower density. And it's, I mean, it's tipped one way or the other, it could be a problem. So yeah, I don't disagree at all with the appropriate management conditions. I'll leave it at that. Okay. Other comments, suggestions? People have conditions they want to discuss at this point. I want to have, I want to float to get reaction either from board members or the applicant. Yes, Mr. Maxfield. That's one of the things I'm considering. I don't even know if this is really anything that would come down on the applicant. I think this might be a concern of the town, but just I worry about the impact it might have on the sewer system in that area. I know some of our sewer systems, the new buildings that had gone in across the street increases the flow in there. And you're talking about areas where we might have restaurants where there's grease, things like that, getting into the sewer, what is more buildings and usage of the sewer going to do to that. I'd like to get an idea of where the sewer system, how it flows, what it's going to be connected to and where it's going to just in this property. Because I would worry a little bit about back up depending on the flow. So I'd like to see where it's going to connect and then kind of how it flows out from this building if that's possible. That's my major concern. That's a good point, Mr. Maxfield. That's interesting, yeah. So if I could, I mean, some anticipation. So why that tree right here has to come down? So there is an old sewer line that comes here, comes across this property. And then I think joins that might even come this way and then join over here. So sewer manhole, sewer manhole. This is going to be a brand new line that the applicant is going to pay for. And in the site, you've got sewer lines running into this new sewer manhole. And then this is additional new line and then it continues to flow to the north this way. And so this is something that we've been talking about with Jason Skeels, town engineer. And he was in Guilford for the Department of Public Work Superintendent. They were the ones that asked for this new sewer line. So this is something that we're doing as part of the project. Thank you, Mr. Rudy. And the town engineer has looked at this and said it's sufficient capacity for the number of residents that would be there and all that, right? Yeah. We've got a letter from him saying that. Got a letter from him and how much the fees are. Yeah, we've got all that. Mr. Maxfield, does that answer your question? I think so, yeah, for now it definitely does. And you may want to talk to Jason just because I don't disagree with, okay, how does the sewer line, where does it all go? Like what is overall, where is this all flowing to? So, yeah, Jason is probably the right guy. Ms. Parks, you did have your hand up. Did you have something to another question? I was just going to make the comment that normally you would pay 30% of your salary for your renter mortgage and that if at $4,000 a month you would need to make 144,000, something like that. The average UMass faculty salary is 62,000. So even two faculty, married faculty members would not be able to afford it. So I just making that point that rents in this area are not affordable for anybody, except for students at this time. I guess what I'll say is I respectfully disagree to Fold One. You don't have to only spend 30% plus this includes maintenance, includes insurance, it includes other things besides just what you would consider the 30%. So maybe increase it to something higher. And be, there are families that live in Hammers, right? It's not, and they're paying. I mean, I do closings every day and what they're paying for their mortgage, for the principal and interest, for their taxes. I mean, people are spending in it. And I don't know that a couple each making, so okay, the average salary is 62,000. So two of them together, that's 124. You get two people maybe at the third of their career and they're making $144,000 relatively simply. And that's 30% plus they don't have maintenance. So I don't know that it's so disparate as you're mentioning it. And there's for the four bedrooms, there's 12 four bedrooms. So if there are 12 professors or 12 people, like we're not saying it only can be professors. There could be somebody who loves the proximity to the university, loves to walk down to the football stadium, loves to go to the basketball, to the Mullen Center, loves to walk downtown to get a coffee to go to the Drake. This may be a perfect place for them. You look at the Hastings House. I mean, those are condominiums downtown and they're selling for 600 plus thousand, $650,000 because of the proximity, because of what the area brings. And I did a bunch of those closings. You don't necessarily even have families or you have maybe one person, but they really like it. Maybe two people. So I just want to put it back into perspective because I can see the specter there, right? I've been around in this town long enough. I've been doing this long enough to know what folks are worried about. And again, it comes down to management. And I don't hear anybody saying undergrads are bad, right? Responsible undergrads are fine, unruly undergrads. And if the tipping point goes to too many unruly undergrads, which is the fear, that's bad. So it's thinking of ways to prevent those, not saying undergrads, you can't come here because that's the classification that you're putting them in and saying, okay, 25%. That's it. Because we think all undergrads are bad. I mean, what kind of message, and I'm not talking to you, Ms. Parks, I'm talking generally, what kind of message are you sending? Is that this is what we think about the people who keep our economy going, is that we only think 25% of you can live here in a society, in a community. So I don't think we're as far off as folks may think. Yes, we say 4,000, 4,500, but I showed you that that's kind of what the market is. Construction costs are incredibly high, land costs are incredibly high, labor costs is incredibly high, housing, there is housing need. We're looking to propose housing here. I just don't wanna get tripped up over those things. And so I don't need to go on a- Well, I hear what you're saying. I'm just saying that there's no one in my family that could afford $4,000 a month for rent. My kids do not live in Amherst because they can't afford the rents in Amherst. And I think it's a shame because there's not enough housing for people who need housing here. And a lot of people who are able to pay $600,000 are coming from Boston or New York City or coming from places where the salaries are a lot higher than this area. So I hear what you're saying. I'm just saying it's very hard for people who are actually from Amherst or the area to rent in this area. And actually it's very hard to buy in this area at this time. I don't disagree. And bigger level, probably worth a discussion. How do you get, we've talked with other clients about workforce housing. And with that is subsidies are required because if you just look at the cost of the construction and the risk involved with it and how much you just need to have to cover your debt service to pay for everything that you just spent to get it done. I mean, that's really what's driving a lot of this. So not necessarily for this project, but just more globally because I don't think any of us disagree. Right. Yeah, enough said. Well, we're at nine o'clock which is our typical quite quitting time for a meeting. And we can go a little bit longer if there are additional questions. I just think, why don't we take an inventory of the kinds of things that we've asked for you to have. I don't think we have to go through all of that today. I've been trying to write down all the requests. I know Maureen almost always does. Dave helps out as well. Why don't we put that together? If the questions that we have for you and information we need for next meeting, we'll get that to you the next couple of days so that you have time to prepare it and get it to us so we can look at it as always. It's good to have stuff seven days ahead of time. That's what we like. So we wanna build some time into that. And if any members have additional questions, get them to Maureen directly and she can get them to the applicant, to Tom and to Mr. Roberts. I guess what I'd like to do is have this meeting go until the next time we can meet Maureen and we haven't set that date yet for the next meeting. Right. So I don't have a, I can't suspend the meeting or until a date certain, continue a meeting to a date certain yet. So let's leave the public hearing open until we can set that date. How do we do that? In this process, we need to continue. Well, we hope that the applicant is agreeable to continuing the public hearing to a date and time certain and we need to figure that out right now before we end tonight's meeting. So Mr. Judge is not available on May the 12th, which is our normal, our next regularly scheduled meeting. So, you know, if, you know, a possible date is not meeting until the fourth Thursday of the month, which would be May the 26th or would folks with the applicant and the applicant and the ZBA members be flexible in meeting on a special evening, perhaps sometime between the 16th and the 19th? Fine by us. What do folks, what is ZBA members? I could do the 16th, 17th, 18th or the 26th. And just 18th is not good on my end because you have planning board and historical commission and I have a hearing somewhere else at the same time. Dylan, when do you have a licensing commission meeting? Does that have any impact? We're Monday nights, but right now the only thing I can definitely plan in advance would have to be on a Thursday. You could meet on Thursday. And any Thursday next month? Okay. Let's see here. Oh, the 19th, it looks like Steve is not available on the 19th. Well, that may change, but right now I'm not available. And I'm trying to move that, but I don't know that I can't. Okay. Marine, I am unavailable on the 19th. Okay. And what's today is the 20th? Okay. So May 5th is not an option. And did anyone say the 16th would work? Monday the 16th? It would work for me, but I thought Dylan said he couldn't do it. Sorry. Okay. Sorry. I can't keep up with all this. Can we just go date by date? Sorry. I know Dylan you indicated, but I didn't jot it down. Okay. Let's say Tuesday the 17th, what would that work? Marine that entire week to meet is not work. Okay. So Monday, it kind of looks like May the 26th might be. Yep. That looks like that's the date. It looks like that's the date. Make it happen. Okay. Well, that was easy. Okay. So, and that would be May the 26th at six o'clock via Zoom. All right. So if that's good with a client, right? I know you'd prefer it sooner. Oh yeah. No, I mean, I've got another hearing that night. So I'm just trying to think of what I'm going to do. I mean, it's more important that the board all gets together. I don't know if you have, because I've got a hearing in Ludlow that night. If any other day that week works, like the 25th or the 24th, I'm free. So Tuesday the 24th or Wednesday the 25th? Looks like Craig says no. And then, so I guess Monday the 23rd is the only other one. No. Okay. So then we'll, I'll figure something out for Thursday the 26th. All right. Is there a time that would be better for you? No. Four o'clock in the afternoon, three o'clock in the afternoon. I don't know. I don't, works for me. Would that work for, I can't even work until. Can't even work. Okay. What day is that? The 26th, the Thursday, the 26th. Any chance you can meet earlier than six o'clock on that Thursday? No. No, okay. I can't do that. No, that's good. Okay, that's fine. I can do any other day. Not the 24th or 26th. So then I move that we continue the public hearing until on this matter, until the 26th at six o'clock via Zoom. Do I have a second? Go ahead. No, that's perfect. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Mr. Maxfield, any discussion? If not, roll call vote. Chair votes aye. Ms. Parks? Aye. Mr. Maxfield? Aye. Mr. Meadows? Aye. Mr. Gilbert? Aye. Motion carries. So we will continue this on the 26th. See you in a month. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next sort of business is any public comment on any matter before, except for the matter before the body tonight. So anybody in any matter at all, just not on this application. I don't see any hands raised. I see no hands raised. No. And lastly, any business that came up in the last 48 hours that was not previously anticipated, I don't think we just dealt with it, which was how to schedule the next meeting. Oh, well, there you go. So that was, we've taken care of it. All right, so we'll work together Maureen to put together a list of questions and information that we need from the applicant. If you have any other questions, give it to Maureen in the next couple of days. We'd like to try to move as quickly as possible to get that information to them so they can get it back to us. And we're not looking at stuff at the last minute because that's always the, it works to our disadvantage and as well as to the applicant's disadvantage because we don't understand it. All right. Are there anything else anybody wants to bring up? Mr. Maxfield. Yeah, she got one. I was looking at the memorandum set around. And we do have in here a position for vice chair. So I don't think we have filled at all. I didn't know, but any guys wanted to, wanted to go over that at all. You wanna talk about that or no? In here? I thought, I thought, go ahead Maureen but I thought we had a vice chair. You know, I think Dylan does bring up an excellent point. I think in the, I think the last time when we voted for the chair for Steve, it was a lot of things were going on with COVID and I think we might have had an oops and didn't do that. But so from when memory serves me. So traditionally at the end of each fiscal year, so the end of June, all municipal boards should be doing a vote for their reorganization. And it is part of the ZBA rules and regulations to devote in the chairperson and the vice chair. And I don't know if the ZBA needs a clerk. I don't know if that's, I don't know what that person would do, but we can certainly, and we need to officially add it to agenda. So I guess I can take a look at the rules and regs to see if we could just do it at the next meeting or if we should just wait until July. I'm not completely sure on that. But it sounds like Dylan might wanna be a vice chair. Is that? Well, potentially, but something an idea that I'd be kind of closing to the board here for something we could do with vice chair. It doesn't look like it says anything that it has to be a year long term. I imagine we all might like a shot of a vice chair while we're serving on this board. Something to think about, maybe we were to set up something like three month terms for vice chair, that way we can kind of rotate that position in, people can get in, people can have the experience of chairing anytime, Steve is out something like that. And then something I remember learning from, my days doing political organizing back in the day, titles are free, don't cost anybody anything. We can all get that nice, oh, vice chair on the emmer zoning board of appeals. I'll put that on our resume there. I'll get that shot to do so. But something. Are you talking about maybe being like a co-chair or like? No, just the position that's in here is vice chair of serving, you know, if Steve is unable to serve as chair. Yeah, okay, yep. Still just feeling that. I think we should make sure we elect the leadership. We should follow that, something that we should do each year. We're gonna have to, that's coming up because our terms, some people's terms are ending. And the town council hasn't started the fill, the process of filling the board seats yet. So it makes sense. First of all, it makes sense to fill in any vacancies if we don't have it. And I thought Tammy was vice chair. I thought that was established before, but that's my memory, but we could check the minutes. Do you remember that? I thought when I was chairman, we just picked the next most senior person and that was in seniority on service. And that was Tammy. But if that's not the case, then we should fill that position and have it. And we can do that. And we should have that at an announced meeting where it's on the agenda and it's a matter to be discussed. And then I think we should, when the new members or anytime the committee wants to decide on chairmanship and other leadership positions, they can do it. But it seems to me it makes sense that once the town just identifies who's going to serve on the VBA going forward, that you then sit down and decide who's the next chair and vice chair going forward for the next year is what I'm thinking. So let's get a vice chair if we don't already have one. And then when we decide on the members, when the town council decides on the membership because my term is up in June, I think. And I don't know if they'll reappoint me. Mr. Gilbert's term is up in June, I think. Yeah, I think Mr. Gilbert's term is up. Dylan, Craig and Tammy, your terms are not up yet. So you're gonna be on the board for sure. So it doesn't make, it seems to me it makes sense to elect a new chairman and a new slate of officers once you have the new membership. That's all I'm saying. And that will be start no later than July 1st. Yeah, but fill whatever vacancies we have, fill a clerkship if that's a title that people want. Sure. All right, yeah. And I just think we do it on the 26th. Okay. Sounds good. Does that make sense? Okay. I happily defer to anyone else who would like to be the vice chair. I have enough on my plate at the moment. We can hash it out at the next meeting when there needs to be a vote. And you can make your speech, your campaign speeches. I don't want to. Please choose someone else. Yeah, if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. Is that, are you sure I'm gonna ask them this time? That's it. All right. But I really did think you had that position. So if not, let's select one next meeting. And the next came May 26th. Yep. All right. Good catch. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Dylan. Dylan. All right. Is there any other business? Anymore? Nope. No, this is... All right, motion to adjourn. So move. There's second. Second. All right. Seconded, this is not debatable. Chair votes aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Gilbert. Aye. All right. As unanimous, we're done. Thanks everyone. All right. Thank you all. Good night. See you guys. Thank you.