 To the December 4th, 2023 meeting of the Code of Maritime Redevelopment Board, I'm standing to order. My name is Rachel Zemberry. I'm the chair of the Redevelopment Board, and I'll ask the other mentors of the board to please introduce themselves. Steve Rebeli, good evening. Eugene Benson. Shayna Hall from Houston. Gene Lowe. And we have Claire Ricker, the director of the Department of Planning and Community Development joining us. Great, let's jump into our first agenda item, which is agenda item number one, the meeting minutes from November 20th, 2023. I will see if there are any changes or corrections to the minutes starting weekend. No. Steve? No changes. Gene? No changes. Shayna? I don't have any either. Is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes from November 20th, 2023 as submitted? It's a motion. Second. We'll take a vote starting with Steve? Yes. Ken? Yes. Shayna? Yes. Gene? Yes. And I may ask as well, those meeting minutes have been approved. And number two, which is consideration of the citizen board article. We welcome John Leo. Good evening. And the evening, who is interested in discussing with the board a rebounding of five to seven Windsor Street to be in the MBTA communities overlay district. And I believe that there is a discussion around which of the two districts perhaps. Or is it the neighborhood public district? It could be more appropriate and labeled in multiple districts. Okay. Why don't you clear unless you have any introduction that you'd like to make? Sure. Just really quickly pointed forward. Marisa put this drawing together for us this afternoon, which I think really tells the story here. In gray, you can see the neighborhood multifamily as was submitted to the OHLC and the attorney general's office. This is what time meeting voted on. And here is Mr. Leo's parcel. This parcel was likely removed when the board had the conversation about potentially leaving some of the immediate parcels immediately behind commercial development on Mass Ave. You know, potentially anticipating some aggregation. This was one of the parcels that was under that was removed either as part of that process or because it was on the national register of historic places. When we looked at alternate two, which is ultimately what the board went with in terms of the overlay for the entire MBTA communities, we started to look sort of to the north, I guess, west of Mass Ave. And include some area around Schwannville. We were concerned in the community about historic properties that may be included in the overlay. And so we did make a call to try to as many of the properties as we could identify with data. On the national register, it should not include those in the district. And that's really the background, I think, in terms of from where the department is. Great. Thank you very much. So this is not my book, my house. It's my family's house. My grandparents bought this property in 1957, 1956. And we've maintained it ever since. They've been there till they passed. And family members have been living there. And the last 10 or 12 years, we've rent out the first floor to a super mom, who's basically... I don't get where you're at. But as you can see, the house is a very large parcel for Arlington. I think it's around 18,000 square feet. It's been on the National Historic Registration Center before, but so has number 13, which was introduced in the register during the same introduction phase. And I don't know how many others are in the district. It's kind of hard to track them down. I don't really have a good read on what it is and what it is inside. It's going through the register and picking up all the houses. So I don't think that should be a reason to exclude our house. The property itself, obviously, because it's on the district, we couldn't do anything to it unless we paid for one of the historic commissions or some of the art commissions. Not that we have any plans to do anything through the building. You know, we've had maintenance out of that which put a roof on it. So we're not letting people into the room in the hopes of knocking it down. That's not our plan. We want to preserve all our options. The size of the lot, and talk about adaptation. We have to see the role of storefronts here. They may want to take a data to the Mass App district and go up. That might cause them to possibly be interested in this part of the lot, which wouldn't touch the house structure itself, but it will allow them to use that for different needs to build it. Or we could explain the house backwards and not touch the front or the two front sides and add on to the back of the house for additional housing. That was the reason I think the Warren article itself is included in just to consider those options in the future. Otherwise, we have the potential to literally be surrounded by everybody around us and go to the library and maybe the town wants to do some of that. If all of those build up, we'll be in this little bone house within a whole bunch of six to four to six-story buildings. We can be kind of sad to waste that person. That's what our goal is. There are many options in the future. I'm one of six children. We all think this is something we want to consider and go forward with. So I'm going to bring the Warren article, but my preference would be for you guys to go or to adopt that Warren article. I'm not quite sure. It said why we were excluded in the first round, whether it was on purpose or out of the state or what happened. I think the neighborhood district would be more appropriate than the Nassau district because unless the storefronts wanted to do something, there's a couple of different owners of those storefronts. This is owned by one person, one family. These are owned by, I think these three are owned by different families. So it's not a piece of bone that will lock stores. They're back, if they're building, it's not really on property. So there's not a lot of extra room here. So that's kind of what we are doing. Before I put on this cap, because the warrant does open, I believe, a week or so. So we've done that cap one time. We've worked that in the process. I think it's a discussion. Yeah, absolutely. So maybe I'll start, and then we can each kind of give you our steps because we did have a really truncated discussion about this. We didn't have much opportunity for the special town meeting this fall to have an discussion about the citizen petitions that came forward. So the property was removed because of the fact that it was on the national register. The board had requested in response to community feedback and the board's own preference for all projects that are on the national register to be removed. If one was not, that was in error. That was the direction of the board was to have them all removed. So at the time, it was our preference not to spot by allowing one here and not there, the intent was to remove all of those particular properties with the opportunity, obviously, in the future for anyone in town who can request a zoning change at any time. So I think that this is absolutely a great time to be discussing this. I agree with you. I think that the neighborhood sub-district makes the most sense as opposed to the Bassett and Broadway sub-district. I personally, when an applicant is looking to rezone their property, I personally prefer that it remain a citizen petition rather than a board sponsor. But it doesn't mean that the board wouldn't potentially in the future vote and not vote in favor of it. So that would, of course, be my preference, but that's kind of a high level of my issue of law. I agree with you, Rachel. The intent when we first did this was not to send you out, but it was to exclude all historic structures. Yes, the register, not the sub-district. And if you missed their team, you missed their team. It was quite a frenzy at the time trying to figure out all properties along there. We have to go back and correct ourselves if we have to do that. But when your article did come back up to us, I believe we were supportive of your work article. None of the stuff we were, we indicated that we would be if we came back as a citizen petition, but not as an individual amendment. Yes, and I agree with you, Rachel. If you don't like the spot zone as a board, we recommend you make a change. And I, as a board member, would be supportive of that spot change because it's a great argument and it does make sense. I might go as far as if you go either way, if you could be zoned with mess app. And that would be nothing. But don't forget, in front of this one, we excluded those because it's a part of the East Arlington. I want to say that you'd be part of that rezoning later on with mess app. Because those shops are very shallow, very, very not compliant unless they have some room behind what you have. So to me, it's a natural potential, you know, to include your property with those along mess app. And, you know, even if the building still wants to remain in stock, you can be moved. Because otherwise, you are basically a landlocking those projects out there and they'll never go anywhere. And that's one of the issues we have right now with some of our commercial space along mess app. So I would be supportive of you. The other way is to be able to just doing along mess app. And that may be something that you can find later on. That's what we do with mess app. There's many opportunities for you because of the location where you're at. And the size of the parcel. And the size of the parcel, yes. Yes, but your parcel is a little bit on the landlock side. But yes, it is. It's very hard to fit something new in that dog. You're right. Without the grandfather for that, well, footprint of that dog, but that open space there is just definitely right. The dog may become the open space, I'm not sure. Yeah, frankly, the barn, even though we keep the other side, it's just, you can't steer it. The floor is on the locus most. I don't think there's that many bars left in here. Was there? No, not on the other side. I remember looking at that when we were at the library, and I looked at it, it's quite huge. It's back with that was, this was part of that, right? This house originally was here facing mess app. And they picked it up, moved it, and then sorted it from there. Okay. So that's when we had a circular drive on the back of the barn from the mess app. We did a project in the history of the house. We had a research. Okay. We moved it, I think, four nights into one. And they played the source. At that point, that didn't move. Yeah. No. I'm just, I'm just a sport of whatever you guys are saying, but it would definitely recommend going with a citizens partition. Not a board decision, but one block. Shana? Great. I would, I would kind of, I think it seems like a very appropriate parcel for the district of Holland, and the city of Holland, who supported the city's education. Okay. James? I would too, but I'll tell you how I get there. Okay. Excuse me. I recommend you not to terminate it. And don't even know. Because I felt the last moment, which was when the road was too smooth, it's nearly out of shape to many others. And that would have to be done, and at least set out into the historical commission ahead of time. So I felt that without that, it was pretty mature. Because I put on the commission to come to town with it. I was under the impression that all of the historical, all of the buildings under the National Register were excluded from the tourist supplies. And I don't have any information that all of them were not. So I think that is possible. The other thing I'll just mention is, we will at some point, reason why that's hard to say, I mean, probably until next week or so. If we put those parcels that face the National Register, into the National Overlevels, if we'll have to put it down, under the Bible that was supposed to pass, if one of those were to purchase more of the parcel, we could go into the National Register, if they wanted to. So we wouldn't have to resume that position. For the National Register, we could be able to resist it. Because where we ended up, if a parcel in both districts were then close to that from what they said before, by the National Register, so we wouldn't need to make that decision. But now, I think we could put it where we want it to be, and let it go into this domain. So I would be supportive, but I would just have to do that with the neighbors. And I'd consider all the neighbors have my name, or be added, I would assume that they're not with me. It also happened to the historical commission to see what they had to say. I'm just curious, your family and property then, not onto the National Register, what was your family's role in that? Nothing. Nothing? I don't understand what happened. We've been at the age of four. I don't remember having any kind of discussion at that point about it. Grandparents would have passed. My father at that point didn't have any projects. Because he could look back and say, this is our house, and at that point, you know, he was living there. Your father was a writer? Yeah. That was my idea. Yeah, it was. Some idea was happening, but it was one of those things. Bringing in these 70 or 80 projects, and they're one of them. But it was kind of a mass introduction of the National Register. Do you know if your house is also on the town? Is it Joanne or Pellas? Joanne and Pellas are kids. Yeah. And that's an album. I think the story is, it's not a national story. Well, not every life crown, not every property that's on the town. It's on the town. It's on the town. I don't know. But, you know, if you get to the labels and historical conditions and information, you're probably going to see everything that was true. You should take a look at the zoning of the people as it requires you to do register and sort of understand the rules to the developers and the people in this process. So don't forget that. It's important. Okay. Do you want to email the police at the site on your mobile? Yeah. And I think, Claire, the department can help with understanding what the outreach hope is. Absolutely. Perfect. That's it. Thanks. Great. I'm also supportive of including that property and being able to come again with this one. Noting that, you know, it was immediately to the southwest is a strip of, a fairly narrow strip would be three parcels. You know, I would also be willing to get our game saved but concurrently rezoning changing the base zoning to be three. Yeah. This may change, as Mr. Vincent said, this may change in a few years, but in terms of having flexibility to allow this person properties to extend reworded in the future. Yeah, it may be something you want to consider. Okay. Okay. Thoughts for me would have a perfect public comment. Okay. Absolutely. Great. Absolutely. Absolutely. Anyone? I think it was to tell you sorry, you could just introduce yourself for the record. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. I'm a charitable private and historical mission that's overseen this. And it was in 1980s that's when police were put on for the next year. I think that's in the document that you had. You know, I found out that this is mine. I just might be familiar with and say that, you know, one of the things that particularly we would like to see is that, yep, the houses could be, you know, retained and mapped for some use, like, you know, the original idea for your work. That's something we would support because we feel that these are big houses. They could be reduced. And so, you know, that's my perspective on this kind of thing. And I can provide a list of, I think there were some other mistakes. I just come down here in terms of which ones are actual and there's sometimes different ones that aren't. And some of them are very important these houses that were built for people who were running the town at that time. And I can tell you a little bit of history, but great, thank you. And I think you make a good point around the fact that putting or asking the town to approve changing the zoning to the neighborhood but the neighborhoods of the district does not necessarily identify how specifically this would be redeveloped into the way Robinson's point, right? There are multiple ways of retaining the existing structure. Exactly. The Carrick House is also on the National Register. This is the town? It's just the houses. So, as the Carrick House, I was looking at various information. That's the piece on the property and some property all of the buildings on that piece of property are in history. So, that's the way it works. I think I just thought I could come and send you two sets. Thank you. That's helpful. Here's some of your outreach now. Also, TV is doing other shit. So, would anyone else like to speak? Do you agree? I agree. So, we'll close public comment and it sounds like unless you have any other questions that the board is generally supportive. Obviously, we'll, you know, if you decide to go with the citizen petition, we will hold a cold hearing once that is identified as an article that will move forward towards the warrant. Or anything unforeseen, it sounds like the board has we'd also like to share as if the board is supportive of the commission. We appreciate it. Yeah, we're going to go forward. Okay, great. It just makes more sense if you would thank Sonora. All right. Thank you very much. I think you're going to come up with one of the ones that you considered. Yeah, I was not talking about it. I didn't know who I was in the neighborhood secretary. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So with that we will close agenda item number two and open agenda item number three which is the discussion of the board plans for 2024. So we have identified that we would follow up on some of the items that were so open from the board retreat that was called yesterday. Yesterday. It seems so long ago but it was yesterday. What has happened? And there were two specific items and there it looks like we have at least one of those the administrative approval of signs. Correct. Is that Jean from you? So maybe we'll start with that as one of the open items of the board game. So Jean I'll hand it over to you. I sent something this morning I hope everybody can look at it. So I should stop by apologizing for being so wrong yesterday because I was very wrong yesterday. If you can take a look at the actual rule it's even more stricter than I have remembered. So it really allows you to review your sign-mob applications. So it doesn't even allow you to build them. I don't think that's the way this has been happening since the sign law was updated nearly four years ago but take a close read that says administrative may be considered administrative approval so that seems to be only if they're sign-mob applications and then it gives you a answer. So the only way you could approve you're only going to approve the sign if it's a sign-mob application and it's the same elimination as for the existing sign other than that it sort of seems to be the department most of the sign permits need to come to us unless we want to lose regulations to give more authority to the department than it has in the company. Is there specific suggestion related to that that you would like to propose? I haven't talked to Claire about it so I don't know what you're thinking is how much you're sign-mob industry I think it's an interesting question and it's one that obviously it's a we kind of it's it has been a little bit of a balance tricky to balance you know what is so minor that you don't want to necessarily put and what it's you know to burden the board or the applicant the very board or the applicant you know it is a $500 application you know and there are times from the application it's pretty minor you know whatever going from a non on the side the other requirements of the zoning there's that one you know kind of stick in there which is the we're going from the non on the non on the non I think I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to sort of I need to But generally, we have tried to stay within the constraints of the sign, by law, as such as we can, without bringing things that are, sort of, minor, relative to the managing of that. It's actually going from, to, with all of our conditions in that. So I guess my question is, if, the way I read this, any new sign, no matter what occasion, could not be subject to administrative review. And so my question is, should we broaden this, so that the only signs that might be administrative review are the signs that don't meet the high risk criteria, you know, that don't meet one of the requirements where the board is in authority to weigh or adjust under the requirements. Just right now, this is very narrow, if there were, you know, a new building that would have to be part of, you know, to administrative review, including a sign, including a sign, you know, all of the standards. So that's, do we want it, and it brings us to you in the board. Do we want to make this broader, so that the department can prove administrative review any sign that applies with the part of the person. But you still want to read it to just sign it. Steve, do you have a second? Sure. I would be, you know, it depends on how the director feels. But I would be okay with the administrative review for the reason why it would be, you know, the letter of the requirements would be the requirement. And saving our role for when applicants want to go into contact. You know, I also think there's, you know, maybe you want to have a discussion about whether bullet items number five and six of roll 18, you know, requiring the same elimination were not eternally eliminated. You know, whether we want to continue to keep that in place. I agree with the administrative review. It means that generally with the dialogue makes a lot of sense. I think potentially reserving the right report to review and saving our queue locations with high-profile signs would be worth considering. I agree. I think that the word may be considered allows for some of that flexibility. In fact, we had a set of signage that came in front of us recently that was marginally in compliance and because of the fact that there were multiple signs on the building that the department did elect to present the reports that we could have a discussion which I appreciated. So I think that that particular modifier may give the department a certain kind of flexibility there. And I agree with Steve that removing the criteria that specifically speaks to elimination, whether it's an eliminated sign or a non-eliminated sign, I believe that the signage by law is suitably prescriptive in terms of what types of elimination are allowed. And if it meets those and the other criteria, again, the planning department feels that they have the bandwidth to review and that it's not in the location where they can deal with it's important for the development board to weigh in. I would be fine with removing the elimination requirements of the department and review whether it is eliminated or non-eliminated. I think the intent we first tried to modify the signage package was to give the planning board more flexibility in improving signs so that it wasn't such an audience process of going through a whole planning board meeting for a simple sign. That was very minor. And I will hardly agree with that. I mean, it's just small minor changes. We have all the faith that you guys will do the right thing and you have. So I have no objections to this at all. You should do another thing. You should make whatever changes to the signage article or bylaw that would empower maybe I think you're correct. But they already does give her that authority. I don't know. But I would say let's make that change to make happen. Well, I think we would use basically what we would need to do by relating to the rules of law. Right. There's so many modifications that we would need to do. What that we would get really a lot of potential to get would basically say Signs on property side. Signs on property side. And we would get rid of all the things that we wouldn't need at all. And we would say if the sign proposal doesn't require the requirements of its own bylaw then it needs to come to us. And then there's a sense that's still there that we wouldn't need since the parking is not required to provide a minister of authority. Maybe when we pull that application to the board. And then we can pull in something like a shell and throw it to the board. I don't even think that's the right way to put it. So I'm not going to go into that. I think what here again that this, this, if we, if we put this in terms of saying that the administrative approval by the director of planning for the development or the science or subject to administrative approval by the director of planning for the development or science that meets the zoning and general bylaw conditions. The department may, you know, again we can talk about how they may refer the sign to environmental design review. I know the bottom line of the question is, except for how signs and things like that come to us. So I think the way to do this would just be to say on signs, I'm not sure exactly who and who the government may approve signs that are criteria for that. One, the signing of the zoning requirements. Two, there are no, no, no, no, general bylaw regulations. That's standing in the curriculum. And then that's all we would need in that whole category. Just two and three? Yeah, just two and three. Yeah. And then we would do the first real introductory sentence. And then we would take them to kind of like that. We would, like, decide what kind of zone. And then we would kind of, we would require you to just do something inside of the major and make these signs. Right. Is that what you're doing? So it's going to sign modification to it. The new signs or sign modifications. Right. Or it comes just out of the beginning. Sure. So we can, we can, like, we can just see what we're doing. Why don't we do that to the fellows? And that just gives us a little bit more work to do. But I think overall, it would be better for the business. So it should be less work than alone, right? If you're on the processing side of the patients, especially for an apartment when they're unnecessary. Do that. Do you? So, should there be any, do you? Do you know if the building department currently assesses a fee? Thank you already. Thank you. For a sign? For a sign. Perfect. This is a review application. Oh. Right? Yes. Yeah. Let me, you know, I'm not prepared to answer that question, I think, right now this evening. But it's absolutely, yes. Thank you for bringing that up. I think it's something we should certainly look into. I would not make it equal to a special party fee. No, no, no. Okay. Well, there is the procedure, and we can just leave the procedure and the product and the, et cetera. That's probably what we need to be able to do. The last item on the page. So that probably does it. Because that would be done together or not. There was an industry. Thank you. Great. Thanks. We will update that. We will bring that back for a final review. Could you say, you know, you're going to amend the rules and that's for this. Great. Great. I would turn it over to you to see if there are any other topics from the Border Treaty that you wanted to follow up on today. Sure. Thank you. I think one thing that we did not get to last night, we should consider what we had for a potential urban renewal area. And I think the way that we could do that, as I can have the department look at a few suggestions in the areas that might be a good urban renewal plan. The first area that needs to be aligned is our own consent. Especially if we could make it personal. I think that it would qualify on their state. Schedule for a potential urban renewal plan and redevelopment. I think that we should certainly look into doing what is sooner than later. Just simply because it accepts the responsibility of the property, which is important. But I do think we need to start things from certain areas relative to what we do in urban renewal. I think that I'm sorry, I'm obviously going to have to look at the math for thoughts initially right now about where we may want to do a program like that. We can even do one parcel in terms of urban renewal that is considered as well. We would look for some common mark or really many corrals that we could even ten-part out at least something that could be an area that could be done. Urban renewal could be a problem. So I think what I would like to do is at our next meeting on the 18th is proposed for new areas that we can look at and do some research and check for any of the parts that are not necessarily being built out to full terms in the zoning. I know we've talked potentially during the street in the past, but certainly it should be a good part of our discussion. I certainly hope to volunteer and help sit in on the meeting with you guys and you guys first do this and I will be very interested in that since I do have a little history and just look at our properties and turn it over quick in class as far as if it's viable or not and I've been looking at some of these properties for quite some time now. There's a spark, you know. That's okay. It wasn't two or one okay. Two is five, three is nine. Okay. We learned that. Okay. So just let me know and I will try to like sometime later. I know it's the Hall of Lazy Christmas and all that but I would try my best. Okay. Thank you again. What is where is Dutley Street? I totally got that wrong. Dutley Street is what I was just saying. My apologies. That makes more sense now. That makes more sense. All right. Okay. Gene. No good idea. Thank you for looking at that. It was a great mention of the other day. The rest of the community. I was in the process. Yeah. Great. Steve. So I'm in favor of the notion of pursuing or considering our renewal plan in terms of other things or things that we didn't quite get to yesterday. Pikebuffers. Yes. We need to review. I think what we should do is hold that section on to a future meeting, whether it's for the 18 or the first meeting in January, which is the eighth. It would be good to pull the background information again so that we can come to some. The grid is on the scope and the references that need to be included in the board article language. What's the warrant? The warrant article closes in January, January 26th. Thank you very much. It always comes back. So I think that on the eighth, we should be working towards the language that we would like to see because we'll have one more meeting than I believe to finalize the language before the warrant is. We just said it. We have the eighth of the 22nd. Right. That's right. But I think if we have a discussion on the eighth, if there's any follow-up, it's necessary. We can do that in that vote on those of the 22nd. If that works for everyone. Okay. Please. The sketch and model. Oh. Shows the mass of the buildings and the totals. Sure. That's part of that discussion for the eighth? Yes. Okay. If we just do the motion and you do it later, I just want that as part of the process of the sort of understanding if that's okay. We'll reduce that buffer. Correct. Anything else? G. So we have a discussion to look at the mass of architectural access work and to do that. And I told the language which I'll tell you somewhere but I'm just reading the fuel. And I suggest it be a general condition for the special point of view, which is now in the general conditions that we should be. And we could do similar, put a similar, not identical provision in the site plan of privilege in this area. And I would say it should be one of the general conditions. This special permit in the environment that we approve of is conditioned upon compliance with the condition set on the area. And then you have a forms of a new grant with the state government that will be applicable with the mass of architectural access in the relation. That's the exact language that's in the zone of money. In my view on this, people get the approval. They never go back. Right. And we'll suggest this now. So this should be, yes, I know, you know, things don't get into templates. Yep. That's been suggested. So including the decision language. That makes a lot of sense. Is maybe the first of the general conditions. Before the trash movement. Yes. Thank you. Much more for you. Do we need to hold it here until we make that change? No, no. Is that a thing? It's ours. Okay. Anything else? Okay. All right. Let's close agenda item number three. Moving forward. We don't have anyone joining us this evening. So we will move on from agenda item number four to agenda item number five. New business clear. Sure. So my great piece of new business. Good news. This week is that we have someone who's accepted. The assistant manager position and is working through the process of background check right now. She's interested in starting the students next week. So definitely, you know, pending the background check. We do have an assistant director. Certainly for the particular. Congratulations. Very excited to be here. Great. Can't wait to meet her. So very business. No. She is. No. Jean. No. Jean. I did it. We did it. We did it. So we did hear back today. And I was accepted for. I turn my. So it currently aspires. I believe. Congratulations. Thank you. I. Water says. Fantastic. Well, those two pieces of good news. So. We did it. So we did. And it was accepted for. My term was renewed. So. So it currently aspires, I believe. A. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. The water says. pieces of goodness. Is there a motion to adjourn? So motion. I'll second. The vote is starting with Steve. Yes. Gene. Yes. Shayna. Yes. Finn. Yes. And yes as well. This meeting is adjourned.