 recorded. The chair notes the time is 6.01. I call this meeting of the Amherst zoning Board of Appeals to order. My name is Steve Judge, the ZBA chair. I want to welcome everyone to this meeting. We'll begin with the roll call of the ZBA members. Steve Judge is present. Mr. Craig Meadows. Present. Mr. Everett Henry. Present. Mr. Philip White. Present. Mr. David Sloweter. Present. The quorum is present. Also attending tonight's public hearing is Christine Brestrup, planning director, and Jennifer Mullen, who is providing technical assistance. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extended by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of the 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. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 48 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 48, in Article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning By-law, this public meeting has been duly advertised and noticed there have been posted and mailed to the parties at interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff and may be viewed via the town of Amherst's YouTube channel and ZBA webpage. 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 to gather 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 screen or by pressing nine on their phone. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about a project and input from the public is gathered, followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is where the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information in 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. Tonight's agenda consideration of minutes from January 25th, 2024 and February 1st, 2024. And then a public hearing on ZBA FY2023-18 ASD Shootsbury, Massachusetts, solar LLC. Request for a special permit under section 3.340 of the zoning bylaw to construct a 9.35 megawatt, 4.4 megawatt AC, ground-mounted solar boutique array, expanding 41 acres on 102-acre site with a company battery energy storage system at three parcels of land owned by WT Cal Sump Company, identified as map 9B parcel 11 and 12, map 9D parcel and parcel 27. On Shootsbury Road, RO Outlier Residential Zoning District. Frontage and access from the subject parcels of land is located between 187 and 201 Shootsbury Road. This is continued from January 11th, 2024. ZBA 2024-11 U-Drive Amity LLC Request for a variance from the conditions of table three dimensional regulations in section 6.171 of the zoning bylaw to reduce the additional lot area per unit from 4,000 square feet to 2500 square feet and to allow the building height not to exceed 57 feet due to hardship created by soil conditions at the corner of University Drive and Amity Street, map 13B parcels 18, 27, 28, and 54, BL Limited Business Zoning District and ZBA FY 2024-12 Patricia Teaton request for special permit under section 6.31 of the zoning bylaw to allow for the construction of a single-family home on a flag lot with requested waivers from building and lighting plans at 386A Shays Street, map 20D parcel 78RN Neighborhood Residential Zoning District. Then this general following that is a general public common period and other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours. So the first order of business is consideration of the minutes from January 25th, 2024. Have people had a chance to review those? And if so, do you have any corrections or suggestions for the minutes for January 25th? If I say 23rd, I meant 25th. Yeah, 25th, 2024. If there are no changes or amendments, I think they're fine, but I didn't attend the hearing. I've entertained a motion to approve these minutes. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Motion is moved and seconded. Any discussion? If not, the vote occurs on the motion to approve the minutes of January 25th, 2024. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Sloveter. I did not attend that meeting, so I will abstain. Mr. Henry. I also did not attend, so I will abstain. Mr. White. We need three votes. I didn't hear you. Aye. The votes are three ayes, no nays, and two abstentions. The motion carries. The next order of business is approving the minutes of Thursday, February 1st, 2024. Does anybody have any suggestions or changes to those minutes? I've looked at them and they appear good, but again, I was not able to attend. If not, I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes for Thursday, February 1st, 2024. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Motion is moved and seconded. Any discussion? If not, the vote occurs on the motion. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Sloveter. Aye. Mr. Henry. I'll send that president of that one to abstain as well. And Mr. White. Aye. The vote is four ayes, zero nays, and one abstention. The motion carries. Next order of business tonight is a public hearing on ZVA. Well, first before that, does anybody have any conflicts or disclosures for any of the matters on the agenda tonight? All right. If not, the first order of business is ZVA FY2023-18 ASD Shootsbury MA Solar LLC, requesting for a special permit through section 3.340 of the zoning bylaw to construct a ground mounted solar prototype array. The only submissions that I am aware of is a email from Attorney Reedy on February 16th, which he, amongst other things, anticipates a request to continue this until April. But he also gives some updates on the work since the last meeting. I know of no other submissions, Ms. Brescht, up to you. Sorry. I don't know of any other submissions on this case. All right. Mr. Rhee, are you representing the petitioner here? I think... We need to let him in. Jennifer, we need to... Hang on. Yeah, I have to find Tom on this long list of people. There you are, Tom. There we go. And can you let Corey McAndless in as well? From Peer Sky. Yes, sure. Thank you. Yeah. That should work for both of you. Hi, Tom. Hi, Chance. Thank you. So, Mr. Reedy, are you representing the petitioner here tonight? Yes, I am, Mr. Chair. So, for the record, Tom Reedy, Attorney with Bacon Wilson out of Amherst, here on behalf of Peer Sky, and its ongoing application for solar development off of Shootsbury Road in Amherst with me this evening from Peer Sky, Corey McAndless. And so, yeah, Mr. Chair, as you noted, we had submitted that email on Friday, essentially just letting the board know what we've been up to, I think, since our October meeting. I think that might have been the last one that we had. If you recall at that meeting, there was a vote and a discussion about having Peer Reviewers for the project. I know that the town has been working to contract with, receive proposals from and contract with different Peer Reviewers for this project. We believe that they have one under contract for battery energy storage and layer for that study. And we anticipate this week, hopefully, a second Peer Reviewer will be selected for the balance of those items that the board had discussed at that meeting. So, I'm going a little bit of a reverse order on the email, but we've been working with the town to get those Peer Reviewers lined up and then for us to get the plans to them. So, that's one of the pieces. The second piece is the wetlands piece. And so, if you recall, the order of resource area delineation had expired on its own terms and also on its own terms required some additional work. And so, what we've done is hire Goddard Consulting Steve Ribberty, who does a lot of work in the Amherst area. The Conservation Commission and Aaron Jock are both very familiar with him. He went out, redelineated or refresh the delineation. Frankly, there weren't many changes to the delineation. There were a couple of small new spots that have been identified, but I'll say they don't materially impact the project. And so, we are going through that and rad the abbreviated notice of resource area delineation process. Currently, Aaron and the Conservation Commission had voted to hire Emily Stockman, who is a wetland scientist to Peer Review that project. Emily, Aaron and Steve had been out to the site, had moved some flags around. The surveyors went out and picked up those flags, put them on the plan. The plan has been submitted to Aaron and Emily. They're just reviewing it to see if they want any other changes before it's formally accepted by the Conservation Commission. And then we'll either be heard by the CONCOM next Wednesday or at their subsequent meeting once everything is all set. We anticipate acceptance or the order of resource area delineation issuing at that point. Based upon those updated resource area delineations, Pure Sky has gone and updated their plans. And as I say, it hasn't materially changed. And so, those are the plans that are going to be provided to the Peer Reviewer to ultimately do that review. And so, that's why we are requesting a continuation until the end of April because we think for that process to really happen, we need a good 45 days for the reviewer to review, to come back to the developer and to go back and forth to get to a place where hopefully at that April meeting, we can present to you a clean letter, so to speak, with whatever changes they've suggested. And then we can go through, if the board would like, at the first hearing, certain items and maybe a second hearing, the balance of the items just to give them enough time to breathe, if you will. So that's a couple of the changes. And in the last piece, as far as battery energy storage, I know there was some concern about how being the battery energy storage supplier and Pure Sky for business reasons is going in a different direction than Powin. And it will update you once we have that supplier identified, but it won't be Powin for this project. And I think, you know, that's, I'm not going to get into any of the changes within the plan itself, just because you'll see it when you see it. That's really, we've been working. Yeah, really, what we need to know is that there's, the work is being done on this in between the meetings and you anticipate that it'd be 45 days before you, around 45 days before you'd be ready to come back to the board, something like that. Yeah, that's the hope. It's, you know, as I would think about it, it's probably your second April meeting. The first April meeting is probably a little too quick, but that second April meeting, whenever that is, I think would be a good place to come back, hopefully have everything taken care of, if not touch base, and then it'll be the next one. But we, you know, frankly, we're trying to get all of this completed by the end of June when I know that the board is probably going to change its composition a little bit. Great. Okay. I don't have any question. Go ahead, Mr. Henry. Do you have questions? Yes, just one. Is now in the company that had the battery issue in New York? Correct. Okay. And I already correct you. You're going in a different direction? Correct. Okay. Thank you. So this is really just a question of granting a continuance of this hearing. Since it is a public hearing, we are obligated to hear public comment after any board comment, but the comment should be confined to whether we would continue the hearing, not on the basis of objection or support for the underlying proposition. The motion, the notion before us is just whether to continue this, this matter until I think it'll be April 25th is the second meeting. Mr. White, did you have something you wish to say? I do, Mr. Chair. I just want to note for the board that as I was not on this original board for continuity sake, I will be abstaining from everything and vote on this. Are there, Ms. Brestrup. May I have clarification on that? Does that mean that Mr. White will not be voting on anything having to do with this case or just on this continuance? Mr. White, weren't you, I thought we might be able to clear this up later, but weren't you on this from the beginning of the consideration just in this one meeting? No? No. I was not on this at all. At all. All right. Yeah. I was asked to attend this meeting for the other issues that we will be talking about tonight. Yeah. Okay. All right. Good. Then that makes, we're clear on that. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on whether to continue this matter to the 25th? I think the date would be the 25th. Am I not right, Ms. Brestrup? Yes, that's right. Thank you. To continue this to the 25th, there's an opportunity to speak now, but keep it to that topic, not to whether, not to the general matters before us on the application. I don't see anybody with their hands raised. Do you, Jennifer? No, I don't. Okay. Seeing that there's no public comment, I would, unless there's any other comments from members of the board, I would entertain a notion that we continue this until the, our meeting of April 25th, that's six o'clock. So motion. Mr. Henry moves. Second. Mr. Meadows seconds. Any discussion? If not, the vote occurs on the motion. The chair votes aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Mr. Slobberter. Aye. The vote is four to nothing. The motion passes and this matter is continued until April 25th. That's it. Thank you very much. You bet. We'll see you then. Thank you. The next order of business is a public hearing on ZBAA FY 2024-11 U Drive Amity LLC request for a variance from conditions of table three, dimensional regulations in section 6.171 of the zoning bylaw, produced additional lot area per unit from 4,000 to 2,500 square feet. And to allow the building height not to exceed 57 feet due to hardships created from soil conditions at the corner of University Drive and Amity Street, map 13B, parcels 1827, 28 and 54, BL, limited business zoning districts. We had a site visit there yesterday and Ms. Brestrup, you took the best notes by far. And I can, I'll start the summary of the site visit. Would you please add any other, some of the questions which were raised by participants there? And I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but I think you have a better memory of, you had better notes than I took. So we met with Mr. Riedi and Ms. Brestrup and Mr. Wachilla and Mr. Sloveter and I and we walked the site. We went from the parking lot back to the, to observe the property line at the rear of the property. We walked over to the the wetlands that border the property on the, it would be the north or the west and the, yeah, the west and the east and the west side, right? And the south sides, north side. And then we walked to the front and we walked to the front where the, to observe the proposed changes to the sidewalk and the different entrances to the street from the new proposed development. The questions that were asked were focused mostly on the reduction in square footage, the nature of the hardship, the, how high the building was going to be and why, why the figure of 57 was chosen. Those are the major issues that we talked about. We also looked at the, the possible, where the drainage from across the university drive into the property and down through the wetlands. I think that was the majority of questions, but Ms. Brestrup, there may have been some that I failed to remember off the top of my head. That might be important to relate to the public. I'm sorry, I don't have my notes here, but I do remember that we talked about parking and where it would be located and we talked about the positioning of the building that is the northernmost building. We talked about the access drive that is in front of the buildings now and that that would probably be either eliminated or shrunken down and it is on private property and not in the public way. We talked about access from university drive and where driveways might be. And access from amity, well, can we talk about access from amity and how that would change? And from amity and we talked about the extent of paving and the extent of lot coverage and what else? I think that's pretty much it, I think. I think that's all that's of material questions that were asked. In addition, we have some submissions that I want to go through. On this, we have Mr. Slovid, are you there? Anything else you wanted to add to the site visit? No, you've covered everything between the two of you. Thank you. Submissions including ZBA, FY20, 24 applicant submissions, an application form, a project narrative dated 112 and revised to 6, 24, ZBA, 2011 building and elevation renderings, site plans prepared by R. Henry, civil engineer, sample unit rendering, test pit reports, sample floor plans. We have also, there are public comments that we received. We have an email from Mr. Steve Braun, February 20th. We have an email from David Adelfeld and Victoria Dixon, February 20th and an email from Tim Neal on February 14th. Oh, and today we received, or I received today, a revised site plan, number one, showing existing conditions, which we received, we received that at the site visit, which has been submitted for the record. So those show an additional line, blue line on the site plan showing existing buildings and existing conditions. I think that's all for the public submissions. Am I correct, Ms. Breschville? I believe that's correct, yes. All right. Mr. Rudy, you're representing the petitioner. Can you give us your name and address to the board one more time? And if there's anybody else that's going to speak with you? Sure, Jen, if you could let Barry Roberts in as a panelist. He declined, but I'll try again. Okay. As did Jonathan, as did Gail. Yeah, it'll probably be better than Jonathan. I mean, we get some moral support here, I think, in case anything comes up architectural. So anyway, for the record again, Tom Reedy, attorney at Bickelson, out of Amherst, here on behalf of U Drive Amity in its petition for a variance, as the chair noted, two dimensional variances for relief from the additional lot area per family to reduce it from 4,000 square feet per to 2,500 square feet per and the height to allow height variance to be 57 feet from the average grade on the street side of the building. And so we're talking about a variance here. I'll get into the site. I'll show some aerial images of the site. We've got existing conditions planned where we'll talk about the wetlands. We'll talk about the soil conditions. We've got a soil layer sheet. We've got some soil data showing essentially some really soft soil subsurface and just how that all is going to impact the development. We're going to talk about also the hardship of what's allowed and what that actually means and what we could build or couldn't build and why it would be financially infeasible. And so what we're talking about is not maximizing profits. It's really financial feasibility of a project versus not. And then we'll go through, I'll touch on each of the statutory requirements. There are four of them. I put them together in the memo to you, all as board members. And so we'll talk about that it doesn't substantially derogate from the purpose or intent of the bylaw. We'll talk about a couple of reasons why. And then we're going to talk about how it's not detrimental to public good, which I think we can talk through, but also you've seen probably from the three public letters that you received. So without more, I think what I'm going to do is talk about the site and also just so you know, variances, they have those statutory requirements in 40A section 10. There has to be something about the soil, the shape or the topography that specifically affects this site, which doesn't affect the zoning district generally, where literal enforcement of the bylaw would be a hardship, financial or otherwise, and where suitable relief, desirable relief can be granted without substantial detriment to public good or derogation from the purpose and intent of the zoning bylaw. So as we think about it, we think about those four different items. And because they're so unique, if you were to grant this, it's not a Pandora's box, it's not precedent setting, because each site needs to be looked at on its own merits. And it really is site specific, right? If we didn't have the soil conditions that we're going to talk about, or the extensive wetlands that we're talking about, or the construction costs for the premium of actually having to preload, et cetera, on the site, just because you're granting it, if you were to grant it here, you're not then saying having somebody else come in and say, oh, well, you gave it to Roberts down at the corner. So I just want to kind of put that in the board's mind that variances are really creatures of the site that they're on. And they're probably the farthest from precedent setting that you could have. So with that, let me get into, first, I'm just going to use the Amherst property viewer and be switching back and forth a little bit here. So what I've done here, if everybody can see my screen, is just highlighted the four parcels that we're talking about here. So this is the corner where pleasantries, formerly rafters, was, and I believe checkers before that, you've got 2535 University Drive here, you've got in charter insurance, Zomek and Zomek, Cheryl Nina's hair salon, and then you've got two additional parcels, which are really wet. You know, I could turn on the wetland layer and what you'd see, but you'll actually see it with the existing conditions plan that these parcels here are wet. And then there's, this is the Hadley town line right here to the west, you know, north is on the up part here. These are all, for the most part, wetlands are swamp. And this is all wetlands in here. This actually takes drainage. If I were to turn on the utility layer, you'd see, and maybe I just will, sir, for the sake of it. You'll see drainage actually comes all the way, you know, from, I believe, the arbors down piped, piped, piped, and discharges into this wetland here. There was another resource area over here. You'll see that it actually comes all the way down through catch basins, to a discharge point here, to the wetlands here, through a culvert, and then discharges over here. So you've got really environmental limitations to the west and to the south. And so you really only have so much of a developable footprint for this site. It's a 5.32 acre site because all these parcels are going to be combined. Based on the way your zoning bylaw reads, it's in this zoning district, which is a BL zoning district, you take the first 20,000 square feet away, and then you divide what you have left by 4,000 to get the total number of units you could have. That would allow 53 units on this site, essentially by right. What we're asking for is an additional 32 units. So we're asking for 85 total units on this site because, and we'll talk about it later, 54, frankly, with the other restrictions in place is not, it's just not viable. We'll talk about that when we get to height a little bit, and we'll talk about it just as far as the expense of actual construction, including, I don't know if folks saw it in the newspaper, the Republican had an article about the cost of a unit for affordable units, and I think it was $451,000. So that's about what you're looking at, $450,000 to $500,000 per unit. And the more units you have, because there's fixed costs for land acquisition, for diligence, for permitting, and for site preparation and construction, there are some fixed costs. Those, if you have two units or 10 units, 50 units or 85 units, those are staffed. And so the more units you have, you're actually able to offset those costs and the costs of construction a little bit better. And so that's ultimately what we're asking for here is the relief to allow us the ability to have additional density so that we're able to actually have this project that we're going to propose. So I don't know that I need to describe to anybody where this is in relation to other things in town. It's on the northernly end of University Drive. You've got New Market Center to the east. You've got Amity Street, which leads to downtown, Uptown perhaps as it were, Football Stadium, UMass to the north. And then as we start to move south, you've got the Big White Plaza and Route 9. So it's somewhat uniquely positioned on a corner lot and we're fortunate to have the acreage, the 5.3 acres that we have in order to actually propose a project that we're proposing. And so that's the site. And now what I'll do is I'll turn to the existing conditions plan and I will show you what exists currently. And so here you'll see the four separate lots. This is 422 at the corner. You've got 2535 University Drive in the middle. These two are the vacant lots. You'll see there's a green line if you follow this mouse that shows this wetland delineation. And this is a delineation that we had against Steve Riverdy, got him consulting, go out and refresh and take a look at. And so you'll see that as we discussed in the previous screen share, there are wetlands to the west and to the south. And the development area is really concentrated to these two parcels right here. You'll see there are three curb cuts on Amity Street, one westerly and then two others. As we were standing there at the site visit, there were plenty of vehicles that pull in, cut through, trying to beat this signal over here, which we'll talk about in a little bit. That potentially being around about in this proposal being kind of the crux of allowing that roundabout to come forward for a MassWorks grant. Drainage infrastructure currently on site all surficial. There are a couple of catch basins here which discharge and then ultimately go into this resource area and across the way. I do want to talk a little bit about the soils on the site. First, I'll show you the soil overlay. So this is from MassMapper, which is the Massachusetts GIS. It's formerly known as Oliver. It's the MassGIS mapping system. Here you'll see the site, one, two, three, four, these four parcels. And you'll see the varying soil conditions. You've got Amistown, Innesburg, Minnigrit, and Citico. And this uniquely has majority three of the four and a fourth one over here with that Citico. So you're not going to find another parcel in this zoning district that has kind of the conglomeration, if you will, of these four different soils that are here. There's some, they're poorly drained and these poorly drained soil, which is one of the reasons why we think subsurface we're dealing with the conditions that we're dealing with. And so then finally with the site, let me get to Mr. Roberts had Martin Geo environmental go out and do different test pits. And so I'll explain this, the drilling a little bit here. And so you'll see and there are I think seven or eight test pits that were done and they're really consistent about what they show. And you'll see that there are different samples taken. They go to about 32 feet all the way down. And you'll see that at each different layer, every two feet, there's a different report because they take a look at the soil. And so on the right side, you'll see, okay, what is that soil made of? So first year sand and little gravel, and it's dry. And you'll see that if you look at the blows per six inches, that's how many times the driller needs to strike to go further down into that layer. And so you'll see essentially the higher number means it's more stable soil because it takes you intuitively, right? It takes longer to get through it. And so there's more blows that it takes to get down. As you get down to about the 10 foot mark, and I'll show you on the other borings, it's essentially the same. You'll see that those numbers change. You'll see that instead of 10, 16, 14, and 12, you're at three, three, three and four or one, two, one, one or zero, zero, one and one. What that tells you. And then you look to the side, and you see silt and clays, clay, silt, clay, silt, clay, clay. You're reaching, as I talked to Barry earlier, slop, right? It's very soft down there. The problem with that being down there in development is if you put a building on that, building weighs something, it's going to start to settle and squeeze that water out. And the difficulty is if you've got a building that starts to settle, it doesn't always settle even. And so one of the things that you're going to have to do on this site likely is preload to actually re-compact that soil so it actually squeezes that water out so that the site itself is stable to build on. And so this, you know, I'll flip through these if I am able to. Yeah. So there's the first one. And what I'll do is draw your attention just kind of simply the higher numbers up here, you get to 10 and below the lower numbers, and then the clay, clay, silt, clay, silt, and the wetness of it. And so each of these have a water table shown of five feet. And so when they were doing this at about five feet, that's where that water was reached. And so you'll see consistently here, again, water five feet, high numbers, low numbers, you know, sand and silt, and then you turn to clay, silt, and it's wet. And that's the soil condition that you're dealing with on this site. And so if you're going to look to develop this site, you're going to have to squish some of that out, and you're going to have to use certain foundational requirements. You're going to have to spend more for a geotech, spend more for structural engineering, et cetera, and then actually build it in accordance with their suggestions. And so we're talking about a premium cost. And I think I might target it at, you know, over $800,000. In reality, you're probably closer to a million dollars when you're talking about what this type of soil condition adds to the cost of a project. And so, you know, I don't need to belabor it. You're going to see the same. I had submitted this. It's the same for each of the borings, high numbers, low numbers as you get to that 10-foot sand at the top. And then you turn into clay as you get down towards the bottom. And so that's a little bit about the site itself. And so those are the soil conditions. And we're talking about soil conditions and topography specifically here. I'll get into topography a little bit more when we talk about the height variance, the request there. But as far as the premium cost of construction, I think you'll see these soil conditions constricting from a horizontal level with the wetlands and then from a vertical level with the subsurface conditions. Not only can you not go down to put any infrastructure, and so in a traditional development like some of the other Barry has done, he's able to do subsurface infiltration systems for stormwater. That allows a bigger footprint, maybe not having to go as high because you're able to spread it out farther. But because of the soil conditions in the high water table and the stormwater regulations where you have to maintain a certain separation from the groundwater, because if you have groundwater and then the bottom of a basin or an infiltration, you're going to infiltrate into water. There's going to be surcharge and the system's not going to work. And so by not being able to go down, you have to go surface. And to go surface, you're taking up more of the footprint or the area. And so that's further restricting the site from a horizontal perspective. And then you're talking about the vertical perspective, as I mentioned, not only not being able to go down with stormwater infrastructure, but also really any infrastructure, basements, subsurface parking, et cetera. And so you'll see that these conditions kind of build upon each other to get to a place where that's why we end up with the design as you'll see, parking on the first floor instead of subsurface. The parking on the first floor requires us to go up an additional story to get the additional density that we need to pay for the premium costs that actually build on this site, given those subsurface soil conditions. And so you'll see how they kind of feed into each other. I think what I'll show now is the plan that Mr. Judge had mentioned, which is the overlay. And I think this will be really useful for folks to take a look at because you'll be able to see how the existing site conditions relate to the proposed site conditions. And you'll see how the horizontal constriction, if you will, leaves a small, developable footprint and why we're proposing what we're proposing. So if you can see there's a blue, we'll call it an underlay. That's what exists there currently. So you've got 422 Amity Street right here, the Pleasantry's building. You've got 2535 University Drive, which is the Encharter, Cheryl Nina, Zomek and Zomek building here. You've got Access Road, parking, parking, parking, parking, parking, access, access, access, parking. And then in the gray, you'll see where the building footprints would be in relation to what exists currently. And so you'll see that to the greatest extent possible, we're trying to keep the building footprint within the disturbed area. There are some areas like this access point here, some of these parking spaces, some of the circulation, which goes beyond what has been previously disturbed. But it's not much in relation to what, like I said, it's a five acre site. And I think about three of those acres are wetlands or the buffer associated with those wetlands. And so you are talking about really confining this development to a certain already developed portion of the site. You'll see the wetlands to the west by the W flags and to the south. And we've got the buffer zones on here as well, 30 foot buffer, 50 foot buffer, 75 foot buffer, and then the 100 foot buffer. So you can see exactly how far those wetlands somewhat encroach onto the property. Let me think what I'll do. I'll show you the clean version of that site plan as well. And so you'll see here, without that underlay, if the project has approved what the footprint of that project would be, it's closing up those two curb cuts on Amity Street. It's pushing the existing Amity Street curb cut up a little bit further towards the west. It's closing that access road and proposing, right now it's a six foot multi-purpose path along the easterly side of the property. We've got parking within the site. I think there's 114 surface parking spaces and then we have about 70, 73 covered parking spaces. Those take up the area in the first floor of this portion of the building and this portion of the building. And so in total, I think you're at about 184 total parking spaces for the uses on the site. And parking ultimately, so maybe I'll back up and talk about the process a little bit. This is a variance we're asking for relief for a couple of dimensional regulations from you. If those are granted, we would then go to the planning board because the mixed use use is allowed by right with site plan approval. And so we expect at that point to be talking a little bit about design, parking, parking per unit, complementary parking between the commercial space that's being proposed, which I'll show in another slide. And the residential spaces, and this is something that's worked on other sites, one university drive, for example, there are complementary parking spaces where residents will use it from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. and then the businesses will use it from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. And so it's that complementary nature. But I expect those portions of the discussion to be taken care of at the planning board. And I think next I will show you the full, the renderings which you've potentially have seen in the newspaper. And so here you've got the renderings of what the proposed buildings would look like. Again, we'd have to go through planning board process, but this is the concept. And if it's a condition of approval to have something like this built, and this is the proposal. And we can show you the floor plans as well. And so you'll see. I also should mention there is the roundabout cited on this plan based on the plans that we got from Jason Skeels, the town engineer. It's not guaranteed at this point. It's obviously a public right of way. The town, I believe, is looking to submit a MassWorks grant. I think this project, the state may look very favorably on the MassWorks grant because of, with that roundabout, we would be able to close those curb cuts. And it would actually facilitate the construction of this building. And the state is really looking for, as is the town, increased density, increased residential units. And so our plans show the existence of that roundabout. We have no control over its actual permitting or construction. That's something that's really outside of our hands, but we're obviously happy to support however we can. And so this, here's your rendering. Cune riddle architect Jonathan Sullivan, I think did a really terrific job of pulling this together. You've got those two buildings. Your fifth story. So otherwise it's one, two, three, four. And that fifth story is back here. And that fifth story is back here. Underneath those fifth stories are parking. And the reason the parking is there, and this isn't all four stories, is because we can't go subsurface with the parking. And we wanted to have sufficient parking. Frankly, if you want to have this use succeed for the commercial uses, for the residential uses, you want to have sufficient parking. So that's why those fifth story exists. I want to talk a little bit about the height. And so in the BL zoning district, 35 feet is allowed by right. You can get a footnote A modification to go up an additional, you can go up, you get a modification. There's a restrictive provision in the bylaw. I think it's 6.171 that says, however, in this district, you can't exceed more than 10 feet above what's allowed. And so at maximum, we would be allowed 45 feet. And so we're asking for a variance up to 57 feet. And I'll explain the 57 feet. The buildings will be 55 feet. So from first floor to the roof plane, that will be 55 feet. However, the way that the town measures height, it's from the average grade on the street side of the building, the structure. And so at Amity Street, at that curb cut on Amity Street, you're at about elevation 162. As you come up, you're at about elevation 165, 166 here. And then you're at about 167 at this point. And so when we're talking about average grades, the difficulty is finding that average grade, especially because the building is pulled up against the road based upon conversations we've had with the town and what we think, frankly, makes a really nice design. And so you don't have as much room between the street and the building to manipulate the grade at all. And so we're very tied into what that grade is at the street. And so because there is that somewhat fluctuation, we've asked for instead of 55 feet, 57 feet. And 55 feet appears in the zoning bylaw, in other zoning districts, dimensionally, just like 2,500 feet per additional area per family appears in other zoning districts as well. And so for these areas, we're asking for that, these won't come close to 57 feet. But because of these fifth stories, because of the density, because of the subsurface conditions, and because of the parking, we've got to go up a little bit more. And so one of the other things that I do want to talk about is what's allowed by right. And so we're allowed 54 units, quote, unquote, by right. And so, okay, why can't you build that? Well, let's let's think about what that would actually be. Not only did I mention you've got really fixed land costs, diligence costs, permitting costs, site prep costs and construction costs, because these are going to be, it's a podium build, where you're going to have steel and concrete on this first floor, higher ceilings, 12 to 15 feet, and then additional stories above it. And so if you're at 45 feet, let's say there's a special permit issued, you're at 45 feet, you're not going to get four storms. You would be at three storms. And so if you're at three stories, you're actually at one level of commercial space and two residential levels above it. If you're two residential levels above it, you're likely not fitting 54 units in there because of the unit mix. You don't, first of all, Amherst has a restriction of no more than 50% of any one unit type, but also there's a market condition. And you don't want to overload it with too many of any one type of units. That's why this project has a good breakdown of units. And so what you would be talking about if you said, sorry, we're going to, we're not going to do this is, I mean, frankly, not a project, because it would be, I think, 25 or 26 units that you would be able to put in that three-story building plus mix, plus the non-residential space. And I can tell you that it just doesn't, it's not going to pencil. If you're talking about, let's say $500,000 per unit, let alone the commercial space, you know, you're at 10, 12 and a half million dollars just for construction and the rents aren't going to, with all the expenses, the taxes, et cetera, et cetera, it will just not pencil that way. And so this, this isn't necessarily like, okay, you just want a little bit more because it'll make more money. It really is about financial viability of the project. So besides that first rendering, we've got some others from the roundabout. So you'll see the step back, the fenestrations, some of the reduction of massing that I think Cune Riddle and Jonathan did a really fantastic job showing you've got a parking, it's a garage parking. You know, you've got a garage here, a garage door here, you'll have one on that other side. And then this is a view from the southeast, probably at the entrance to Amherst's favorite new restaurant, the Amherst public house, looking northwesterly towards the development. And then this one is within the development itself looking east. And then I'll show you a floor plan. And so you'll see what we've got for unit count up here. This is, this is where we show 85 units. I think you've also seen a plan where we show 78 units. The difference, I'll call out, but it really is the second floor of this building and whether or not we think we can sustain or the project can sustain a second level of non-residential. So you've got the number of units up here and we'll get into the floor plan so you can actually see the type of units. And I've actually got a screenshot of what one of those units would look like. And so, you know, proposal for non-residential space at the corner, proposal for officer retail here along University Drive, residential amenity space. And then right here you'll see you've got all of those covered parking spaces, you've got surface parking spaces. And again, at the southerly building covered parking spaces, retail space and amenity space. I'll go up to the second floor and this is the all residential unit or plan, I should say, you've got your four bedrooms and all the four bedrooms are four bedrooms, two bathrooms, the three bedrooms are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, the two bedrooms are two bedrooms, two baths, and the one bedrooms are one bedroom, one bath. And so you don't have in the four bedrooms, bedroom, bathroom, parity, where you've got a bathroom connected to each bedroom. You know, these Barry's projects, I had asked Gail who's on the Zoom to look at Barry's other recent projects, U Drive South, 180 Ferenstreet and 70 University Drive. And I can tell you, they have about 50% undergraduates and 50% of professionals, retirees, families, graduate students. And so that's the idea with this project is a real mix of the folks who would be able to rent. In addition, this is going to have 12% affordable. So that number obviously changes, 54 units at 12% affordable or 26 units at 12% affordable is different than 85 units at 12% affordable. And then there are other restrictions about the level of affordability based on the number of affordable units that we have. But you'll see you've got the four beds, the three beds, some two beds, and a few one beds. In the other iteration of this, this upper floor is office space. You'll see at the southerly piece, that's office space. One of the items that I would request, if it is approved, is not to condition it on, I say these floor plans approved, because if you find a great commercial tenant that wants to take this corner space on the first and second floor, well then this isn't going to be a residential unit that probably comes down here. And this residential unit, sorry, this office space or commercial space would come up here. And so you've got internal amenity spaces within the site, within the building itself. Each of the buildings has residential amenity spaces for fitness center lounges, et cetera, from things that we've seen in the market of what works. And so the fourth and the fifth story are really spectacular. I'll show you the screenshot of one in a minute. But you do have balcony areas and also outdoor spaces for some of these upper levels on the southerly side, the northerly side, and southerly side. And then this is the fifth story where you've got some, I don't want to call them penthouses, but some really nice two bedroom, three bedroom. There's no four bedrooms on the top floor spaces. And each of these spaces has the ability for living room, dining table, kitchen table. They have island space. They have sizable bedrooms. I mean, you're talking about over a thousand square feet for some of the two beds, over 1600 square feet for some of the four bedrooms. You're not trying to pack anything really in there. Mr. Rudy, just a second. I think it's helpful to get a feel for the plans, but we're not really looking, it's good for us to know that, but we're not really considering these plans as part of what we're asked to do, I think. So I think we really, as much as we can spend our time focusing on the, the variance requests and the justification for those would be really helpful, but it's to get a feeling of it is good, but I think we can probably move on from. Sure. No, I'm almost done. So I don't know if Mr. Henry, if you want to. I see Mr. Henry here. I want to give him an opportunity to say something and then we'll go on. Thank you. I just want to make sure I heard correctly. These are meant to be rental properties, not condos for sale. Correct. And one of the reasons Mr. Henry is that with condominiums, you can condo it and then you can sell it and then who knows who actually is buying it and if they're going to turn it into a rental themselves. So we've found that it's actually better to control from a management standpoint the entirety of the site. So yeah, these would all be, these are just for rent units. And what do you anticipate the commercial space to be used for restaurants? Yeah, great question. Probably not a restaurant. We had thought about that. The difficulty is the parking demands of a restaurant, frankly, and just, you know, you can go from noon to 11 noon to 1 a.m. And they're going to need a lot of parking. The town requires, I think it's one space for every four seats, but on a practical level, you're probably talking about 50 or 60 parking spaces dedicated for the restaurant. So I can tell you, I don't know what would go there yet. It's a little early. There's the ability to have that second floor, hopefully for some local folks. Cheryl Nina has expressed an interest in coming next door and Charter has expressed an interest in coming into these. So that's some of the hope for maybe the upstairs commercial spaces. And I think that first floor is probably closer to retail, you know, something that is attractive to the community, to the university, and would be a good fit down there. But probably not a restaurant, though, is what I'm thinking. I also want to make sure I understood what you said a little bit earlier on. So you're asking for an exception. And one of the reasons you cited was not to make money, but it sounds if you're asking for the exception for additional units to offset the costs, the ways that are fixed costs to develop these. Did I hear that correctly? Yeah. And I want to be careful of saying, you know, not to make money, because the idea is hopefully to get a profit, but there's a lot of risk involved in this. And it's, I think my point was, this isn't where the numbers work without this. The numbers don't work without this. And so I didn't want to make it seem like, oh, well, it's fine. And we're just looking for gravy on top of it. The numbers don't work without this note. Like I've looked at them. I know that with this number of units in this configuration with the rents you expect to get based on, you know, expenses and taxes and all the other things that come into it, this would work. It covers debt service and it covers expenses. There's a, frankly, a little bit of breathing room, but not a tremendous amount. So that was really the point of the comment. Thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Redi. I didn't want to. No, no, no, no. I think, you know, last I'll just show, and it may, let's see, I'll show a sample of what a unit could look like. Again, just so you're, you know, all of these things come into cost, which ultimately comes into the hardship, which ultimately comes into, you know, why we're asking for the relief that we're asking for in order to add. And it really is adding 32 additional units over what's allowed on a five-acre site. This is an example of that, a fifth floor, two-bedroom. It's located in, I say, the southwest corner of the building. Access onto a little outdoor area and then also some balcony areas here. So you can get a sense of the size, the windows, the light, and just what sort of finishes place like this would have. And so, you know, ultimately, the request is, as I said, two-fold dimensionally to allow the reduction by 1500 square feet. I will note that the BG is 1,250 for each additional lot of lot area per family. BN is 1500. Both the RG and the BBC are at 2,500. And that's what we're asking to come down to from 4,000 to 2,500. And that would allow us to put an additional 32 units on the site. You know, I can get into why it's beneficial as far as housing, density, location, but it really helps. I mean, it allows this project to go forward to actually provide that housing. And then the second is the height, as I mentioned. And it's really for the 57 feet in those two areas where the fifth story picks in because of the parking subsurface and the way that the town measures the height requirements. And so, you know, we can talk about public good and why it makes a lot of sense. Derrigation from the purpose or intent of the bylaw, you know, we're not doing anything that another zoning district couldn't do, so to speak, right? So 55 feet is allowed in other zoning districts. We're asking, and they can have footnote modifications. So they could go up to 65 feet. We're only asking for 57. And as I mentioned, there are others, other zoning districts, which allow 2,500 square feet for each additional family. And so it's not like we're blowing up the zoning bylaw and saying, wait a second, we're going to do something that you've never done before. You've done these, these things are allowed. It's just not in the zoning district. And I think it's right for this area. Plus, it allows this project to go forward based on all those premium costs that I identified. So, I mean, I've done a lot of talking. I'm sure my wife is used to it, but I don't know if everybody else is. Thanks for the patience. And I'm happy to answer any questions. I've got some questions. I see Mr. Slaviter, but Ms. Breistrup, do you have something to add here before we go into questions? I just thought I would add this and Tom can correct me if I'm not correct with the numbers. But in terms of the density of this project, I think it would be similar to North Square. Actually, it would be less dense than North Square. North Square at the Mill District, where provisions is 130 units. And I think that's 130 units on about five acres. That's exactly correct. Yeah, that's, it's on like 5.3 acres actually. And I think it's got 20,000 square feet of commercial space and 130 residential units. So, that density is greater than the density that's being asked for here. I just wanted to give you something to compare it to. Thank you. So, Mr. Rene, this really comes down to, in my mind, trying to prove the financial hardship. And that is a result of the soils. And so, from one of the things I've got, I need to get my head around is, what is it? I understand it's the 10 foot, 10 foot wetness where the soils occur. What I don't understand is, what are the additional costs that you have to, that are imposed upon, construction costs that are imposed because of those kinds of soils? And you'd say you have to pre-tamp them. And so, what does that mean for in terms of fixed costs for the building? Sure. Good question. So, yeah, so it's pre-loading. And I'll answer the question then, what other point about it? So, it's pre-loading. And what you have to do is you have to bring in a bunch of gravel, and Barry can correct me if I'm wrong, load the site, they have test pits, wells, they figure out how quickly that subsurface area is compacting. So, you put a lot of weight on that site to get it to squish out the water. And there's a real cost to that. I think I've targeted it as $825,000 is probably what you're looking at for something like that, just to squish that water out. And it could be more, right? We haven't gone through the steps of actually saying, okay, you're contracted to do this. How long does it have to be pre-loaded for? How much tonnage needs to come on? And so, that's probably a low estimate of what it would cost. And so, I bring that up also by way of example, that to offset that cost, you need that additional density. And so, what we're talking about is not really, so I've said 54 units is what's allowed. But you're not going to be able to get 54 units in that footprint unless you did all studios or one bedrooms, which I don't think is the right thing to do there. That's not the project. And so, you would only end up with a three-story building and three-story building with let's say 25 residential units plus commercial space certainly cannot bear that additional cost plus any other cost associated with the podium build, thicker slabs, concrete, steel, et cetera. And so, it's because of those additional costs, you can't just build a three-story building there. You've got to find that equilibrium to say, we haven't come in with a say, oh geez, we need 125 units. We really paired it back to say, this is a project we think works financially and for the market based upon all these, it's really balanced, all these factors. And so, as a result of that, this is like that rake even point equilibrium that I mentioned to get to where we need to be. And so, what is the requirements of a podium build for the first floor? I know you said you want to go 15 feet to accommodate commercial space, I guess. But what is a podium? I'm unfamiliar with a podium. Sure. So, and Jonathan, feel free to jump in, but I'm going to try to take this one. It's concrete and steel, the first, it's almost like two buildings within one. So, that first level will be concrete and steel. And then as you go up, you can build with wood. And so, Jonathan, I said I wasn't going to call on you, but is that essentially right? Maybe he doesn't answer me now. Maybe he doesn't answer me now. Jonathan, true. Whoa, Jonathan, that's pretty hard to understand. Can you try that again? You sound like a chipmunk, Jonathan. Yeah. Mr. Salvin, that's not, we can't understand you. And it's not you. It's some kind of a malfunction on the broadcast. So, get another try at a later point. Maybe we'll alter it back on. Yeah, I think that's essentially it, Mr. Chair, is that you're building essentially like two buildings, that first one, like you'll see it downtown. They have the steel beams and then above it, because of fire separation, you're able to build with wood above it. And so, that's why they call it. Do you have to do that with three, if you have three stories, do you have to do the same thing? I, with a mixed use building, you may have to to put, to get that height of that first floor. And so, that's what we're trying to talk about, point load. Preloading and podium for three stories as well. Yeah, especially with, I think, parking underneath. And then lastly, it looks to me like most of that, most of the building area is basically one sort of soil. Let's go back to the soils in the area. I'm not from, the map that showed the different soils. Yes, let me get that up. Okay. So, most of your build is going to be in, though I can't read it, but it's the Inosburg. Well, it's a little bit. So, if you look, let's see if I can, I don't know if I can move this around a little bit. All right. So, I got you. So, this right, here's the corner. So, that's part of it. And then this other building crosses these two over here. So, you really are dealing with at least three of those different soil types. You know, one, two, and then I don't know that the building extends to here, it may, but this one's certainly two over there. All right. So, Mr. Sloveter had his hand up first, then Mr. Henry. So, Mr. Sloveter. Yes, I have some questions relating to the finances. I also picked up on your statement that you're not trying to maximize profit. You just want to make it feasible. So, in what ways have you foregone trying to maximize the profit and just being, just trying to make it feasible? I think you eliminate parking. I think you can take away that first floor parking, but again, it's, I mean, then you're not going to have, likely won't have sufficient parking. And so, you have to reduce the unit count. If you reduce the unit count, then you're back into the same boat that you were at before, where it just doesn't pencil out. So, though, I mean, we thought iteratively about this. And that's why we keep coming back to this design, because that's feasible. If you wanted us to maximize profits, you know, then maybe you say, well, pardon my friend, screw it. Right. Let people find out their own place to park. Let's add additional units on that first floor. But again, it just doesn't, that's not the right project for this area. So, when I say, you know, make it financially feasible, it's covering debt service, covering expenses, and building it a little wiggle room to make sure that the assumptions are correct. And what rent levels, you mentioned market price for the rents. What kind of rent levels do you expect to charge for these units? Price per bedroom? You mentioned that the penthouse was, well, use the word penthouse. So, what would the rental be for the three-bedroom or the two-bedroom penthouse? You know, it's a good question. So, first of all, it's not rented by the bedroom, it's by the unit. And so, that's the way we look at it. We don't say, okay, well, this three-bedroom will get X amount because it's per the unit. Sorry, per the bedroom. It's for the unit. You know, that three-bedroom on the top floor, you might be looking at $3,500 a month. But what I would remind you and anybody else on the board is that's essentially turnkey. They'll pay utilities, but they don't have to worry about the taxes, insurance, maintenance, mortgage payments, et cetera. And so, while, and I haven't done the analysis for this, but I had done it for a separate Project 180 Fearing Street, and when you start to think about, well, what could somebody afford, especially a single family home in Amherst, let's say, $600,000, have to put $120,000 down to be at 80%. So, you're borrowing $480,000 at 7%, 6%. What's that P&I principal and interest payment per month plus a $600,000 house in Amherst is what are they paying for taxes on top of that, plus insurance, plus maintenance, plus, plus, plus. And you start to see that, okay, you might say $3,500 sounds like a lot. But in reality, it's a better deal than actually trying to purchase a home if you're able to at this point. And so, the long-winded answer is, I don't know all of the rents. One bedroom is you're probably at 1,900 to 2,200. Two bedroom, you're probably 22 to 28, three bedroom, maybe that three to 3,500 and four bedroom, probably 45, 46, 47, maybe even a little bit above, depending. That's really what you're looking at. But I mean, before you get to there, you have to back out all of these different, what are the taxes at that point, what are the other expenses, et cetera. So, you mentioned though that only about 50% of the building is students or you anticipate or historically that's what you've been getting. And the rest are young professionals, maybe faculty at the university. And at those rental numbers, do you expect that faculty members at the university will be paying those kind of numbers to live in a three bedroom apartment or a two bedroom apartment? Is this a realistic expectation or is it going to be another dorm? No, no, it's certainly realistic. So, an immediate example is 180 Fearing Street, which is at the corner of Fearing and Sunset. That has that breakdown that I mentioned to you with the number of undergraduates, et cetera. And those rents are about these rents. I mean, the square footage is about the same. And those rents are about what I think I'm contemplating for these. And that's what I've kind of based it off of. And there are folks who are paying those. So, yeah, I don't anticipate this. I mean, part of this is, I was having the conversation today, it's a little, there's tears to, and I know we're getting off topic a little bit, but infrastructure helps to identify tenants. If you have higher end, well taken care of properties, and then you go through the tenant selection, tenant advertising marketing process to get the right tenants, you have the tenant review process, and then it comes, and then it's management. And with all of those things together, because fully undergraduate, very well, I mean, I'm 50% a nice mix compared to what else is there. So, and this doesn't, I mean, I don't see this layout as being conducive to all undergraduates. Plus, it's going to have an affordability component to it. So there will necessarily be, you know, 12% is going to be for those folks who qualify economically. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Mr. Henry. Oops, you're muted. Mr. Henry. Welcome, Mr. Chair. So, attorney, I understand trying to make this financial feasible, but why not just say, you know, this is what the property is, this cost is the cost of doing business. And we can only do this to what the current bylaws allow. And at the same time, this is a mixed commercial residential. Why not forego the commercial part of it, and just go for residential to maximize that space? Great, great question. So I'll answer the first one of the second one first rather. Not only, I think in discussions with the planning department and the university, this is a good site for that mixed use. Because I think the university is trying to make university drive a different sort of corridor, an entry to the university. The zoning bylaws and Amherst require, if you're going to do mixed use, and if you do mixed use, there is no unit cap within the building. Apartments have a minimum of three and a maximum of 24 units within a building. And so what we would be looking at if we forewent all commercial space, just putting an apartment, I don't even know that it could be apartments there, but you're limited to 24 units within that building. And so when you, again, you start to think about economies of scale, you have, if you have two buildings and you've got two elevators, you've got two exteriors. And I don't know that that makes a lot of sense, especially given the footprint and the location. So I think it's important to keep this as commercial on the first floor, really for public good. I think that's what this site wants. And then as to the first question about, it sounded like financial feasibility, I don't know that there is a financial, given all these site constraints, I don't know that there is a financially feasible way to do this. Any other way that we're proposing it? Sure, we could put a gas station in there. I mean, it's zoned for that. We could open up another bar there. But, and I'm sure you'll appreciate this as an attorney, if variances, if it was a zero sum game with variances, there would be no variances that were issued. Because what would be the purpose of going through a variance process if the board would just say, oh, well, you just have to comply with the bylaw. But that's not the case because there are variances that are issued and ultimately upheld by the court. And I think I gave an example in the memo that I had sent in that there was a time that the zoning board of appeals in that case at the trial court level and the appeals court level for them to say, yeah, but change your design. We want to see something else that works. Those things didn't come up. They said, here's what we've got. Here's the statutory requirements. We hear that there is a hardship and that this relief for us, the height, the density, will alleviate, ameliorate that hardship. And it's not going to be substantially detrimental to the public good or to the purpose or intent of the bylaw. And so while I'm talking about, like I said, I brought it up to make it clear that this wasn't good to great. It's survive. I mean, that's where it's getting to with a project with what's being proposed. And I appreciate what you said earlier about university trying to develop that part of university drive. But just for my own education, for this type of project, was there any other site considered other than this one? If we could find another 5.3 acre site, I mean, there's nothing else like this. I guess Mr. Henry is probably the best way to answer it. It's first location, location, location. And I think the location is supreme. And I don't know that you'd be able to find something similar. And then the size, even the size of the developable footprint, you'd be hard pressed to find something. We talked to the folks over at New Market Center, they weren't interested in doing anything that's right across the street. That's an already developed property. They weren't interested in doing anything. And so the answer to your question, yes, there were other sites considered, but I don't think anything was coming close to what this site had to offer. And one last question because I see Mr. White has his hand up. And I know you can't predict this, but what impact do you see this having on the residences that are currently on Amity Street? I mean, I'd say minimal, especially if there's a roundabout there. I think you've got at least one letter from a resident on, I think in Amity Place, someone else from Blue Hills, which is, as you probably know, right off Amity Street, no concern with traffic. There's a lot of traffic volume that already goes on University Drive, particularly if anything, it's probably beneficial because there'll be more commercial uses in that area on University Drive. Maybe there's an uptick in traffic, but as you probably know, residential uses, folks typically leave in the morning, go do whatever they're doing and come back, as opposed to, let's say this was a gas station or something like that. That may have more of an impact on the surrounding neighborhood than something like this. So I think that this, I don't know that Mr. Henry, you were on the last variance hearing for the one over by Atkins, but there were letters in opposition from the neighborhood and we're not seeing that here. So people know how to, I mean, there's a butter notification, et cetera. This has been in the newspaper. I think if people were concerned, we would probably hear about it. Thank you. Mr. White. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Reedy, for your presentation. My actual question was pertaining to traffic. So thank you, Mr. Henry, for asking that for me. But I do also want to mention, maybe take a little bit of an issue with a statement you made, which I believe to be kind of a false equivocation of stating, trying to compare your renting to single-family home ownership with a rental property, and there is, they absolutely do great value to a community. I'm not trying to say any otherwise. But the renters are still paying the taxes and anything else through their rents. Yes, the grounds are covered. The key difference, and we all know this, between renting and owning is possession of equity. And so that was just something that you said that I did kind of take issue with, and I did want to mention too. By no means was I intending to offend, certainly. But also, I think it was more of an example of when you hear a number like 3,500, you say, oh my gosh, this developer is making so much money. And it was what I was trying to do was just buy comparison to say, yes, and you're entirely right with, you don't have that equitable value that you do if you were able to afford and can purchase a single-family home without a doubt. So it was just, I don't want to say it like an apples-to-apples comparison if you were to look into say, and I haven't done the numbers, but what is a mortgage at $480,000 at 7% over 30 years, plus coming out of pocket for $120,000 down payment, plus the taxes, plus, plus, plus, I would suspect it's probably above $3,500 on a monthly basis. And that was my only point, is that on those economies, but certainly, like I said, I'm not. We don't know each other that well, but I'm not in the business of offending. And like I said, I didn't take offense to it. It's just something that I absolutely wanted to just mention. Absolutely. Understood. Thank you. So, Mr. Reedy, I know the town has been talking with the planning department and the planning board have initiated a conversation or at least a discussion with the university about development along university drive towards the university, going north on university drive. What are you participating in that? How does this fit with that? Are you would, to your knowledge, would your, with this development weight approval on site plan review until that conversation is completed? Or is this going to go forward? And then the rest of the conversation with the university and the development along university drive will take place later. So the extent to what you're involved in that, how does this fit with what they're doing? Sure. And maybe two different pieces here. So the first is the university and we reached out right away. We had conversations with Tony Virulis, John Kennedy, about what we were proposing to make sure that it fit within what they saw. Just footstep of the university, doorstep of the university, and they were supportive of it. So that's the first piece. The second piece is with the planning board. And you might be talking about the rezoning that they're discussing for university, the university drive corridor. And so, in this press group can probably speak much more intelligently than I can on this. But what I'll mention is I think this would be in accord with what they're doing, a stepped back fifth story. The density is there. They're actually looking to eliminate any additional lot area per family requirement. They're just looking to base it off of building coverage and lot coverage. And so this project would have no problems in either of those regards because of the size of the lot. Frankly, the issue is timing. They started conversations, I want to say last spring 2023. They're likely not to get through an iteration of theirs until June or July of this year. And then it goes to council. And then it starts to move forward. And so there are real costs. There was acquisition costs. There's carrying costs, utility, insurance, debt service, et cetera for the site. And so, but from, and I was just on, I paid attention, I was at the hearing last night, it seems like something like this would be embraced by what the board is looking to do. And we've had conversations with Nate and Chris and Rob Wachilla to make sure that we're staying in the loop about what we're proposing here. Ms. Bristow, do you have anything to add to what Mr. Riedi has, and from the town's perspective, where are we, what's the process that's going on for university drive? I would say that our track is parallel with what Mr. Roberts and Mr. Riedi are doing. We started talking about various areas in town that could support increased housing density we started talking about that last spring and then this fall we finally lit on university drive as a good area, which has a lot of potential and is not in a situation where there would be a lot of anxiety on the part of neighbors and it's very close to the university and it's already developed and so this seemed like a good place to think about further density and also economic development for the planning board to do that. And then Mr. Roberts and Mr. Riedi came along with their project and it seemed like, oh, well that's kind of similar to what we're proposing. The two have not come to match. We're still working on our project and we're hoping to come up with the best version of it that we can, but we're certainly keeping an eye on what Mr. Riedi and Mr. Roberts are planning to do and, you know, not trying to do anything counter to that, but I wouldn't say that it's not like we're working together or partners in this. It's really parallel tracks and so. The overlay discs hadn't been proposed yet and still under consideration and I don't see anything about Mr. Roberts project that alarms me and that would be really counter to what we're trying to do, but it's just different or it's not different. It's just our project has not gelled yet is I guess what I'm trying to say and their project is moving along. Mr. Meadows. I just felt like I want to throw my two cents in, but at the same time I have a question. I think that as typical, Mr. Riedi has done a fantastic job in presenting this, except for his analogy between homeownership and rentals, which I have heard before and I disagree with also, but, you know, the proposal to do this and knowing Mr. Roberts and knowing Jonathan, it seems like an excellent project and fits well within what the scope of the town is looking for to try and not have more, more of our single family houses converted to student housing or one thing, but the point that I have this confusing a little bit is how does the roundabout fit in with this or the proposed roundabout. I just I can't grab, understand the details of how that would work. So if I could, Christ, if I mean, if you're more involved in this directly, I would just say that we are hoping to apply for a mass works grant from the state to pay for the cost of construction of building a roundabout at this intersection, and we've been talking to the university about it, they would have to give up some land and there would have to be some takings of private land in order to make a roundabout work. What the state is looking for when they consider whether to grant such an application is will this provide jobs for people in the area and will it provide economic benefit or something like housing or shopping or something like that that would be really beneficial to the people in the area. So you can't just apply for a mass works grant in the absence of a project. And in this case, we would have this project where Mr. Robertson, Mr. Reedy could write a letter in support of the mass works grant describing what they're proposing to do, and that would be beneficial to the town in obtaining the grant. So that's that's the connection. We did the same thing with Colonial Village on Belcher Town Road. We applied for a mass works grant a couple of years ago for that. We ended up getting somewhere between I think $750,000 and $780,000 to build sidewalks on Belcher Town Road. And we got a letter of support from Alan Cohen who owns Colonial Village and he has the intention of essentially doubling the number of units on his property. So that was enough to convince the state to give us that grant. So so we would hope that when we apply for the mass works grant that we would get a letter of support from Mr. Roberts and Mr. Reedy to help us to get our our mass works grant. And that is moving forward. I think if this project doesn't go ahead, we're going to have a little bit harder of a time to convince the state that this is the roundabout is going to be you know beneficial economically with jobs and housing and places for people to work. So that's that's the relationship. Does that help? It does. I'm still a little confused how it fits in that corner unless it's a small roundabout but somewhat similar to the one at the on North Pleasant Street or the one at the intersection perhaps at North Pleasant. It is not a big roundabout like the one that they have at the end of the bridge. It's not a big two-lane roundabout. It wouldn't fit there. It's a single-lane roundabout but I've seen the plans for it and you know plans were done by the university so I don't have the plans with me to show you but it appears like it will be a good thing. Very you know it will accommodate the traffic that builds up there coming and going from Northampton so it would be beneficial to the town to have that and also beneficial to the university. The roundabout would have to be situated, much of it would have to be situated on the university property off to the the north of Amity and it would have to be you have to kind of shift the street coming down. That's the only way you can do it otherwise you're taking up private property from new market as well as from where now Pleasant Street is located. That's that's what confused me. I didn't you'd have to kind of reach anyways it's not my problem. You'd have to kind of figure Amity streets and move off to the north and then come back up Amity Street. Trafficking engineers have to figure that out I guess right? I think that Mr. Reedy and Mr. Roberts have access to the UMass plans when they were doing their plans so here's what they have and Guilford may have the plan but I don't have it but this is showing how it is currently designed. There will probably be changes to it over the course of its development but this is what it's currently proposed to do. That makes a little more sense now that I can see it. I'm also assuming that you'll be doing ground source heat pumps on there solar given the tax credits for those things. It's a good question I'm not I mean we've had this conversation I think every project we've come before I don't know yet but it's something we obviously look into I expect so at least at least air source heat pumps will look into the ground I'm not you know like that. Well the ground source heat pumps when you put the tax credits on they're much more efficient and they're much less costly than the air source. Thank you. Mr. Slaughter. Well since I'm not a big fan of hope as a plan I like plans as a plan if we hope to get a roundabout from the state and and it's not approved is the town prepared to pay for a roundabout is the developer prepared to contribute to a roundabout because that intersection already has issues with the traffic volume and if you put another 180 cars for residential purposes at that corner that intersection is going to be loaded with even more traffic so it seems to me that since your plans depict a roundabout it feels as though this your property bringing all those cars and additional traffic and commercial and residential there works if there's a roundabout so who's going to put a roundabout in there to make your plans complete if the state doesn't pay for it. Right. I'll defer to Ms. Brestrup who has her hand up before. I was just going to say we have not applied for a massworks grant with UMass as our partner before and I would say that that is really key to getting this roundabout built to get in this grant from from the state the fact that UMass is willing to partner with us on this and so I think we have a better than average chance of getting the roundabout and has UMass committed to partner with you and committed to contribute the required amount of UMass land to make the roundabout possible. I don't think we have anything in writing but we have continuing series of conversations in fact we're having a conversation about this tomorrow with representatives of UMass to talk about moving this ahead so we're going to have to you know decide quickly that we're going to do this but part of it hinges on whether this project is going to happen or not if this project doesn't happen then our chances of getting the massworks grant are diminished because we don't have that you know economic development and housing component that they're looking for. Well given the amount of cooperation that a lot of us have seen not coming from UMass it I hope that you're successful and I actually use the hope word I can't believe it I hope that you're successful in getting them fully on board because you know it's not easy to be optimistic about UMass cooperating with anything so I I'm if they don't if it doesn't go through is the town prepared to put a traffic circle in there a roundabout? I haven't had that conversation with the town manager I think that putting a traffic circle in there is probably worth 1.5 to 2 million dollars 1.5 million is what it cost us costs that's the grant that we got for the Palmer and Lane intersection roundabout and I think that didn't actually cover the cost of of all of the construction so I can't commit the town to going that route by ourselves without that grant all right thank you if I could just add it is in the university's best interest in this case to want a roundabout there because that their goal is to create a new way to get into UMass and for that I mean that's what they said and I agree with David having been here just a few years I'm skeptical of how much cooperation we get from UMass but when but in this case I think it's in their own best interest and they said they want to try to find a way to keep get people into the university using university drive rather than sunset and Lincoln and other roads into the university so I think it's we have there's some reason to have hope to have hope that they would work in their own self-interest is my read of what the situation is anyway that's my hope other questions you know we're right at 740 I like to take a five minute break and come back this seems to be a good good time to do that we will come back if you have additional questions for Mr. Reedy or for the team we can ask them then we'll go to public comment and then we'll go to our deliberation after that so let's take five minutes be back here at 745 and we can continue thank you if we can recording has resumed all right thank you Jennifer you're welcome there any other questions for Mr. Reedy Mr. Slobner in your narrative that's one of the documents that was submitted at the end it says that granting this will be without substantial detriment what unsubstantial debt detriment do you feel this project will result in felt like a loaded question Mr. Slobner if you ask me I think we can look at it positively and so I'd say what public good will it fulfill right so I think we'd go so far to say you know not only is it there's there's not a substantial detriment there's not a detriment in fact let's look at the other side it's going to further the public good I think it's providing much needed housing it's providing a commercial retail office space in an area that that I think can bear it it's diversifying the tax base you know this is a big project the town stands to benefit quite significantly from the tax payments associated with a project like this and we know that the town has several capital projects that they'd like to do and also ongoing a project so I would look at it as there are some public benefits to a project like this okay I understand the way it was written I know if I have too much of a fattening dessert there may be an well without substantial weight gain but there will be some at least minimal weight gain and the way you wrote that I don't know what you're thinking I mean there's detriment I can think of detriment with a project like this I don't know what you meant when you said without substantial detriment that sort of implies that you recognize that there is some bit of a downside so you don't see you don't see any downside at all well I mean it's I don't know if it's a downside it's it's going to be different but I don't think it's anything that the area cannot handle and when I say substantial detriment I really just I'm tracking the law because that's the way that it's written all right thank you all right um unless there's other questions I'd like to go to public comment on this so Ms Mullins would will you assist me in identifying people who wish to speak all comments should be for those of you who wish to speak all comments should be addressed to the chair if you wish to comment please raise your hand via zoom or if you're on the phone press star nine I will recognize you with the assistance of Ms Mullins and when you do get recognized please give your name for the record your name and address for the record and try to keep your remarks to about three minutes I will help you to do that by starting a timer on my watch or on my phone excuse me all right so I okay the first one I think we have is be call him is that correct that's correct can you hear me yep we can yes thank you thank you very much this is Bruce Colderman 159 North Pine Street in North Amherst I'm also a member of the planning board but I'm not speaking for the planning board uh at at the moment but I I do want to support what uh uh Ms Braestrup said that the board is working towards uh a vision of uh uh how university drive could be augmented and basically augmented in precisely the way that this project well let's not say precisely but uh in in very close uh uh parallel to the way this project is proposed um we have had quite a bit of public comment from our from people speaking to what we're trying to achieve or what we're thinking we're trying to achieve and of course it doesn't it's not our decision it's town council's decision but it's been very positive the sense that university drive could be uh um uh could carry more could do more uh is I think certainly for me very important I've learned something I've learned a lot from this hearing particularly though the the the connection between the cost of of of preloading the soils and making this work for higher buildings which of course I guess is why we've only got such low rise buildings on there at the moment because you either have low rise buildings or if you want to uh you have to do you have to have a high rise building to cover the cost as Tom said and and this is exactly what we're also doing with the elementary school at the moment so this is not something that is unknown in town um the I think I want to personally uh endorse this support this and and uh hope to use David's not too good word uh that you will support this variance from the planning board's point of view I'm not speaking for the board but my sense of how we as a board would benefit from having a real project that was moving forward in conjunction with how we are trying to imagine an overlay could be structured and so given that this is to the greatest extent that I can think uh in in keeping with the aspirations that we've uh uh discussed so far and we've been doing it for six months or more so we have some sense of what we're trying to achieve or what we think is the town is trying to achieve we have the public feedback which indicates that what we're going is is that many people are supporting the idea that university drive could be created more as a corridor could have a better mixed use could be narrowed and the uh street frontage could be vitalized and so forth um so supporting a variance here would help us as a board I think um do a better job of creating an overlay that will allow this more to happen because basically what we're trying to do is to create a situation where developers like Barry who want these kind of projects and we want these kind of projects don't have to come to you to get a variance we're creating we're trying to create the circumstance where this hearing will not be necessary in the future and because we want to see this kind of project happen I think I mean I'm speaking for the plane board but my sense of what we're trying to achieve is that we want to see these kind of projects we want to see university drive look more like this than what it does now and now I understand better about what it takes to do that I think having this project moving forward as we are developing the overlay or trying to would be helpful to us I think nothing but good can happen from you granting this variance and Mr. Chair I would really appreciate it if you were to read the attendees I'm on a personal crusade to try and get chairs of town committees too at the opening of public comment to say who is in the audience because in any public meeting that I've ever been to you walk in the room and you know who's there thank you thank you Mr. Holdham I appreciate your your request but we've got 19 people 20 people in this it's the list and I'm not going to take up the time to do that at this point but I understand why you'd like to do that if you were on your phone I guess the next is Mr. Leining Andrew Leining yes hello can you hear me yep sure can name an address and and great yes I'm Andrew Leining I live at 260 Amity street just up the hill on south sunset in Amity and yeah I want to also express my support for this project I I I'm going to echo Mr. Mr. Reedy's comments about expanding the tax base and just more housing and more commercial opportunity is is supremely beneficial to our town I'll I'll just say you know we get beautiful sunsets looking out on Amity street and but to me the more most beautiful thing is seeing people more housing more people living in our town and enjoying our our our town and yeah I I just unbridled support for this sort of thing and this project looks looks really good so that's all I have to say thank you Mr. Leining next I think is Ms. Keller go ahead Ms. Keller hi thank you I'm Janet Keller I live at 120 pulpit hill road and I'm a supporter of more high quality development on university drive I do have a question that I'd like some follow-up to Mr. Reedy's point that there would not be substantial detriment from the development and I'm particularly interested in the concerns that we've heard lately about warmer weather or weather and that we experienced this summer and we I would like to hear about any information you have that there won't be any damage to the extensive wetlands complex that fans out to the west from University Drive and its ability to hold the water during heavy rain or rain events or even snow melt events should should uh that uh return um so um have have you been in discussions with the wetlands administrator in the concon um I I would love to hear um any work that's been done in that regard thanks thank you Ms. Keller and Mr. Reedy you can reply if you wish during after the public comment of course uh from the chair yep oh did you say after after okay I'm ready okay after Ms. LaFollette thank you for the record thank you Patricia LaFollette 18 Dana Street um I have lived on I live at the corner of Dana and Amity so I am actually one of the residents who might be affected by this and I'm very much in support of this project particularly for two reasons one of which has been mentioned before which is that Amherst desperately needs housing of this kind especially workforce housing Barry Roberts has done a great job um producing some of this housing and I think this plan looks beautiful um but the second issue which hasn't been mentioned quite as much has to do with money the town recently approved an override to increase property taxes substantially to pay for new school and those of you who've been paying attention know we are struggling to cover the annual costs for our current school system Amherst desperately needs development like this a 40 million dollar project to help bring in much needed revenue so thank you very much thank you for your comment Ms. LaFollette um Ms. Keller you've already spoken so I think your hand is still your hand is still up um is there anybody else who would who wishes to speak Mr. Bert there's a Claire Bertrand name and address for the record Ms. Bertrand 610 Bay Road um so I'm not a neighbor um although I probably go on this road every day um I I think it's a great project um I appreciate that the zoning board is giving this careful review and I think you've asked great questions um and on balance I appreciate that you know the investment for this kind of development really is a risk um but it's well situated um and I think we all know uh Barry Roberts track record for development is solid um and I think they've also focused in on a niche which is uh really needed um and that's not only um quality housing but larger size quality housing where folks who no longer need their big houses but do want to stay in Amherst um can age in place um here in town so I applaud this project and I hope you'll vote to support it thank you Mr. Bertrand any other comments a quest for comments Ms. Keller you still have your hand up and I noted I wouldn't normally return to you but you only took about a minute and 20 seconds your first time um did you have something you did not get a chance to say is that the reason your hand is up or is it just um I I'm sure I um my hand is still up because I lost my um connection to you guys I can hear you but um I can't get back into the meeting and see you um and I can't get back into the zoom um I haven't succeeded yet to take my hand down so that's what's going on all right well we can hear you fine and we can still hear you so know that uh both of your comments work well I can still hear you maybe I'll just content myself uh with hearing you and um for the rest of the meeting thanks yeah and you won't be missing anything if all you do is hear us that's for sure thank you thank you Ms. Keller all right um if there are no other public comments Mr. Reedie is there any response you wish to make to the public comments sure first thanks everyone for coming out but to to Ms. Keller yeah we've had conversations to the to the board right you're dressing the board through the board always um we've had conversations with the conservation agent about this site um you know there are obviously stormwater standards that the development has to meet especially given you know DEP is up updating those standards candidly and the engineer that we've been working with phil henry who's done one university drive south 70 university drive has been using what they call coronel rates which is up to get into the weeds a little bit DEP had been using rain rates from the 1980s the Cornell rates have were updated we have been using the updated rain rates for all of the projects we've been doing in Amherst to make sure that the stormwater is appropriately handled to not exit the site uh in any greater volume than it already is and so you take it on site you control it and then you release it so those wetlands to the west and the south will be preserved if not enhanced and I think as part of you know whatever we're going to do through a notice of intent with the conservation commission I would expect some um additional wetlands whether it's mitigation or enhancement to be a part of that process so yeah we're we've had the conversations we're attunely aware of what's happening with with the wetlands all right are there any other questions comments from board members before we go to the public meeting all right now I would I'd entertain a motion that we open the public meeting on this while keeping the public hearing open just in case we need to gather additional information and the public meeting is normally it's where members of the board deliberate on the question before us and it's normally not an opportunity for public comment do I have such a motion so moved Mr. Chair is there a second second all right moved and seconded any discussion if not we'll go to a vote of the chair votes aye mr. slovener hi mr. meadows hi mr. white hi mr. henry hi the vote is five to zero um the motion passes so now is the time for us to deliberate on what's before us tonight on this uh this matter I'll give you my impression and then I'd like general impressions from everybody else so we can move this along as quickly as possible and with as much consideration as possible I like that idea of this project I like the idea of the putting more next use with residential at that site I think it's woefully underutilized now I really like the idea from a town standpoint which is not not an issue before us but it's a positive aspect of this and it fits I guess it does fit into the number four consideration we have to make is that I think to the extent that we can help drive the entrance to UMass away from the residential streets and moron university drive makes a ton of sense I think that's really helpful to the neighborhoods up in this area up north of anamity I think that's very helpful number two there's already a lot of commercial and development along university drive and I think we're going to see more we've got high I don't know how many stories 70 university drive is but that's already a rather large building on university drive and so I think it's I think the basic idea is consistent with with the area and consistent with the neighborhood the question for us for me and the question for all of us I think is really whether you can demonstrate a hardship that's a that's the requirement of a variance of the variance of the state law in my time on this board on the zoning board in six years this would be the fourth variance I've dealt with in all six years and so they're a rare thing and they're supposed to be rare and that's the reason that we have that the law lays it out as it does it requires a fairly rigorous determination on our part we have to make findings that we meet that this application meets all four of these requirements for a variance and the one that is toughest to get my head around but I think I'm there is that there is a hardship either financial or otherwise that occurs from the unique properties of this lock and I'm not I'm not a hydrologist but I am convinced that there is a lot of extra expense that could be that would be required to build on that lot to I guess preload I think of squishing the land the additional requirements needed for construction and then to get the kind of mass that you need to pay the net that's a lot of fixed cost it's probably less if it's three stories and five stories but whatever you probably for just what is permitted on itself it probably makes that it may make that cost prohibited just the fixed cost of the additional amount you have to put for preloading and then the construction cost on this kind of land and that's why I think a good point made by Mr. Coldham is why you saw why you see single well single mostly single story buildings on University Drive because of the cost I think you can make a I think the applicant in my view has made a pretty persuasive case that there is some hardship there and a financial hardship and that a waiver in this case will help to meet will certainly meet the other requirements that are under the law and will aid development of a community aid for housing I think we need more commercial space down there I think it will be in some ways we if we get the hope that Mr. Sloveter talks about about the ground about I think it will reduce traffic in the area and in general I think this is a worthy project and I am inclined to support it for a host of reasons but I'd like to hear from other people and then and of course we're always open to thoughts from my other members so that's my initial impression and I'd like to hear from other people on on the board before we move on I I will I will just add that I do like this development I am always in favor of any kind of progress I think the renderings look very good my personal preference understanding that Amherst has a need for home ownership I would like to see something in the form of some of these being ownership units so to speak rather than rental properties whether or not there is a financial hardship I struggle with that given that the developer here is in the business of developing properties so while I will support the property I am not and I want to do agree that there is something on hardship I am not 100 percent convinced that the extra cost of building this property rises to that significant financial hardship given that this is the business of the developer thank you Mr. Henry are there other comments Mr. Sloveter well I I very substantially support the chair's comments I also am struggling with hardship I think hardship is a significant word that should not be used as casually as I sometimes hear it used and in the case of a property where all 85 units will be rental units and rent can be adjusted over the short term or the long term there is a significant mechanism automatically in place to relieve whatever hardship somebody perceives it being they can allegedly they can expect to charge something and I never I'm not familiar with any businesses that do not seek to maximize profit so I don't really buy that argument I don't I have a tough time given what Mr. Henry just said that this is a reputable very experienced but a developer who knows what he's doing who is planning to do this so the word hardship just strikes me as a difficult test to get past and I don't really buy it completely however I will support this this application largely as a response to what it will do for the town and the public support from the comments I didn't hear anybody who was significantly who was negative at all I will I will say in a positive sense that this project does not lower itself to the standard of the the dorms that other that are being built downtown which make almost no effort to get anyone in other than a student so I'm taking Mr. Reedy at his word that there is a real expectation that young families professors somebody is going to live there who is not a student and who doesn't consider Thursday through Sunday only for drinking it would be nice to have a nice project there and I will support it in spite of my reluctance to I've seen hardship occasionally in my life and this thing doesn't look like it but I will support it and accept the hardship appeal in spite of that thank you Mr. White Mr. Slovatter I'm a student and I don't drink at all I'm not a student and I do no but uh the business uh I would agree with the comments made by Mr. Henry I also would like to see more you know units developed with an MR for home ownership and Mr. Slovatter's point I struggle with that word as well kind of looking into it where I kind of come into it and why I will and do agree with this project is you are absolutely correct that people that own rental properties can raise or low lower theoretically that's not generally done rents in times of hardship however I think in this the the term hardship in this sense is being used in a sense of generating initial capital towards you know feasibility for the project at least that's the way that I'm looking for it or looking at it but yeah I mean I see everything that Mr. Chair you know to your comments and yeah I do agree Mr. Meadows where do you come down on this I agree with the difficulty in defining hardship I I have a hard time thinking in most cases that are variances reasonable to grant on the basis of hardship but I'm not certain what it means but in this case I think the project is an excellent project I think it's something that will benefit the town and and I'm willing to try and figure out a way for myself to redefine the word hardship so that it is functional here yeah at the risk of trying to understand the purpose behind the state law and I haven't read the I haven't read the legislative history but I I think the purpose behind the various the restrictions on the variants and especially in this case is the realization that you have zoning districts which are not they're not arbitrary but they cover a large a large and various and varied types of property and you may have times where the zoning requirements for specific geographical zoning district just don't fit with the the soils the wetlands whatever it is that make it unique in that area and that at times you may need to have some flexibility to to vary from the requirements of the zoning law the bylaw for that particular zoning district for good reason and they're laid out for those good reasons and it seems to me in this case that the and they and one of those good reasons is the soils and another good reason is the the financial or the kind of substantial hardship and I'm I'm convinced of that flexibility if you can meet those tests is there in order to make zoning rules work for varied circumstances that aren't always apparent when you're laying out the zoning boundaries or when you're laying out the prescriptions for what can be done within a specific zoning district so I look at this and I say on balance you've got difficult soils that aren't every place in the zoning in this particular zoning district you've got a various various soils and in order to build what would um order to build on this site to a to make it to make it reasonable and to and to provide all the benefits to the town which are maximized by a greater number of people living in those sites and the amount of commercial space or non-residential space and the amount of parking which would which I think is important in order to reduce the effects on the town all those things add up to a good project which is impacted by the soils and is impacted by the increased costs the financial burden um required of a builder in this case now mr roberts and other developers are well aware of the property when they bought this it wasn't a surprise to them that there is water on this there's the soils could be like this and there's water wetlands on much of the ground but I think it's this choice before us is really do we want a really good project that benefits the town and that has and I think meets the requirements of the state law or do we want a couple of apartment buildings there which won't look as nice as won't add the additional parking which won't add the additional commercial space putting it out and it won't work with what the what the town is trying to do overall with development for those reasons I think that this development this proposal makes sense and I think I can in good conscience look at the requirements the findings we have to make and make those findings and it's for that reason that I think I can support this so that's how I that's how I got to the spot although I'm like you I am suspicious of of variances and I think they should be rare and they should be should not happen very often but they're there for us to use it when it makes some sense and I think this is the case where it does so unless unless anybody else has anything to say I encourage them if they do I'd like to proceed to the next step but I don't want to close off the ability for us to discuss this amongst ourselves okay so the next step would be the first thing I think we have to do is vote we first have to make the findings I think is what we have to do is find that the four findings required of us under state law are met by this property and so I'm going to read those findings to to us and I'm going to look for at the end of this I'm going to look for a motion to to to move that we have made these findings one the circumstances related to soil conditions shape or topography that especially affect the property which a variance is sought but do not generally affect the zoning district in which the land or structure is located secondly facts showing that substantial hardship financial or otherwise will result from literal enforcement of the applicable zoning restrictions to the land or building three facts supporting the finding that the relief sought will be desirable and without substantial detriment to the public good and four facts supporting the finding that the relief sought maybe get that the relief sought may be given without nullifying or substantially derogating from the intent and purpose of the zoning bylaw so I would entertain a motion that the board makes those four findings we have a motion do we have a second second it's moved and seconded is there any discussion on the motion before us if there's no discussion we'll move to a vote the vote is a roll call vote the chair votes aye mr. Meadows aye mr. Henry aye mr. sloveter aye mr. white aye the vote is five to nothing um motion carrots the second um decision we have to make is on conditions and if I can turn your attention to the project application report the last page there are four conditions um suggested by the staff um the first is that the variance has to be exercised in accordance with what we've seen I think that's pretty much in the submissions to us that has that has to be one the building height should be no higher than 57 feet the number of floors shall not exceed five stories required area additional lot area per dwelling shall be no more be no lower than 2,500 square feet so this that provides along with the variance we just granted number two and number three speak to that specific variances number four if the rights authorized by this various and not exercised within one year of the day of such grant decision rendered and filed with the town clerk this variance shall lapse the applicant can request an extension up to six months provided the application for such an extension is filed with the board prior to expiration of the variance extensions shall be approved by the board during a public hearing and miss breastrup that is not um completion of the building in one year what triggered what can you tell me what is the action that satisfies the rights authorizes variants are not exercised within one year is that applying for a building permit or what is it have to receive the building permit and then start construction and construction could just be starting up the preloading of the ground right yep okay all right and then if it's if it takes longer at the site plan review takes longer you come back to us to get the that's okay all right otherwise if it had to be built in the year that's the year and a half that'd be pretty down tough okay um are there other conditions that people would wish to consider i believe i heard that only 12 percent would be affordable is that a condition that we can ask for that to be greater than 12 percent that 12 percent is required by uh town law town bylaws um i'm not sure if we can i suspect we can but um miss breastrup i don't know is there a limitation on requiring more than 12 percent units affordable i would say that's really something that should be dealt with by the planning board oh that's yeah um deal with their site plan review it's not directly related to this variance in my opinion so our what you're saying is that our our mandate here is to look at the two variance requests which would be the number of units i mean the lot size and the height and that's all we are here for and that site plan review from the planning board is the construction the size the units the shape of the the layout the number of the the various um mix of units bedroom sizes all that's done by the planning board that's all done by the planning board you could consider making a recommendation to the planning board that they consider um asking for more affordable units um but that would that would be just a recommendation in my opinion i do think we have to be careful about going beyond our our mandate in our request um i would you know mr. henry i would be happy to join you in a letter to the planning board asking for a increase in the the affordable units um given i think what the possibility i don't i don't know that this is within our i don't think this is within our purview to really require that that's not a question before us but you could you'd have to you'd have to make a case that somehow that would deal with one of the four factors that we are needed for the variance to be granted you have to you have to tie it to that i think there was an argument i i appreciate if it's not in their purview and that's fine we can move on but in terms of um making an argument if the estimated 825 000 is why we're doing this then i don't think it's unreasonable to say add two additional units to be affordable to so that you know it's more easily accessible to a broader number of people than just those we can afford 35 hundred dollars or whatever the high rate is going to be but i think the the best way we can accomplish that would be a letter from us on a recommendation or either personal or by the board so um i think that's probably what we can do the best we can do and that's okay that's fine that's good all right we'll do that um any other conditions to to impose upon the the granting of the variances i think mr. white has a hand up oh i think he took it down oh all right no i was just gonna say mr. chair um whether the board decides to make those recommendations to the planning commission as a board or as individuals i would be happy to have my name added to that as well i'll circulate a note um to the board following this meeting we can all decide how we want to do that why don't we do it that way great um is there a motion to approve the conditions as stated in the in the in the draft project application report so moved is there a second second it's been moved in second in a discussion if not the motion occurs on the vote to approve the conditions as stated in the project draft project application report the chair votes aye mr. meadows hi mr. henry hi mr. white hi mr. slobner hi motion carries conditions are approved um with that i think we have completed our business except for a motion to um approve the request for a variance on two matters on the square footage requirement and on the height requirement of down to 2,500 feet and up to 57 feet do i have such a motion so moved moved and seconded any discussion was it mr. henry who moved and mr. meadows who seconded is that what i understood i think it went the other way but you know they are working they're tag-treating here this is the second time this has happened so i think they're of the same voice or the same mind all right all right is there a motion to there is a motion before us to approve the variance the vote occurs on a motion to approve the request for variance in zba f y 2024-11 with conditions would you like to include closing the public hearing or do you do that separately well i should have done that in this one i normally do but i missed that in my motion thank you and to close the public hearing on this matter as well thank you miss breaster um the chair votes aye mr. meadows hi mr. henry hi mr. white hi mr. slobner hi congratulations mr. reedy thank you very much you have your variants thank you good luck i hope that it is a wonderful success i hope it brings people into and provides housing i like what mr. henry said about additional affordable housing and you'll be hearing from several of us on our support for that um from the board and one of the thing to note so because of the number of units we would have 10 affordable units and 20 percent of those would have to be so it's typically 30 of 80 percent but because we have over six you have to provide uh 30 of 60 so they're you're getting a different group people who are making not 80 of the area median income people who are making 60 of the area median income so it's more we'll call it deeply discounted um than just your typical affordable so just for something for you to take into consideration i didn't want to involve when you're in your flow but just something to think about we appreciate that it's um helps us on our and i as i said i'll circulate a letter amongst the board members um shortly for those who wish to sign on to the planning board all right next order of business is um request for a special permit under zba 2024-12 request for a special permit under section 6.13 of the zoning bylaw to allow for the construction of a single-family home home on a flag lot with requested waivers from building and lighting plans so um who is here to speak for the um applicant the petitioner i i i see patricia teaton and i notice your name is on the application brian baker and um jenna keller still hands him to fill up so jenna please go ahead miss resta i just wanted to make a correction that the um legal ad said 386 a shea street and it's released 368 a shea street so i just wanted to get that into the record before you started your public hearing thank you so it's let me it's three it's 368 a shea street 368 a shea street and the legal ad and the um agenda noted that it was 386 a shea street so just wanted to make that correction thank you you're right um who's wanting to speak for the petitioner tonight or who is speaking um hi i'll i'll be speaking um i'm not sure if chris stoddard is on here he was going to try to make it but uh it's gone a bit later than he was thinking it would be and he might have had a conflict at this hour so i'm not sure that he's here um i'm sorry mr baker we have two things we have to do before we go to your presentation the first is report on the site visit and secondly in submissions and i've skipped over those at this late hour um we had a site visit on tuesday um at the site we walked the site most of it and we went to the up where the the um plots are the metal posts are are are um indicated by yellow by red flags we looked at the land we met them a neighbor joined us for our site visit um we used the um site plan that was given to us to try to site the um placement of the the rain garden the placement of the garage house placement placement and the housing circle the residential circle that's needed to place the home within that lot and we looked down to try to see where flow would go uh and the impact of lighting and and storm water flow on the neighbors um mr slobberter and myself mr breastrope and mr uh wat chiller were at the site visit and mr breastrope or mr what slobberter anything to add on that i'd say we saw a lot of trees it was a heavily treed site yeah and a heavily sloped site heavily sloped yep yeah uh everything you said was accurate the the slope the slope characteristic is the source of the greatest concern not so much the what's involved in building a home there because that's really not what we do but the uh rainwater the water runoff is a significant concern and the height above the neighbors would also mean that any lighting up there even lighting that is aimed down would be very visible those people would be looking up at lighting so i think that lighting needs to will ultimately be the other concern along with uh water runoff but the site is steeply sloped and as uh chairman judge mentioned and if anybody is short of pine cones i know where you can go to get a lot of places just covered so yes but it's all accurate thanks we have the following submissions um an application form a management plan uh site plans prepared by christopher stoddard pe dated 12 22 23 and updated january 15th january 24th and february 12th the storm water report report prepared by stoddard engineering dated one january 25th and updated to february 12th storm water operations and maintenance program uh there's not a date on that but it came in recently the soil suitability and assessment for on-site disposal prepared by alan weiss uh cold spring and environmental consultants dated um april 6 2010 the staff submitted a approval not required plan of land prepared by randall iser dated july 19th 2016 he request waivers from building plans and lighting plans and we have one um we have a um a letter an email from mr and mrs william and gene jeffreys harvey allen and michael and joelle mcdermot dated february 20th 2024 i think that's the extent of the submissions that we have both public and staff submissions and submissions from the applicant so mr baker with that all said and done um would you like to do your presentation now please uh certainly so let me just share the plans are you seeing those yep so uh i bought this property uh a few years ago with the intention of building a single family home for myself on it um my circumstances changed and i was no longer going to build a home for myself on it so i decided to sell the property um you know i was aware when i purchased it that it had been split off uh it was a flag lot and that it was you know split off to be a building lot for a single family residence that the different zoning considerations of it didn't allow it to be anything else it can't be a two family um that uh you know with the the aquifer recharge and and whatnot um i had at the time that i purchased it uh an environmental engineer come and just check for wetland considerations i didn't think there were going to be any in there but i have a letter for that too as well um and then uh as i decided to sell it um pat said that she was interested in buying it um but that she would like to have some assurance that it was actually buildable because it required a special permit um and that without that there weren't a lot of assurances and it was a bit too much of a risk and so that's sort of why we engaged in this process um getting kind of ahead of ourselves on the uh the building design uh because she's still purchasing the property and getting the the building finalized which is why we've asked for waivers on those things she would like to purchase a um a prefab design and that's what's shown there um within the building circle uh and you know she has uh you know taken a lot of consideration around what that would be but she doesn't even own the lot yet and so you know going through this process and i don't know if rob has communicated this is uh you know us trying to the reason that she is applying for it and i on the land is because we're trying to do this as as a precondition for the sale um you know chris has done uh the side of things and uh did a revision when we got some feedback on it regarding the drainage where that water would go um you know there were already percolation tests that they said were admissible for a septic system which would be required obviously because there's no sewer in the street um you know we I met with the fire department around the length of the driveway and made some width adjustments there um on their recommendation um and you know it's uh it's a like I said a single family residence um so there's some considerations in terms of rental and whatnot that don't come into it as much but I understand there's some concerns around lighting um and drainage so um maybe interested to hear what those are um and perhaps we can have some responses for that Pat did you want to say anything additional you're uh you're muted I was I was also uh just give us your name and and your current address for the record please Patricia Teedon I live at 11 Bean B E A N road in Merrimack New Hampshire thank you yeah I'm particularly interested in um better understanding the concern about the lighting and even even the little bit we went over already was helpful okay um so I think this is a time for the board to ask questions of the of the applicants in the so um one of the things that I I am not a storm water engineer and so I looked at this property and I thought this is an incredible challenge to to um have to trap the water it's efficient amount of water from the changes in in the the drainage that occur because you place a surface of building there because you don't have to you don't have to make it as if there's no water going down there you just have to make sure that it's not any worse than it is now right you just have to do that um I read through the storm the storm water report and with my limited knowledge it sounds to me like the engineer who is tasked with making these decisions and who is a who puts his license at risk if it isn't accurate and has got experience doing this believes that the rain garden and the other also the additional um elevation changes in the toward the back of the house down to the back of the the lot will allow for the water to be slowed down to not increase the flow into the neighboring yards and that's the concern about drainage is that by virtue of this building we don't want to put the your neighbors the butters in a position where there's additional water storm water that is flowing into their yards and um and from what I've read from their comments to overwhelm the existing measures they've taken to deal with what is the current runoff but the engineer says there isn't a concern that that this will with this rain garden will handle that and then that was the other landscaping they have to do to bring it bring it up and then have the water wash back towards the over the towards the end of the property the far end of the property that will take care of that so that's the concern about the the um the storm water and I'm not an expert there's probably people that know this better than I do but I have to take them at their word that that's that it's it that you have built a sufficient um spring garden the thing that comes with his report that is really important for the if you do construct this if you buy this property construct this house is the pretty substantial maintenance of the ring of the rain garden on a monthly year yearly basis will involve significant expense and significant work and that rain garden won't work and it won't do the job it's engineered to do unless that maintenance is done in some cases monthly but certainly other aspects of it have to be done semi-annually and annually and whether you do it yourself or whether you have an expert come in and do it the maintenance plan that you've sent that they brought with this is substantial and it will be a requirement of any approval for this building site is that that maintenance plan for the rain garden is appeared to or um it threatens if it's not it's a condition it's not it here to as a condition of the special permit it threatens the it would void the special permit if you're not doing that so that's the concern and the remediation of the the drainage question so if you're that's what you asked about that and that's what I see is there's the question there in terms of lighting I echo mr. slobber's concern I'm we stood you know 10 feet or 12 feet down from the exit from the lot line and from the barn that sits in the existing prop the existing house and the problem is with the house if you have lights on the outside of the house on a flat property there's a lighting cone that comes down even if it's it's downward cast there's a lighting cone right it creates a um a path that's lit and if that ground is flat the lighting cone comes down and it's you can measure where it's going to end if the land is slowed that lighting cone goes down farther and lights up more there's more light trespass from that one light in addition if you're down below the light down below the light you look out of your house and you look up into the light that you would not otherwise see because it's elevated a pretty significant degree and for that reason I'm I want to see a either some ship some kind of buffer or some kind of a lighting plan to eliminate the possibility of light trespass from the lighting cone or just looking into lights and a lighting engineer can help you do that but as far as I'm concerned I would like to see um okay as a condition of the special permit um a further further lighting further lighting um engineering to for this property and not waive the lighting requirement so those are my thoughts and questions and would do you understand that Ms. Tejan? Teedon yes I understood thank you okay Ms. Teedon Baker all right are there other other questions for people Ms. Brespa? I wondered if you were suggesting that as a condition that could be accommodated in the future or whether you were suggesting that that's something that you'd like to see before you vote on this? No I had drafted up some language that would require as a condition before a building permit is issued that the applicant provide to us for review at a public hearing not a meeting but a public hearing so it could be input from the public butters at a public hearing the lighting plan thank you Mr. Meadows I'm not certain how to vote on this without the lighting plan without more clarity on what a buffer would look like and be composed of I just find it difficult to imagine voting on a variance that it's not a variance excuse me but the plan here without more clarity yeah there's one of the things that you could could do is work on you could Teedon you could work on this and try to come up with how you would like to buffer the property I mean you're gonna have to take down a lot a significant number of trees you really can't the way the property runs you really can't put a fence along there I don't know if that'd be very helpful you've got that the rain garden there you're gonna have to figure out a way to either buffer the the property and the lighting or you're gonna have to figure out a way to not make the lighting trespass into your budding property because I you know it's just very difficult to see how that can be done without additional work and at the very least it has to be done if we don't have questions about a buffer and vegetative buffer and adding additional shrubs people do that yes I mean all of these properties have lights and they're all on a slope adjacent to it and they all you know have not necessarily trees there's certainly ways that people buffer the lights or that people protect their neighbors from lights correct yeah but there is ways to do that but we don't but this there are two things you're requesting a waiver from a lighting plan and from a landscaping plan and I'm not inclined to grant that waiver I think there's because of the difficulty of the site I think there should be a lighting plan that lighting plan can come at a later point well I originally proposed at a later point Mr Meadows thinks that it should be before us I think he thinks it should be before us before we grant the special permit and I think the same thing about the I think he feels the same way about the the landscaping and or the buffer to vegetative buffer I see but I don't want to I don't want to move approving this without having those things addressed either by us now you know when we do it when the this is approved either prior to approval or by the building commissioner coming looking at it and then coming back to us and eventually proving it and that provides more risk to you quite frankly then you know we'd be looking at some you've been going through the expense of doing all this maybe we don't improve your your lighting plan or your buffer plan you're probably better off coming back to us with a lighting plan and a buffer plan so you know what you have enough to do would we have to do a whole nother hearing at that point you would have another hearing yes if that's what you wish to do miss Brestrup um I wanted to say that it would be hard to come up with a lighting plan without a plan of the building and the reason for that is that if you don't know what the building is going to look like then you won't know where the lights are going to go so I think you would want to have at least a massing diagram of the building in other words how tall is it you know what are roof peaks like um and that type of thing so you know where lights are going to be placed and then you'd know where they're going to be shining on the ground and then you'd know how to buffer them so I wondered if Mr Baker or Ms Teedon had um if if Mr Judge would ask them if they have um any kind of mock-up or image of what the building might look like and they could work with that to locate lights on it and bring that back to you yeah I've been I've been working with uh two different builders not signing contracts since I didn't own the land you know it's just sort of a chicken and egg thing um so um I'm pretty you know I'm certainly leaning toward one of the builders and I'm sure they would be very happy if I signed a contract and they would start working for me under contract um so maybe that just has you know we were trying to separate those but we could overlap them a bit that would be helpful yeah what you want to eat would also that'd be helpful to have if you have a drawing before us that's we often have that what is also if you don't have a drawing because you haven't contracted with them yet what would also be helpful is a massing as Ms Brestrup said which shows a general idea this is how big that structure is going to be on the side the lights are going to be 12 10 feet up from the from this structure on at this point on the lot where does that light getting your lighting engineer to say where does that go or you're having lights that you have in the ground that that shine back towards the house on the ground towards up towards the house not on the house but up towards the house that's another possibility but you need something there that talks so we can judge what the where the light's going to go because with that sloped site that light is going to if not engineered correctly is going to be in your neighbor's bedrooms and when they walk out the house they're going to see it and it's going to be not only that but then you then you have a buffering as well so um I think you I think you're better off having some of those things done and coming back to us okay I think Mr. White thank you Mr. Chair I would agree with your statements as well as Mr. Meadows to Mr. Baker and Mrs. Teedon I apologize if I mispronounced that I understand that this you know project presents kind of a unique you know situation in that I absolutely think it can be done I know it's a little frustrating to have to present the idea of coming to another hearing however at this point I don't know that I would feel comfortable or would be able to vote in the affirmative for this just to kind of maybe give you more of a measure of where I think maybe the board is sitting but I think it absolutely can be done um but I would need to kind of I guess maybe get the can a little further down the road and kind of have more of a complete vision of what we're looking at before I would feel comfortable voting thank you thank you Mr. White Mr. Slaverer well um I share with our chair that I'm not a stormwater engineer I'm also not a lighting engineer so I've got both of these issues covered I'm not reluctant to approve anything if it makes sense but having stood on this property yesterday which is quite steep and as we looked at the neighbors they were well below so the normal downward aimed lighting that we would mandate so that it would not bother a neighbor who was on the same level the downward downward aimed lighting is very effective you don't you're not looking at it but this your house would be so much higher that it really would need to be addressed and if it's addressed properly I'm happy to approve it that's not an issue a barrier that would not allow the light to shine on the other properties might have to be 30 feet higher some you know an enormous enormously high barrier which probably violates something so it's it's as as the chair said it's in the lighting design how it's aimed and all of that that needs to be done and if if there is a a potential design that would address it that would solve it that's fine but I'm not prepared since I don't know what that would be I can't I can't uh on good faith just say okay I'm sure it'll be fine we need to look out for the neighbors as well thanks Mr. White your hands up do you have something else you wish to say it's it's just three o'clock in the morning in Dublin and you're I got it okay um are there any other comments from members of the board I guess I would say one other thing um we did receive a comment from somebody the butters regarding the storm water and I would think it would be it may be helpful to share that with butters because they're concerned about the storm water management so it may be this it's up to you you don't have to do it it's not going to be a condition it's nothing we can we can't tell you what to do on that but it may be good to address their concerns directly by the having the engineer talk to them or some other way to um to so they can feel they can make a decision about what what they feel about the storm water okay that's up to that's up to you um I sense a consensus here amongst our board that this is something that we may want to continue but before we do that we should go to public comment or Mr Henry did you want to comment I do not miss a chair um thank you Chris Brester yes I wanted to mention the fact that um I think we need a detail of the stone wall so that's another thing that you might want to ask for if you decide to continue this public hearing because I think when we were out on the site yesterday we realized that some parts of these stone walls would be very high they would be eight feet high and so it would be good to have a detail of the stone wall that could be sent to the building commissioner and the town engineer for them to look at and that could either be a condition or it could be something brought to you before you close the public hearing but since it looks like you're going to be continuing the public hearing you might want to ask for that to be brought to you um for the next public hearing session and it's just really a cross-section of the wall what is it made out of how tall is it you know what kind of um buttressing does it have is that um well anyway just a detail of the wall and I think that the town engineer asked for that but I couldn't find his email today so Mr Wachill and might have that that's that's a good point and something that we should have the things you get done ahead of time before you invest more time and money that makes sense to do it earlier rather than later so I think Ms Prestrup made a good point there I would like to if there aren't any more board comments I'd like to go to public comment on this and then give after public comment is done give the applicants a chance to respond to the board regarding those comments so Ms Mullins do we have people who wish to speak uh Janet Keller's hand is still up I don't know I'm going to allow her to talk for a minute should I or I think I think her I don't think her hand is up to speak I think she had it's just the technical difficulty okay okay now there's a Daniel Cookson yep great uh Mr Cookson can you um give your name and address for the record and please keep your comments to about um three minutes make the comments to the board and not to the applicants hi uh this is uh Holly and Dan Cookson we uh we own the property at 390 Shea Street our daughter is currently living there with her husband she's a PhD student at UMass and we bought the property so they could live there um and also we we considered we're considering living there after she is done with her PhD and leaves presumably but anyway our two you've done a great job of covering all of our concerns I'm really impressed with the board uh our main concerns were the water runoff because the front yard of that house tends to flood anyway and our other concern was the buffer of trees between the two properties it's kind of a wildlife quarter there are coyotes there are bears turkeys and also just for privacy issues so those were our two main concerns but it sounds like you're going to continue this anyway um and we'll be eager to see the next plan thank you thank you any other public comments okay all right let's return to the board um you have the opportunity to respond to that if you wish as that you don't have to but you may if you wish uh you're talking to us yep as you can respond to the board regarding those yeah I understand that yeah you you would like to see more information that you don't feel comfortable uh approving the special permit without the additional information on this lot um I'm curious about these sorts of lots in general if it wasn't a flag lot and it wasn't a special permit what would be the the requirements for all of these different things are all these things only triggered because I mean the thing with the the different considerations with the water and what not are those triggered because it's a flag lot or are those always something that have to be approved in terms of a property of this type it's pressed up you're more of an expert on this than I am and I risk um being inaccurate so I'm going to I'm going to turn it over to you to describe it but let's say that especially if it's a special permit these things would be a lot of the same considerations would be would be uh um considered by the board but when it's pressed up you can give a more complete answer so normally for a lot that's not a flag lot you would just need to go to the building commissioner and get a building permit and he may have questions about what you're proposing but then you'd work it out with the building commissioner but because this is a flag lot it has special requirements because you need to get a special permit but the building commissioner would want with the bit I'm asking would the building commissioner want to have um of storm water you want to know where the storm water is running right no the building commissioner would not ask about the storm water um in in general I think that one in two family houses are not normally required to um have a storm water management plan um and the fact that this is a flag lot it's really it's a different kind of lot because you put your house and and your development behind other people's houses normally and therefore you might have more of an impact on them than you would normally have if you had your house up front on the frontage so it just puts the development of these lots in a different kind of configuration with their surroundings and that's why we require this more extensive type of review yeah okay since I I just I guess I put a comment there's a significant amount of additional documentation uh requirements uh you know different things that need to be cleared and not only that but the stringency of those different requirements for a lot that is you know very similar to other lots but just happens to have a longer entry point um and it's been interesting to talk to the different professionals that I have during this process and them expecting you know to have a certain amount and then the the difference in requirement for a lot because of the fact that it's a flag lot and somehow flags a special permit not because of any particular component of the lot itself besides that uh has been a really interesting uh maze to traverse um and I guess that's all because it sounds like uh we need to continue and provide further documentation on this because it requires a special permit I you know I think it's instructive I think we we've reached a consensus here amongst the board but just for your your edification I think it's instructive to note that we're you're asking us to approve a special permit without knowing what the buildings are looking like without knowing what the landscape is going to be without knowing what the lighting is going to be you know we don't have a lot from our standpoint so we're what we're saying to you is give us an idea of these things um we don't we don't need to hold an architectural drawing necessarily to to approve a special permit but we need more information than we have not right okay yeah I understand all of that okay all right um is there any comments from members of the board so I guess I would ask Mr Baker and Ms Tiden how long will it take for you to get how long do you think you need to get the the um relevant information that we're asking do you need a month do you need a month and a half what do you need I'm thinking you probably need a good month a month and a half to do this well I think and Pat I don't mean to speak for you but I think Pat and I need to speak about whether or not you know this is something that still makes sense for her and whether or not she actually wants to purchase the property given the additional work that is is being presented for us to do um and I think after that then we can email and see how long we think it's going to take if that makes sense it doesn't work well for us we need to our requirements are to find a date certain to continue this meeting to or for you to withdraw your application I don't okay the thing isn't I don't think you want to withdraw your application let me give you some advice I think it's better for you to have a to a date certain let's say a date certain in uh sometime in late April or first part of late April let's say sometime in late April um whether that be that we'd have nothing maybe on the 28th Ms. Brestra the 25th is the time that you continued your other public hearing that's right 25th so um and just to let Mr. Baker know that when it comes time to be on the 25th if you've decided that you don't want to go through with this you email us and tell us that and you send us um something that says you want to continue the public hearing to another date or that you want to withdraw your um application so you can decide between now and April 25th what you want to do that sounds great thank you very much for letting me know that okay all right all right so I would um do we have to go into public meeting to do that or can we vote on this okay vote on it now you can vote on it out of the public hearing and continue the public hearing okay so I would entertain a motion to continue the public hearing on this matter and gets down ZDA 24 2024-12 until April 25th at 6 p.m. um I think you've continued your I'm sorry for interrupting but it's okay the first one to April 25th at 6 so I think you have to continue this one to sometime after 6 didn't we continue this through road to April we did but we don't know how much time it'll take so let's just took to I could say 6 15 okay the 6 15 that'd be great all right 6 15 um on April 25th do I have do I have such a motion so moved is there a second second moved in second in any discussion amongst board members if not um the motion occurs on the the vote occurs on the motion to continue this to September 2 April 25th at 6 15 the chair votes aye Mr. Meadows aye to Henry aye Mr. White aye Mr. Slobber aye vote is five to nothing the motion carries um good luck with your um with getting your information the information to us and with your decision you have to make we appreciate it thank you for your time you bet that completes the business of the applications before us tonight um the next order of business is public comment on any matter not before the board tonight so um Ms. Mullins if anybody any attendee from the public wishes to speak on a matter not before the board tonight this is the time to hear that from the public on that I don't see any currently no there's no request for public comment uh the next order of business is new business or stuff that's come up within the last 48 hours I think the only thing is that there's a schedule Ms. Perestro what's what do we got next the next meeting I am sorry but I was not able to speak to Mr. Wachila about that today um I know that I think the next meeting is I know you have um Ball Lane Valley CDC on March 4 and um yeah today is February 22nd so I don't think you have anything between today and March 4th I think that's correct March 14th I'm sorry yeah March 14th it's a Thursday and we don't have a meeting on the 21st because I don't I think most people can't be there so Ball Lane that's the 40B on March 14th and if it's different we'll have Rob send out a memo to everybody tomorrow okay anything good the members of the board want to bring up if not it's 9 10 on the east coast of the United States it's what what is it in Dublin it's 9 it's 2 10 2 10 a.m. 10 a.m. yeah 2 10 a.m. all right thank you for your thank you for your time thank you everybody for your work Ms. Perestro Ms. Mullins thank you for all your help we appreciate it welcome thank you good night everybody good night good night um we have to adjourn we're going to adjourn so I have to entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second I all right moved in second and not debatable vote occurs I vote aye Mr. Meadows aye Mr. Henry aye Mr. White aye just a little bit here aye 5-0 we are adjourned thank you all thank you have a great night everybody good night good night good night I'm going to bed I'm gonna have