 Good evening. My name is Christian Klein. I'm the chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I'd like to call this meeting of the board to order. I'd like to confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present. Roger Dupont. Patrick Hanlon. I can see Pat. Kevin Mills. Kevin. Aaron Ford. Steven Revlak. Sean O'Rourke. Wonderful. From the town, I know Rick Valarelli is here. Vincent Lee, I see, is here. I saw Emily Sullivan is here from the Plain Department of Conservation Commission. I'm good. Paul Haverty is here from the VVH. Marty Nover is here. I'm Beta Group with her team. And Stephen T. Fry is here representing the applicant. All right. So this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020. The order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location for there all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. Public bodies may meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom app with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it is being broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference. Other participants are participating by computer audio or telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care not to share personal information. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We also ask you maintain decorum during the meeting including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. As chair, reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. First item on our agenda this evening is the approval of the minutes from the January 12, 2021. Those meetings, those minutes were distributed by Rick to the members of the board and I know there was some comments I believe that came back on that. Are there any additional comments beyond those that were already submitted? Seeing none. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. A second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. So a quick roll call vote. Mr. Dupont. Mr. Hanlon. Mr. Ford. Mr. Revlak. Mr. Mills. Mr. O'Rourke. And the chair goes aye. Thank you all. Next item number three is the approval of the decision for excuse me, docket 3641 69 Epping Street. This was put together by Patrick Hanlon. Members were having an opportunity to submit comments and I believe those were all incorporated. Mr. Hanlon sent around a final copy this afternoon. Are there any additional comments on what was already an exemplary set of decisions? Seeing none. This is a quick roll call again. Mr. Dupont. Mr. Hanlon. Mr. Ford. Mr. Revlak. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. O'Rourke. Aye. Okay, which brings, okay, so that is the last of the administrative items. I was now turning to the comprehensive permit hearing for Thorndike Place. I want to review some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. This evening's discussion will focus on the architectural and urban design aspects of the submitted materials. Those documents are available on the ZBA's Thorndike Place website. We'll open this evening with an introduction to the building and site design amenities. The board will then discuss its questions with the applicant before we open the hearing to public comment and questions. So with that, we'll turn this over to Ms. Kiefer. Hi, thank you. Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. And those, for those individuals that are watching this evening's ZBA hearing that haven't previously participated, my name is Stephanie Kiefer, and I'm counsel to the applicant Arlington Land Reality, serving as their permitting counsel. And with us here this evening, we have a number of members from our project team again. Some of them very familiar to you. We have John Heschit from BSC. We have Bob Angler from SED. But we also have this evening, and our presenters will be Gwen Noyes and Art Klipfell from Oak Tree Development, Greenstacks, together with Scott Blazik of Bruce Hamilton Architects in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, working with them. And when we last appeared before the board earlier this month, as you may recall, the presentation focused on transportation and traffic issues during which our traffic engineer from VAI, Scott Thornton, presented his traffic impact study. And then the beta peer review presented, as well as we heard from the tech, Mr. News. Subsequent to that hearing, I'm just taking care of a few housekeeping matters here. Subsequent to that, the NEST on January 15 submitted its response to the bulk of beta's traffic comments. And there were just a few issues that BSC was addressing on the on the traffic peer review. Those were submitted on January 25th, together with the comments on beta's peer review and the town engineer comment, pardon me, beta's BSC submitted the kind of the extra responses, I think one through nine of the traffic. And it likewise on the 25th submitted responses to beta's peer review vis-a-vis stormwater management. And then also incorporating some comments on that same topic made by the town engineer, together with its updated stormwater report. And then also we submitted a fiscal impact assessment report prepared by Fougere. And lastly, BSC submitted revised wetlands delineation memo and updated site plan sheets. Make certain I have these rights sheets C100, 101, 105, C200 and C203. I present that just as a matter of housekeeping, just to update you what's been submitted since the last hearing. And onto the savings hearing, as you stated, our focus this evening is architecture and urban design. And so our understanding that there has been no peer review, but the board has had performed with that. And our presentation this evening is going to be in a very capable hands of Gwen noise and art clip file and with the assistance of Scott Placic. And they're going to walk you through the building layout, its architectural features, as well as the design features that have been brought to bear and revised through this process to weave the building and its tenants into the Arlington community and this very neighborhood. And just as a reminder, and I'm sure you're all aware, the site is approximately 17 plus acres and the multifamily housing consists of 176 12 units. So when one looks at that, obviously part of this is we're proposing that it be preserved for conservation in a large chunk, but it works out to about 12 12 units per acre on the overall, which is pretty modest in terms of multifamily housing. And before I get too much out of my lane, I'm going to turn it over to the professionals to present to you the architectural features and the urban design elements of this. Thank you. So I think she meant it was coming to me I'm Gwen noise. I'm a partner with Arthur of Oak tree development. And I've had the honor and the task of working on this project for many years. So we're carrying it on. At this point, I'm going to, I'm going to read my presentation because I think it'll go more smoothly and I won't make as many mistakes, but so forgive me while I have a script here that I prepared. At this point in our 2020 21 project review process, there's a bit to share with you that doesn't require graphics, but just some introductory comments. I'd also like to take the opportunity to express some gratitude for this current process and its participants. This is hard work for all of us. And we're told that the ZVA would like us to tackle would like to tackle some other work too. So we're going to try to help you move this along so we can wrap it up as soon as we can. I know my partner Arthur has recently had some voice issues and compromises voice. So we're sparing his voice a bit so he can talk later about the proposed building plans and the exterior architecture. So I'm reducing introducing us and the site and the landscape characteristics, but it appears that this may be our only opportunity to express some gratitude for this last project chapter of our work so that so many citizens of Arlington have participated in. So I'm going to take a minute or so for that. Our team, thanks, go to you, the planning board, the zoning board, sorry, the appeals construction, constructive attentiveness to the project over the several meetings that we've had with you. We're also grateful for the conservation commission and the traffic commission who have spent hours meeting with us to review the project and write letters about it. The Arlington Planning Department has also been engaged as their legal counselors and other staff and they've been weighing in at critical junctures so we appreciate that. And the town's peer-reviewed consultant, Beta, has provided constructive second looks at our environmental, civil and traffic work. All of this has been very productive and practical. Thank you, all of you. And now some thanks to our team over the past year, in particular, all of the just mentioned entities have deliberated with us and offered many recommendations that have enabled us to improve our proposal. A distinctly COVID and Zoom experience for all of us and we've managed to come a long way. The local regulations and complexities of 40B zoning have been worked through with Stephanie Kieffer's dedicated and brilliant guidance along with Bob Angler of SEB whose seasoned wisdom and experience have been totally invaluable. And throughout a very extensive and thorough civil and environmental investigation and then at the design process we've been working very closely with the totally capable Boston consulting firm and specifically with the very able John Hessian who's there on the bottom of your screen at least on ours and his extensive and professional team may produce a mountain of critically valuable data drawing, state details and reports all of it accurate. The the traffic investigation and replanning with with Vanessa's experienced professional Scott Thornton that was that's where we got our traffic in information. He's provided much work and many hours to address the traffic challenges of this area in Arlington but we're not addressing those tonight and we've given him a break from being on the Zoom with us all. So there's there's more. My partner Arthur and I are about to present the project's architecture. We're presenting our our own firms and green stacks as well as our architect our associate architect Scott Glassic who's also on the screen of Bruce Hamilton Associates. He and his associates have been working tirelessly with us to produce the architectural graphics. And of course we're all here because the Newgar family owns the land and is optimistic that this very capable team that I've just come through will at last reach a housing solution that will admirably serve the community and will also bring a substantial piece of land into the community benefiting a conservation mode of views. The family's stated desire is to deed the excess land beyond Tharn Dike Place to the town or a community entity for future conservation improvement. So what's important now is that we are about to present to you this evening a housing proposal that we are confident would serve the larger Arlington community as well as the immediate neighborhood. As I said we will not dwell at this time on traffic concerns. We appreciate that they are very real and Scott Thornton has been working with the Traffic Advisory Committee and data to address the challenges of Lake Street and all the surrounding and and the surrounding streets and so enough of that right now. We will instead focus on how Tharn Dike Place will provide much needed housing especially for seniors that is in short supply in Arlington. Tharn Dike Place addresses several of the needs mentioned in the Arlington Planning Office's studies over the years. This high quality new housing would especially alleviate the historic shortage of affordable housing in Arlington. Very importantly all of the proposed 176 units would count towards Arlington's quota for affordable housing. Your community does not need reminding that Arlington has been historically way low below Massachusetts municipal requirements for affordable housing and has added only a few units for years. So now we're going to go to something visual and Scott I'm going to ask you to put on the first slide which is the perspective. Sure I will share my screen here. So I think I just need permission to do that so I am ready. Rick can you go ahead and take care of that? Scott you're good to go right now Scott. Okay thank you. So this first slide shows the scale and relative placement of our proposal along Dorothy Road. I'm going to share a few points about Tharn Dike with just this drawing on the screen that our other drawings at the scale and level of development don't convey. The following are important qualities that of Tharn Dike Place some of which you've heard before. So I'm just going to list them point by point. Tharn Dike Place will be within a few minutes walk of a bike ride or a bike ride to the ALYT enabling many residents to avoid car commuting. It's within walking distance of Mass Avenue and ALYT offices and many commercial and retail operations. Tharn Dike Place will provide a blue bike station on a sunny corner of our property for more electric bikes. A transit screen in our lobby will inform residents of public transportation timing. All these things are meant to emphasize its convenience to public transportation. Tharn Dike Place will be built to high energy efficient standards. Just a few of the things that we can assure you will be there. It will be a lead silver equivalent. All energy efficient and heat heating and cooling, high levels of heat and sound insulation, water saving, saving plumbing, color corrected light, LED lighting, non-off-gassing, building materials, energy efficient appliances, a state-of-the-art security communication safety equipment, all those things that will make it a safe and good place for people to live. It would have a water retaining roof that would attenuate heavy rainstorm runoff and reflect heat away from the roof. It would be built with modules that will shorten the site's construction disruption, improve construction quality, and shorten construction duration by about five months. And that's when compared to conventional construction periods. Pre-fabricated module deliveries to the property would come the minimal distance from route two, and at times that the contractor in the Earlington Building Department would work out together. As you know, when we started this new Tharn Dike 2020 chapter a year ago with a site plan and project that was expansively stretched over the property and had 219 units and over 300 parking spaces, much of its surface, the project's design elements made incursions into edges of sensitive landscape. And we have a shot of what that project, just to remind you what that looked like. So Scott's going to put that on the screen too. No, that's the wrong one, Scott. It's the older one that had the, that one, that one, yeah. So that's what we were talking about over a year ago. 219 units and some housing along the street. And if you can look very carefully, you can see that there were a number of places where we were in wetland area. So, and there's a lot of surface parking. This is where we came from in redesigning the proposal we're about to present. It was spread out. It had lots of grade parking and it was insensitive areas. So we're going to take that off the screen. It was just there to sort of remind you where we came from when we did our redesign. We think we have a better plan now. And this is showing the site plan as we're currently showing it. And it has 176 units, not 219. So that's a considerable reduction in size from that standpoint. We listen to your concerns about the size and spread and move the building with a new configuration to raised ground that is closer to the street. We introduced three-story street elevations and side and street side courtyard configurations to respect the existing scale of the Dorothy Road homes. We brought in one of the most highly respected civil engineering firms that I've already mentioned to you, the BSC with John Hessian. We devised a compact design to accommodate 176 apartments as well as a community room, exercise room, bicycle storage, and various landscaped courtyards. We stepped back the building in pieces that reflect the scale of the neighborhood. We laid out more compact buildings, a more compact building form that accommodates almost all the parking underground with some zoning compliant parking counts that we're willing to trim back at the request of the TAC, but we haven't done that yet. That's negotiation for a waiver. We placed the spine of the building and four-story 75 feet back from the street and planned landscape and the entire length of the street with shrubs and street trees. There are four different courtyards, each one with a unique character and maybe Scott can use his cursor. I'm going to start with the landscaped main courtyard, which is in the North West courtyard that has the pavement in it on the upper left of the building there. That one is the main public entry courtyard and it has space for short-term parking visiting bicycles, which we're going to identify the stands for and guests would be able to have short-term parking there. Then just south of that facing the woods is a sunny social courtyard that goes right off the entry in the community room and it would be a place where you could have games or activity, small parties, and there's a view south over the woods and of course out to that direction. Then there's another courtyard that we'll call the Northeast courtyard that is right off a bunch of several units that are on the ground floor and second third floor and that would be a quiet courtyard that would stay cool in the summer and cooler in the summer and be a place you could sit under a tree and read a book or chat with a friend. That would be a meditative kind of a courtyard and then south of that where there's some sort of purplish trees. That's what it could be a rain garden. It's in the flood plain. We left the flood plain there and it would be a place where there could be wildflowers and native trees brought in to enliven that. Well, that's done. This is where we've kept some of the flood plain that we don't have to do a two-for-one kind of a replacement for because we have it. So there will be easy access to the street level parking from a number of, for a combination of visitor and resident parking. That's the parking lot that's up on the upper left there. And again, if the negotiation about parking involves cutting back the number of parking spaces, one of the first places we would take it away is on the northern end of that parking lot where the neighbor is a little concerned about how close the parking is. We could take away several spaces there and put in a buffer of trees that would give a little more space between that neighbor's property and the parking lot. That would be at least 25 feet. The residential building is set back 23 feet from the street, similar to what is often the spacing of the houses down the street. There are quite a few that are even closer than that. There is a pedestrian walk and a porously paved fire road that wraps around the south and east of the building. And it's ADA accessible and provides access to and from the courtyard and to the children's playground. The playground is in the southeast corner of the property and that would be there as an amenity for the families in the building. And it has this sunny exposure all day long. There would be bicycle access to and from the building. There's a special door at the end of the building where it goes out to the fire lane. And that would be where bicycles could come and go very efficiently from Dorothy Road. And then, of course, part of what we haven't had further discussions about, but we're often asked, won't there be some way to go across the property to more directly to the bicycle path? And that's something we're open to, but there hasn't been any negotiation or specifics about that. And that's a process that we're willing to undertake whenever. The bicycle provisions that everything where we have bicycles, we've got plenty of parking for them in the basement and some on the ground floor near the entry. So bicycles would be honored parts of our of our plan and the security and use of it would be eased at every option that we have with good sturdy stanchions, etc. There's wheelchair access from the neighborhood to the conservation area that would come also along the fire lane that would have a walking part. Along there that would be accessible from from the neighborhood also. The, as Stephanie mentioned earlier, the property, you're only seeing a small portion of the property in this slide. We may be using something in the neighborhood of five acres with this layout, which leaves 12 acres for conservation and community use. And that would be something that would be negotiated with the community. And we believe that the Thorn Dyke owners and management would be very engaged and helpful and contributing over the years for that. So that's the site overview. And now my partner who's been sitting patiently beside me is going to talk about the architecture pieces of the building that I have not addressed yet. So here he is, Arthur. Good evening. Good evening. So thank you all for listening to us here. I think when we go to the ground floor plan, Scott, so this building shape and form, I think coming back to some things that Gwen said, we, as we cut back on the number of units from 219 to 176, we obviously could contract the building footprint. And as part of that, we were able to minimize the floodplain issue, the impact on the floodplain, a negative impact, to very low numbers and also have almost completely avoided the incursion on the wetlands. So what we have tried to do, given the goal of doing that, of being a better neighbor there with the overall 17 acres, we've tried to mitigate the impact of the building along Dorothy Street, Dorothy Road. And to do that, you can see the courtyards are actually back 75 feet from the road. And the wings that come out toward the road are back, as Gwen mentioned, 23 feet. And what that really means that only 50% of the project length is actually on the road, everything else is set back. So 50% is set back and 50% is actually out to within 23 feet. Just so you'll see that a little later in a section. Now, can you zoom in, Scott, on the entryway? We'll just go through that quickly. I think, oops, it isn't loading. There we are. So you can see where the entry door is. And Gwen introduced you to the courtyard in front of the turnaround. And you can see there, there's a fitness area, common area, mail room is a big thing, package room, marketing room. And then off to the right, right next to the entry is a bicycle room. And we'll talk a little bit more about bicycles. We're going to have just outside that door from the bicycle room coming toward the marketing room. There's outdoor spaces for about 20 units. We didn't put that in 20 bicycle stands for visitors and that sort of thing. Again, right by the entrance door, where Scott is pushing his cursor. So the basically out obviously is entering from the from the courtyard. When you're in the lobby, one of the nice things about the lobby is it opens out to the south, the south courtyard. You know, as Gwen mentioned, that courtyard will be nicely landscaped, places, you know, tables with umbrellas and nice things for people to enjoy the sun because that's the sunny side. And if you move to the right a little bit from the lobby, you'll see the two elevators going up into the building. The access to bike storage, that stairway is only one floor goes down to the garage so you can't walk to the garage. Scott, you want to put your cursor on that? No, the one in the lobby is the one. That's only one floor. Just goes down to the garage and to the bikes. So I think that's it for that floor. Let's go up to the next floor, which is a typical floor. Now, what we did do here to kind of show you how we laid the building out, you can see the elevators coming up. The units along Dorothy Road, the two to the right, are the three bedroom units. And then there's one off to the left. It's a little hard to distinguish those colors at this scale, but that's sort of an orange. The blue coloring is a two-bedroom. The red coloring, which is a little bit dim, those are studios. And the one bedrooms are, I believe, yellow. And there are, in the second courtyard, the courtyards to the right, at this level, there are four ADA units, two ones and two twos, and that's those arrows. When you look at the drawings and you get a set of drawings, you'll see that there are four ADA units. Well, that's good, Scott. You can bring us in on that. And why don't you look at the three bedroom units? Scroll down a little bit. Those are the threes. Let's blow up a two, show a two. Typical two. That's an inside corner two. That's fine. And then there are also quarter units that are twos. There's a quarter, two on the left. And to make it whole, want to show a studio in a one just to get a sense of what the units are. There are two studios side by side. As you can see, it's red. And right next to it is a one, as you can see is a yellow. So not fairly typical units. I think as we're mentioning that the 25% affordable would have exactly the same unit design, unit specification as the market rate units. That's our intention here. And we've done these units in other projects. These are all, I think, another thing you might want to think about or notice is that they're laid out as module construction. The modules are 62 feet long and 13 feet wide. So you can see how they cross quarters. Scott, you can cursor that maybe and show how the 62 feet crosses a corridor or whether 62 is going to mention out there. So let's look at the fourth floor plan. Now this shows the setback. And this is, again, this is a big building. We're not trying to say it isn't, but we've done our very best given the need to bring this building up to this piece of land in a way to diminish as much as possible its impact on wetlands and floodplain storage. So you can see where we've cut back the fourth floor. Those are those white areas. And I think the note on there, Scott, says what storm under storage. But storm retention, we may have used there of some PVs or whatever, TBD, to be determined. And then the dotted line there, the eight foot tenant use limit. We were asked to do that. We were asked to not allow tenants. You can see there's a corridor going down to what will be a balcony or could be a balcony. And we agreed to keep our tenants back away from the edge, thinking that they might be making noise in the neighborhood or whatever. So we would accept some kind of use limit there. So let's look at the garage plan, Scott. So this is going to spend too much time on this, but you can see the dark lines there. Show the bicycles, Scott. There we go. Those are rows of bicycles. We may have more space for bicycles if we do take out some of the parking, which is the possibility at this point. But we do have, let's see, we have 205 spaces in the garage, I have some notes here. And then 26 are in the exterior lot on the west that Quinn pointed out to you where we may pull that back a little bit away from the neighbor's land and plant some trees. And then eight are actually at the entry. So the total number of parking spaces is 239. As I say, 205 are in the garage. Now, 20% of these need to be compact or can be compact. So we're taking that. And I believe that's your local regulation on that. So we'll abide by that 20% or 47 spaces will be compact. And we also dimensionally will pay attention to the regulations, which are 8.5 by 18 for a regular space and compacts are 8 feet by 16. So that's all according to regulations. Unless there's some kind of interest in the in the city and in cutting back on the parking that that was mentioned in one of the responses we got to the plans, why not cut back the parking a little bit? 788 spaces. That's right. 788 spaces, which I think you can see that that's all by code. Everything is down there is by code. The bikes are not by code. But this gives us a ratio of bikes to people. There are 105, I guess, 105 bike spaces in the garage, 36 inside by the lobby, which of course are the handiest. And then 16 spaces outside by the entrance doors, a total of 160 spaces for 176 units. So there's a space for every, a bike space for every unit. Okay, Scott, let's go to the next. So this, we were asked to show some context of the abutting existing buildings. So this is, we've done that on the two streets, Little John Street, and of course, this is Dorothy Road. And what we've tried to do that last house, there is a brick house, and there are several houses that have brick facades or whatever. And so we've in the elevation. And you can see we're showing the you can see the three elements that come out to within 23 feet of the street. And they all have that brick red element. Which is lowered. And we're doing this to lower the scale of that elevation to it's a big building. And we're not trying to pretend it isn't, but we're trying to do everything we can by cutting back that fourth floor along the street, by having that the bulk of the building back 50% of it anyhow back 75 feet. With the piece with that, that red siding is back 23 feet, as we mentioned. And we were also asked, we're still working on that a little bit to go to the courtyard, Scott, and scroll right to the courtyard, Kenya. So there, that's the actual entrance. And we're going to work on that. You can see the canopy coming out. You can see, you know, we're doing got some cables on the edge and all that kind of good stuff to really mark that entrance. And we were asked to do that to use color and textures to make that entrance stand out. So that was our response to that. So let's go to the next slide, Scott. Do you want to back out on that just to make sure everybody's seen that? No, go back. I'm sorry. Go back to Dorothea Road. The, what the Scott and his crew did is they put the plan, as you can see, under the building. So you can see where the abutting units are. Those are real plans. These were photoshopped out of the elevations themselves were taken out of Google. So those elevations are correct. And the plan itself, you can see Glenn mentioned the the landscape courtyard, which would be very quiet. Put your cursor on that Scott. And then the entrance courtyard. Now the entrance courtyard, we are taking out two cars there. So there'll be a little bit more walkway around that courtyard. And that's in our account. We're counting only six cars there. This drawing shows eight cars and we just haven't adjusted that yet. So go ahead Scott. So this is Little John Street. And we thought we should do this just to show the other street. I think somebody asked to see that. This shows you can see the width of the street. You can see again the plan below. There's the width of the street and the sidewalk. Some landscaping along there. Now the furthest wing, way to the right, that's faded out a fair amount because that's actually the third wing, way to the east end of the building. So the actual building that faces is that dimension right there that Scott's outlining. And I think it's worth saying, you know, I've talked about that lower brick colored band. As soon as you come around that corner, there's a lower band that complements the size of the houses across the street. We might want to bring that band all the way around this corner as well. I don't know, that's we're still doing various architectural studies. So I think you can go to the next one. I guess the next one is a section. No, that's the east and west elevation. Scott, did we miss the east and west? Sorry, Art. I can go to whichever one you want. You mentioned sections, so I jumped ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's okay. We're going back north. We have details of the east and west. You've already seen the west elevation, which is the one that was there with the Little John Street. The east elevation is obviously not highly visible, but it does show the wraparound of the brick band at the lower level. And you can see, this is where I was saying, if you look at the upper drawing, which is the the two north elevations, Art, do you want the east and west? No, this is all right. Because I was going to say the upper is part of, in detail, the Dorothy Road elevation. And that's where I was mentioning, we can possibly bring that right end of that, which is the one that abuts the west elevation down one level. I think that might be a good idea. This actually shows the entryway. It's just a blow up of what you've seen before. And the lower level is the other end. So if you see at the right, this little high-touch mark, the right end of that attaches to the left end of the upper drawing. And that's what you saw in the long elevation. So now, east-west. So there we are. That kind of shows the path down to the garage. Again, you're just seeing something you've already seen, that you can see how the right end of the west elevation is off in the distance. Therefore, fade it a little bit more to give a sense of the setbacks. And the east elevation has a wing coming out, as you can see, and then goes out. And then that brick-colored band wraps the corner, which that's the corner you actually saw in that perspective. So now, the section. Sorry. No problem. So the section is through the courtyard. And you can see the parking underneath. You can see this is cut on the courtyard that has the floodplain storage coming in. So there's nothing. There's no parking on the right. That's actually floodplain storage. And you can see the left-hand most drawing. There is actually a Dorothy Road. And then we have the sidewalk. Then we come up to our courtyard level and then into the building. And the building is at elevation 13, the floor of the building itself. The floor of the courtyard is 12.8, although that varies. Elevation 12.8. The curb is elevation 10. So you can see 10 stepping up to 12.8, stepping up to 13 inside the building. And there's seven foot eight clear in the garage, which means the floor of the garage is at about elevation 2.5. So I think that's what we have to put up for your review and questions and thoughts. And I think we thought, Scott, we'd go back to... We can go anywhere anybody would like to, but we thought we'd go back to the colored plan, that one, right? To begin the questioning and your thoughts. So thank you. Thank you. I have a bunch of questions. I don't know if anybody else on the board would prefer to go first. Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions. Mr. Ford. Given the flooding issues, have you guys considered permeable pavements to aid in the stormwater management? I know that's related to the architectural. I know it's not directly architectural, but when I look at the civil planes and the architectural planes, it looks like it's just asphalt. I believe John is on the line, but we have been talking about porous pavement for all the exterior fire road and so on, that that would be porous. And in fact, that it's going to be a little complex because we'd like it to be both porous pavement that the fire trucks can drive on, but also a surface that is good enough for walkers, for people who are walking or, you know, have a carriage or a wheelchair even. So John is on the line somewhere. I saw him and maybe he has something specific as the civil engineer, but he'd like to add to that. Johnny there. Mr. Chairman, if I can, John Hessian from BSC, just to supplement what Gwen had said and to respond to Mr. Ford's question, the emergency vehicle access and the walking path around the perimeter of the building is proposed to be porous pavement. The primary surface parking lot is not proposed as porous pavement because it has the proposed stormwater infiltration system under the parking lot. So we really don't want porous pavement draining through that media and then into the infiltration system designed to accommodate the building and the surface parking. So and with the predominance of the parking in the garage level, you know, surface pavements have really been limited on the site as much as possible. Okay. Thanks. That's helpful. One more question, Mr. Chairman. What is setting the 176 units and let me preface this question by saying, you know, one of my concerns is the size of the building and how it encroaches into the floodplain on the backside, particularly where the parking garage kind of goes in. So I think it would help all of us if we could maybe understand from the designer's perspective what kind of sets the units. So, John, you might, we've worked really hard to deal with the flood issues and we, you know, we want to pay attention to the town regulation, which I think is more stringent than the state regulation, that there's a two for one compensatory storage being supplied in the project or should be. And I think John can deal with that and bring that up. But you can see the red lines here. The red lines are the flood areas and you can see why we left that one courtyard open for flooding. But there are some areas of flooding, which are the areas inside the line that's inside the yellow lines that will be, or flooding storage, is impacted. And John, do you want to say anything about our strategy for compensating for that? Sorry to jump in. John has done, Ms. Tessian has done a great job and I understand how they're mitigating it. So I get, but my question really is what kind of sets the size of the number of units. So I get how we're mitigating it is really just what's driving the 176 units from the design side? Well, you know, obviously it's a goal that 25% of those units are affordable. We know that about the whole 40B system that we're working with here. I think it's a, we are not the owner of the site. The MuGar family is, and there's a threshold there of the value of the land. And as you know, they're willing to part with the land and give part of it to a non-profit or whatever we might work out. But obviously they are trying to compensate for what they see as the value of the land, which is realistic. And then you come to economics. What is the cost to do a thing like this to provide the affordable housing, the 25%? And I think it's a, we started out with 219 and I think interest rates are a little bit lower. We were able to move the bar a little bit and take out some units. So we went from 219 units to 176 units. So I can only say that that seems to work for all parties. These are compromises. No question about it. And of course we're compromising with wetlands, with flood storage, as well as economics, as well as Dorothy Rogue and the impact of the building on Dorothy Rogue. So we're trying to balance that as best we can. And that's what this proposal is all about. That's all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Ford. So I have a number of questions. I like this sort of the start question. How are you planning to construct the foundation and the parking garage level? Is this building bearing directly on the land? Are you going with pilings? Are you, is that a floating foundation houses? Well, that, I know it's not a floating foundation. As to whether we need piles or not, we have not done soils analysis at this point. I don't believe we do, but that's an open question. If we do need piles, we would obviously use them. Other than that, it would be a standard foundation. You'd have, you know, you're already underground by five feet or so, six feet for the footings. Have you considered, for piles, would you be looking, have you considered doing drilled piles instead of, there was a lot of work on route two that was pounding piles for an extended period of time that was really disruptive to this area of our Lincoln, which is partly where this question comes from. You know, would you be considering doing piles that are drilled as opposed to, drilled and poured as opposed to pounded? We did a project that was the same number of units above it. In other words, it was four units over parking, four stories over parking. And we did that, as you're saying, for that reason, we drilled them. And, you know, there really isn't much financial impact. I don't know if it's more expensive, most expensive, but I think the easy answer is yes, if at all possible, we would do that. You had mentioned that you're using a prefabricated module that's 62 by 15. Have you done a rough estimate of the number of units that would be required for the project? Well, we know exactly how many units would be required, frankly, I haven't counted them, but we can, and we can get that to you. It tends to be about 1.5 boxes per unit. And the box is, of course, 62 feet long. So we could rough that out and say 176 times 1.5 is something like that, but I can get you the exact number because as you can see, those plans are completely drawn. They're 13 feet wide, 62 feet long. And the whole project is made of those boxes that are exactly that dimension. And so I can get you the exact count of that. And those would be brought down Little John Strait, is that correct? I would assume that, yes. Okay. Okay. Then just through two before us, I just wanted to confirm. They would just be delivered on a daily basis, maybe 10 or 12. And I just did a quick calculation for 170 16 and it'd be something around 264. So if it were 10 a day, that'd be 20, 26 days, something like that. I think we probably have also already said that the box manufacturer, we don't know where that would be right now, but establishes a staging area. So boxes are put in the staging area so that you can feed a crane rapidly. And as Gwen says, I tend to throw boxes a day is fairly normal. And have you reviewed the roadway leading into the site to confirm the turning radiuses and the ability to turn the trucks around to get them out? That seems to be okay. Okay. The front courtyard, that is not the one that has the parking spaces, but the other one. There are no, there doesn't appear to be any entrances planned from the building onto that courtyard. That's great. And it's a north facing courtyard with 33 and 44 foot walls on the east, west and north. So I'm curious how you envision this, what do you envision the space being in the winter or even in the spring and fall where it's never going to see sunlight? Well, maybe I should have John speak to that. I assume that's a landscaping issue. Obviously people can get there and come from the street side and into that and take care of it. But John, do you have anything that you could add to that? What might be planted there and still work? It's north facing as Christiana is saying. Hi again, it's John. That northeast courtyard is envisioned to really be a passive recreation area. Honestly, probably won't get much use during the winter, given what the chairman has pointed out, the north facing with the vertical walls, but it will be a landscape with raised planters, trees. It will have, it can be planted with some year round interest that will provide visual benefit to the people that live in those units that look out onto that space. And I really view it in the summertime as sometimes we're all searching for shade, so a nice place to go read a book and get out of the heat in the sun, to be honest. And there'll be some seating provided, but the point about the winter has as many places in New England here. There's the winter, although we're surviving with COVID much harder than maybe we have in the past with entertaining outdoors in the winter season. I was wondering if you had considered lowering the building around that to try to get more light into it and make it a little more free season rather than just sort of the single season appears now? Well, to get sun in, it obviously, I think as you know, the south side of that you know has four full stories and I think that probably would not be very practical. As the sun moves toward the west, then you're coming over the three-story piece and I suppose particularly in the summer you get sun in there and no question as the sun shifts around. But that's, you know, again it's all a matter of balance and we're trying to make a project work here that's much more pulled together, pulled out of the wetlands and the flood plains. And of course we reduced already a number of units, which was, you know, a challenge to cut back the size of the project that far, an economic challenge. So I know I'm not answering your question, but I'm hoping that the sun comes over the wing and that's the best I can do. Okay, where it's facing out directly onto Dorothy Road and the only access would be from that side, is it exclusive to the building or is it a public space that could be used by other residents of the neighborhood? John, do you have any thoughts about that? We haven't talked a lot about that. I'm sorry, was that public use of that northeast courtyard area? Yeah, is it private or is it public just because the access is from the public way? I mean that's something that is not, you know, definitive in the design if that was something that would be, you know, an amenity to the neighborhood and to the project. You know, you're absolutely right. It has very easy access to the sidewalk on Dorothy and would provide you know, easy access for folks that live in the neighborhood. We might think about John as if we, you know, obviously there'll be people living around that courtyard. There'll be windows, you know, maybe two feet above, but not very far above the courtyard level. So they would need their privacy and security. But maybe there'd be a way to have a public piece carved out that wouldn't be so close to windows. It's a very large courtyard. I think it's 91 feet across that. So there, you know, you could imagine a nice little park in the area there that could be public and we'd certainly be open to considering that. Thank you. How is trash going to be managed on site? I've talked with John about that. We have, there are trashrooms in the basement that are at the bottom of the trash suits. And the trash truck would come back down the driveway to outside the building. And there would be carts that take the containers out to the truck that would then do a rear loading. So the storage would be interior to the building until the time it's being removed? Yeah, in sealed containers or closed containers. And that would, recycling would be the same? Yeah. For the bicycle parking, it looks like you're accommodating all the bike spaces on the, where the bikes can stay on the floor, which Arlington changed its zoning bylaws, which obviously because of the nature of this project, it doesn't impact you. But the new bylaws that bike parking spaces, you can't require someone to have to lift a bike in order to store it. Yes, we heard that. And we've, we don't think that's an issue. Okay, perfect. Did you say you're reducing, you're reducing the number of cars parked in the, in the sort of the center of that U shape turnaround? We're taking out two cars. That's, to give us a little more walking area, place for bikes. If you can see it's tight. It was recommended by the, that we might seriously consider lowering the number of cars we've got parked in the garage and on the site, which we're willing to do to a certain extent. But we would need a waiver. Yeah. I know that it was brought up, I think, on tax comments to just the way that those parking spaces are oriented right now. You have to drive in on the left and drive out on the right, which is, I think they're going to be split. Yeah. Where, where will the air handler units be located? They would all be on the on the roof. Would they be on the low roof, the high roof? Is it, are you able to keep them farther from the street front? Well, what we've been doing, and this, this may mean that they could all be on the upper roof, is using mini splits, Mitsubishi mini splits, which means what you have is a condenser for each unit. And they would be on the upper roof, probably. And it's not, they don't need to be particularly near the units. The piping is very small. And that's easy enough. Now, the other issue is the ERVs, which we will have, and they, we believe the easiest thing with those is just to bring them right to the outside through the wall. Now, that may be something you want to consider, I don't know, but it's, it's certainly the easiest thing to do is for each unit, modular unit made in the factory to have all that installed in the factory. You get higher quality, a lot higher quality. And then you have two pipes going to the outside, they need to be 10 feet apart. And, you know, one is obviously intake and the other is outflow. And I think we've all seen buildings with various things like that. We probably would not have our washer dryers go to the outside. We've at least been doing, we're trying to make it an all electric building because that's really the most sustainable thing to do. So we're looking into some of the buildings we're working on in other sites, use all electric hot water heaters, one per unit, and there are tremendous discounts available. They're expensive, but because of the discounts, they're not, they're affordable. So that's, those are the three key things, the ERVs, the hot water heater, domestic hot water, and then the heating and cooling, which is a mini-split Mitsubishi. And those can be fairly remote. We won't have to have any in that lower roof. We could have there, but I don't think we want to. I think we'll have everything in the upper roof. And then how does that, how is that impacted by having the blue roofs? Well, I'm not, I'm not sure exactly the definition of a blue roof. That's the water, okay. Well, I think these can be lifted up. Yeah, you want to have your stormwater potential there. And, you know, I can't answer that question easily. I assume what you do, you know, for example, PVs, they lift them up on, you know, metal grids, keep it off the roof. I just assume these are, these are fairly light, these condensers that are part of the main splits. So I think that would just be lifted up to allow the water to pass underneath it. Have you done any lighting studies for desegated site lighting? That would be good. Well, no, that's the site lighting. We have not gotten that far. I've, we've been aware that it's like the next thing that we need to start addressing. And I think that, that how the building entry is lit and the signage and so on is all something that, that is, is of concern. But I did say in my piece, we use all LED lighting as just a matter of course now. Now I was curious about, so 58 Dorothy Road is the first house adjacent to the building, to the east. And so that building now is going to have a 35 foot high wall next to it. And then to the south, it's going to be a more like a 40, 45 foot high wall. So I wanted to ask if you have considered that, you know, the impact on that house in particular, but it's adjacent house as well, as to how, you know, the introduction of this building is going to be impacting the usability of their, their rear yards, where they're going to be losing, you know, a large percentage of their solar access. Scott, why don't you go to the Dorothy Road elevation? As you can see, there's a, the building that's in the background is, is way behind the, that the house we're talking about, the brick house there in the corner. So you can see when the, when the three-story band comes out, it's fairly far away from, from that, from that building that looks like it's about, I would say, almost 60 feet. Actually, let's see, it's 52 feet. One, two, three, four. Yeah, it's 52 feet between our building and the brick building. Scott, where's a plan that shows how the, how the wing goes around behind the building? I think that would be real. We could go back to the, the site plan. Looking out, I think it just kind of zoom in here. Right, that's good. So you can see, you can see how far that, that wing that comes out is way back. Any shadows it would impose would be way back. So what I was talking about that's, I think it's 52 feet. The reason I'm counting the number of 13s from the edge to there, I think it's roughly, yeah, that distance. Can you, does your computer tell you what that is, Scott? No, I can't measure that in here, but yeah, this is, this is six, as you said earlier on, this is 62 feet based on the modular box. Have you conducted any shadow studies? We have not, but we can include them. Okay, I think that would be, that would be helpful to see you know, both in terms of the northeast courtyard and in terms of, you know, the impact on the adjacent neighbor. Okay. Then at the west, at the northwest end of the building, I believe it's no longer three stories at the street. Is that correct? You're stepping that corner back up again? That's correct. Is there a reason for doing that? Because you had talked about keeping the scale low along Dorothy Road, but you're stepping it up here. Well, again, we, and this is, you know, we're talking about negotiations here and what we can do and what we can't do. We are, we're very much in a balancing act here, trying to create enough economic value to make this all work. And so this was an issue of, it seemed like a place where you could increase that, that a little bit. So we did, but there are actually two reasons for that. Scott, go to the, the fourth floor plan. So one reason was to just to capture a few more units, but the other is the stairway system. There may be another answer to that. But you can see there's a stair in that right there. And we needed that stair to be the end of that corridor. Now, there may be other ways to solve that. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. So that was, that was another reason that that was pushed up was to get that stair in there. But I think these, you know, this is a negotiation that we're trying to make an economically viable project. So that's why we did that, the stair in the, in the economics. If you could jump back to the site plan. So the, where the, excuse me, where the access drive meets the corner of Dorothy and little John, is there a particular reason it's coming in at that angle and it's not aligned with little John? That's a John Hessian question. Hi, John again, Mr. Chairman. The, the design intent there was to create some definitions so that it didn't appear to people traveling, you know, through the neighborhood that were unfamiliar that that was an extension of little John. So it was to, and, and one of the comments from, you know, the town engineer was that they would like to see a driveway apron and concrete sidewalk across that driveway entrance. That will help further, you know, kind of define it as a private entrance and not an extension of little John. Okay. You know, just sort of thinking in terms of, you know, every car that exits is going to be shining its lights diagonally across that into that house. Whereas if they're coming straight and they're aligned with little John, that won't be, that won't be an impact. So I was just curious as to where that was coming from. Yeah. I mean, it, there, there's, you know, something else that also drove that was there's an existing utility pole there that would, in order to straighten that out and have it aligned with little John would require the relocation of that one utility pole. The, the issue of a sense of entry, I mean, we could, we could do gate posts or something like that. If that's another way of indicating the end of little John, but that doesn't solve the utility pole problem, but there are ways, other ways to give the message that little John isn't continuing into our drive. I do appreciate your willingness to talk about the, the number of parking spaces. I know this is sort of a large issue. I don't want to speak out of turn from my, my board, but I, I do think that there's a lot of interest in trying to reduce the amount of parking that would be involved, especially the, the large parking lot to the west, because the impacts it has on the, on the neighbor, but also it's just, you know, it's quite a, quite distant to a lot of the building. But the concern we have, or at least the concern I personally have is about guest parking, because, you know, as you know, the neighborhood in Arlington does not allow overnight parking. And these are not large streets. And so with a large, you know, if this building was to proceed at the size it is, you know, is there a way to manage the amount of guest parking to, you know, allow the, the building to function, people to have their guests, but also to not overwhelm the neighborhood? We've had a considerable number of discussions about this. And we, we, we, we, if we go below the number we have, as you know, we would need a waiver. We have discussed how we would use a waiver and, and still balance what you're saying. And, and certainly the, the occupant need. So I can say that the two obvious places that we would, that we would immediately make a change and reduce the parking are right near the Little John neighbor. And I mentioned in my, in my presentation that we would be very willing to cut down the size of that parking lot and also make the entry courtyard a little safer and more comfortable for parking. Those are two places that would be obvious to give up a few spaces of parking for the amenity level. But the, the other question of how many spaces do we really need is something that, that is a balancing between the market and the needs of the community and the desire of not, you know, of not having people trying to park on the streets. In your experience with, with recent projects, what has worked as a ratio? Is it one car per unit? Is it usually there? It's, it kind of depends upon who they, what the composition of tenants are. I mean, we're finding that millennials who are commuting into town a lot and using Ubers or renting cars when they need them. They're using, you know, using public transportation that, that, that, that a lot of them are getting along without, without a car or certainly if it's two of them, that they're, they're doing well with one. So it's, but if you, if you get farther away, it's people do need their cars. We've, we've, you know, we've been doing some studies in the neighborhood and, and Scott Thornton is not here to speak for this, but a number that seems to work both from a market standpoint and, and, you know, they're in a functional way. It is 1.2 spaces per, per unit, just as an average. Yeah, I know you're, you're well aware that the two largest issues and the issues that are really, you know, weighing heavily upon this board and upon the neighborhood is this question of how to deal with traffic, what the traffic impact will truly be. So, and the impact on the wetlands and especially changes in the flood pattern in the neighborhood due to the construction and both of those are, you know, the larger the building, the more that becomes a concern for people. And so, you know, it's good to know that I think, you know, that if we move to limit the parking, it will, you know, something like that would be amenable to the, would be something that, you know, might be a better way to sort of put a cap on what the traffic is. But as I've been reading through a lot of the comments that are posted by members of the community, those appear on the, on the agenda as an attachment. And there's a lot of people are concerned that there will be a lot more vehicle trips from this project, partly because of the, you know, in the post COVID era, people will be more likely to not rely on public transportation until their fears have settled down as there may be more use of vehicles. It is still, this building is still a considerable distance from Mass Ave. It's three quarters of a mile from the entrance to El White. So, you know, people who are less mobile will still want to drive. And so, you know, that there's definitely a need for parking here. But as you say, it's sort of a balancing act that we need to try to find some resolution to. Well, we assured Scott that Scott Thornton, our traffic engineer who's done a lot of research into the parking that that this was not a parking or traffic hearing. So that he didn't need to be here. But I think just anecdotally, there's a lot of sort of hand wringing about what's going to be the effect, the long term effect of COVID, because many people are working at home and not commuting. And how many of those people will be going back to commute? That's that's one question that's out there. And then if people who are are worried about this went back to the notes from the traffic advisory committee and the findings that were there, there's a lot to be said about about how what the process for looking at the traffic problems that that might or might not come from this project. So there's a lot of a lot of intelligence in your files about the traffic question. And as I said earlier, we're we're if if Scott were here, if we were prepared to be talking about traffic, he would have been here, but he's not. No, no, absolutely. Other questions from the board. Mr. Revlak. Yes. Yes. Thank you for noticing, Mr. Chair. I do you you actually covered quite a few of the things I was going to ask. So I thank you for doing that. But there are a couple of others. So with respect to modulars, do you have a manufacturer picked out? Or is there has a manufacturer been selected? Well, we we work with two or three different manufacturers and kind of go back and forth. One is in Canada. And as you may know, we completed a year or two ago, I think it's about a year and a half ago, a big project in Newton. That was 68 units, as I remember. And that was made in Canada. RCM. And that's one that we work with. KBS is a company in Maine that we're actually engaged in a project right now with and talking to them about a number of other projects. And I would say that that would be probably the one we would assume that would be the who might make these. It's in a place called the name of the town of South, Paris, Oxford, Maine. They're very good and very reliable. And then there are several in Pennsylvania that we also talked to, there's a simplex, which is big, there's VBC, which is has a factory in I think to south of Philadelphia that we're also talking to. So I don't know, easy answer is we were not designated at this time. It really is an issue that the CM that the contractor to build the building is the one who actually signs a contract with the modular manufacturers. So what we do is get the drawings done, the CD drawings done, bring in the C we call them CM construction managers, general contractor, whichever you want to call them, and then work with them to identify the modular manufacturer because they have to live with that performance of that modular manufacturer. So you want them there with you when you try to figure out who to sign, they own it. Okay, thank you. My next question, I was wondering what will the laundry facilities look like? We would have laundry in every unit. Okay. Wash your end and dry every unit. Okay, very good. Another thing I was curious about is, hypothetically, let's say I were a tenant and I ride in on my cargo bike with a load of groceries. What would be my path from the bicycle parking area to an apartment? I can answer that. Sure. If you rode your bike back and wanted to go park your bike in its own specific place, if it were in the basement, you'd have an entrance on the east end of the building, you'd have a fob entrance into the bicycle parking area in the garage, which is right opposite the elevators or very close to where the elevators are. Scott can indicate where the parking is and where the elevators are, and that would take you straight up to the your floor with your groceries. In another building that we've been involved with, we actually have grocery carts that live in the basement, but people can use them to take their groceries up and then bring them back down. Then if you were lucky, you'd be parking upstairs in that there's bikes right next to the entryway, and of course the same thing can happen there. You park your bike, come over, enter the building through the front door, and go to the elevators. That's it. Okay and I do understand, so actually this leads to a follow-up question, bicycle and automotive, automobile parking spaces, will they be numbered and assigned to individual tenants with, you know, like some number for guests or just curious how that would be managed? You know, I think that's a moving target. It depends upon how many bikes it would be very doable to assign them and have everybody provide their own lock. We've found in the past that it turns out that a number of bicycles get abandoned, so eventually you have to cut the locks and give the bikes away or something like that, but the management of the building will have a system that they like and are familiar with, and there are a number of good managers that we've worked with there. They tend to be very professional about solving problems like that. Okay and in the event that a, you know, a tenant preferred to store their bike in their unit, would they have the option of doing so? Well that's a good question. Some people get these very expensive bikes and they love to do that. It's not to be encouraged. Choose up the elevators. It's, I mean, I think the preferable way to do it is to provide a good enough, secure enough, safe enough or pleasant enough bicycle room on the ground floor. You know, I've seen some buildings, we haven't gone there yet where they actually have, you know, bicycle repair areas that you can, you know, borrow tools or put bicycles up on a stand. You know, we haven't thought through that or checked out where it would go, but I think, you know, as you're picking up, well my husband and I are bicyclists. We like it. We are for it. We want to encourage the bicycle culture in the building and we'll do whatever we can that is practical to make the use and coming and going and so on of bicycles be a good experience. And I do think the idea of providing a repair space, you know, a stand in tools would be wonderful, but even just space for someone to bring down their own tools and own stand would be useful because, I mean, bicycles need periodic maintenance and having a space to do that is, you know, an important part of, you know, riding and owning. I like that idea a lot. You know, one thing just sort of a neoculper, an apology. We didn't know a lot about this idea of the bike stands not allowing any kind of lifting. In this particular bike stand I liked you, but you do have to lift the front end about a foot off the ground. And it's an idea, you know, you can put more bikes and less footage because the handlebars don't we've all any biker knows how irritating that is. So anyhow, we do have to, if anybody looks at this carefully, these bikes are slightly closer together than what need be, that will be actually true. So we have we have plenty of other spaces to put bikes. So it's not, we'll keep the numbers up. Because we believe in this stuff. But just looking at this, those bikes are a little bit tighter than if you have no lift. And I think the current wisdom now that we just in the last couple of days came to us, that even one foot off the ground is probably not going to pass the official designation of no lifting. But there, you know, to get to I'm delighted to hear this closer interest in bicycles. If, if, if we do end up being requested and allowed to reduce the number of cars that definitely is a plus for the bicycle population or storage or or workspace kind of option that that could that would help. Okay. So I just have two or three more questions. One, going back to the front entrance way, I recall there being sort of a little bit of an overhang and with, you know, cable supports to just visually accentuate it. But on the rendering, it still took me a couple of seconds to, you know, to find it. You might consider adding some trim around the door, or just something to accentuate the door itself, you know, in addition to the overhang. That's just a suggestion. And finally, a couple of the earlier part of the earlier discussion is focused on building height and, you know, to throw something else into the compromise and trade off category, where I was wondering if there had been any thought given to just basically shifting the entire structure vertically at all. So I mean, it was so it would be, you know, the foundation not as deep building would be a little bit higher, but it would be further away from any risk of flooding. And presumably I'm thinking perhaps also less obstruction to existing groundwater flows. So you're seeing the same footprint, but lifting it up. Am I right in that? That is exactly right. Okay. Well, you know, I think as designers of this kind of building, one always tries to keep it as low as you possibly can. So that's just a natural instinct, but it's quite easy. And actually, as you probably know, would save money raising the thing up as well as being less susceptible to any damage from flooding. So we'd be happy to consider that, but I'm not sure there'd be a general consensus on that being a good idea. But it's quite doable. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I have no further questions. Thank you, Mr. Meals. Yes. Chair, can we request they put the landscape drawing back up, please? Absolutely. Scott, go for it. I have a few issues I'd like to make points on here. You know, obviously the neighbors feel this is a rather large and imposing structure in the middle of their neighborhood. And I don't think we're going to be able to do too much about that. But I am very concerned about this northern corner, which was originally three stories, which is now going to be four. I think it's already visually imposing enough on the neighbors without adding that. I think you should try and find another place to put the stairway. I'm not looking for a comment back, just something for you to consider. Now, I do have a question. In regards to the whole building, has anybody calculated out the displacement of the excavation? Is that a known figure, please? John, do you have an idea about that? We haven't calculated. We haven't brought in the geotech people. Okay. Thank you. I didn't carefully get a chance to review the side elevations. How far down will this building go below grade? Well, most of the grades around there, I think are eight or nine feet, elevation eight or nine. It's one of the drawings. And, you know, our basement floor is at about elevation two and a half. So you can see, you know, you're coming from eight round numbers down to two round numbers. So it would be around six feet below, because the grade is up and down, up and down a little bit. It's not hilly, but I would guess it would average maybe six feet, five to six feet that would have to be removed. So essentially, you've created a subterranean, a large dam that will interfere with water migration from the existing houses. I guess it would be on the other side of Dorothy Street and up Little John. I do believe the groundwater there would be tend to migrating towards the Elway Brook. The soil used to be an extensive, if you will, wetlands continuous from fresh pond and spy pond over to the Elway Brook. And the natural drainage patterns would be towards the Brook. So essentially, you've created a dam there. Now the people in this neighborhood already have extensive problems with water migration into their homes. There's some pumps pretty much run just about all the time. There's what I've been advised. What can you say to these people that would address this problem? You're going to be displacing a lot of soil that would have been absorbing water. You're basically building a dam that's going to be preventing the water from migration. And I do believe you're going to be causing quite a problem for the surrounding neighborhoods. Lastly, I do have a concern about the water on the roof. Where is that eventually going to go? So if I could answer those issues, I'd be quite happy. John, are you there? Yes, I'm here. So there was a lot there. I think I shot those down accurately. I'll do my best. So with respect to your question or comment of the dam, creating a dam for groundwater, our groundwater monitoring results show that the groundwater here in the vicinity of the building is between elevation zero and elevation three. So we used elevation three for our stormwater design. Art mentioned that the garage floor is at about elevation two and a half. I believe it's actually at elevation 2.83. So the building is really not the building garage and basement level is really not in the groundwater. It's basically sitting right on top of the groundwater. And I think it was Mr. Revlak raised the question about potentially raising the building a little bit. And if there's anything we could do there. So the building itself, the garage, from a groundwater perspective, really will not be creating a dam for the flow of groundwater. The second question of where the rooftop detention goes, it's routed through roof drains that are plumbed through the building out through the ceiling of the garage and to the west into the stormwater drainage system, ultimately into the infiltrate underground infiltration system that's under that surface parking lot. So you're going to be dumping copious amounts of water underneath the parking lot next to a resident home on Little Joined Street. Is that correct? Not immediately next to it. But also, as you mentioned, you believe that the normal groundwater flow direction is towards Al Whitebrook and not back towards the neighbor on Little John? Well, that may be. But if you start adding, I'm going to say it looks like a few thousands square feet of water drainage into a concentrated area. I'm going to think it's going to be bringing up the local water table pretty good. You know, you do have a migration going towards, but you're still going to be pumping a lot of water into a relatively small area. And I do believe those local homes may be impacted. Just a thought. Anything further, Mr. Mills? I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. Other members of the board? DuPont says no. Mr. Hanlon? DuPont says no. Mr. Awork? I think Mr. Awork. Okay. So one last question I have is sort of the disaster scenario question. So when this area floods, which is not a question of if, but it's a when, how do you keep water out of the basement, out of the parking garage on short notice and if the, if the garage floods, how do you get the water back out without impacting the neighborhood? John? So I'll take a stab at answering that question. So you, you mentioned the disaster scenario, but when you said this area, when it floods, are we talking 2070 flooding or are we talking FEMA 100 year flood at elevation 6.8? We're talking 10 years ago when Dorothy road was flowing. So the, well, at elevation 6.8, the flood waters won't rise up to, and we don't have a grading plan. The flood waters would have to rise up to approximately elevation 9 to be able to spill over down the ramp to the garage. So we believe that based on the current, you know, FEMA flood information, the site is graded to minimize or eliminate the potential for flooding in the garage for any water that does get into the garage. The garage will be fitted with oil, gas separators and a pump system to pump any flow from the garage out. And at that point, it's pumping from within a building. So it would be pumped to the sewer system and not, that's not a external storm water system. Yeah, because typically, because one of the issues that occurs in this neighborhood is that the storm water system in the streets gets completely sad, gets completely filled. So you're not going to be able to pump into it. Right. So Mr. Chair. Yes, please. May I just, just to give a little context. And I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who lives adjacent to Alewife Brook. It's, you know, on the other side of East Arlington, but it's still in the same flood plain. I mean, with respect to like flooding disasters and water, I would, I personally see three basic categories of risk. One is one is, you know, just rainfall events that become slightly heavier and produce more, say, basement infiltration. You know, you get a wet basement. This is something that's going to, you know, continue to happen. It's a nuisance, but, you know, it involves a little bit of pumping, you know, you run your shop back, etc. The next grade up is, you know, the, you know, what are contemporary hundred-year flood events, which, you know, in my case put about two feet of water in the basement, which, you know, involves pumping involves tearing down and cleaning up and, you know, various other forms of remediation. And then finally, there is the, the more catastrophic event that we haven't actually seen yet, but are likely to in the future, which is a flanking or overtopping of the Amelia Earhart Dam, where seawater comes back, you know, following the Mystic River or Alewife Brook. One of the reasons I keep fussing about, you know, building height is I would really, really like to see, you know, really like to see the building tall enough or elevated enough that it's going to withstand that, meaning that it will be above a sea level rise storm surge event in 2070. Beyond that, yeah, it's, there's going, you're going to have to, you're going to have to, you will need to pump out a basement if it floods. Now, finally, I just, you know, I think it is worth saying, and this kind of goes back to what Mr. Mills mentioned earlier, storm events are going to get worse and more frequent over time. So, I mean, to the extent that problems exist, they are going to get worse, whether this building is built or not. I think we have what I would hope we can do is ensure that, you know, the construction of this building does not accelerate the deterioration of conditions in these neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you. So, with that and no other questions from the board, I think we are ready to move on to public comments. There's just a couple of quick notes before I open the floor. So, public questions and comments will only be taken as they relate to the matters at hand and should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. Due to previously demonstrated interest in the project and to provide for an orderly floor to the meeting, the chair strongly encourages individual public speakers to limit their comments and use their time to provide comment related to the topic discussed. Please note that there are multiple hearings scheduled for this project, although we are getting very close to the end. The chair also encourages public to provide written comment to be reviewed by the board and included in the record. The procedure for requesting to speak will be the same as for previous hearings. Please select the raise hand button from the participant tab on Zoom or dial star nine on your phone to indicate you'd like to speak. When called upon, please identify yourself by name and address. You'll be given time for your questions and comments. All questions can be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps us to generate an accurate record of the meeting. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed, the public comment period for this evening's hearing will be closed. As previously noted, there are multiple hearings scheduled. Board and staff will do our best to have to show documents being discussed. If you'd like a specific document to be pulled up during your comment, please ask us to do so. So with that, I will go ahead and find the list. Okay. Mr. McCabe, you'll go ahead and unmute yourself. Mark McCabe. Yes, I'm here. All right. Thank you. Thank you. There's just a couple of questions. Mark, if you could just give your address. That's right. I'm sorry. Mark McCabe for Dorothy Road. Thank you. I'll answer mass. A couple of questions. One, the first is that has all the people who are represented in the development tonight have always used words like could, would, might, but there's no definite words being used in the development that's proposed to the community itself. And I was just wondering why they can't answer these questions directly as opposed to using could, would, and might. I'll give a little insight into that. So part of the 40 B process, the way it is organized by the state, is that boards are to review what are essentially preliminary designs and preliminary drawings for the project. And then we grant waivers and issue conditions to essentially create the boundaries for what the project can be. And then with that, the developer can then proceed towards developing a final set of drawings. And I think that's part of the reason for the sort of for the cautionary language is that really until both until the board reaches a decision and until they reach a final design, there are aspects of this project that due to the nature of 40 B, we cannot know definitively. Just ask our council real quick if that's accurate. Okay. Second question is inaccurate. Is there any way that I know there's a new proposed structure, but what stops the developers from going on to adding on to those new structures? Is there anything in legal ways or anything else? They've dropped it down to 170 some odd. What's to stop them from going on after they've developed the 170 units? Thank you, Mr. Havity. Can you respond to that question? Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. Technically speaking, nothing would prevent an applicant from coming back in and seeking a modification of the board's approval to add units to the development. However, the board would not be required to approve the modification unless the applicant is able to show that the development as currently constituted was uneconomic. There has been one case out of the Housing Appeals Committee in which an applicant sought a rather minor modification to a previously approved development that had been constructed and had been operated over a number of years. And the Housing Appeals Committee said this has been operating successfully for many years. Therefore, it's not an uneconomic project and therefore the board is not required to grant this modification. So it would be unlikely that there would be a circumstance where the applicant will be able to successfully come and add units over the objection of the board. Thank you because I thought it'd be unlikely you could develop on wetlands and floodplains, but apparently they can. I appreciate all your work and all your help. And thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. McCain. Okay. Next up, Jennifer Griffith. Thanks. And thanks, Chairman, for reading my letter and asking a lot of my questions. So I appreciate that very much. But I do really want to emphasize that this whole project is just beyond the scope and scale of this neighborhood. It's great talking about it. You know, commenting in the chat that... How do they hear you? They have everyone hands it on like this. I don't know what the fuck it is. Mark, we can hear you. Basically, you know, this is like adding a piece of the city into, you know, a residential neighborhood. So it's beyond, beyond reasonable the amount of traffic that it will add. We're not talking about traffic today, but also I am very concerned about the construction and the construction technique. And I urge the board of appeals to make sure that it's conditioned that any sort of foundation construction is not driving piles when they drove piles across route two. You know, and I'm pretty far. I'm across Thorndike Field and everything and still my house shook. So if we have pile driving right in this neighborhood, that's just a disaster. And there needs to be conditions that the developer will survey all of our homes and our basements for the baseline conditions so that we have a basis for compensation because the foundation issues are just... I mean, the pile driving just take that off the table. And the other thing I just hearing tonight with these modular units, I really think you should go and just double check that you can turn from Lake Street onto Little John because that just doesn't seem like it will really work. And maybe this whole thing, you know, isn't going to work because you physically can't get your units here. So the last thing I'll say is that when it rains a lot, all of the whole region, the groundwater flows down into this flood plain that's in this neighborhood. And the groundwater level comes up substantially. So if you're adding stormwater flow, what you think is going to be some dry underground place, it's not going to be dry, you're going to be flooding the neighborhood. And the water will, your basement and the garage is going to be in contact with groundwater when there's a significant rainfall because the groundwater level just comes up in this neighborhood. And people on Dorothy Road maybe can comment about their experience. But it's, I end up with a pond in my backyard. I might be a few feet lower than where you are, but I end up with ducks swimming in the spring in the corner of my backyard. So thank you. Anna Driscoll. Yeah, hello. My name is Anna O'Driscoll. I live at 23 Little John Street. And I have three sets of questions. One is about the impact of the neighborhood during building. It sounded like the modulars were going to be driven around the streets around here. I'd like to know what the plan is for that. Secondly, my question relates to rats. And there's a huge problem with rats in this neighborhood. What studies have you done? What are the plans? Third question relates to children. There are many children who live in this neighborhood to play on these streets. What studies have you done? What provisions will be put in place for their safety during construction? If I could turn to Gwen for that. So the three questions. One about the construction impact. Sort of how are the boxes going to be moving into the neighborhood? Yep. Now that'd be scheduled. Second is a question about rats and the other rodents in the vicinity. And then also the safety of the children and the residents of the neighborhood during construction. Correct. I'll answer the rats and make a stab at the children's safety. Every construction project starts before construction with the rat management program because there's an assumption that it just needs it. So there's an extensive rodent removal process that goes on before construction starts. Children's safety is a good question. Nice to do too. The extent to which a police detail is needed for any of the construction activity we will see that that's part of the construction contract. And other than that, I think there may be other ways of handling that that is advised to us and will be open to any discussions about that either with the neighbors or with the building department and arts going to talk about the modules. Yeah, I'm not sure. Could you repeat the module question? Yeah, so I'd like to understand more about when you are, how you're intending to get your building materials essentially into the construction site. And so it sounds like there'll be a lot of trucks and do you have to access your site, obviously. And so given that there's really only one straight that the best of times can handle one and a half cars going either from, you know, I'm presuming you have been at Little John Street and Dorothy Street personally and you've seen it. So there's not even two cars can go down there. So I'm just curious, you know, what your plan would be to bring things into the site. Right, as I mentioned earlier, it's up to the module manufacturer to have actually a staging area. We don't know where that would be yet, but they have, they feed the building, the crane. There's a crane obviously involved on the site. So the flow of boxes from the staging area is very controlled with telephones and all that kind of good stuff. And if Newton is an example, and I really think it is that we had continuous police attendance there watching the flow of pedestrians, all that kind of stuff. And these things are required by the building department. So it's not something that it's something that you can depend on because the permit is dependent on it. I think the, you know, in terms of impact, and actually we want a competition to do that project in Newton. And the reason we won the competition is because we said we would do modules, which of course we did. And part of that was the speed. In other words, we completed the building faster. And the impact of shipping the modules was a lot less than a conventional construction method where the trucks, you know, you have a truck of sheetrock and then boards and then roofing and then nails. And you know, it's a continuous flow of trucks where this is obviously intense when you're putting the modules. I think Glenn did a quick take there and we can do a little more research on that and get some numbers out there. But this is intense but quick. And you're bringing everything there in these boxes, you know, all the toilets are in, all the flooring is in, all the everything is in there and shipped and put up. So I think from the standpoint of, you know, we have looked at the access, it seems to be okay. And I hear what you're saying about the width of the street. The street is not wide but the modules are delivered in a very sequence manner done with phones and police details and all that sort of thing to make sure that the negative impact is minimalized. Not to say there isn't some, but it's minimalized. And I just want to underline something that Arthur said that the length of time that there is heavy traffic going in and out will be much reduced because of the module. And another, there's another point about modular construction and that is there's infinitely less site waste. The amount of debris that is generated in the construction process is greatly reduced, which actually has an environmental impact because when the factory is doing the construction and all the gathering of materials and management, they are very efficient in the factory. They reuse small pieces and it's, but anyway, well, I just think it's something that people don't know about modular construction that from an environmental standpoint, it's very efficient. Thank you. Anything further, Mr. Driscoll? Yeah, I just want to make sure that the Zoning Board really is considering children's safety not during the construction, but once the property is there, if it is to be built, I think there's some serious considerations there that clearly have not been looked into. Also, rat management, it's not just removing them before construction. What happens afterwards, we have rat issue in the area. And also, I just want people to note that the developers have said that it will be intense and continuous flow of trucks down the streets. Thank you very much. Patricia Brown? Hi, can you hear me? I can. If you could just repeat your name and give me your address please. Patricia Brown, 49 Mary Street. I've got a couple of things. Glenn mentioned rat management. Does that mean poison? There's noise? Actually, I can't say. I don't know. There's a lot of I can't say in this tonight. It's been a while since I've had to do this. Welcome to the neighborhood. I don't know what the most recent developments are in environmental disposal of rats, but there probably is something that manages to dry out their thirst or something. I don't know. We'll look into it. We'll look into it. We'll just send them all up to New Hampshire. Your landscaping shows there are nine trees that look on the plants to be about 40 or 50 feet tall. How big are the trees you're actually going to plant? That's a good question, too. The trees are more symbolic in the plants right now. We like to plant trees and that's something that the size and species exactly has not been determined. You could plant saplings and that would still meet the letter of the development? We're not going to put saplings in, but at the same time, I can't say that we're going to put in 10-inch diameter fully grown trees. That's what you're showing in the plants. They do grow. Just to step in briefly, Ms. Brown, if you could address your questions to the board, rather than to the applicant. It's supposed to be a construction. Is there any way that right now we're facing a 40-foot wall of construction that we're going to be facing? Is there any way to step back so that we have a one floor or two floor and then step it back further so it feels more like it's in keeping with the neighborhood? This just feels like we've dropped something from Mass App in the middle of our neighborhood. That's certainly something we can discuss with the applicant. The last question is, you keep talking about where the modular staging is going to be and that will be determined. I'm looking like anywhere around here, could that possibly be staged? That's what mixes me in terms of that and how you're possibly going to be able to bring these modules down our street. The turn from Lake Street onto Little John, I can't imagine a 75-foot vehicle that's going to be able to make that turn. Mr. Clifford, when you talk about a staging area, is that something that's on-site or is that something that's off-site? No, it can be two miles away, five miles away or whatever. It's pretty easily managed today with the phones. When I said it's intense because they make sure that the second or the minute that the box is taken off a truck, that that truck is out and a new truck is pulling in. You keep that flow using a phone and it could be, they'll have a number of pilot cars, trucks, getting those boxes delivered. Obviously, you need more pilot cars if you have a longer distance. It could be 10 miles away and it could be things like it's been a churchyard, it's been various industrial area where there's an open space or whatever. You need space for about 20 boxes or something like that to keep things staged. It's never been a problem. We've done a number of these projects. I did want to just add one thing about the rat control. In our experience, anyhow, most cities or towns have regulations on the fact that you need to do that as a developer. It's not a choice. It sets what that criteria is. There are companies that do that. When you have to do this, you call a company and you say, we need you and so they come and do it. I think what's happening now, I just noticed that various things that people are trying to organize a humane way to do this. I don't know what that means because we haven't looked into that. We have another house that had a lot of bats and there was a way to try to get those bats out where they weren't killed. It's more humane. I don't know what you do to be humane to a rat. I leave that up to the professionals. All right. My last question is from day one to day whatever. How long is this construction going to take place? Well, at this point, it's usually 30 to 40 percent faster with modules, but that's obviously a generalization. I would think this would be an 18-month project stick built. I would hope we could build it in 12 to 14 months, something like that. But it depends on the contractor. This is something that as we move ahead, we can make those estimates. We bring in a general contractor to work with and the general contractor works with the modular fellow. We can tighten things up on that and work with the local authorities to tighten that up and have a real binding estimate. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Aaron Freeburger. Hello. Can you hear me? I can. I just have your name and address to the record. Yeah. My name is Aaron Freeburger. I live at 20 Parker Street. Thank you. And I have two questions. The first one is I've heard the applicants mention a few times they've done a number of similar projects and yet we're hearing quite a few vague statements even around the specificity of things as direct and simple as rat control. So I have a specific question if we know if the applicants have experience minimal or extensive in building on wetlands? And then I have a second question after that. Okay. Ms. Noyes? Yeah, well, bookside is. We haven't, we don't intend to build in the wetland here to begin with. And the most recent experience we have in building beside a flooding stream was a few years ago and the stream did flood and we built the garage such that it was, it never has been a problem. And the raising, the rise of the groundwater has, has, was anticipated and has not caused any issues. Excellent. So with your experience by building next to the wetlands and you've addressed groundwater and my research to better understand this issue because I haven't heard some of these specificities in these meetings. I did some quick research to understand more about wetlands and I'd like to share some of the things that I have learned. I think it's extremely important that we take a minute to understand exactly what we are building on and excuse me near and that as we know once the land is being developed, whether it is one story or four or, you know, has more or less door trim, once we start building on it, it's going to be at that point too late to have this understanding. So I am short of a crystal ball of understanding exactly what the impact will be in the understanding of building on a wetland, but I do have science on my side. One of the things I've learned is that wetlands are the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems. That is more than the rainforest. What that includes is it has more animal diversity than any other biome in the world. Rats obviously are residing there, but this week and Baldigo was spotted there as well. Half of all North American bird species use wetlands for feeding and nesting. A third of all threatened and endangered species are dependent on wetland habitat and more than 19,500 animals and plant species depend on wetlands for survival globally. So that's just around the diversity of the ecosystem. Wetlands are also natural water filters. They've been called the kidneys of the landscape. They neutralize harmful bacteria. They clean filter and store water. They remove up to 60% of metals, hold up to 90% of sediment from runoff and get rid of up to 90% of nitrogen. They also combat climate change. Wetlands can store up to 50 times more carbon compared to rainforests helping to combat climate change. And then my final point here is that wetlands are the planet sponge. And we've talked a little bit about this in terms of preventing flooding and what we can do to help with that. This is also relevant in extreme events such as hurricanes and typhoons. According to the EPA, 1.5 million gallons of floodwater can be stored on one acre of wetland. I believe you're proposing building on five acres of wetlands? Is that correct? No, that is not correct. Oh, I'm sorry. How much are you building on? None. Okay, five acres. Okay, fair, fair. Okay. Technically, it's not classified as wetland because it's uplanded above. Right. So to my previous point about the diversity of the animals, the bird species, the threatened and endangered species that are on the wetlands, let's hope that they are following this map and sticking to where they belong. To that point, though, I do see how the town of Arlington has this opportunity to protect these animals, support the plant species, contain pollutants, neutralize harmful bacteria, combat climate change, and prevent flooding in the nearby neighborhoods. So with that preamble, my question is, we've heard consideration on flooding in the nearby neighbors. We've heard some minimal reaction to perhaps dealing with the rats, but my question is, has there been any consideration on the impact of the wildlife that would be in this area endangered and other species? Has there been any impact or understanding on the releasing of harmful heavy metals? Any impact on climate change and the effect that this would have on all those things, including perhaps humane ways of removing babal legal and other species, and perhaps we could release them into New Hampshire. Thank you. John Hessian, can you address a little bit the question about the wildlife? I know there's a wildlife study that's a part of your work. Yes, I'd be happy to. There is a wildlife habitat and vegetation evaluation that was completed at the request of the Conservation Commission. I believe it is on the town's Thorndike Place website. If folks on this meeting have not seen that. In very late person terms, in a very short brief summary, the benefits of the existing habitat or the quality of the existing wildlife habitat and vegetation on the site today is marginal, and much of that has to do with previous disturbance on the site. And actually today, most of it probably due to the homeless encampment that exists out there, their living arrangements and materials that have been brought on to the site. And then secondary to the homeless encampment and those impacts is the impact of invasive species on the area. But that's much better, you know, kind of summarized and outlined in our evaluation that was prepared by one of our wildlife habitat biologists. Thank you, John. You're welcome. Ms. Friedberg, do you have a further question? I mean, all of them, but no, for this audience. Let's show that to the private chat group. Okay, thank you. Next, Chiem Hakim. Yes, thank you very much. I appreciate all the care and the time that the zoning board is devoting to this and the fact that people seem to be listening to the residents of the neighborhood. I mean, this, as we all know, this is almost universally opposed by everyone that lives in town, as well as the town, at least as far as I've heard. Sorry to interrupt you first. As for your address, sorry. Yes, sorry, 10 Edith Street. Thank you. So, you know, we hear a lot about the how much Oak Tree claims to care about the environment and all the environmental mitigation factors that they're going to undertake. I mean, honestly, if they care that much about the environment, they would pick a different site to build. I think we can all agree that affordable housing is something that is necessary, especially as we move into the future. And I think anyone's debating that. But, you know, building, you know, I guess if you want to be sort of pedantic about it's not in a wetland, it's directly abutting a wetland in any way that, you know, it's not an environmentally feasible place to build. If they want to spoil that they care about the environment as much as they claim they do, you know, they'll find another site to build. I think I don't want to go on too long. We all understand what a terrible idea this is and the ramifications of that. But I just want to be on record that, you know, it's not fooling anybody to think, to listen to the rhetoric that we're hearing from Oak Tree to say, oh, well, we care about the environment, we care about the environment. You know, there are other sites that you can build on if that's really a main concern of yours. So thank you for listening. Thank you. Next is John Yerowitz. Yes, can you hear me? I certainly can. Very good. My name is John Yerowitz. I live at 47 March Street for 36 years. I worked in the engineering profession for over 40 years. One thing that worries me dramatically is that it's kind of late in the game to not know for sure if you're going to be driving piles for this project. If so, we risk damage to every house in the neighborhood, whether it be racking doors and windows, twisted roofs, chimney failures, foundation cracks, town service severing at the wall. Okay. We can't do anything. If you're going to drive piles, there's not much being doable except get you guys to get us insurance and cover us. But as an aside to all this, it's just one more bullet in the gun that shoots this project down. Nobody wants it and piles would be a killer. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you. Sylvia Dominguez. Hi. My name is Sylvia Dominguez and I am the town meeting member representing precinct four, which is right here. I need to find out from the people here how many of the houses in district four are going to have increased flooding as a result of this. And also how will the rat infestation be controlled in district four? I don't know. Anybody in my district that wants this and everybody is very upset about it. And I think I need to go back to them and let them know how many more of their, you know, how much often they're going to be flooded. And also, I think that no matter what you say about this place, this is just not a good thing to do in this area. This building is way bigger than anything that surrounds it in Arlington. It doesn't look anything like anything else in Arlington in this area. So as the town meeting member of precinct four, could somebody tell me how much more flooded the houses in district four are going to be? And can somebody also tell me about the rat infestation and what we will do about that? Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hessian, can you speak to localised flooding? So with respect to localised flooding, again, based on, you know, the current FEMA 100 year flood plane in the Arlington wetland bylaw requiring two to one compensatory flood storage. This project is, you know, filling some existing flood plane, but is also providing, you know, that two to one compensatory storage. So we'll be demonstrating that there will be no impacts to localised flooding. On the larger scale, some of the conversations about, you know, increased frequency of storm events and things like that, this neighborhood, you know, is in a low area and people experience it and they'll continue to experience it. But not anything as a direct result from this proposed project. Thank you. Could I ask a question here? Yes. How is that possible that he can say that, considering the fact that there's already flooding happening in this area and that people use their pumps on an ongoing basis? This doesn't make any sense. And I just don't believe that. Okay. And if you're using measurements that you've used up until now, climate change is here, people. Climate change is here. Please listen to that. Okay. I'm going to go back to my district and tell them that there how that nobody's telling us the truth and that nobody's responding for the rats and nobody's responding for the added flooding that's going to occur. Well, Ms. Dominguez, I believe what Mr. Hessian said, and he can correct me if I'm wrong, is he acknowledges that there is flooding that occurs today in this neighborhood. All he is saying is that the level of flooding that this neighborhood sees today is going to be the same level that this neighborhood will see if this project is built. But the project will not increase the level of neighborhood flooding, but it won't do anything to alleviate the neighborhood flooding. Why wouldn't it when you're saying that it's going to divert to the to L. Y. Brooke? I mean, L. Y. Brooke is right here. Okay. So I don't I can't buy this. I'm sorry. This is not scientific. If this is, I mean, it doesn't take much to realize that we're surrounded here by water. I don't understand why you're why we're agreeing to this, considering what is happening in this neighborhood, which is already flooding. I don't understand that. Okay, thank you. Matt McKinnon. Yes, my name is Matt McKinnon and I live at 9 Little John Street. Please go ahead. I just have two questions. The first is if the town of Arlington or the ZPA could point us to a similarly sized project in a neighborhood in Arlington. So we could take a look at it and see what kind of good it would do for the town. As of the two largest projects I'm aware of is Arlington 360 and the Brigham site. Rick, do you know the size of those projects? Or I don't know if there's anyone on from the planning department. So, Mr. Chair, I believe that Arlington 360 was permitted with either 164 or 172 units. The Brigham development, I believe, is smaller, but I do not know the number offhand. And to throw a third project into the mix, the legacy in Arlington Center is also a fairly large apartment complex. I believe it was built around 2000 or 2001. And we don't have any complexes. Do they have, you know, 200 car parking grudges accessing local neighborhood roads or are they connecting up to larger avenues or Massachusetts Avenue or like a link street or a double leaned legacy? Legacy in Arlington Center is on Mass Ave. The Brigham one is on Mill Street with a back way on to the little side street that feeds on to Mill Street that I can't remember the name of. And then Arlington 360 has a large access road from Summer Street. And I believe it has a rear access road that goes out on the local street network, but I don't remember the name of that street either. I do not know how much parking those include, but neither of those were comprehensive permit applications. They were both straightforward projects. I mean, all three were straightforward projects. Okay, thank you. I'd like to, speaking of the comprehensive permit, is that the 40B permit? That is. I do have a question regarding the 40B permit for the ZBA. If anybody could answer this question. When reading about the 40B application process, I came across the, I believe it's a site review, you know, site design review that they conduct to make sure that the development is situated in a community in a way that reflects the surrounding community and size and scope and height and proportions. And, you know, this project when it was first submitted included six townhouses along Dorothy Road with the apartment complex situated behind those townhouses where, you know, looking at the townhouses, you can see where it would fit in the community and kind of hide the apartment complex behind it in a way. But since the application was submitted in 2016, I believe, 2015, at the end of 2015, it's changed considerably where those six townhouses have now been removed. The apartment complex has been pushed forward onto Dorothy Street. So I'm curious if there needs to be another design review. You know, I'm afraid this is like a bait and switch where we were shown one thing, it was approved, and now we're being shown something completely different. And that's my final question. Thank you. Well, thank you. Mr. Haverty, is there any kind of a review at the state level in regards to the concerns that the previous speaker had? With regards to sort of a pre-review of the project in regards to the scale and density and its impact on the neighborhood? So when they get their eligibility letter, there is a review of sort of the density issues and the impact on the neighborhood. There's a design review process that they undertake, but it's rather informal and not super in depth. So it's not really much of a process to prevent an application from coming forward that a town may feel is overly dense. They will look at sort of the relation to the neighboring properties. But at the end of the day, you know, they're not so much looking for a way to stop a project from moving forward. They're looking for ways to allow a project. Mr. Klein, Stephanie Kiefer? If I may just add on to what Paul has stated, just to somewhat give a further picture to the commenter. Once a project is approved by a zoning board, an applicant has to go back then to the subsidizing agency for what's known as final approval. So the project eligibility is the beginning of the process that Paul referenced, but the final approval stage, the applicant goes back with a number of documents, the affirmative fair housing marketing plan, et cetera, but also goes back and presents to the subsidizing agency project modifications that came along during the course. So it somewhat does go full circle that the preliminary application, the project eligibility is submitted to the subsidizing agency. And then at the tail end of the process, I guess you could say final approval is sought of the subsidizing agency. And it's generally during that time that you demonstrate, you provide updated plans and show a narrative or a graphic form of the changes that occurred to the project during the course of the public hearing process. Thank you. And Mr. Chairman, to clarify, is right that that is how the process will work. All I will say is that the subsidizing agency will not do any sort of design review of the finally approved plans. And that's only done during the project eligibility process. So whatever the board issues for a decision, whatever plans the board eventually approves, if they do approve them, will be the final plans. The subsidizing agency won't make any changes to those. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. McKinnon? Those were my final two questions. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes, please. This is Pat. I noticed that it's getting to be here about 10 after 10. I've been sort of holding back on a question that I wanted to follow up on that was raised by somebody earlier. I've not forgotten which speaker it was, but there was more than one. It has to do with, I would like very much before we're finished today for someone to just take the map or take the drawing and try to give us an idea of what it would look like to bring the trucks that we now are going to know or staged some distance away into the neighborhood where the boxes are going to be put. We know that it's not exact, but a general sense because in the discussion, I've just sort of have gotten lost in the words and think that the, that just showing a picture would be great. So I'm not asking for that to be done right now, but I am hoping that it is done before we find that we have to return for the evening. Ms. Kiefer, could you talk to Scott Thornton about preparing that? Okay. Yes. Yes. And just to somewhat clarify some of the discussion with the construction process, and I think that was raised earlier hearing, but obviously before the construction begins, there's a pre-construction meeting that would be with the general contractor planning the police department to work out the details likewise of routes and whatnot. So Mr. Hanlon, to your point in your question, I can work with Vanessa to basically kind of like map out what the recommended or proposed would be, but it's a process that it would be working with the local officials to make certain that everybody's satisfied with the timing and, you know, police details, et cetera. But we can work on that for you. Thank you. Thank you. Susan Stamps? Oh, hi. Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity to say something. Appreciate the hearing. I have three questions. The first one is, I thought I heard Ms. Noyes say that the whole project would be affordable, but then I thought I heard Mr. Clipper say that it was going to be 20, 25 percent affordable, which is it? It's 25 percent and 80 percent of AMI. Okay. And Chairman Klein, if I may also chime in on that, just to clarify for the 100 percent, in terms of the state, what they call the subsidized housing inventory, so it measures how close or where a municipality is in relation to the 10 percent affordability goal. For a rental unit, all units would count. So 25 percent of them would be priced, as the chairman had suggested, but in terms of the state's SHI, all 170 units count towards that. Oh, because they're all going to be rental, not a homeowner? That's correct. Oh, okay. That's good. The second question is, I used to work in West Concord and I was working there at the time that this company, Oak Tree, built Brookside, I forgot what it was called, Brookside Square, or something like that in West Concord. I advise people to go out and look at it. This schematic that they showed tonight was disappointingly similar to what they built in West Concord, with the square buildings with no imagination whatsoever, totally didn't fit into the funky and aged small-scale area in West Concord. And that looks like it's the same complete lack of imagination looking at this schematic. Also, there's a huge amount of blacktop in the Brookside development in West Concord, the whole place is a heat island. It's like walking through a desert, walking through that development. And it looks like it's going to be the same thing with this project, but maybe they could correct my impression of the project. Was there a third question or was that the three? I was just wondering if they have any kind of response like, oh, this is going to be like Concord because XYZ. Ms. Noyes, if you could just give a brief statement on separation. Just timing-wise, we're at 10.14, we have our meeting until 10.30, so very quickly. I will respond to the heat island question. The town of Concord required that there be a ground floor, including office space, and the office space requirement brought with it a parking requirement that we needed to meet. It did require outside parking around the building, and it was according to the ratio that the town required. I should say that we did give back to the town an area of parkland, which is being used by people well, and that was something that we were able to do. As far as your concern about the look of the building and taste, nobody can account for that. We get many compliments and there are clearly some people like you who don't particularly like it, so that's hard to please everybody. Okay. Very quickly, trees. How many trees do you expect to be taken down for this project? I don't know if Ms. Noyce can answer that, or if that's Mr. Hessian question. We have not conducted a tree inventory. We've talked with the Conservation Commission about the commission requires a tree count for trees removed from a resource area, and as this plan has evolved, and we've essentially requested the commission that we do that when the plan is final, has been finalized, but there's been no tree count conducted today. Well, are we talking five trees, 50 trees? I mean, just some estimate. No, I mean, there's clearly a significant, you know, the development footprint of this project is approximately five acres, four and a half to five acres, so there are trees that will need to be removed to construct this project. We're probably talking about dozens, tens, maybe, dozens of trees. Okay. Now, the statement was made a few minutes ago that there was a flood map that was done, and that the project will not cause any more flooding. But in fact, when you take trees down, tree roots hold water. And when you take trees down, that causes flooding. It happened to me personally, and where I used to live in Carlyle, I backed up to a wetland. I took down two willow trees, and I had two feet of water in my basement, had been a dry basement for 30 years. So have you done any discussion of the effect on flooding by taking down trees? Mr. Hessian? Yeah, I'll kind of circle back to, you know, there's a performance standard for floodplain storage, floodplain impacts, and compensatory storage for those impacts. There's a standard under the Wetlands Protection Act, and the town of Arlington has a more stringent requirement. And our design has taken both the state and the town of Arlington's performance standards into account, and we're providing a two-to-one compensatory storage volume for the floodplain impacts of the project. But I haven't heard any mention of the impact of removing the trees and their roots. So, which, and you're not saying that that was included. So I'm assuming it wasn't. There's no, essentially the way that the removal of vegetation is really included in the analysis and design is in the stormwater management design. So when you go from a land cover type of, you know, wooded to a impervious surface or a lawn area, you, it results in a higher runoff amount in the proposed condition compared to the existing condition, and then that's incorporated into the stormwater management system sizing and design, but not in a flood storage in the root structure of a tree, per se, but it is accounted for, but not in the way that maybe I didn't answer your initial question properly. All right. Well, I'm not exactly sure what that meant, but I think I've used up my time, and I appreciate the answers. Thank you. Thank you. So we do have till 1030, and I'm willing to push us right up to it, but I think we do still need to have a vote to, that this hearing will continue. So we need to put a continuation into place. So I was going to briefly move that this, Mr. Havity, if I can do this, can I, can I vote to move the hearing, continue the hearing to a date certain, and then still accept people speaking now, just so that I don't accidentally have the meeting cut out on us? Right. You can't vote to continue the meeting and then continue to take additional comments. It certainly set up a date, and make sure that you vote on that date by 1029. Yeah. Okay. All right, we'll do that then, and I'll go on to the next on the list is Nicholas Aide. Yes, thank you. My name is Nicholas Aide. I live at 152 Lake Street, which is on the corner of Lake and Middle John. I have a comment and a question, and just some observations. I've heard a lot of statements tonight. I appreciate the opportunity for the house meeting to learn, to speak, all of that to share. Thank you very much for that opportunity. I've heard a lot of statements from the developers that they're not sure of this, and they're not sure of that, but they are sure that we aren't going to have extra flooding in our basements, which I find very surprising. So I'm just making that observation. I am sure that my neighborhood will not look the same with a four story monstrosity looming at the end of my street. I'm absolutely 100% sure of that. So, sorry, that's a fact. I'm sure of that. On the question side, the question I have is about these modules. We've brought that up a bunch of times. The developers have mentioned about staging areas. I don't care about the staging area. I don't understand how any size module that builds a building that size, by the way, back there, it'll be able to see probably from my window, and I'm all the way at the Lake Street side. Thank you very much. I don't understand how those modules are going. As other people have said, Mr. Hanlon included, how in the world that's going to come up Lake Street where there's no heavy trucking and come around the corner, where it's a tight corner anyway, and there are accidents that happen, and do that for two years or 12 to 18 months. I'm sorry, I'm a little agitated, but it doesn't seem rational. It really doesn't seem like a rational project to me, and I think people are not being honest with themselves about the way it's going to impact the people that live in this neighborhood, who love this neighborhood, who love this town. That is all. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, if I may interrupt, it's Rick Valerly. We time out at 10.30, which does not give us much time. No, I know we will. We got five more minutes. I got one more name on the list. So we'll do this quickly, and then we'll vote to continue. So, Heather Keith Lucas. Hi, thank you so much. My name is Heather Keith Lucas. I'm a resident at 10 Mott Street. A couple of comments, and I'll try to be brief. I'm thankful for my other neighbors who've raised such critical questions and concerns to this board tonight, and I urge you to consider their points. I am deeply concerned about the health and safety of our neighborhood children. Our children currently ride their bikes in our streets, in part because of the low volume of traffic we have, and our neighbors currently are quite considerate with the kids in their bikes and being safe. Construction for years will reduce the air quality in this neighborhood and their ability to run freely. The safety of the children and my adult neighbors will be in jeopardy with a significant increase in traffic, not to mention the rats that would need to be addressed, and I'm not sure that that truly is being heard right now. We've already needed to pull up our garden this summer because of the rat problem. It is significant. I do question the safety of the intended residents of the proposed property. Oak Tree spoke that the intended population will include seniors and potentially those in wheelchairs as well. I'm concerned specifically why it's okay to build a large development for low-income senior population on a flood plain. We have flash flooding that happens on Dorothy Road now on a fairly regular basis. When it does happen, it happens very quickly. When that happens and someone who is physically disabled is stuck in the garage or in the elevator when that happens, I'm not sure what will happen, what their safety will be, and it seems unconscionable from a social perspective to allow this building to be developed on a wetland where it does flood. Even for those who are not disabled, for those that are low income, their car is most like they're the most expensive valuable and that's gone once it floods. Anything further? Not at this time. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, that was the last name on the list and we have under four minutes until we are timed out. So with that, I will move that the board will continue this hearing in two weeks, which will be Tuesday, February 9th at 7.30 p.m. Um, may I have a second on that? Second. Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Quick roll call vote. Mr. Hanlon? Aye. Mr. Mills? Aye. The board? Aye. The Revillac? Aye. The Bureau of Work? Aye. The chair votes aye. So we are continued on Thawndyke Place until Tuesday, February 9th at 7.30 p.m. That was the last item on our agenda. So thank you all for your participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting, especially wish to thank Revelle Aurelie and Vincent Lee for all their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting. Please note the purpose of the board's reporting for the meeting is to ensure the creation of accurate record of its proceedings. Our understanding that the recording made by ACMI will be available on demand at ACMI.tv within the coming days. If anyone has comments or recommendations, please send them via email to zbaatown.arlington.ma.us. That email address is also listed on the ZBA website. All comments received will be included in the agenda for the forthcoming meeting. To conclude tonight's meeting, I'll ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Second? Second. All board members in favor of adjournment, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? We stand adjourned. Thank you all so much for your time this evening. Thank you.