 James Sleming, Precinct 3, article proponent. This was common ground, a restaurant that sat on the corner of Mass Ave and Broadway in Arlington Center. Since the building was built before the current zoning by-law, there was a point of contention when the restaurant opened, not enough parking. However, there was a process available to try and open anyways, the special permit. Special permits are a tool to regulate uses that are allowed, but where the impact is a perceived threat to the town or those nearby. This is a section of the zoning by-law showing an example of when restaurants need a special permit. These apply when a restaurant replaces another type of business, or brand new building is built. For restaurants, anything under 2,000 square feet can usually be done without a special permit, and anything over 2,000 square feet requires one. Here's what the timeline for a special permit looks like. The applicant advertises in a local paper, has public hearings, and if approved, has to wait for any appeals. If everything goes smoothly, a special permit takes about 2 months of time. During the hearing, the applicant's site plan and a good chunk of their business plan get presented, public comments are heard, and the town has wide latitude to ask for changes. In the case of common ground, here is a summary of the special permit that was issued. The owner was required to reduce seating at the restaurant, have restrictions on live music, and more. According to the owner, he wasn't happy with these changes, but accepted them after just two public hearings because he could not afford to keep stretching out the process any further, with each hearing costing $10,000. Note that this cost is not a fee imposed by the town. It was the cost to prepare and present application materials to the town as part of the special permit. This is a guy who had already launched a successful restaurant in Alston and who had the money and willpower to open a 5300 square foot restaurant, and yet the cost of going through the special permit process was high enough that two hearings was all he could afford to do. To me, if this is a problem for him, what about the entrepreneur who wants to open a smaller restaurant, say 2,500 or 3,000 square feet? Will they choose to open their restaurant somewhere else? Maybe they won't do it at all. This article would increase that threshold from 2,000 to 3,000 square feet so that slightly larger and slightly more numbers of restaurants can be opened in town without a special permit. For scale, Arlington Diner in East Arlington is 2,000 square feet, which is the current upper limit. Penzi Spices in the heights is 3,000 square feet and would become the new upper limit. Note that these regulations only apply to cases where the size of the restaurant is the trigger for the special permit. If a restaurant needs a special permit because there isn't enough parking, they would still have to go through it. In summary, this proposal would allow slightly more restaurants without requiring a special permit, reducing the barrier to entry for restaurants in Arlington. You should support this because the town and its residents want more restaurants and making it easier to open a restaurant will make that goal more possible. Thank you.