 Sorry. Sorry. This is just Amherst media again. Are we, are there going to be mics so that we can hear the board members? Yes. Okay, great. Sorry. Thank you. Amherst media. What do you see? All I see is the planning board members in the town hall room. I know that you guys typically present, but you have, you know, like planning board stuff that you typically share your screen. That's the only way we'd be able to see. Okay. Well, as long as you can see the planning board member. Because all we're seeing here in this room is a purple screen. On my, on my, on the PC, I can see Amherst media is in the house and I can see the board members. So why don't we go ahead with the way we're going to go ahead, the public and watch us in the room. We can obviously hear ourselves and we can be heard by the public. Right. Okay. And we all I think have the handouts that we were going to look at this. That's correct. So we don't need to broadcast on the screen. Okay, if you're able to bring them up on your screen so that Amherst. The documents, I'm not sure that seems to be what the problem was when I was trying to do that. Okay. But they have all been posted as the night so people could actually go there and bring that up. That is correct. All right. Good. So we're good to go. You are. Okay. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of November 29 2023. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst planning board, I am calling this meeting to order at 609 p.m. This planning board meeting is being held in the town room at the Amherst town hall. However, this is a hybrid meeting members of the planning board and members of the public pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended again by chapter two of the acts of 2023 may access this meeting via zoom. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media minutes are being taken. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting. Or you can go to the planning boards webpage and click on the most recent agenda, which has the zoom link at the top of the page. Please be aware that the in person meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual meeting unless otherwise required by law. Every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members I will take a roll call when I call your name. Please answer affirmatively whether you are but please answer affirmatively I will state for the record that all the town, all the board members are present in the room. Bruce Coldham. He has it answered affirmatively Fred Hartwell. Jesse major. I dug Marshall I'm present Janet McGowan. Johanna Newman. Are in winter. Right. In case they were not audible in the recording. All the members answered affirmatively for those participating remotely please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak. After speaking remember to remute yourself. Planning board members who are present in the town room should raise their hands when they wish to speak and the microphone will be passed to you we have two microphones this evening wanted either end of the table. I don't think the one on the other end is turned on yet, but it can be when we are ready to use it. General public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting if deemed appropriate by the chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when couple public comment is solicited or raise your hand if you are present in the town room. If you joined the zoom meeting using a telephone please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on the phone. When when called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes for at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with the guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. Having read these prepared remarks, I do want to say that it's unclear to me whether you will be able to see raised hands. You should be able to see those those hands. Okay, so we now can see the zoom screen on the screen here in the room. So maybe even I can see those raised hands assuming I'm able to look up and notice them. Okay, good. So those comments are actually applicable this evening. All right, first item on the agenda and it is now 614. Our is the general public comment period. So this is for comments from the public on items not on tonight's agenda. So not related to university drive and a potential housing overlay or related to rather generic comment agenda items of rental housing issues in general housing. We have four members of the public that I can see Janet Keller, Jennifer Taub, Louise C and Pam Rooney. So any members of the public in want to make a comment at this time. There are no members of the public in the room with us. Okay, I don't see any hands raised on the zoom screen by the members of the public who are watching on zoom. So we will conclude that there are no public comments this evening. I'm now is 615 and we'll go on to item two on the agenda. University Drive potential housing overlay zone. Presentation and discussion about concept for an overlay zoning district to allow more housing with a mix of apartment buildings and mixed use buildings, including ideas for streetscape design. All right, so why don't we let the staff start the conversation. Bruce, you have your hand raised and it sounds like it looks like you would like to start with a comment. Can you get the microphone? We received minutes from September 27th and earlier one of these meetings retention become even though I wasn't there I found extremely helpful. Are we not expecting to approve those minutes? I don't believe we were expecting to approve those minutes this evening. Chris, what was your intent? The intent was not to approve those minutes because we didn't want to spend that time tonight, but we will have an opportunity to review them on December 6, our next meeting. Okay, so in fact, next week, we will officially discuss them. But I'm glad you were able to send those out and sounds like Bruce at least found them to be very helpful. I guess that's a lengthy set of minutes. Oh, I guess as long as I'm thinking about the length of the meetings. Since we're in person and we've started at six, we typically do that to try to let our staff get home and have dinner sooner than meetings that start later. So, I guess my hope is that we can make this about a two hour meeting. And we've gotten off to a fairly fast start. Maybe talk about university drive for about an hour. Now, and then leave us half an hour or a little bit more or less for the discussion of the rental housing issues. All right. So, Chris, would you like to introduce the materials that were prepared for this meeting? Yes, thank you. I'm Chris Brestra planning director and I have Nate Malloy planner and we are going to sort of tag team on this. We have a number of things that we've prepared for you, all of which are available in the packets that are online, even though we're not for some reason able to show them tonight on the screen. But they are online for anybody who wants to look at them under the planning board page. And there is a packet on the planning board page which people can access and maybe Pam is going to do wizardry now and be able to show it, but I'm not sure if that will happen. Anyway, among the things that we had were a map showing a potential area of an overlay district along university drive and it includes both sides of university drive between Amity street and root nine. And it goes roughly one, one property deep each side. It also includes a property on the north side of Amity street, which I think is owned by Jones properties. And it includes Hawkins Meadow and spelute motors on the south side. And a little piece of the PR PR piece district. So, I think all of the planning board members have access to that map and also the members of the public via the planning board packet. Oh, Pam has worked a miracle and has been able to show these documents. Thanks, man. This second thing that we want to draw your attention to is what is this a three page document that describes what this overlay zoning district might be and asks us some questions that we would like some guidance on tonight about what the planning board thinks about these things. We also have some images of buildings that are similar to what might be built in this area. These images are all from New England as far as I know. And so we can look at those later. We also have a document that we prepared back in 2021 that had to do with a BL overlay district that was being proposed for downtown Amherst and that was a in, I guess it was an incipient zoning amendment but it never really got to be proposed, but it has a lot in it that we might want to borrow from for this overlay zone. And then let's see the last thing I think we have what we have two more things. One is a document that Janet McGowan put together it's called possible Amherst housing solutions. And Janet has gone through and listen to all of the planning board meetings where the planning board discussed housing and she wrote down all of the different ideas that people had and I think it's a very useful document because it's really, it's quite complete. It's got pretty much everything. And then the last thing I wanted to draw your attention to were some items that Bruce called and emailed us about he wasn't able to attend a site visit today. And I'll describe the site visit but he did send some questions so we might be able to direct our attention to those items. I'll just give a small short rendition of a site visit that we held today. Janet McGowan and Karen winter and I drove around in my car. And it was really quite enlightening, even though I have been up and down university drive many, many times but to see it and really think about what was there. All the shops. There really are very few residential dwellings there except for the arbors and a development that Harry Roberts built recently at 70 university but otherwise it's mostly businesses. Most of the buildings are one story. There are little a few two story buildings on the side where the hanger is. There are two, there were three marijuana establishments there. I think there's one that it's actually operating now. And it's really kind of a, you know, I would say somewhat of a mishmash of different things, lots of parking wetland fingers coming in between properties. Do either Janet or Karen, would you recognize them to elaborate on on that site visit. Yeah, we and it I was surprising to me to see that there were really empty buildings that were there and so much parking that we had no idea was there so much paved over land. It's definitely a mishmash, as you said, on the parking front, I was surprised like a lot of those little buildings have parking in the front and a lot of parking behind so it's the lots are much bigger in terms of impermeable surface that I knew. So just to add to that, in addition, we drove to some of the peripheral areas like we drove through Hawkins Meadow which is an apartment complex south of root nine. We drove through green leaves which is a condominium development that is in a PRP district south of root nine. We drove through Charles Lane, which is off Amity Street it's a little single family development and we also drove through Amity Place so we got a sense of all the surrounding residential areas so it was really a good reminder of what's there. So, and we had a good conversation about what we were seeing. So that's site visit report now. And we drove through UMass through the portion of UMass that was listed in the U3 report as a potential area of development and that is an area that's now parking parking lots across from Southwest dorms across University Drive so we looked at that. And then we drove up, what is it, Massachusetts Avenue and we drove by the new building that's currently being finished. So I think that's the end of the report but then I wanted to say that Bruce Coldham had some questions and comments that he has made about that area which he wanted to add to the site visit report and with Mr. Marshall's permission, either Bruce or I can read those. Do you want to read them Bruce? Yes, because I couldn't go, I decided not to go this morning and risk compromising my ability to be here tonight I guess I didn't know how I would be feeling. In the past, in the recent weeks I had spent some time driving up and down there and on the side roads and looking in probably much as you did and then looking at the parcel maps and seeing who owns them and how they are linked and all this sort of stuff. And the observations that I made were that there weren't any empty lots of wedding development and that there were seven lots along the north and western side of the University Drive starting from the small body parcels but not including them because I thought they were three stories that had an elevator. I was trying to establish what I thought just rudimentarily were candidates for redevelopment and other places that were probably not so immediately obvious because of the level of development that's there. I thought that there was the seven lots along the north and western side of the University Drive seemed to me and that kind of analysis to be the low hanging crew. It's not that this hanging necessarily keeps me low because it includes in charter and places that are quite new but still only single story. That there was a little likelihood of, I can't remember what number three was. I interpreted it as that there was little likelihood that changing the zoning would actually spur development which I think we could argue about. I think I thought that places like the Victory and the new development that Barry Roberts has put in and then the others and the Health Centre at the other end on the east side. There was really only that 100 University Drive which is a two story building which I think I was probably probably involved in designing 40 years ago. It seems that it's probably a two story commercial and I thought anybody who put an elevator in a building probably diminished the likelihood they would tear it down and rebuild but that was just my thought as I observed. And then I looked at North of University Drive and I had this crazy idea that where the University owns or in control of passers along both sides and particularly the east side of that. It's a narrow strip of control with the University and it's backed up by some extremely long lots that come down from some set. And because of the way I created the co-housing community in North Amersby excruciating acquisitions and rearrangements and petitions of lots and things. I thought something like that is possible to do. It's not usually done but theoretically it was possible to create something on that side of the road with unusual cooperation and initiative between multiple parties. So, well, this was just my observation of looking at the parcels. So my site visit was a little different from yours in that I was doing it using the parcel maps and things like that. And it just seemed to me, it's always seemed to me that the... Try to begin with the microphone. You're just talking really soft and I don't know whether your voice will be caught in the recording. Sounds like I'm bellowing. Oh, I know what the problem is. That's good. That's the problem. It seemed to me that the real potential for development was also along the north side of University Drive owned by the University. And I was interested to read that U3 Advices report that came around. Unfortunately, that seemed to be focused on the parcel, the parking area that's now got fairly heavy investment of PV canopies on it. But the east side of the drive without knowing anything much about the wetland positions, although imagining that there's probably something problematic in that regard, but that the fact that there are so many, there are a number of very long parcels coming down from sunset that theoretically could be truncated with the cooperation of all of the landowners, of course, but they wouldn't be reducing their parcels to non-conforming lots. And I don't know how deep down they care about their parcels towards University Drive, that the back ends of those parcels could theoretically be sheared off and coupled with the land owned by the University and if the wetland situation wasn't compromising, that theoretically there could be quite an attractive and useful housing development along that stretch of University Drive as well. So that was my side visit. Alright, thanks Bruce. So I mentioned when you were, or interjected when you were talking about your observations that you, I wasn't, I would, I'm not sure that there are, or I think that there are some parcels where you could do some development that are south of Amity Street. The corner lot where the pot shop is right at the corner of Amity Street and University Drive. The, you know, the slowbitty building is pretty far back from the road. And we were talking last time about the fact that the property line is right at the sort of eastern edge of that secondary drive. So there's a fair amount of distance in there. Even where the Big Y Mall is, if you put a building right along University Drive, there's plenty of room before you get back to the Big Y Mall. And then the two story 100 University Drive that is on the east side and you mentioned is also set back pretty far. So, and by, and Chris, you didn't mention that there is 70 University Drive that exists also, which is at least four stories, right? Is it three? It's three stories. Okay, so that's a, that's a multi-story relatively new residence building that's larger in scale than most of everything along that stretch except for the slowbitty building. So those were the parcels that I thought, you know, I've seen in other cities where there was a deep parcel that maybe had a mall behind it where the developer came and built a new building right along the street to try to make, you know, new urbanized housing or development and then, you know, whether the original mall stayed or was eventually torn down, you know, it depends. But so, you know, I think there's some, I personally think there's some potential, even if, you know, this isn't maybe the most fruitful place to rezone in town. It's not bad to give a little bit more opportunity for something to happen, even, you know, and we can hope. But obviously we're not the ones building. My only other comment would be that along north of Amity Street where the university does own both sides. When I've ridden my bike along that bike path, it looks really wet along the east side as you go back, you know, even like 30 feet. It's pretty wet and I'd be awfully surprised if there wasn't a lot of interest from the Conservation Commission in leaving that alone. But who knows. But in general, I think we should be talking about land that UMass doesn't own so that we can actually influence what we can influence. Okay. Next. Anybody else? Chris, I see Karen, I see your hand. You will be next. I did want to ask, Chris, were you hoping that we could go through this concept ideas document and kind of, you know, get to each section and give you feedback on what you've written or the questions you've asked. Okay, she says yes. So Karen, go ahead. Just briefly, when we were driving along, I know Chris mentioned big why you could put another story on there. I think if we loosen some of the regulations and as you said, there's so much impervious parking there, you never see it filled up. There could be something along the road there, which could be attract much more attractive and unify the streetscape in a way a little bit like these pictures that we have here. So I'm very excited about potential in this area. Good. So you're also reminding me on route nine where Home Depot is for years, there wasn't anything between route nine and Home Depot. And, you know, they came in the last few years and built that strip in front that has the jeweler and a couple of restaurants in it. I forget and maybe there's that men's clothing store or something. But anyway, what's that hot table. Okay, I haven't been there. But anyway, so, so that's another instance. It may not be exactly what we have in mind, but, you know, at least there's a developer or an owner who recognized the parking wasn't being used and I could build some more rentable space. Chris, so would you like me to moderate this or do you want to go through and read, or, you know, going through this, this document you put together, where's the microphone. I was going to suggest that Nate could take over now and talk about what do we need to decide because he was the one who really came up with this concept about need to decide these things before we can move on so we know what kind of dimensions we're talking about, what kinds of buildings we're talking about, etc. Okay, I think then Janet had a comment that she wanted to make before we get to Nate. So, when I'm reading the U3 report, and then driving today, you know, I, when I was doing this work originally I was kept on thinking University Village, you know, I'm calling it in my mind. And then I realized after reading the U3 report, this has already been thought about and, and there are proposals by UMass to build a long university drive. And I do think there are wetlands issues in this whole section. I mean, like the whole road, you know, you could just see little, you know, when you look at the maps you can see the little wetlands plants and stuff like that. And I know Barry Roberts had to deal with that at 70 University Drive. And so to me, you know, I'm interested in this discussion here, but I think we need to step back and think of this in a more cohesive way. And also what Karen has been saying and what they said in the U3 report is that we need to work town gown. We need to work with UMass on University Village as it could extend up. The university has tons of wind up there, parking lots, you know, kind of grassy verges that don't do anything. And so I think, you know, if we're interested in getting them to build more beds and they have a report recommending places for beds as well as other places on campus, we should build on what has been done and keep moving forward that way. And if we, you know, I'm interested in looking at this section of University Drive, but to me it has to be part of a bigger effort working with UMass and students and everybody to kind of like what's the vision, what's the village look like. And then establish that and then work to the zoning that would fit that. You know, like the zoning here, everything is three stories right now. So it's not an issue. It's probably locked coverage. It's more of an issue. And then what can be built in the, you know, four different zoning districts. But I think that we need to step back and think of this in a bigger way and work with the partners who are right next door, you know, who could solve the problems or they've already, I mean, this report already covered all this ground. But anyway, I thought it was very interesting and exciting. All right. Thank you, Nate. Sure. Thanks. You know, on the, the handout, you know, housing overlay zoning district concept ideas. You know, there's a question posed, you know, what should be decided first and so, you know, establishing the district purpose and goals, the geographic area, and then definitions and then, you know, the rest of the document is really, you know, standards and conditions are things that would already support, you know, go into the details of formulating an overlay. But I think at the last time we talked about this, you know, there was an agreement about what actually would happen on the University Drive if it was an overlay district. Is it student only housing? Is it a mix of apartments and mixed use buildings? Is it social dormitories? And so I think, you know, what Janet just asked is important, but it's also like, okay, would we allow a lot of students to live here through the market forces or would we try to change how what we want to see here? Do we allow townhouses? And I think, you know, what are we trying to solve with this overlay? Is it more housing in general? Is it for a specific population? And so I think those are the questions we should be asking. So really what are the purpose and goals? And we can, you know, I think there wasn't agreement yet. And so I think that's really important because it could, you know, having that could help shape really what we're thinking about here. Chris? I just also wanted to say that it takes UMass a really long time to do anything and to make any decisions. So I don't think we need to wait or should wait for UMass to make decisions. We can certainly work with them, let them know what we're doing and encourage them to do things on their property. But if we wait, it's going to take 10 years for them to do something and we don't have that much time. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, in response, Nate, to your, your, your opening question, I guess my personal vote would be that it's open to anybody that wants to live there. Students, young professionals, seniors who want to be close to the healthcare that's right around the corner or near the bus lines, everybody. So I would be, I would support general housing of whatever persuasion that was built. You know, if people are concerned that this would, these would just become more dormitories and think that this is a bad place for that. You know, I might be open to talking about the allowable unit sizes and whether, you know, maybe two bedrooms as the maximum to try to keep it to smaller family groups in this type of housing and no four bedroom units, which seemed to be the predominant unit type that caters to the student market. Anybody else have any thoughts about that? Janet. So just to frame it, I'm not really thinking of this as an overly district, just like the concept, like this area. I don't know if it's a zoning district or whatever, but just for, I think we should play it out. Looking at the way you're looking at it or suggesting, but what if this was just a student village too, because like that's the problem that people have is, and it's in the U3 report. It's in, you know, the Indians in every neighbor that comes to talk to us is there's too much student housing in kind of residential neighborhoods and it's not a good mix. And so what if we predominantly put students in here and it could be up to a thousand students or a thousand beds? You know, what if UMass built 2,000 beds? You know, also, and that will just change our market. And so I'm not saying let's say just student housing, but let's think of that as a possibility. Like what if this was a student village and maybe looking at some examples of other universities that have built that and what worked and what didn't? Because I know, is it Boulder is doing one and there's, so that crazy British guy, you know, so we've been listening to examples of other places. So if it was just a student village, let's think about that and then keep your idea in mind of just, oh, maybe it's mixed for everybody because we do need stuff for staff and kind of working places. Well, I mean, we do have people in town who are strong advocates for more affordable housing, you know, and which typically doesn't go to students. So, you know, if we built a thousand beds in this neighborhood, a whole, you know, we'd have, I don't know, what is it, a hundred or something affordable units that we don't have now and isn't that a good thing. But if we limit it to students, we don't do that. So, you know, I think there's competing interests. Yeah, no, I agree. But I'm just saying is like, let's play out that scenario too, because that could be where that student demand gets put in a way that doesn't have impacts. You know, there's almost nobody living around. Okay, Bruce, I saw your hand next. My thoughts a couple of weeks ago were that focusing and restricting or toward the student housing exclusivity was a good idea because that seemed to be the problem we were addressing in town. But then I read the conversation of September 27 today, and I saw that this had been thrashed out some and I mean not thrashed out it had begun to be opened up and I wasn't here so I didn't know that until I read. And I think I would be more inclined to say, well, if what I just said is true, if there is a strong demand for student housing in town. And we did suggest that and make this a more general zone. Then the market would theoretically move towards concentrating on answering that problem, but we don't necessarily have to have a heavy hand in this. So I'm moving to supporting the proposition that you articulated. Johanna. Thanks, Doug. I think we've talked a lot, and maybe we'll get to it more when we talk about other housing issues, but I feel like we just have a shortage of supply. And the more that we can just address that supply shortage with maximum flexibility. We can let the market kind of fill in and the more restrictions we put on it, the more we limit that ability. So that makes me think, open it up to all types of residents. There will probably be some students that live there. There will probably be graduate students and young faculty that move there. I think about Amity Place and the number of young faculty or graduate students starting out in Amherst who live at Amity Place as the first spot they go to. I think there's a niche for that. And by making it general residents, we would make sure that the inclusionary and affordable housing requirements are there, which I think is a deeply held value in town and a housing type that we really need. So my inclination is also to have it be more general and not restricted to just students. Hey, Jesse. Thanks. My thoughts are not to necessarily try and be restrictive only students allow developers to do with, I think, the rent, which will probably mostly students, frankly. And I'll repeat what I said, I think it was at that last meeting. I feel very strongly that the commercial stuff that they're now, at least on the East End. Sorry, South End. South End is really essential for all of us too as town members. And so I'd want to do whatever we can to encourage whatever new development keeps what's there and grows what's there from the commercial. So mixed use. And again, I don't know what the tools are to make that happen or encourage that to happen. But I think it'd be a shame if it ended up just housing, because then I might not want to go there. This is too much of a hassle and there's not enough drawn. So I think we should keep that in mind as well. And I've also felt like the health, the health functions that are there are valuable to keep Janet. So, you know, I have, you know, mixed feelings. I think that gets me back to the village, village center planning kind of idea and your idea earlier about having some green space or playgrounds for kids that, you know, there's some amenities there for families. You know, even if it's student housing only, you still the inclusionary zoning requirement applies to it and you're supposed to spread the affordable units throughout the building, which I don't think is a real treat for those families. You know, and so we were talking about that problem at Aspen Heights or Chase or whatever, that the affordable units are, it's a student housing development and they're spread around. And it's not that it's really a conflict of kind of lifestyles to put it mildly. So maybe I was saying what about, you know, you could build a separate building or section off the family area, maybe change the bylaw to let that happen. So if it was like 100 units and 10 were affordable, maybe those 10 units are grouped on the same floor. So if it's families and non students that they could kind of have a more early to bed. So they could be first floor units that have a yard behind them. Yeah. All the other people, whoever those are people are upstairs. When you characterized Aspen Heights as a student complex, was it designed for students and it was the developer pretty upfront about that or was it designed as market rate apartments that are open to anyone. Chris. It was initially proposed as a student housing development, but the town doesn't like student housing developments except in those few areas where we allowed the social dormitories. So the town and the ZBA pushed the developer to develop it as a family general everybody can live here. And then the families were invited as part of the affordable housing, but we're saying now, maybe that's not the best model doesn't always work. And we may need to think of a different model, but Nate could help us figure out how to do that because there may be state laws about not segregating certain types of people. In other words, can you segregate the families from the students in an affordable in a development that has affordable housing the state may have regulations about that. Okay. Nate, do you want to comment about that I see a couple other hands. Yeah, I think that, you know, I think Aspen Heights is one example we don't have too many others actually yet where there's a lot of units that are mostly students and then there's you know the 1010 or 12% that are affordable which are which are not students and so I think 11 to 13 is pleasant will be one where they have you'll have a fair number of affordable units and we'll see what that's like in a year or two but yeah my thought is if the market does what the market does and most of these are student rentals and we have our affordable units I'd rather see a larger percentage of affordable units, you know or a higher percent am I so right now we have 12% and under 80% area median income. You know I've been saying well what if we had an additional percentage up to 20% so 13 to 20% of the units would be up to 150% am I so then we're trying to get to the missing middle, and you know it wouldn't be capital affordable it'd be a local restriction. I mean the state would probably allow it but it would be something that the town would monitor be more work you know for the town but it's you know I feel like there's a balance at which you know students and non students can live together and I don't know if the you know when it's 9010 I don't think that's a good balance and so I don't know what the market will do so if we do allow density here and a new building goes in will it be 9010 you know whatever our inclusionary zoning areas or would a developer do something different just because they also want to have a mix of residents and so you know I'm a little torn to like how heavy handed are we here you know do we have a little bit more regulation in terms of affordability or income or you know like the dog was saying you know could we say that 10% if you have an apartment building of over 50 units 10% have to be three bedrooms or none can be four bedrooms I mean I could we do that but it typically doesn't get into the interior of a building I think it can get into proportionality of bedroom of unit sizes but not getting really specific and so yeah I mean to me that's kind of it goes back to the purpose though so in goals is this anyone can live here let's make it open in general market and how do we try to influence or try to get a mix of residents right a diversity of residents as opposed to right now seems like it would just be mostly students and so I think there's tools I think we'd have to investigate a little bit. So has been Heights there's like five thank you sorry I saw your eyes so is built by the national developer of student housing and they run a van to UMass and to the Hadley stores pretty often and so that's their market if you go on their website students students students and so we have met members is met it's like housing production targets and almost all of it went to students right and so that's who's building all the major developers that we're seeing are often national developers of student housing because I see high turnover and high rents and so we should assume if we build a thousand you know beds probably most of them will go to students or we could say 50% of this building has to be non non student and that would create some space for you know it may no one may want to come build here because if you can charge $2,000 for per month for 350 square feet. I don't think you're going to be that's not family housing and that you're never going to see you're not going to see families but you're going to you will you see the developers coming in getting less per square foot for housing. Okay. Jesse I saw your hand a while ago. Go ahead. I guess this was really a question. I think for Nate wrote the document with bullet points. One of them made me think inclusionary zoning was not necessarily required or there were ways in this overlay to not have that is that right. We're not going to. I think depending on how we structure the overlay it doesn't have to apply so right now you know it applies to most residential use types it doesn't apply to. You know the social dormitories for instance so what was built up on university or on Olympia Drive doesn't need to have inclusionary units but in the if this were an overlay we could say that. You know we're coming up with a new apartment definition and inclusionary zoning doesn't apply to that so. You know I think we'd have to be careful because we do have the uses already established in the bylaw so what we haven't done is said you know we're coming up with a new. Anything new yet but it could it could be the case that we could do that. Could we within this zoning within this overlay allow social dormitories without requiring affordable housing percentages and mixed use buildings that are market driven and open to anyone that would would be required to have those affordable percentages. You could so in the overlay right we could take the existing residential use types we have and say whether or not they're allowed so maybe. The social dormitories allowed by special permit in the overlay but other ones are by site plan review and is that enough of incentive that the mixed use buildings are built. And not you know all social dormitories and it could be that. You know if we did that and we see the first two projects or three are just the social dormitories we say okay we don't like where it's going. You know do we change that. You know the difficulty would be do those then become some you know non conforming or what happens with how they're. You know what's the zoning after that but. Yeah you know it is one of those things like how you know. I think some developers might come in the national chains and I say this is great. Or if we have you know certain requirements that you know limit size and height maybe local developers will still be interested in this. You know it won't be opening it up to like landmark to come back again. You know it'll be like okay I'll do a 50 unit building it's not a 500 unit building it's 50 units. What's there now is you know one story. You know commercial building but they're willing to put in the mixed use building. You know it's hard to say exactly. You know who would be the ones who to develop this you know we're offering that an opportunity with an overlay we don't actually know who would come in and take advantage of it. Well having asked that question the social dormitories typically don't have any commercial space in them. And that would that would be a problem for me in terms of what I'm interested in because you know when I looked at your photos of the different. Examples you know I really respond positively to the buildings that have pretty transparent first floors that are offices and commercial so. I would have a hard time figuring out you know do we need a social dormitory type that. Still requires commercial on the first floor or non residential use of some sort. And is that you know are we creating a new hybrid monster that you know I mean. That we don't have yet. So Johanna I think you were next. She's had her hand up a little while probably before yours so Bruce you're after that. I just still come back to the primary thing of we just need to produce more housing. And once we produce more housing we'll see where the market settles out but you know so much of the pressure on the neighborhoods is that the students need to live somewhere. And by creating just more opportunities I think. That's like a critical step that's going to move us in the right direction. Okay Bruce. A couple of comments if I may just to clarify my social dormitories we mean more or less what we've approved for Olympia drive. Yes. Yeah. I agree with Doug I think there's a strong. We should hold strong to the notion of mixed use of the first floor that the ground floor at least in the street front be. Encourage to support the kind of commercial activity commercial retail activity that would be. Support the kind of activity that residential activities that we're hoping to. And following that a little. I. What I want to ask myself and therefore I guess the process is if we are. Ups owning this I think it is an ups owning thing I think we're talking about so we're adding value potential value to this parcels. And depending on a number of things particularly story heights whether it's four or five. I guess that value could be more or more. And therefore we ask ourselves I think. What can we get the development enterprises to kick back into this process. I am. I was wondering whether part of that whether some formulation could be constructed that would. Avoid what's happened with the carriage houses where basically all of the small scale commercial enterprises were essentially. Spread. Hither and yon either went away or they ceased to exist. Question number one for me then would be is there a way in which some kind of. Agreed rental relief I don't know what the right phrase is but I imagine the phrase is very important because you've otherwise stumbled over some legal obstacle that you didn't intend to. But in in simple terms whether there would be some kind of. Rental relief that could be or incentive that could be maintained for a certain number of years on these commercial spaces that would allow. Some enterprise allow a larger variety of enterprises to get a footing get a foothold and stay there. I say that partly because I think I understand that the that the commercial space. The commercial space is the is the is the lesser important revenue generator that's the case this should be possible. So that's without going into it any further that's a question that's in my mind. And thirdly following on the exchange that you and they just had it seemed to me that it would be useful in terms of height to look at the kind of. Instruction that's possible I think I it's a long time since I've had my head in the building code. But I kind of imagine that there's a certain. Maybe five stories allows us to have a concrete slab with a different type of construction on the first floor and you can have a less expensive frame construction. Above and maybe that can be four stories if it's sprinkler than three if it's not and so maybe there's some magic about five and maybe you guys already know. That's exactly what you've described that if the first floor is essentially non combustible and separated from the upper floor you can build a four story stick framed. Building on top of the first floor so we we we think it all has to be sprinkled in and you know anything. Five thousand square feet height limit then is cognizant of that and it's as high as it can go and maintain the. Maintain the capability of of local enterprises to do the work as opposed to having to get suffered from Boston or something like that. So I think that would be important too as we think through how we establish the height that sounds like this is already being done. And we just don't forget it. Karen your hand was up for a while you were next and then I think in it. Thanks. I was really surprised to learn about this study that was done in 2014. One of the issues and I and I thought it was kind of amazing that for the $60,000 that was paid so much was was learned. They focus on where development should go. One thing that they brought up is a question whether if we're going to have a lot of commercial spaces developed in University Drive is that going to compete with downtown and is it going to. And that's something we should think about. But otherwise I like Bruce's idea that you give the developer enough and I think Nate has brought this up to. Enough the way that they can earn the profit that they need to on the residential starting with the second floor and then maybe have subsidized or just have the possibility that they really get small businesses that need low rent in the first floor. And that this is done for a number of years because otherwise it's true will have these. We won't have any possibilities of these shops like for example, I missed being able to buy sheet music somewhere. There are so many things that I miss in this care shop the knitting store. How can we make it possible for us to have residential to provide a lot of room where students can be and still have shops of this kind at the bottom. It's a good thing to think about how we could do that. On that on that subject. One East pleasant. That's where protocol is right. Which was vacant for you know. Was it was it I mean let's let's say it was a few years I'm not sure it was actually six but. I guess to Chris and Nate. You know I was surprised that they didn't lower the rent enough to get somebody in there soon. And do you have any sense of. What the perspective of the developer was that it was worthwhile letting that be empty until protocol actually. Came to came to be Chris you've you're kind of nippling on that. So this is totally my theory, but my theory is that those particular developers have a very high sense of their aesthetics. And what they want to present on the ground floor is something that is representative of them and the building in general. So having a sheet music store on the ground floor probably isn't the image that they're looking for I have not heard this from them but that's my. Idea of what is going on with them because you're right they could have rented that space to someone for a lot less money. And had a tenant but they chose not to and they chose to wait until they had a tenant that they thought was commensurate with the. So I think that's part of what's going on but I don't quote me. Okay, thanks, Janet. So I'd like to sing the praises of small kind of crummy shops because I know. So, you know I was just in Davis Square today and I took some pictures I can send around of the main drag on Elm Street and they're just these crummy commercial buildings from the 50s maybe and crummy commercial buildings. Yeah, and they're every single shop is got a different storefront. They're all small. They're all full, almost all full. And, you know, from the burn to, you know, like Mike something or other and, you know, so people like that kind of facade like a small shop they can go in. And it's also easy to start up if the rent is low. And so, you know, it's so, you know, and I, you know, with those shops that you reach describing in Hadley that just, you know, the hot pocket shop. It's just, it's just the same kind of small strip. We had that down in Amherst like we have two strips of small stores, people thronged to that. And so I think when I was looking at these pictures, I was just thinking all that big glass, it's just so uninviting and it's so uniform looking. But I think the, you know, we could just require that the first floor has to be small shops or mixed size shops with different facades and different kind of window treatment. So it doesn't have this monotonous kind of I'm building university housing for students somewhere in America kind of look and we can give people an extra floor if they do that. My concern is I'm sort of jumping ahead to the other things is I think if you say you don't have to do mixed use and you can just do apartments and as many units as you want, you're going to lose the commercial. Because everybody's going to build their, you know, $2,000, you know, $2,000 a month, you know, studio to get maximum rent. And so I think we should, if we're giving extra height, we could ask for what we want to see. And maybe someone leaves, I think they, I think one east closing street could afford to leave it empty because they were making so much money upstairs. You know, and I don't know if protocol got a lower rent, but it obviously didn't hurt their profit line because they applied to build two more buildings like that. Okay, Johanna. I guess I'm looking at the clock and we have another 50 minutes and we've like touched on the first bullet point on this. So I guess we've touched on other aspects of it. But I wonder, you know, given that ideally staff comes out of this with some clear direction and action items, whether I don't know, we should just like move through these bullet points more quickly or yeah. Were there aspects of the other bullet points you wanted to put in your two cents right off the bat? I can't tell if you're saying every single lot should have, should be required mixed use or just the corner lots because in this kind of proposal we're saying it's kind of listed as corner lots. So I'm curious to hear. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I mean, right now I'm still not sure that there's been a consensus on the purpose and goal of it. And I think, you know, so I'd like to just bring us all back. I think the conversation is good. It sounds like we would want the flexibility of different housing types, different buildings. And so, you know, it's still, I still want to make sure we're understanding what that means. So we're starting to get to it in terms of what are we allowing. Is it mixed use buildings everywhere? It sounds like we really wouldn't want social dormitories at all. You know, and so if it is really an housing opportunity here, is it okay that most of it will be rentals? You know, do we want to have other types of unit mix or configuration? And then, you know, then we start getting into things like what Janet was saying. For instance, if it's a mixed use building, would it be okay if it was a, there was a fifth floor if it was stepped back from the front of the building, you know, you didn't say five. That's what I'm thinking, because right now we say we've limited to four. And so, you know, if we wanted to have, because it sounds like most of the residential subsidizes the commercial. You know, what is the right mix of residential to commercial to do that? Yeah, I mean, one is pleasant. I mean, I kind of agree with Chris. It's like, you know, was there a reason maybe they just it was designed as a big space and maybe they just didn't want to carve it up because it once you did that you might not go back to getting another tenant that they were looking for. And so it was worth it to keep it vacant and keep marketing it to get the tenant they wanted then carving it up into five little shops. And so, you know, I know the way you can construct now you can have a big open spaces on the first floor. You know, I think that we could have design standards, for instance, to have small scale facades and treatments on the first floor. It doesn't mean that the interior space isn't going to be one big space, but right. You know, breaking up the that, but I think it's really hard to say that you have to have small shops, you know, small, gross floor area units, commercial units on the first floor. And so, you know, I don't know if there's a way to incentivize it. I think it's really difficult to do that. But yeah, I think, you know, I think I just want to go back to the purpose and goals and then I think the geographic area. So this, you know, that line is the outline. You know, is it is that, you know, it crosses a few different zoning districts. And so really I'm considering this as an overlay because to change all the base zoning would do could be could do more harm than good in terms of things becoming non compliant or what happens there. And so really, it's an overlay that would be, you know, voluntarily used by someone it wouldn't be, you know, the idea would be that if it's enough up zoning, and there's incentives there they would use it, it might, you know, if we don't strike it right then it might never get used as an overlay. And so, you know, I think the boundaries seem good to start. I mean, we have there hasn't really been a discussion. You know, does it go south of route nine? You know, it does include right now. Hawkins Meadow and includes some properties coming up the hill east of the intersection of University Drive. And so yeah, I think those are considerations still to discuss. The only part of the outline that I wonder about is why it goes north of the Amity Street, that one, that one property on the corner, I know I know it's a rental house and it's, you know, seems to periodically get sort of pulled up and then it slowly declines and gets looking seedier and seedier and then it gets pulled up. But that's the one location where if we were to have a, you know, a pretty substantial building seems like it would be kind of out of place. Janet. I kind of didn't understand why it jumped over Russell Street or route nine because then it took over Hawkins Meadow but it left out like all the other apartment complexes right next to it. And then I thought it sort of took in a bunch of small residential houses off of Snail Street and route nine. I just, it just seemed very, I kind of thought part of me just thought let's just stay on this side of route nine so we can just focus on that. And then I thought if you're expanding it, leave out the small residential houses because we want to leave the neighborhood a little alone. And then why, why not include green leaves and I think there's another, there's another housing complex next to Hawkins or the low income housing place. There's Aspen Heights and then there's, oh, it has a new name. And then there's Vesta. Oh, it's in Hadley. Okay. Sorry. So I just, I didn't know why it, when it jumped over route nine, what, why it included some things and not others and then why would you include small houses. Jesse or unless Nate, do you want to respond to that? Sure. I mean, some of it is the, you know, we've often talked about how could you incentivize redeveloping existing apartment complexes and so, you know, including Hawkins Meadow. So it doesn't mean it's going to happen, but if, if we have the right density mix, you know, could it, I mean, there's a lot of open space there. The site design may not be as you could, you know, you could have twice as many units and still have a nice site design, for instance, you know, going up route nine into the area that's in purple, the few homes. I mean, those homes have been rented. They're old, but they're pretty beat. And then there's a geographic area. You know, what, right? Where is the boundary? Where does it stop? But, you know, the thinking would be there is that if you have a nice development, it's on the corner across the street from, you know, one university drive south. And so, you know, across the street is the five college realtors building. It's like, if all of a sudden you have a few nice buildings there in a streetscape, okay, there's an announcement you're coming somewhere right now. I mean, when I, for years, I've driven home, going by those homes that are rented and half the time there's seven cars parked in the front lawn. They try, you know, cut across traffic to go the wrong way. And sure, at one point they were probably worth saving, but I look at them now and I'm like, wow, I don't think they've had investment in years in them. And they actually look really tired right now. Just this year they seem like they've reached a point where, you know, whoever is owning them is just making the money, right? They're not investing in the upkeep of the buildings. And so I think the one that's right outside of it is actually a really nice brick building on route nine. And then there's a larger lot with the Talionade house. And, you know, at some point it's like, oh, do we go there? And I'd say, you know, I feel like I'd want to keep it closer to university drive in the corner there, not extended. And so, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe that isn't the right boundary, but my thinking was include all four corners of that intersection for some possibility. That makes makes a fair amount of sense to me. One other use that I hadn't thought of that just came to mind for this area would be a hotel. You know, a sort of an urban hotel that doesn't have a lot of parking associated with it, but you could, you know, come here, take the bus or take an Uber down to UMass and do your conference and then come back. You know, if you want to stay in a hotel in Amherst, other than the University Lodge, I don't know where you would stay. All the hotels are in Hanley. The Lord Jeff. Yes, of course. Excuse me. I hadn't hadn't thought about the Lord Jeff. Yes. So, Bruce. A moment ago, we were talking about having housing going down to the first floor and so forth. If I understood it correctly, I would maintain that the entire streetscape and street front in this zone in this overlay should be dedicated for commercial retail, which is not to say that the whole of the first floor should be. I think there is considerable value probably in encouraging ground or ground connected housing on the back sides or courtyards or what have you. So I think the guidance that I would give in relation to that would be, yes, keep the mixed use and the commercial along the street front and maximize the ground connected housing to the to the to the rear side. I think that that's the that's the approach that I think would be the sweet spot for this because it would have left or allow various types of housing that benefit from having ground connection. There wouldn't be a lot of it, but there would be some of it and that would add diversity and theoretically have stability to the whole enterprise. Okay, great. Jesse was your hand up for a minute. Just to back up my very simple stab at the goals and purpose. Allow the market to build parentheses student housing and require commercial. I think the whole way. I agree. Require allow the market to build student housing essentially that's what they're going to choose, but also require the first floor. Next use. Geographical area. Yeah, I think besides the one house on the north. All makes sense to me. Janet. So, I think we shouldn't jump over route nine because I think that I love the idea of redeveloping the apartment complexes for more density, but those complexes are places where like regular folk live. Right. And so if you allow more density at Hawkins Meadow, you know, that's, that's where people will swoop in and build the student housing. You know, so this, this is a place where, you know, working people live. There's places all around South Amherst like that. That are probably mixes of some students, mostly regular folk, but if you incentivize it for more density and development without some kind of controls, it's just going to turn to these. That place will just flip. I also think no one's going to be able to cross the street. And so we, if we're building a university village of some sort, we have to figure out how people get from one side of route nine to the other or crossover. You know, and so I think this is a really dangerous area and it's mostly the through way into Amherst and towards the university. And so I would, I would just stay on this side of route nine for now. I'm sorry that these houses are tired, but I kind of think you're kind of rewarding people for letting me. You started to talk about, you know, houses that are declining in Amherst and not well maintained. I think you could look at 200 and see that. And so I don't, I just don't think, you know, those, those could be returned into like a nice Victorian or a triple decker or be a nice house. But I just sort of think you should stay in the core area and not kind of jump over. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Going back to and building off the purpose and goals. So Jesse, I really like your two ideas of allow the market to build notably student housing and commercial ground floor. I do think another goal could be, I'd be curious to hear what others think is using this as an opportunity to address that missing middle piece. And so if we're saying it's market driven, but we're not going to do social dormitories. Is there more we could do, like, you know, I don't know, saying from 13 to 20%, it'll be 150% AMI just to help make sure that we get affordable housing and, you know, a notch above affordable housing here as well, and that that's another goal of this project. So that suggests it's not just student housing. Correct. We just do social dormitories. Okay. Well, then, so, yeah, so I was, I was actually going to disagree with or enlarge the vision that Jesse expressed with, you know, building student housing and having commercial area, I was going to say, let's just build more housing. Of whatever type of the market decides to build with some commercial space on the first floor at the street edge. All right, so, oh, good, we've got everybody's hand up. So Bruce, and then Karen and then Fred. And so, Jesse, could you hand over to Fred? Thank you. Yeah, I think I'm in agreement with you, Doug, about. That's any housing that's created here is going to positively affect the market elsewhere in Amherst. And I am intrigued by the idea of a bedroom limitation because I think that would address the some of the worst aspects of that particular cohort. And I also strongly support the concept of commercial on the first floor. I've said this before one of the real challenges to the town of Amherst financial picture is the ridiculous percentage to which the tax base is tilted toward residential. And that is not in the best interest of the town long term. So this this does check a number of those boxes that what we've been talking about. I think it's an interesting idea to consider the extent of which route nine is going to end up as a barrier to what we want. And I've been in a couple of those particular occupancies. I'll call it on University Drive down near the Snell Street intersection. And one of which is is owned by a family that I have a social relationship with. Slightly and so I've actually been in some of those. But yeah, in general, I think this is a productive discussion. Thank you. Okay, Fred. So why don't we just go to Karen and then we'll go to Bruce. I want to agree with Janet. I don't think we should need to go over route nine. I think we should make this a kind of a concise area that we focus on and really encourage building this up and getting a lot of dense housing because in that particular area. You're not you're not infringing on neighbors that are very sensitive except for the the little area with the small houses that we toured that we thought was so nice that small sort of moderate income houses the neighborhood behind. You know, on the excuse me, Charles Lane, I think Charles Lane is is really lovely and should be kind of protected. It's important that that these kinds of neighborhoods are yeah are protected and the same thing with across from root nine looking at those condominiums that are placed there because they they're so close to root nine but they still have enough land around them. They're peaceful. You know going to other university towns you have often, I just been to Berkeley you have these dense areas but then you have a site of them places where people can go walk and breathe and that are that are open. And so I'm for reducing the size not going across the root nine at the moment and really driving ahead this area that we're talking about to try to get dense housing in there. Let that be market driven, which means it's going to be, you know, well, we'll see what happens. And that will, and the purpose when you go to goals, our goal is to save also to save the town to save neighborhoods from the intrusion of too much student housing need, which is just eating away and eroding the other residential areas. So, we have to kind of get going and have an area that's going to do, except we need something like 10,000 more beds and I don't know how much this area can supply so the need is going to be ongoing I suppose. All right Bruce. I'd like to go to the top bullet point on the third page, which says buildings would be allowed to be up to four stories high and then continues a bit. I'm thinking that if we can get five stories here. That would be a good thing. And I know that story height has been an issue with new development in town recently but that's been in the center of town. This is not the center of town. This is almost the reverse of that it's a new and an upscale I mean, fairly wide streets and it seems to be exactly appropriate to have the buildings there as tall as we possibly can. And additionally because it I hope would serve the by adding that additional value allow us to extract the kind of perhaps rental incentive benefit for some years that would stabilize the commercial slice of this so I think it seems to me that going up that extra story to five would be appropriate and beneficial to this enterprise. Okay, thank you. I'll just say that I, I agree. And my, my poster child for that is one university drive, which is a three story looks like it's been chopped off. Unfortunately, it's really awkwardly low. It's the new Barry Roberts building with the eye doctor in it. You know, there's probably there probably could have been another 40 units in there with. Hey, maybe they were for it would have been 40 students who would not be in and more houses in town. I don't, I mean, I didn't wasn't here in the planning board for any of the history of that built building I have heard. I think a rumor, you know, for me it was just sort of anecdotal that it came in originally as taller and was was chopped down, which, you know, just looks to me like a mistake. Chris. You, you probably know the background to that. But I completely agree with the five stories down here. It was proposed to be higher. I think it was proposed to be four stories high. And I believe that the reason it wasn't is because of parking, because they didn't have enough room on site to park enough cars to accommodate that building. And they made a deal with the town to use some of the town right of way to accommodate some of their parking, but they were just really pushed to the limit as far as parking. So I think that that was one of the major reasons why they chopped that top floor off. Okay. Thank you. Well, we haven't talked about parking at all. You know, obviously. Parking reduces the amount of land to. To build on so. My inclination from the, at the beginning, at least would be to have fairly. Small parking requirements for this area. You know, which would let the developer say, you know, I think I'm going to target this at people who are going to use a public transit and ride to ride their bike to UMass and walk to big why or. No, I want to have more parking and I'm going to have build less and, you know, I'll reduce the footprint of my building. So I would. That's where I would start. Karen and then Fred, I definitely agree. I think we should reduce the parking requirement. We don't want less. We want more green space. We want more houses. We want people we want to encourage public transportation as much as possible. I really do think that's an important part. Okay. Fred, and then you know how to. Yeah, I would also agree. And I'd also. A major expense in this kind of constructions, the elevator. And once you, you know, once you've got an elevator shaft. Better way to mitigate that is another story. And so I think that there's a market incentive for that if that story is available and I think it ought to be. Okay. Thanks. I also think five stories is appropriate. I also think. Little to no parking requirements will help us generate more housing and. You know, get people using public transit and the bike path. All of this connects beautifully to the bike path. And I want to talk a little bit more about geography because I think by crossing route nine. And including the intersection. You just create a more dynamic space than if you exclude it. It's like. You know, you're in kind of narrow sprawl and then you have this, I just, I think it, I think it's the opening. I think it's the keystone. And I think it'd be a shame to leave it out, both because by land mass, it's, you know, 20% of what we're looking at right now. And that to me feels like a missed opportunity. And I think there's just, I think it is part of making this really. A vibrant entryway into that new neighborhood that we're creating from route nine. Okay. Janet. So I was staring at the nursing facility and the, the OP buildings. And I'm wondering about unintended consequences. So, if you have very tall buildings that could be packed with apartments. And are people, are the owners going to want to flip those buildings and turn them into housing? Do we lose that? Those facilities, I especially think you would probably lose Hawkins Meadow. But so, and then, you know, so I, I just wonder, like, if you increase the density, what could you lose that you want to keep and think about that. And then also, I do think of university drive as I'm still not abandoning UMass and their, their, their ideas. I think this is a great place for students. You know, it's they're going to want to live there. It's right next to UMass. That's why they crowd the neighborhoods, you know, downtown. And so I think, you know, just good spot. But I do think Hawkins Meadow, let's leave it for another day. You know, I just don't think it's going to become this dynamic area of people racing across from nine to, you know, you know, things. I mean, everybody gets in their car and drives across because it's so dangerous. I just don't think we should disturb that community right now. It's pretty stable. Okay. Anybody else, or should we have we given you enough to get a little bit farther by the next time we have this conversation, Nate? Sure. Yeah, I mean, I drew Janet when you're speaking earlier that yeah, maybe Hawkins Meadow and the other area could be excluded by do like including the other corner. You know, all four corners on University Drive and route nine in the overlay and maybe that shifts a little bit. But I like the idea of having, you know, the opportunity to mirror development across the street. I actually think if we have more people there, then there's a solution to solve the, you know, the crossing problem and the traffic problem. So I think that's coming. I think I think that would happen. Yeah, I mean, I think you've given us enough to staff to think about, you know, to me, the height is an issue. And it's something that, you know, the downtown design standards were hopefully going to have a consultant selected pretty soon. And that's something I want them to look at because, you know, we have, you know, for instance, in this overlay, would we require flat roof buildings? Right now we don't include certain things in the height of a building. If it's a pitched roof, it's to the midpoint of the roof, not to the peak. And so, you know, equipment on it isn't considered part of the height. And so, essentially, everyone, you know, puts all their HVAC up there and everything else. And then they put a basically a, you know, six foot or eight foot vinyl fence on top and that adds to the height. And so, you know, when we had the height in the document, you know, that was an absolute height and we said there's no footnote. So there's no way to wave it. And so, you know, for me, it'd be, you know, what is the right height here? And how to, and in the overlay, we could define it differently or we could have standards and conditions that really would say that, you know, rooftop equipment can't be visible and, you know, maybe we require a parapet or, you know, we could really push on a developer. Even with a peaked roof, you can design trusses so that there's a saddle or something or there's pockets where you can put things. And so, we haven't been great about that. You know, I think 133 Southeast Street is an example where they put the fence on the top, you know, the new building down in East Amherst, and then they, you know, put the mini splits on there. And that's all you could see was 50 mini splits, you know, behind the fence, and then they added some screening. But to me, the absolute, the relative height of that building is really tall and you could actually have a five story building with a flat roof that's probably shorter than what that building is, even though it's not five stories. And so, anyways, it's just something to consider to me. It's like, okay, five stories, but if you're doing 15 feet on the first floor and you're going to do 10 feet on the upper floors, and you put H back on the top, all of a sudden you're at like 70 feet or something. And it's, you know, it's just, you know, I think in this overlay, we have the ability to say we're not following the existing dimensional standards. We're coming up with our own. So what is that? You know, we're saying a certain setback on the west side doesn't have to be the same on the east side of University Drive. We're saying, you know, maybe we're not going to have a big parking ratio. We're going to be flexible on lock coverage and building coverage. So those are the things that we, you know, staff would start looking at. What is the right dimensional standards and conditions for this? I guess my comment in response to that would be, you know, let's try to use what we have as much as we can in our, I mean, I just, it seems like it might lead to a great deal more complexity of our zoning code in a way that just might just generally be unwieldy, I guess I'll say. I mean, personally, the five stories is fine with me. I don't object to it downtown. I don't object to the mechanical units on the top. I know, you know, I'm not one of the people that is vocally opposed to those buildings. So I know I, there's people disagree with me. If we allow five stories, I think we should allow the height that those buildings have actually ended up being because I think we had like a 51 or two foot maximum and then we give the variance for an additional three feet or something in order to let them accomplish five stories. And so let's make it 55 feet or whatever those buildings needed for five stories. Let's actually put that number in so we can get rid of that one variance. Janet. Why don't we just fix it in the zoning by law that the definition of the height and the parapet, we could just, if that's, you know, that's, you know, that problem has come up over and over. So why don't we just do an amendment. So we just say, the height is your height and if you want to stick all your stuff on the roof, then you're, you know, I mean, you don't need a 15 foot per story. You don't need a 12 foot story. So I'm just wondering if what's bothering you might be just the way the bylaws right now. So. Yeah, I actually, I will wait to have the consultant for the downtown design standards. I think that's something that we've asked them to look at. And I think it's bigger than just let's have a number or define it. I think there's a lot of variables in terms of how the buildings are built. I think for the overlay though, we can have dimensional standards that are specific only to the overlay standards and conditions that apply here. And maybe they get extrapolated and incorporated into the zoning bylaw. But, you know, by the end of the year, we hope to have a consultant on under contract for the downtown design standards. And I'd really like the consultants to use their knowledge and professionalism and best practices to define the height. So I don't, I don't necessarily have the right answer. I think if we said an absolute height is always this and nothing can be above it. You know, that could be really problematic in terms of equipment or design or, you know, anything, what does solar mean up there. And so I'm not, I think it actually gets a lot more complicated and a lot more variables and just assigning a number. I agree with what Doug says, though, I really do think that it's if we're thinking we want to be five stories, you know, we can talk to developers, we go look at it. Is it 15 feet 101010 is it 1510, you know, 151212 for upper floors and actually have what is the right height, not something that is actually too short that we have to have a waiver for every time. But I, but in terms of what we're deciding now, you know, I don't, I don't really want to get into like what is the definition of height that's something we, I'd love to the consultant to do because I, you know, I just think that it gets more complicated with whatever could be on the roof and how we define it. And even looking at these old pictures up there, you know, looking at the, what used to be here, it's like, you know, is, you know, is having a spire on the corner of a building is that part of the height, you know, and I just, I don't want to start trying to define that now. Well, the mansard, which I'm seeing I gather at least my apocry, maybe it's apocryphal, but the mansard originated in Paris when the height limit was to the cornice. So they built to the cornice and then they created the mansard where you could get an extra floor and considered that part of the roof. Anyway, so what's that? Mr. Mansard, yes, during the Napoleonic with Mr. Hausman. So it's 20 of eight, and it feels like this is a good spot to stop this part of the agenda this evening. Everybody looks like they're okay with that. So time is 741 and we will go on to the other housing issues conversation. Part three of our agenda, which had two subheadings rental housing issues and general housing issues. And Jesse, I'm wondering whether I could call on you. You had requested that we add this to the agenda and I wondered if you could give us kind of what what you were thinking of when you asked for this. Thanks. Sure. I just wanted to continue the conversation we had started. I don't remember when it was when we had before we had you mass reps here, you start trying out ways. Basically what Janet summarized right discussion about all the different ways we can start to think about addressing the student rental density in neighborhoods. So I've been working or trying to put together a bunch of numbers of what we have because maybe it's a scientist until I see the actual some of the data. I can't really think about how to come up with changes that would be meaningful and useful. And so I actually have a handout for everyone. If that's permissible, we can post it later on. And this is subject by assembled just from the town JS with a lot of help and probably too many emails to Nate asking for how to get different things. So maybe pass that around. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Nate looks that looks like you'd like to. Yeah, I think that this conversation is, you know, the RKG, the consultants who wrote the housing comprehensive housing study said that, you know, it's going to take multiple approaches to get the desired outcome. And so to me, this is kind of the, you know, the other side of the coin if we're allowing density here, you know, are there other things we could also be thinking about. And so that's all I was going to say is just I think that they can happen in parallel that I think they're they're really kind of complimentary discussions. Yeah, and just add to that the way I think about it. Getting new building is great, but that's not going to be soon. And so maybe there are steps we can take that would be sooner than that, as a planning board, because I do think that's part of what we can do. So anyway, just to explain what I'm putting in front of you. The neighborhood is the same data just organized differently on the left side is alphabetic order with these neighborhood codes, which came from the property cards. The right side is just sorted by the percent column. And so again, this is straight off the town j s total number of properties down the bottom you can see 7137. Well, there are a couple hundred that didn't have all the data so I can do it. And this rental column is again from the property card, and it's simply listed as owner, owner occupied or owner unoccupied. And so I've just calculated the number of owner unoccupied. So each neighborhood, the first one on the left, I must woods. Yes. There are 409 units properties properties and of those 69 are rental, not owner occupied as owner unoccupied. Okay. And and the 14% is 69 divided by 489. The percent owner unoccupied. Right. Okay. The list that owner unoccupied is right. So it's the percentage that are that are probably rentals. Right. Now a big caveat here is that it's not parsed by student versus non student. But this is just the numbers. And so again, I just needed to see what we're talking about. And it's the same information on the left and the right disorder differently. Correct. Okay. And what my first thought was to try and see this in relation to UMass sort of radiating out. And I think we'd all guess the same thing that would be denser near UMass and moving away. And I think it's pretty much true. So on the on the right, the way you've ordered it, it probably pretty roughly, pretty consistently corresponds to the top being very close to UMass and the bottom being furthest from UMass. Correct. Okay. And it kind of holds true if you look at the neighborhoods. Something in part of the reason I wanted to look at it this way was if we're going to think about ways to influence where or how far apart or how many student rentals there are. I'm not sure I can think about it as a townwide regulation or change, whatever we're going to make, because the neighborhoods are so different. We can't say, oh, the whole town, we can only have 30% rentals because that's not going to help the neighborhoods that are already at 50%. Because that's where more are going to keep happening because there are other neighborhoods where there's only 14%. So, so in my mind, we might have to address this problem. So I just wanted to share that with the board members and get input on if there's other ways that would be useful to look at this kind of data. Well, so given the sort of geographic correspondence, I mean, it seems like an obvious takeaway is if you accept that the preponderance of rentals are students, that this supports the idea that students really want to live near campus. Right. And that they're much less interested in living in South Amherst or further away. And so that the demand for student rentals probably corresponds also to proximity to UMass. Yeah, I think that's, that's one takeaway certainly. Janet, would you like to say Amherst might be an anomaly is there's a lot of kind of cheaper housing near there are student housing there's a lot of low income housing and more to come so that is going to be a high rental neighborhood but not necessarily student based. What are what are these. I mean, the like Amherst Woods amity plays those are single developments and and like, what are those from how did you even aggregate that. Yeah, so the Jesse mentioned this is from the property card so this is assessor's data. We've also provided the last year's rental registration, which is the most complete. And so I think you know the next step I was telling Jesse is I can I can map this and I think you know I've been talking to the IT department of creating a kind of a you know a geodatabase with all this information that then can be mapped. I can display it by attribute and so these these are neighborhood codes on the property card from the assessor's office and so you know it might have to do more with how they the valuation of homes not necessarily you know how is it in a cohesive neighborhood so I want to map it. I can map it pretty easily and then see, okay, you know, what is central Amherst really what is Echo Hill or Echo Hill hondos, which are probably could be, you know, aggregated together. And so, but so really these are just neighborhood codes that the assessor's have on the property cards. I mean, one, one thing that I had thought about prior to this meeting that I thought I might ask for you to in your GIS folks to do was just, you know, how we have these maps of the base showing every every part of every every property. We just get a lot of the town with any property that's listed as not owner occupied in red and everything else is green or whatever just so that we could see. Is it is it, you know, sort of at this point probably to confirm what Jesse's what your information already suggests that most of the rentals are right around humans. I think the, I spoke with the assessor and she said that this information is probably, you know, 70 to 80% accurate in part because, you know, they look at it only when say when legally there is a change if it's a change of ownership if there is a declaration of homestead if there's certain things happening that they can see at the registry, or through taxes or other legal means. And they really try to update it now pretty regularly whenever that happens. Historically, it may not have been updated as systematically. It's the rental registration program, which is kind of an honor system right you're supposed to self report that you're renting and it's actually been pretty good. And so the next step is to kind of cross reference the rental registration data with this data, and then it could be mapped I think the difficulty is historically it was never that these databases never spoke to each other very well you have to link them and then the way to then show it all is through GIS right through a mapping software and so I think we're getting to a point where we can start to do that but you know three years ago even all we could ever see were tables like this and so but I agree that I think we could get to a point where we could even have a map that shows you know this compared to the rental registration data and you could see where the overlap is or where there's inconsistencies. Okay, Jesse, and then and then Chris just add a couple other points and what we're looking at one that's really important is the rental registrations I did get that list from you guys which was great, but if you can see the third line at the top of the Asterisk, the rental registration from this year only had 1211 properties total. But from the property cards there were 2026. So there's a big chunk missing from the registration I guess is one takeaway, not for us but for that process right. Even if it's only 80% accurate, that's still 600 places that are not reporting or not being reached somehow. The other thing I was hoping to discuss if others find it useful is how we can start to capture student versus non student because as part of our discussion that's already happened. It's been a really important part of this issue. If we want to limit student houses and allow other non student rentals which I think we all agree is part of the problem this middle rental. That's missing. One way to do it is to define the student rental and then somehow limit the student rental, but we don't until we know what's what it's feels impossible to do that. So I have some ideas, but I'm open to others. I was wondering if we could make if anyone else is interested in how we do this subcommittee to figure out how to capture that data, just on student versus non student rental. I know when UMass was the reps from UMass were here. It sounded like they had better information on on where the students are living off campus. So, you know, it could be that I mean, Chris, I don't know whether it would be you would have an avenue to request. And that kind of the addresses. I mean, obviously we wouldn't want to have the names of the students that's probably private of who's living where but but what addresses are students living at off campus. And that would be a way to start to get at it because it seems like there's fairly consistent year to year continuity between if it's a student rental it stays a student rental Fred. I wanted to comment about that topic because, you know, at our last meeting we had UMass in here and I, we got the historical data from from them about the number of students and so forth that were how versus not how and so forth. I never would have thought this, but I, I brought that home and I showed it to my wife. And my wife at a considerable period of time as an adjunct professor in the psychology department and she looked at the the virtual students the online, because UMass was saying, you know, this is now an important part of their enrollment. And they weren't part of the local rental housing picture. And my wife said, they're all living here. I said, what? She's yeah, they're all I can I can tell you is because I know we're I don't know how many of my students were coming in electronically and I know where they were living they're all living in Amherst. They just decided they didn't want to actually come to classes. And I, wow, I never thought about that. But, you know, I think we need to ask UMass to take another look at what that what that number what that number means what they kind of implied that it meant because that was astonishing. So I just agree that I was fine to mention. Okay, well thanks for that bit of information, I guess. Chris, should I let you jump in? I know Bruce was the next hand that I saw. I just have a simple question. What does C slash I mean. Nate says he doesn't figure that out. Looking at the addresses because I have all the data. Also, it's the neighborhood behind the high school. It looks like I don't know what CI is either. But I think those are the addresses. No, more south, not south of high school, but but I guess East from high school. But but yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yes. Yes. Well, that's what I think that's what the C slash I is on here. It's the yeah. And again, I couldn't map all this easily so I'm couldn't be so together that's what I was hoping would happen next. Okay, thanks, Jesse. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess we'll hopefully find out more next next month. Come on back. Janet. Oh, yeah, Bruce was next. Bruce. Did you turn off the mic? Did it die? Then I'll pass this down. My comments know as interesting as yours friend. But I was also drawn to this chart that we got last time. Just Jesse, your total here is 700 and 7137. I don't know how thorough that is. That's probably not the grand total. But since we have the number there, and I look across and the, the number of off campus undergrads from this chart was 8183. So, but many of those are in neighboring towns. And that's a number we don't yet really know. I think there was one of the questions I was asking, can we identify what fraction of the non housed students, non new mass house students are looking for housing in town. Your data suggests that. Closer is better and amateurs closer than Sunderland. And so, I mean, I know what the assumption would be, but if it's two thirds. Then, and this I'm not including grad students here because the general sense, I think from that discussion was that there wasn't a big difference between graduate students and. Regular. I don't know you say that. So, let's go with the 8000. So it gives us a sense of how well, beginning to give us a sense of how well the town is coping what the pressure on, but if your number is low and it should be eight and eight is half and so it indicates, you know, it seems anyway to indicate that around half at least of the rental. Opportunity in town is being taken. Well, actually, I guess we is being taken by student rentals. I mean, I'm making that broad. Conclusion tentative conclusion from based on what I'm looking at these two incomplete. Incomplete. Charts, so we can, we can, we can refine that as we go ahead, but that that's beginning to help me more as I look at this stuff. Thanks. I actually think it's higher than that based on just the number of owner unoccupied. I think you mass the people that came said that the students want. Not no longer and more and more to live. Centrally. So the pressure on downtown Amherst is getting greater and greater. And I think what this, what you're, what you seem to be headed toward is that we might have to put in some regulations in certain parts that are extremely targeted and that are extremely vulnerable. That we sort of circle those parts. I think that's where this is going, right? Yeah. Thank you. Yes, that was my thought. And again, going back to what I said earlier, maybe I didn't say very clearly to just somehow regulate the whole town wouldn't change the density in certain neighborhoods. Because if it's a percentage, if it's unless it's a distance model, but a lot of ways you could choose to regulate. If it's the whole town, because of an unequal distribution, it wouldn't help those very high density areas. Wouldn't change really anything. And it sounds like if we wanted to authorize more social dormitories in town or social, whatever we call them, student only housing. It's better to do it near UMass. It's more likely to be that a developer would think it was worthwhile investing to build such a thing because that's where the demand was. Jesse. Okay. Janet. Thank you. So I would, in the data front on page five of the youth three report, the the census in 2010 said there were 9,711 housing units. And so that doesn't even include all the new housing. So I'm just wondering these numbers. I'm sort of anyway, so I was going to read the page 29 of the report and says finally Amherst already has a powerful tool in place with its rental unit registration program. Continuing to build the program's ability to track data and enforce the code will further protect neighborhoods from an infiltration of student housing. This can include requiring property owners to denote if tenants or students or moderate low or very low income that registration program can also target recently converted homes from single family to student use to enforce overcrowding, creating a disincentive for prospective developers to purchase other single family homes and convert them if they know their income stream will be reduced through enforcement. And so I know we're looking at the rental registration program, but just if you, maybe we could require saying who's your tenant this year and you know, every landlord will know, you know, if their tenants are students where they were likely to know who at least one of their tenants is. I mean, trust me, if you have student tenants, you have every name on your lease because you don't want to, and you might even have their parents as you know, so you're going to know how many people are in your building or should All right, Karen, I see you, but I see Nate and I'm wondering I'm going to give Nate. Sure, I was going to say that the information here is, you know, it's hard to compare it right now this is looking at properties it's not looking at number of units and so the rental registration. Typically we've only had one rental permit for what could be multiple units on a property. And so it's sometimes it's hard to have that comparison because you know, even like our building permits of the town typically is issued at one building permit for what could be say like one he's pleasant that has 100 units or whatever it is and so Getting down to that granular level of data can be tricky because it's not something that we've historically recorded on permits or on property cards and so the rental registration system now does list number of units. And so then, you know, it's just taking that you have to, you know, kind of drill down a little bit more and then just figure out how you're comparing it and so the census right list number of year round housing units and so there's like According to the 2020 census, you know, there's 10,600 and like 60 year round housing units in town, believe it or not, there's like 30 that are considered seasonal. And then, but the way a student can claim to be a resident when they take the census, you know, is different so In the 2020 census it actually looks like our population changed or between 2010 and 2020 it dipped because of the way students declared where they lived when they were taking the census and so I think the census sometimes is a is a is a really kind of approximate tool. I feel like I would I want to use the UMass data and then ask them a little bit more about it. And to me that would be the most accurate information in terms of where students live and how we, you know, for how we categorize them. Go ahead, Janet. So they would say one East Planet Pleasant Street is one rental unit. And so without knowing there's like 100 apartment one rental property one property but knowing there's 100 units in that would that increase change the percentages in this chart or no, you're back to the Properties just what percentage of properties are rental. It's not talking about unit number of apartments. Okay. Okay. Jesse you want to say something else. Thanks. Yes. Again, back up something said earlier. I'm happy to keep working on this. And I'm trying to figure out the best way to really visualize the numbers also. Again, I'm not sure that for our discussions, these as many neighborhoods is the right way. If others have ideas. Please, you know, this is starting is this list of neighborhood is every place in Amherst part of one of these neighborhoods believe so. Sorry that 200 number down on the bottom versus missing 200. So first this was just exporting all the property cards. All but about 200 had a neighborhood associated one of these codes. So it's the majority by and large every property is part of one of these neighborhoods. Correct. Okay. But again, I don't know where these all out. I'm guessing there's different neighborhoods that might make more sense to define for this discussion, but I definitely need help deciding what that could or should be. Okay, Karen. So I know personally living in this densely populated area, you this this for unrelated people is not worked. It's not enforced. I know personally from the inspections have to be announced when they come the students move out they move their mattresses down the street. Everybody can see that the inspector comes in comes out the mattresses go back in talk to Marilyn Smith who lives right down there and close to the university. So it seems like that solution is not working. I don't know how you could get it to work. I think one thing we should really zero in on. And I think Ithaca has certain plans, but in these areas which are so vulnerable next to the university where you have historic houses, you want to try to preserve neighborhoods. I think you might really have to have a distance between student house so that you have some houses that tough luck they can't, you know, if they haven't got students living there now, that's not going to be an option. And those houses maybe then won't be able to be snapped up by the kinds of investors who are now coming in. Okay. Johanna, I actually saw your her hand before you Fred so you're next. First of all, thanks for compiling this Jesse it's really interesting to think about and look at. I'm thinking about the neighborhoods where maybe there's fewer rentals, but it's like it's popping up right like it's happening. I think like I used to live on Columbia Drive. And I feel like Columbia Drive is off of East Hadley Road. So it's across the street. It's a neighborhood across the street from the boulders and kind of butts up against the Bramble Hill Farm Conservation Area. So it's, you know, it feels like a echo hillish kind of like moderate family. We were subletting from a, you know, family that was abroad for a year when we first moved there. And it was like watching dominoes fall, you know, watching the single family homes be converted to student rentals. And I imagine similar dynamics are, you know, at play in Orchard Valley right now and some of those farther like farther out areas. And one question I have is how can we nip it in the bud. So I'm interested in the like I hear you on the okay the neighborhoods in downtown that already are like kind of feeling a crush of student, but I also feel like there's the the emerging issues and some of the farther out neighborhoods. This is where I put in the plug for owner occupancy. And the, you know, owner occupied student housing where there's an adult on premise. They're not the problem there. The noise complaints that they don't come from owner occupied. And, you know, if you're going to create distances between student houses and so forth, you've got to give a buy to owner occupied because it just simply not the problem. Okay, thanks, Fred. So it's 10 after eight. Jesse, I'm just thinking we should wrap up soon. Yep, just just one. Two last thoughts. When I look when I think about this obviously quite a bit and looking at the different strategies, I think that the distancing one is the only one that gets at all the neighborhoods in the right way. I think meaning where it's not yet very dense, whatever distance requirement you set and prevent the dominoes right but what's required to do that. I think also for our town based on some of the other conversation is the determination of student definition of a student rental versus not because I think we all want to encourage also the non student rentals to be very present everywhere. And so I think I don't know how I don't know if that's the first step as a family somehow define what a student rental is and then that can get reported on the rental registration in order for it to then progress and be part of the distancing plan. Yeah. So I'm one of the issues with the distancing issue plan is something is how you impose it on a non compliant neighborhood. You know how do you tell some landlords, you know, your neighbor got in line before you buy three minutes. So you and your next two guys down the line are not able to rent to students anymore or at all. I mean maybe and so, you know, there's the grandfathering it will it would it actually would it actually change anything in the in the neighbors neighborhoods that are dense. It maybe it would only impact the neighborhoods that are slowly transitioning before before you know things are in place. So I don't remember. I don't know whether Bruce or Janet were next but Bruce, you're closer to Fred's microphone so why don't you go. I've been talking to a number of planning directors about this particular strategy. And so I think if I will and I'll simply say that if I think we were posing to go down that route. We really should talk to the two or three communities that have been doing that have been doing this for a while. And ones that have reinforced it and ones that have backed off from it because you just begun to scratch the surface on that one. This is a normal. Are you going to drive a whole lot of rentals underground. Right. I mean, I possibly also it's just the formula for imposing this because I think we first we would have to first of all understand that in doing this kind of thing and this I have from the folks that have done it is that you're creating a you're creating a market or you're you're you're you're creating market discrimination. And you first of all have to be able to sustain sustain that you know in a court of law. Or think you can and and and then you have to be able to convince the constituency here that there's a good idea because it's it's a very it's a very involved process. So well of the of the research you've done and you know you've you've been our our leader in that have there been approaches that you've gotten generally you know that seem really promising. I haven't dug deep enough because what I've done is has tried to get a broad brush response from various communities about their approach and so forth and so having done the, I don't know, 10,000 foot fly over or whatever you might call you identify patches of interest and this is one patch of interest. And then you would fly lower and you would do that kind of work. So I don't think yet, certainly me have I dug deep enough to really get a useful summary of what the issues might be, but I've got the impression that they're there. So either Chris or Janet, one of one of you go next. I just wanted to say that you need to think about manpower or women power or people power. And our inspection services department is already way overstretched in the work that they do and they don't have time to do all the things that they should be doing now. So to add something like this would require adding staff, and we're already talking about adding staff because of the rental registration program, which is being updated and expanded. So we're trying to figure out how do we get enough inspectors who can handle that, which is something that a lot of people have already bought into. So I'm just bringing this up as a practical, practical thought caveat. That's right. Okay, Janet, and then maybe we close. I agree with Bruce is like we have to look into that deeper and one of the questions would be, did you have to get more staff? Like how did you enforce it and things like that? So how did it work? Did it work and how does it work and did it require more staff would be a great question. But I think that I don't think you have to grandfather it in. But somebody, you know, somebody gets a permit for students and someone doesn't, but that opens up units for people who can't find housing to rent in Amherst. Like many of my friends who, you know, they're older and they can't find housing or else it's really substandard and really expensive or in a student building. We're trying to create a market that is more balanced. And so, you know, so you're saying, okay, you can't rent to students, you could rent to other people. You know, there's a lot of people who want to rent in Amherst and there's a lot of staff that could find places. So I think you're playing with the market in a way and I think I think we have to do that. So. Okay. All right. Anything else? Anybody really needs to say tonight. I'm going to turn it over to Aaron and then Fred. So maybe one of the things we have to do is zero in on owner occupancy. You can only buy a house and rent it out if you're going to live there. All right, Fred. Yeah, I just at the last meeting I got into. The subdividable dwelling and because we were. Over the time limit, I didn't cover one topic and I just want to take about two minutes to mention something that's really important about the subdividable dwelling and that is that that permitting is front end loaded and I found that almost nobody's aware of this. What do you mean by that, friends? I'm going to get to that. When you get a special permit for a subdividable dwelling, you get the special permit at the outset for the highest possible use. And let's say you. You get the permit for that. You occupy the entire building for 10 years. And then your children start to leave home. Okay, now I'm going to rent a unit out. You don't have to get another special. The whole thing is front end loaded that 10 years later you go to the zoning board of appeals. Not at a public hearing at a business meeting and you say this is my revised management plan. Do you have any see anything I could do different? Okay, fine. 10 minutes you're out of there and you get your building permit. And because it's front end loaded, it can be taken into account at the time the house is mortgage. The bank is not a bank will not give financing based on a future special permit because special permits are discretionary. In this case, they can give financing based on the fact that it can be divided and become income producing in the future. And that is huge. And almost nobody understands it, but that is built into that part of the bylaw. I didn't get to that. I wanted to correct and add to that at this meeting. Okay, thank you, Fred. Okay, 19 minutes after eight. Did we cover housing rental rental housing issues and enough general housing issues? All right, I think everybody's played out for tonight. Unless anybody has anything else to say, it looks like Chris does. Oh, is there a, I don't see any hands raised. Is anybody any public members? Jennifer or Pam, anything anybody wants to say up there for public comment? Doesn't look like it. Chris, that was not giving you any noise. Hi. So I just wanted to talk about how we're going to move forward with this topic. And I think rather than having, this would be our suggestion, our recommendation, rather than having an additional meeting every month that we try to incorporate this topic into our regular meetings. And so that's what we'd like to do when we see that, you know, a particular agenda is on the lighter side that we would add this topic and then we would keep discussing it. And those would be our usual zoom meetings rather than in person meetings. So I wanted to get a sense of whether that was acceptable to all of you. Jesse looking at some of the articles and history. I'm a little concerned that would be very. Well, I would be interested in figuring out how to work on this a little more rapidly. So I don't know if a subcommittee is the right way to go to then bring topics more specifically to the full board. I don't know what the options are. But again, it sounds like this topic was raised 10 years ago, right, or some number of years ago and there were studies and nothing's really progressed. So I'd love to figure out how we can try and determine we can't do anything or determine we can do something a little more timely. Chris. Does that mean that we need to meet in person for an extra planning board meeting every month? Or does that mean that we just, I mean, why don't we look at our agenda as you know it over the next six weeks? Let's say and see if there's some opportunities to kind of continue this conversation in at least the frequency that we've been having. So at least once a month, say at least one of the two meetings each month, can we devote a reasonable portion of the meeting to these kinds of conversations. So, you know, I mean, and, you know, there have been periods in my experience on this board where we were really full with a lot of applications and some of them were very complex needed a lot of multiple meetings. We haven't been in that mode lately and maybe we're going to continue in this mode. So let's strike while the iron is hot and keep it moving. You know, I'm eager to do something at University Drive and move over to East Amherst. You know, I mean, let's let's let some people build down here. So I just wanted to say we're eager to do that too. It puts a strain on the staff when we have three meetings a month and then we have to do minutes and postings and all of those things and produce documents for three meetings a month. If we cut it back to two meetings and then slotted this topic, either University Drive or neighborhoods into those agendas, I think it would be more manageable for us. Right. Okay. Well, one question about that is, say we went to two meetings, say we can continue to have these conversations in one of those two meetings each month. How do people feel about zoom versus in person if one of those two meetings like the first meeting of each month was in person and then the third week of each month. Our second meeting was on zoom. I mean, I think there's been some, I've since some positive feedback to having us all in the room every now and then. So from a staff point of view, is that a lot more work or is it equal to a zoom meeting? Chris. Yeah, let's get rid of that dead microphone for me. It's not a lot more work, but for Nate and Pam, I think it is a lot more work. Because they have to actually be here rather than turn off their camera and eat their dinner at home or something. Nate. I mean, I think that, you know, from a few standpoints of zoom meter, zoom meeting is a lot more efficient. So we've only had one or two members of the public come in person. They still attend through zoom. We present our information over zoom. No one really looks at the paper copies. I can annotate on a screen or do live edits on a map or in a Word document. And so for me, if one of the regular meetings was in person, that would mean an applicant would either have to be in person and presenting. And then Amherst media would have to pick up the presentation or they would still be at home presenting remotely to us in person, which just seems kind of strange because really half the meeting tonight is really or more than half is still happening over zoom. I think that to me it's like I think we can facilitate a discussion over zoom as easily as around a table. We don't have to pass around microphones. You know, and so I to me a zoom meeting is can be just as personable and efficient as in person. Bruce. I think I think is that okay. Okay. I share your sentiment that having had these meetings has been very good, but we have had now for so and I feel that the connection connectivity between us now is really established quite nicely. For me, the difficulty of these meetings is it's hard to hear. I really have a troubled time hearing you Jesse and others as well and Chris actually because of where she was sitting relative to where I was sitting. When I'm on zoom, I just put my headphones on and I can hear more clearly so zoom gets my vote for that reason. Okay, so why don't we then go to to meet, you know, stop the third meeting each month. Let's see how the agenda lays out over the next couple months and try just doing zoom. You know, if we need to, you know, I'll come back to my house or I know go back to Janet's house for for, you know, hot mulled wine and and and and nuts or whatever it is people want to serve. We could have a non business get together if we all need to see each other's face in person. Karen. Is it a possibility for some of us to just get together to discuss this some subgroup like Jesse. And I whoever wants to meet for coffee. Can we do that and see so my understanding is if this body doesn't ask you to do that. Hey, it doesn't becomes open meeting law and then we governed and if you don't have a quorum so fewer than four right so three or fewer. Three or fewer can just on your own side to get together. Okay. Yes, Janet. Well, if they come up with something to that they want to present. They could show up. And then and at that point one of you should email Chris you can copy me or not. And request to put your conversation on the agenda. So I like the idea of a housing subcommittee because you know Bruce is doing all this work as he can but you know the question was can somebody call you pen or Penn State and talk find out how they're you know what is their minimum distance look like and can you talk to the Inspectional Services Department and find out how it worked and how many people it took the housing subcommittee could answer those questions and you know give us that the committee could give us tasks to do to work on and collect information. So let's talk about that maybe at the next meeting like do we need a formal body and then we could post them and invite people the public and we could have our own sad minutes without involving Pam and Chris. That's possible. Is that something you'd like to put on the agenda for the next meeting. Okay, Chris. You note that the request to come discuss the housing subcommittee. Johanna. Thanks Doug. I know it's late. My question has to do with University Drive and just next steps on the process because I feel like there was, you know, we're like talking about some of the details and we have to figure out those details but I also feel like there's general consensus that this is a spot where we want that we've identified where development could move forward and we shouldn't allow it to take longer than is necessary to move forward and so I'm just I'm curious like when can we get a first draft when can we get a second draft. What's our process for finalizing and do we have any kind of goal in terms of getting something to actually vote on. Okay, I felt like that was kind of the kind of thing that Chris was saying we want to keep talking about it and can we do that in the regular meeting so. Yeah. Okay, well we need to do it relatively quickly because we're going to be absorbed by the design guidelines project that is looming. We're about to hire a consultant and then that's going to be moving into high gear so we would prefer to do that sooner rather than later. We do have two upcoming meetings in December. One is December 6 where we're going to be talking about the Jones library and I'm not sure how where you think we are with that we at least have to go through conditions and findings for that project but there may be other things that you want to address as well. And then on the 20th we're going to be talking about Hickory Ridge. Trails their handicap trails being proposed there that. I don't think is going to be very controversial but I think it's going to have a lot of public interest so you make it a lot of public comments and it's also a it's not a completely straightforward project. It's going to take some explanation so I guess what I'm saying is it could take an hour and a half. Two hours to get through that and then do you want to tack on another hour to deal with this which we certainly could on the 20th if you were interested. And then which topic would you choose to address would you go back to university drive or would you go to the neighborhood issue. So what's your feeling about how you'd like to deal with this. Bruce are you going to offer an answer to that question or yes. Go ahead. I think I am. I was going to say that I'm somewhat practiced in in getting to you through consensus process having lived in a co housing community for 30 years and five years before that making it happen. So I was thinking that a next step here would be to identify as John says there is a there seems to me I agree with you on that there seems to be a number of things here where I sent that was general agreement on. And and so what I could offer if it would be helpful would be to go through this list and write down those items on the list there. We seem to have consensus and maybe that's just so that you can send that to Chris and then then we could review that. I mean this was a bit hard to review tonight because going through all those items and we had a pretty good discussion but we didn't go through it systematically. But I think if we were to extract the items where we feel we do have consensus and then would leave a smaller pile that we would actually need to hash through a little further. So I would offer to do that if that would be helpful. OK. All right. For the 20th. December 20th. Or for next week. We could have it for next week if you could do it. Yeah. If he wants to bring at least offer it for. Initial look next week. Oh I could put it. We could put it on the agenda. And then if we get to it we get to it. If not. We don't read over to the 20th. How's that. Yeah. Otherwise you forget what you're doing. OK. So we'll put it on the December 6th agenda to discuss to continue discussion of the university drive overlay district. OK. Speak now or wait a week. All right. The time is 8 34 we are adjourned.