 Arlington, like many communities across our country, is struggling with how to manage the changes the town and the world face as a result of climate change and population growth. We want to cherish the amenities we know and love, but we anticipate changes ahead. Thinking about change and contemplating the future-built environment is hard. In 2020, I proposed to the select board a design competition for Arlington. My background includes training as a city planner and a deep appreciation for Isaac Asimov's science fiction. I believe that thinking ahead into an indeterminate future can help us better understand how to manage our decisions today to shape that future. Arlington has this advanced planning for action based into its culture already with the evolution of the Vision 2020 program started with Jane Howard in 1991 and continued as today's Envision Arlington. The civic engagement group of Envision Arlington took up the challenge. The intent is to bring in some fresh perspectives from designers, artists, planners and visionaries. We asked them to leapfrog 20 years into the future and create a post-pandemic vision for our town. Our hope is that these new visions from the teams presenting today will help our community find new ways to think about how to build for our future. We focused on the Broadway Corridor area. This area was identified in 2019 for an in-depth study by the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning students. The study commissioned by Arlington's Department of Planning and Community Development provided a depth of data, mapping and resident insights. The site includes an important transit corridor, a park and a school. It seemed like a good baseline for sampling new visions for the future. Today we will see these new visions for the very first time. We are extraordinarily lucky to have three excellent teams. Each team has a unique tie to Arlington. The Arlington High School team may be thinking about what Arlington should look like from the perspective of teenagers who live in Arlington now and may raise their families in Arlington 20 years from now. The MIT team comes from the same world-renowned Urban Studies and Planning program that brought us the students who prepared the original Broadway Corridor study. These students bring insights from all over the world to shape their visions for today. The Winslow Architects team combines the understanding of participants who work in the Arlington community with the rigorous training of how architects problem solve to create new built environments. We can't have a competition without our judges. Not only are judges bringing the skills required but are also actively involved in the Arlington community and live here. Andrea Arch, good morning Andrea, has lived in Arlington since 1985. She is a visual artist whose work is included in many private and public collections including the Decordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Arch was a founder member of Arlington Public Art and past co-chair of the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture. She's helping start our town's vibrant public art program. Caroline Murray is a construction professional with Turner Construction, an international general contractor. She brings 22 years of building experience in Boston, Cambridge and New York City. Currently, she is senior project manager and also the sustainability manager for her business unit, focusing on knowledge sharing, embodied carbon, energy, circulation, supply chain transparency and resiliency. Caroline resides in Arlington Heights, is a town meeting member and serves on the Envision Arlington Standing Committee. Rachel Zimbary is an architect and president of Bergmeier, a design collaborative with offices in Boston and Los Angeles, specializing in the creation of branded user experience and placemaking. An Arlington resident, Rachel is the chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board and serves on multiple committees in town, focused on economic development and revitalization of our business districts. This event would not have happened without the encouragement of DHCD, especially outgoing director Jenny Rait, the approval of the Arlington Select Board and the energy and fundraising of the Civic Engagement Group of Envision Arlington and the support and assistance of the Select Board Chair and Civic Engagement Group co-chair Len Diggins. And special thanks to the extraordinary and I do mean extraordinary team at ACMI who will bring this event to prosperity. Let's look at the visions now and contemplate how we can extrapolate these visions into community wide conversations about Arlington's future built environment. Hi, I'm Petru Sofio, I'm an Arlington High School sophomore and I'm very interested in transportation design and how we can move towards people first transportation. My name is Talia Eskenazi, I'm a 9th grader at Arlington High School and I'm very interested in seeing how we can promote sustainability and diversity in towns and cities in the future. Before we delve into our presentation, we'd like to give a quick thanks to Mr. Vatan who's our CAD teacher which is where we got exposed to this competition. Computer aided design and development is a very interesting class which helps students get exposed to STEM topics and really get immersed in conversations like this. So when we were going to design this competition, we learned one thing that centered our entire conversation. We learned that 72% of all people growing up in a community end up living in that community or nearby. So what this means is that the future of Arlington is in the hands of the students growing up here today. So we really wanted to gather the information about what students want to see in their future. To do this, we reached out to them through two surveys. The first asked more vague questions like what do you want to have in Arlington and what do you see main roads in Arlington looking like in the future? To which we got a variety of very thorough responses, all of which can be summed up in our word art that you see in the corner. As you can see, students really, really stress the importance of parks in their community. We also looked at what students wanted for main roads, as roads take up so much of our space in our community and we noticed that people were really oriented to people first transportation, such as bicycling. So we also conducted an alternative method of gathering student input and this was an interactive survey poster. It gave students a list of choices and they chose the one that was the most important to them. Here we have the data we collected from that. We also took a look at the current corridor by taking walks on Broadway and taking photos and we noticed a lot of people biking on Broadway but there are no bicycle facilities or shared lanes and we also noticed a lot of people walking on Broadway but when walking on Broadway the streets so wide, cars were traveling fast and vehicles were running red lights making it an unpleasant experience. So with that data that we collected and with from our students and from our observations we developed some goals for the new Broadway corridor. So when we imagine transportation in the future from our survey we realized that we have to start designing away from cars and we have to think more about people oriented transportation that can be sustainable, so that means walking, biking or taking the bus. We also want to make sure that we have walkability in the Broadway corridor by making walking safe, efficient and desirable. Right, so in the midst of our climate change crisis students were concerned about how sustainable Broadway is going to be in the future. So we developed a couple of goals, these being that Broadway needs to have net zero missions in the future and there must be environmentally friendly policies put in place. We also heard from students that they have concerns about the diversity in Arlington so to combat this we're striving for a diverse residential community and representative downtown commerce in Arlington. We also want to make sure that our housing is appropriate to the future of Arlington so that means we want more affordable housing and more mixed use so we can adapt to the growth in Arlington that is expected. We also want to make sure our business community is welcome in Arlington by keeping our beloved businesses but also adding on to more businesses that residents want. And by far the most stressed student interests were public spaces. Students really wanted to see more public spaces where they could congregate safely and they wanted to see the public spaces that we love and cherish connected in a new system that connects these old spaces in these cherish parks to the new spaces we will create. And because of that when we looked at our vision we didn't just look at the Broadway corridor even the neighborhoods surrounding Broadway but we really looked at the large area around Broadway and taking a look at the bicycle network the transportation network and also what was in a five minute walking radiance around the corridor to develop our vision. So with that we made a concept of part of the corridor that encompasses some of the designs that we are having that we want in our future design that includes separated bike lanes and bus only lanes as well as better sidewalks and more creative public spaces. So with that we're going to go to some of the key features. So one thing that I just talked about is continuous separated bike lanes so we realize that we want Arlington to be sustainable we have to encourage the use of bicycles and the best way to do that is by installing separated bike lanes. We've seen it time and time again that when separated bike lanes are installed the business community is better and it's safer to walk in that community as well and we also know that from a case study that when separated bike lanes and wider sidewalks are installed in San Francisco 66% of merchants noticed an increase in sales directly related to that. We also want to make sure our crosswalks are safer for people walking and that means by adding and raise crosswalks with curb extensions. So curb extensions are elements in the roadway that can reduce the crossing distance by 14 feet per crosswalk bringing the crossing distance from 24 feet to 10 feet per crosswalk and with that we can put rain gardens on those curb extensions to help with stormwater management which also helps sustainability and we can also make those crosswalks raised over the road so drivers entering and exiting the neighborhoods can slow down so we can make the side streets more safe. We also want to focus on Ontario rapid transit because we heard from our students that when they took the bus the buses were unreliable and there was no safe place to wait so what we are proposing is because what we heard is that students want like a subway on Broadway except on wheels on a bus and we realize that we can do achieve this with our two-hour rapid transit and this is so crucial because when somebody drives a car and they pay a dollar society pays nine dollars and forty eight cents for that trip when somebody takes the bus and they pay a dollar society only pays eight cents for the same trip so even if we have to de-prioritize cars to prioritize transit that is the best and the most sustainable choice. We also wanted to bring our streets back to people we realize that our neighborhood streets right now are wide they're filled with cars and it's dangerous when I was a kid I used to be able to play in the street and that was some of my fondest memories were from doing that and now it's not safe for kids to do that so we want to propose bringing traffic calming to our neighborhood streets so limit cut through traffic and also allowing citizens to think about what they want in front of their house not just a parking spot so we can use civic engagement to allow people who live in the house to choose if they want a garden or a park or if they want a parking spot but it's their choice for what they want in front of their house not the cities. So we also decided to create a list of some strategies we could implement that would affect these more broad components such as walkability and sustainability. So when we focused on walkability after researching we found that having strategies like traffic calming and street art implemented make the Broadway corridor more safe desirable and efficient to walk in. It's important to note that when you promote walkability and you make a town desirable to walk in people start using their cars less and they turn more towards walking or biking more sustainable methods of transportation. So we then turned our attention to sustainability how can we improve sustainability in Arlington well we found a variety of answers to that by having our sidewalk concretes made instead of the traditional material but from pervious sidewalk concrete what we have is these um concretes that can absorb water and they create clean runoff um also as Petru mentioned earlier using the bump outs in our design as rain gardens that promote sustainability as well and oh sure um so we also focused on a specific branch of sustainability which is stormwater resiliency and stormwater resiliency in a community is so so so important because when it's done well streams rivers lakes all bodies of water are cleaner flood risks are reduced and the community and quality of life in a town or city improves all together. So one of the some of the tactics that we decided to implement we implemented because of um some research that we did having to do with San Francisco this has been a city that we have looked up to quite a bit while doing our research particularly in the case of stormwater resiliency because what we saw was that after they implemented many of these strategies they saw um a decline in destruction of rainwater destruction after flooding or after storms. So some of these strategies are rain gardens by retention gardens which are similar but have some distinct differences stormwater soils permeable pavements as we mentioned earlier and rain barrels and cisterns. So another big student concern as we mentioned earlier was diversity and we learned that the number one way to promote diversity is to create cheaper housing so how do we do that? Well by using mixed use buildings these are buildings that combine commercial uses housing uses and recreational uses we drive the price of housing down. We can also turn to some Arlington legislation such as parking minimums. Parking minimums can make the price of housing much more expensive by up to 20 to 30 percent so by reducing this and making our streets more sustainably transit method focused we don't even need these anymore and we can decrease by 20 rent by up to 20 to 30 percent. Another legislation that we should look at are single family homes by converting single family homes into multifamily homes the price of houses in Arlington dramatically decreases. We also want to look to our business community to help improve that existing community and in the pandemic in 2020 we noticed that a lot of businesses got parklets outside to help improve their businesses and make it more desirable from the public. So what we did is that we decided that in our final design we can make those parklets permanent by making them as curb extensions onto the sidewalk that will allow businesses to have outdoor seating which will allow businesses to have seating or books or anything they want to have in front of their parking space and we also wanted to make sure that public space is prioritized with that. Right so one more thing we wanted to mention about public spaces was that we're really excited about this idea we have their SEM spaces and so these are spaces perhaps in the bump out or all around Broadway that encourage younger children to get immersed in SEM topics so by having these spaces where they can learn about SEM topics they will be inspired and perhaps even join classes like the ones where we learned about this design in CAD class and this will perpetuate the cycle of improving Broadway. While all of our strategies we didn't go over all of them our presentation is accessible online so you should be able to go through all of them. Thank you very much for your time I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. Judges do you have any questions for the participants? I guess I would ask on your surveys about how many people responded to each of those surveys. So we got for the first survey which was by far the more popular one we got a lot more responses we got around 60 would you say? I think the exact number is 55. Yeah 55 or so and then for the other survey that we did that which we had the interactive poster boards that one we saw about around 60 as well I think 62 and then 63 because we want some few people are confused about the method. We really got yeah we got the student input a lot from CAD students we did try to reach out to students from all over the school building but we really only got to CAD students at the end of the day. Any other questions? I just have a question for you. I really enjoyed a lot of the transportation strategies that you started to look up or started to speak about and so many of them were alternates to car transportation. Did you look at any strategies perhaps to eliminate cars entirely on on Broadway or to limit them just interested in other strategies you may have perhaps looked looked into that might have supported some of the other things that you're looking at. Sure so we explored doing some transit ways on Broadway and the transit way would be where you have a block without any cars but it's just for buses and people biking and walking of course and ultimately that didn't make it into the concept design but that was only a limited scope and we would propose doing something like that at least on one of the blocks blocks of Broadway and that would allow more car traffic to focus on Massachusetts Avenue while buses and people can focus on Broadway and that we think that that would bring a good balance to the street. We've got one minute another question. I was just wondering my heart is in public art a lot and I wondered what you think about the use of public art to influence how people respond to their to their urban landscape. Sure so I'm happy to take a little bit of that so we've seen in studies countless times that when public art is added onto streets people drive slower so that's why we would like to have intersections be center places for people to design the streets or design the crosswalks where we can have a design that's pretty and beautiful and makes the town look more connected but also slows down traffic and for example we looked at doing that on some raised intersections and that's where the whole intersection goes up to sidewalk level which slows down all the cars and also creates a better place for people walking because people in wheelchairs and walking don't have to go down a curb ramp they can just stay at their level which makes things safer for everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you. That was terrific and I this is Petri Sofio and Tania Askenazi from Arlington High School. You guys will take a seat please and we'll bring up the MIT students. Sharon Hasenfrotz is not able to be here today unfortunately I've met with her and and we're you know I thought she was terrific. We are going to have presenting today for MIT Jay Maddox and Daniel Prattana. Okay good afternoon judges and friends and colleagues in Arlington. Three of us Jay Maddox myself Daniel Prattana and our lovely friend Shannon that unfortunately cannot be here today we will present our vision of East Arlington complete neighborhood. So Arlington is blessed with features that most American towns could only dream of. Gorgeous green spaces, bike trails, proximity to a major city and an excellent school districts all contribute to Arlington's high desirability. Nevertheless East Arlington specifically struggles with same issues as many U.S. city faced. Housing costs are increasing for many residents and commuting costs remains high. We notice also underutilization of land and unsafe intersections in Broadway corridor making streetscape inactive and unsafe for pedestrians. Furthermore we notice the pollution in Alewifebrook and lack of public transit reliability. However East Arlington is full of opportunities as well. With careful planning and interventions Arlington can be envisioned as a complete neighborhood that connects historical civics spaces amenities open spaces using a reliable bus networks and enjoyable walking and biking infrastructure. East Arlington is a space where local businesses flourish and future affordable housing developments can help people to stay in East Arlington. Speaking about affordability we need to think about affordability comprehensively. We live not only in our housing unit but within a neighborhood. Any expenses in the neighborhood affect affordability therefore we propose aside from diversifying housing supply for various kind of households we notice that we need more studios one bedrooms two bedrooms and more we need to also lower commuting cost and increase the quantity and quality of public amenities. So we revolution Broadway corridor as a central spine that animates connected East Arlington. We visualize three nodes Broadway Plaza Warden Fork and East Arlington Gateway. Each note has a unique character and mix of programs that adds richness and vibrancy to the Broadway corridor. Most importantly the three notes transform this stretch into a complete neighborhood where residents and visitors can satisfy every need within 15 minute walk. Complete tier means affordable accessible and connected. First we want to take a look we want to expand our vision to extend and renews the Broadway Plaza. This means closing Broadway to modern vehicle between Massachusetts F and the Franklin Street. This intervention resemble Netherlands Wooner activates the neighborhood's historical character and cultural character while introducing new space for retail development where people can enjoy their weekend and have outdoor dining. We also want to connect arrays of historical and cultural buildings in this corridor with a coherent landscape architecture design and add more character and identity to strengthen the neighborhood's character. Additionally we noticed that cyclists on the popular Minutemen bike trail here must crave car traffic across Mystic Street and Massachusetts F. So what we propose is the Minutemen connector an elevated bicycle bridge across this intersection. This bicycle bridge provides a saver intersection for cyclists while simultaneously providing a unique vantage point to see this historical and cultural space that we call Broadway Plaza. Here in Broadway Plaza we also notice that there's a 1.5 acres of underutilized public asset that can be repurposed as an affordable housing development. The site is owned by the town of Arlington and therefore can be easily rezoned. The site is strategically located across the Arlington Housing Authority office making it a prime location to establish the new signature affordable housing as one of the new neighborhoods landmark. Thank you so much Daniel. Let's move to our second node which is Warren Fork. That's our little nickname for the intersection of Broadway and Warren Street. We envision Warren Fork as a local hub. Oh I'm so sorry. Maybe this makes a bit more sense. All right there. So this is Warren Fork. We envision and it's basically right here at the center between Warren Street and Broadway or at that intersection. We envision Warren Fork as a local hub for our complete neighborhood. Current conditions are quite dangerous for both bicyclists and pedestrians. We through our intervention we want to actually open up another green space by basically realigning and simplifying the existing intersection right here. Lusciato Field will continue to serve as a critical open space but will be complicated by our new pedestrian friendly green space. Adjacent to this new green space will be a three to four story civic building right here. Perhaps another branch of the local public library. This new civic hub can serve as a sort of midway point between Thompson Elementary School and the Gibbs School. And with this we sort of imagine a new gathering space for families, for students, for members of the community. Lastly, additional street crossings will slow down across this sort of stretch of Broadway here. Will slow down vehicular traffic and foster a more pedestrian friendly streetscape. Along with this development we envision the further development of more medium density housing. About three to five stories along this stretch of Broadway here. Next, finally let's travel a little bit, let's travel down further, further down Broadway to our final node, East Arlington Gateway. Here we want to re-envision underutilized land to meet Broadway's commercial needs. Currently this stretch of land right here is zoned as major business and vehicular oriented business. We want to re-zone to allow for a vibrant mixed-use community. Our plan for this node could be summarized with three words expand, revitalize, and diversify. Expand Arlington's tax base with a diverse mix of large and medium-sized commercial tenants. Revitalize Alewife Brook is a local or a local sort of mini destination for outdoor recreation and require future developers to contribute to Alewife Brook's environmental remediation as a condition of any development rights that are given. That way we can sort of expand and improve Alewife Greenway bike path in addition. Lastly we want to diversify housing stock by adding high density residential onsite. Ultimately the advantage of our plan is its simplicity. However simplicity and modesty in a way can still be transformative. From an urban design perspective this plan doesn't require the community to remake the wheel so to speak. It takes it takes full advantage of our Arlington's geographical strength and wonderful community. Through the creation of three distinct nodes we fulfill the diverse needs of our East Arlington. We will redesign Broadway to be a complete pedestrian and bike friendly street through the introduction of a separate bike lane and separate intersections for those bikes. We'll also introduce a Minuteman Thomistic Slow Street right here which will help residents cross from Central to East Arlington by foot and by bike. This new civic center at Warren Fork will bring together families and local residents in the neighborhood. Along with our complete street we want to improve the 67 bus service to further connect the community onward to Davis Square. Our vision is achievable by 2042. It's feasible and lastly there's a sort of modularity to our plan. While it functions best as a complete package as a complete neighborhood each individual node provides immense benefits if implemented alone as well. We recognize though that the people of East Arlington are what make it what makes it great and will make it greater in the future. To that end we've designed an inclusive community engagement program to make sure their voice is instantiated throughout the process. First we will create engage in an engage in interactive programming study to determine which exact programs and what mix of those programs are best for East Arlington residents. We'll make sure any accessibility or I'm sorry any participation is accessible as well as a transparent implementation process. For example where somebody could sort of view the progress on the Arlington City website. As a complete neighborhood designed for the community the future of East Arlington is quite bright. Thank you very much. This is us. Thank you very much. Judges do you have any questions? These are clarifying questions on their presentation. I guess I have a public art question again. How do you and how would you might envision public art being utilized to bring those three nodes together? Yeah in our proposal especially Broadway Plaza is re-envisioned as the cultural hub the historical hub so we can imagine by closing the streets we can have like temporary art installation in the street that might represent the local culture and the local history and I believe that a lot with the new development in housing and new retail development we can always incorporate public arts into the spaces as well. I would say the same applies for the new Civic Center at Warren Fort. Yep. It provides yet another opportunity yet more space in which to provide for public art. Thank you. You started touching on my question just now could you talk another minute about the Civic Center and kind of how you envision the use of that building? Yeah absolutely. I'm just going to go back and the slides if that helps. Sorry, it's a little bit stuck. Yeah here we go. So I think that's a great question and I think it's always important to watch out for sort of different competing or redundant resources. There is it I believe there is a public library on Massachusetts Avenue but it's it's very cozy but it's quite small. So we imagine I think a far larger kind of library that also is combined with sort of community programming space, public programming space, whether classrooms, auditorium, so on and so forth. I believe the Cambridge Public Library comes to mind on Cambridge Street as a nice sort of very sort of visually stunning but also utilizable space. So yeah. And my question builds off a little bit from the question about the the Civic Hub there in terms of how that either does or doesn't interact with the Minuteman domestic slow street concept. That was really interesting and I'm hoping you can talk a little bit more about that concept and how it plays in with some of the nodes that you're creating. Yeah absolutely. So this is where we envisioned the new Civic Hub and this connection to the Minuteman to Mystic River is in vision. So what we notice is that the Civic Hub can connect local schools as one of the nodes that we can connect right? So we can imagine the slow street become we can imagine that during the evening during the morning in in in the commuting time we can provide a bike bus program where a lot of high school or school students can ride bike together and then might take a stop perhaps during their recess in the Civic Hub. So that might also activate the space but as we also notice here they are centrally located to the neighborhood as well and I believe with the participatory process we can always redefine what is civic space means right? So we can always I believe that the best use of civic civic space should be flexible enough for future uses whether we want to celebrate our history or whether we want to add new innovation space or public art space or just simply a gathering and a time to a place to enjoy the weekend. And to add to that you know I can imagine say you're a family for a baseball game who comes to Luciano Field as Riveting as that may be. You can imagine that you might want a place where you can go and take a break sit down maybe there's a little cafe or read a book. So I think that provides at least in that in that instance especially if you're doing that whole sort of trail as a nice sort of resting spot no matter what your use is on. That was great. Jay, Daniel thank you very much. Why don't you have a seat and we'll bring up the Winslow team. Hi, John Winslow, Winslow Architects, Phil Reville and Bilalpupakli from our firm. We're a local architectural firm. We've specialized in affordable housing development I hate to say it for almost 40 years myself. And we were pleasantly surprised to see this invite to get to be able to dream a little bit and I have to confess we spend so much time kind of making things work that we don't often have the opportunity to step back and dream. So in some ways it's almost harder for us so it's been fun to do and we have a presentation to make. I would say I'm going to give the big picture over you and then Phil's going to lead us to the presentation. We found that an interesting concept to reconcile the idea of quarter with neighborhood and that we viewed that as the challenge and we really want to acknowledge and appreciate the presentations that have been made. Excuse my voice. All of us pick up on that it can be attention. Corridor implies moving through and neighborhood implies place. So we have a presentation that talks about that and I have to say it even with our own firm we've had a fun time we might have some disagreements on some of the things we're presenting and I lastly want to say in case any viewers are watching this we've taken some liberties which we know you can't take we might show somebody's house being taken by a park. For example we know we can't just do that but these are representative of gestures that we think are worth taking. So I'm going to turn it over to Phil and he'll walk us through it and I'll chime in on occasion. Thank you. Yeah thanks John. So how did we approach this? The first thing we did was just walk down the street right and assess the existing conditions. So you know a couple of things worth noting the streetscape itself needs some improvements whether it's the road or the sidewalk or the proximity of houses and buildings along the sidewalk. There's no delineation of different modes of transportation you see buses cars very few people it's not a very inviting pedestrian thoroughfare while there's sidewalk throughout it's inconsistent it isn't very cohesive. There's green space but it's pretty underutilized right there's some trees along the corridor but it's not very intentional there are some open you know lawns as you see at the intersection by Warren but they're not really being used you could see the same at Luciano field and then commercial spaces they're pretty sporadically located throughout the corridor and as John had mentioned one of the big goals here was trying to create a cohesive Broadway corridor something where commerce pedestrians people who live there can feel like they're part of a neighborhood as a whole there's one identity that's tying the whole thing together so we'll talk about that a bit more as we move through. So identifying those key issues as I said lacks a cohesive identity right so we want to tie it together both as a corridor itself to the town of Arlington and then to the region as a whole. As a main local artery doesn't provide multimodal transportation density as we discussed whether it be residential or commercial is pretty sporadic and haphazard it lacks kind of an organization. The diversity of uses is similarly sporadic and inconsistent and there are no central hubs along the corridor that really connect between Arlington Center and Somerville and Aleway Parkway. So taking those issues and creating opportunities we've got a pretty ambitious first one which is to do away with fossil fuels throughout our identified study area so we're going to aim to create a state-of-the-art geothermal network throughout for heating and cooling so that's businesses and residences. Second we want to prioritize circulation for everyone that's accessible circulation for everyone. We want to concentrate higher density and mix uses. We want to add more green space throughout and we want to create neighborhood centers those hubs that we spoke about. So the study areas we defined it actually stretches from Mass Ave up to the Mystic River and then down along Aleway Brooke Park and you can see Broadway and Warren kind of as the spine along that so our envisioning of that looks like this. So what we've done is identify six key focus areas starting with that geothermal network that I spoke about and moving along the street starting with the Arlington Gateway Hub. We're going to talk about streetscape improvements. Luciano Field Connection are envisioning for a Warren Square and then finishing off at Arlington Center and improving access in and around that area. So starting first with the Broadway Corridor Geothermal Network so this is perhaps the most prominent improvement throughout and it kind of unites and ties together this whole proposal. So I'm going to let John talk a little bit about what this is going to look like. This is something that's been on our mind and also everybody's mind and we thought okay we're allowed to dream but we're going to dream and we're aware that technology is coming where geothermal energy can be a potentially economically viable force and but its general consensus is it needs to be done on a large scale for it to work. You know we all know homeowners have tried to do it and some do it. I'm considering myself it's an expensive proposition but it's something that gets us off of fossil fuels and it's something that's going to happen. So we thought with this identification of an area that we would just take this opportunity and quite nicely the shape of our opportunity is really in the shape of a leaf which is kind of symbolic of what we're talking about. We know that the technology is coming involves drilling wells on the order of like two miles deep. I mean this is above my pay grade but this is going on and that there's talk about networking between public private networking between municipalities and utility companies and what we're proposing is to take this opportunity as Cambridge did by the way not with geothermal but they dug up every street in Cambridge and I confess I'm a Cambridge resident although I'm an Arlington architect to replace all their 100 year old sewer and drain lines. Well the same thing can happen the utility lines and we're suggesting that that happened here. So we're suggesting that there be a right down Broadway is going to be a main geothermal line and then the branch streets would each get their own line and the houses would be connected and for those who are watching or don't know I mean it basically would enable homeowners to take the existing heating and cooling systems in their house and power it with geothermal energy rather than rather than with the fossil fuel energy. That's the first point that I want to make. This slide just simply shows it's the underground you know it's a piping system that can be done. So that's that's our first proposal and I appreciated that opportunity to step aside from what we normally do day in day out and say okay you want a dream this is what we should do. So identifying next then kind of the first actual hub along the Broadway corridor is what we titled the Arlington Gateway Hub. So this is a very high density mixed use area that's you know right at the the mouth of Broadway is it where the entrance to Arlington from the street and Dilapo is going to expound upon that a little bit. So when we were looking at the Arlington Gateway Hub we thought this is our gateway of Arlington so we have to exemplify it we have to showcase it and we also were looking at some of the needs that Arlington is asked for such as affordable housing and we looked at you know the ill-wifed greenway and how can we also connect that into the Arlington Gateway Hub and so one of the ways was to create this mixed use commercial retail space that will provide affordable housing as I mentioned will also provide retail spaces and commercial spaces for the residents to use to walk up through and also the addition of green plazas so people can walk through and it just really is to attract pedestrians and make this a more people-friendly kind of walk-in entrance for Arlington. So here you can see we're just showcasing how the approach how it would look as you were coming down the ill life and so it's really about kind of bringing up that green space you know stepping it up bringing some residents in there making it more friendly bringing people into this space to enliven it and so we want to do that the gateway and bring people walking in from Somerville all the way up and people from Arlington walking into this space and so this is our second method of which we wish to address you know the ill in the Broadway Street and how to improve it. So looking then at general streetscape improvements right this is something that we're going to carry all the way up and down the corridor we took a closer look a more granular look at what that actually looks like with particular attention to how do we actually accommodate multimodal transportation. So John if you just want to talk through this section. Okay our office is a block from Broadway so I've honestly I've never I mean where it's there I've never really gone over and taken a close look I went over and actually paced it off. First question is well how wide this is the non-dreaming part of it well how wide is Broadway what can you actually do. So I paced it off we got the actual width I didn't do it by Google and what we are proposing is that similar to what's being talked about and I think you know clearly we we want to get a two-lane bikeway that says it's its own defined lane and so we're certainly proposing that. This is where reality kicks in a little bit we can't have we don't think it's wide enough corridor to have parking on both sides of Broadway and have a bike lane without taking people's houses and we didn't want to go that far and say you know so we're not. We don't we do think we should get away from the car we don't think you need parking on both sides we do think that if that there's middle ground if it wants to talk about it or perhaps some parking lots on occasion you know every forward every 400 feet you can handle them on the cars that would have been on the street otherwise. So that's basically this you know it's a taking use of the width that we have available parking on one side bike lane on the other pedestrian family walkways on both sides yeah I think we're gonna move along because our time may be. So moving up the street we get to Luciano Field and as we all know right now there is no connection between Broadway and Luciano Field and it's kind of one of the few existing open green spaces in the community as it stands and what we saw here was another opportunity for one of those hubs as we mentioned or at least the entryway into what can be a hub up by Warren Street and we'll get to that shortly but right now what we really wanted to do was bring people to and from the field and we're gonna do that through a plaza that's in the middle of a mixed-use mid-rise development. I'm gonna quickly breeze through the rest moving up the street we've got the Warren Square redesign we pulled traffic up away from the intersection of Bates and River to a different area and we're focusing around a new hub here called Warren Square and then we've got the Arlington Center redesign which really looks at doing the same thing improving traffic conditions in and around and taking this bike lane that we spoke about up and down the corridor and connecting the Minuteman Park Minuteman bikeway to the Arlington, the Alewife-Brook bike path. Thank you very much. Thank you. Questions about public art? I'm gonna ask you about public art so yeah how valuable do you think having a vibrant public art programming is to you know rethinking public space like that you've been doing? Yeah which is clearly important one of the things we many things we didn't get to present here but we are proposing that there be a geothermal sculpture in the middle of this park that we're creating at the intersection of Bates River and and by redirecting the Warren Street intersection we've gotten rid of that terrible why we've redirected it we created a park of both sides with a sculpture in the middle of it. We think public art is very important. Moving through the slides if you'd like. Yeah sure. If you can't present any other questions? I was hoping actually that you could maybe talk a little bit more about this this new know that you're creating there for Warren Square specifically about the way that you're diverting the street and looking at you know obviously you had mentioned before one of the things you noted where there were many underutilized green spaces in the median space so how you're proposing uh taking taking a look at that. Is that a question? Yes if you could yes if you could and you know talk and that's me to just explain that a little bit more. We've gotten rid of that we've we've redirected Warren Street so it cuts across and has an intersection right here we've created a park instead of where Warren Street came through and a park on the other side of Warren Street so it's a park of both sides of the street that we've created with public art and I'd add that they're on the side of the street. We took some property to do that so no offense to every property but you can say it can happen. They're on the side of the street that's accessible by a sidewalk so whereas the existing condition is a lawn that's in the middle of roadway that really no one's going to use these are parks that people can get to from their homes from the sidewalk. You're on number five now how many more slides do you have? That's the last one. Caroline do you have a question? I'm fascinated by this geothermal solution I think it's really bold and exciting. Curious if you thought about any other kind of energy solar or? Well these parks that we put in both at at the intersection and up at Arlington we're also proposing a park at Arlington then we can get a chance to talk about here heavily tree now planting trees is another solution that's maybe a minor in the sense when this is not going to be a big forest and perhaps a gesture. Where in Arlington? Pardon me? Where would that park be in Arlington? In Arlington Center. We've redirected Broadway so that it comes in. We went tree crazy. We're proposing that the fire station become a civic museum or some kind of facility and not a fire station so we've we've we've brought Broadway so it enters here does not come through we've taken what was now a parking area we've parked it and treat it and we will we know that maybe some make-up parking is lost we get that because of that but we just find that intersection which such a major part of Arlington just isn't happening and so we took some liberties. Okay thank you very much I'd appreciate it if there's an opportunity for the judges to ask general questions of the group and maybe you can and and we'll pay take maybe five minutes of your judging the liberation time to do that I'm just making that call so we're watching the time and do you have any questions of any of the participants that you'd like to ask now that you've heard it all? One question I have I was really I love the way that the team from Winslow started their presentation with the talking about how this is really the opportunity to step back and dream which you all have have done and I think I'd I just ask as you were doing that dreaming what was what was the biggest aha moment or what was the thing that really you know when you when you dream you you become passionate and excited and can't can't wait to to put pen to paper and and make something come come to fruition so what was the biggest the biggest um the biggest dream that you really excited you about this whole project I'd like each person go down the line yeah so if you'd like to start that would be fantastic I'm sure well uh I hope Petra had to leave but I hope I'm speaking on the behalf of both of us when I say that we learn so much about how when you really focus on a people first street how how little people people don't want to necessarily take their cars they only do because they think that's what what's convenient but when we redesign it to be people first to be transportation first with our arterial bus transit lane we see that people will be more motivated to to take more sustainable methods of transportation so I would say that that's definitely the biggest thing we learn that that just by doing some redesigning and shifting our focus from this um car centered view of transportation we can really um set Arlington out of paths of future can I ask can I ask Daniel and and uh to come up maybe stand up because you guys are in the dark and answer that question quickly yeah for us the I feel personally for me the most inspiring thing is the the green spaces that Arlington have we just like inter inventorize the the opportunity space and Arlington has Minuteman Park trail Elwuf Elwai brook and then the Mystic River and what we did is simply connecting the dots because basically Arlington is almost complete and by just connecting the dots like making sure that civic spaces are connected to open spaces with variety of uh uh a slow street connection and sustainable mobility I feel that this like very very inspiring to us if you want to add to that no that's perfect okay thank you both very much you have a representative come on up so uh for us I guess the ha ha moment was when we were designing I actually could see myself walking down Broadway because I currently live in Arlington and I just moved recently so I've been able to see like how Mass Ave is very alive and you know the day and the night so seeing our design the way we were designing the green spaces the retail spaces I could see myself as a person who'd want to live there and want to move to Broadway um and that got me really excited I got our friend really excited and like he's my boss said it's a great place a great way to design uh the first time to be able to just do that freely and that is really amazing to be able to have that opportunity so thank you very much thank you I don't know if you your decision now do you want to give up a couple of more minutes and ask another question or I I have no idea who I want a three-way tie right now um so I I guess I have a question kind of if we could just go down the line again um everybody kind of touched on the connectivity and the cohesion which I think is right on the money because that area is so delineated right now it's almost like it's it may as well have a wall around it and I'm curious about how um is that connectivity do you see it more as like tentacles or is it more nebulous like growing from a center point yeah I think cohesion was at the center of what we wanted to do to kind of have an identity along the corridor so um to your question I don't necessarily see it as like a a node that then spreads out I think we're looking at the corridor as a place the whole thing becomes a place and you tie it together with certain elements one being the geothermal network that we're talking about right quite literally but another being design elements so the streetscape being consistent as you move along it um the hubs kind of going from higher density to lower up to higher down to lower but being really intentional with it and and the placemaking that you're doing along the whole the whole stretch um one of the unique thing about Arlington unlike many suburban towns is that it's not designed as a cul-de-sac so the network is already gridded even though it's like low density so uh what I learned is that having a gridded street network is already a blessing so you can easily turn each streets into uh saver um and pedestrian and bike friendly so what is important in making connectivity happens is options if people can have an options to okay maybe this this day I want to still take a car because I need to run around here and there but then the other day I want to enjoy the sun I want to walk I want to uh bike and um just because of that the street network that is created provides us with a lot of alternatives right and what we want to do is just to enhance and pick and choose which streets can be slower uh which which uh corridors that students might take that we need to improve the safety of crossings and et cetera so tell you yeah so normally Petru would take this question because he's so passionate about transportation uh I really don't um well he would usually take this but I'll I'll try to answer it as best as I can I know that as we designed and Petru looked at transportation how we can connect Arlington to other neighboring towns and cities um we we thought a lot about that we thought how can we promote connectivity and I know that um one of the things Petru was considering doing was having the bus the buses um go to different places for instance I see I'm I'm not quite sure if this is exactly the town he was talking about but bus route 87 to Sullivan is what I believe he he um planned for so so essentially our design does incorporate these elements that focuses Arlington uh well focuses the connectivity to Broadway and we see I mean to try and answer your question as best as I can I guess we see Arlington more as a center point and where we focus on how we can connect Arlington to all of the neighboring towns and cities effectively that was exciting oh everything was so excellent I I think each team just did a wonderful job each in their own different ways it's so very different which I really appreciate is the um the well there were some overlaps in terms of sustainable transportation strategies each one had such a different focus with regard to how to connect people and um the way that they were going to really create communities which is really exciting yeah I thought it was interesting that the Arlington high school students who live here and have grown up here presumably um you know had had such an interesting perspective um you know really knowing the town and then the other two um who don't necessarily live in town like you know we're able to I think look at it with a on another kind of way you know from a really um more analytical perspective exactly without being so yeah uh-huh what one of the things that I really loved about the Arlington high school students first of all what an incredible presentation unbelievable beautiful first you know as a freshman student in high school I just I could not be more proud of the students here in Arlington to see them the way that they represented them um and the research that they did I thought wonderful yeah I wrote down participation for them they were by far the best with their surveys and really that engagement um the other teams had plans for that but the Arlington high school team was really the one that at that just ran right at it I thought that was a great great approach and I think when we were preparing for um for for this here one of the things that we really started to think about were the categories of people planet and participation that's right and I think that the Arlington students really um really hit it out of the park when it came to thinking about the people who live here and um what what their needs are and and the planet I mean their their multi layered approach to sustainability both in transportation as well as things like stormwater management yeah their resiliency plan was just music to my ears I thought that was incredible yep one of the things that um I I was hoping for a little bit more look in was that idea of participation how are people going to interact in these spaces together um which I think they're they started to scratch the surface of and and I think um it would be wonderful if they continued this exercise you know as a as a project in school to think a little bit um more about that that opportunity to um to to dream even a little bit bigger in terms of um in terms of moves that we can make in the environment to to have people participate in their community together yep absolutely I thought that um interestingly uh everybody's participation was still pretty rooted in reality I mean and that's kind that's actually really good um but you know I was expecting some kind of more off the wall kind of ideas um but but it was excellent one thing that the students did think about so much was the public spaces and um the separated bike lanes you know they really you can really see them you know noticing how them and they and their fellow students really don't have driver's licenses yet exactly so that was super important yeah and I loved the MIT team with that elevated bike lane I thought that that was very ingenious and I like that and whether it's just for bikes or people with strollers or people in wheelchairs I liked that that inclusive inclusivity was really a part of their presentation I think with the MIT presentation I really loved the way that they looked at how to activate our underutilized land in this corner yeah you know starting with Arlington Center and Russell Commons and using that as an opportunity to bring housing into Arlington Center and address our you know really important need for greater affordable housing in towns and how that might play into again that wonderful swooping bike bike path over over Mass Ave which would just be such a you know focal point of the town it makes me think of the High Line in New York you know just up above the great place for a public car speaking of which their whole idea that what they call the complete neighborhood I've got it it was it was really evident and how they presented absolutely I also I think they were really onto something with creating a civic building in that corridor as well because I think that that again that's such a pull that's right for people as well I know that Fox Library is very very well loved but it's also limited in terms of its ability to provide community spaces for for gathering beyond you know smaller family units and so the ability to have beyond Town Hall and some of our other larger gathering spaces in town an opportunity to bring people together beyond parks which are wonderful in some of our ones yeah exactly but to have a gathering space that really is focused year-round on again that participation piece and bringing people together I think was a wonderful strategy yeah and also they really talked about the Yale life Brooke and it is such a wonderful resource it's so been neglected and I loved how they really kind of brought it to the foreground and really talked about how you know it should be part and parcel of everything they talk about so let's talk about Winslow architects a little bit so that geothermal idea just oh my gosh I guess it was so exciting it was I think that their idea was maybe the boldest because you know it was kind of grounded in reality but that kind of approach would be just a game changer for the town of Arlington I loved that and the fact that they live and work there I thought was kind of exciting so where the they didn't have the broad survey they are the survey you know it's actually their neighborhood so I thought that was kind of clever and pointing out that the shape of it was a leaf yeah so obvious why didn't I I wish it had been my idea you know I think I think they brought a really unique perspective both living and working yeah and the fact that they experienced this differently from some of the other teams I think really played into the way that they were looking at density and and where an increased density was important and and bringing in commerce in a much larger way especially at the Arlington gateway area as well you know to really look at the appropriate places to to rethink height in Arlington and where are the appropriate places for us to you know perhaps look at higher density greater mixed use and and I loved too that they called out the underused median parts along Broadway which you know it's wonderful to see the green space they always make me wish for something more every time I walk through and I see this really inaccessible green space that is so desired in in town so I I wish we had a little more time to dig in yeah they had so many ideas that it was actually harder to you know dig into the details on some of them specifically with Warren Square well that bold idea about actually moving that right we're getting rid of the fire station there and turning that into green space wow again very bold very bold and I liked they had the advantage with their experience and affordable housing yes we can all agree but I loved that they were thinking about eco solutions for affordable housing because they're still at assumption that eco ideas you know whether it's your electric vehicle or solar panels that that's for elite elite landowners and and to to get that accessibility into affordable housing I thought would something that Arlington could be really excited about absolutely yeah and I think you know one of the questions we asked them was and that they brought up with this idea about taking a step back to dream I loved all of their their answers and how passionately they spoke about about especially about envisioning yourself in the future and what would make you you know especially is that the young woman on the team who was a newer resident of Arlington what would make you excited to be a longer term resident of Arlington and stay in Arlington and and grow and and experience this this community in 20 years and to have these ideas really spur that type of passion is really exciting to see I agree I agree in terms of did you have any thoughts on again this idea of people planted in participation as as areas that we're looking through any or any places where we we'd love to see further study I think I like what you said a minute ago about work and live yes and I think it didn't occur to me till you said it but I think a little bit more like what's residential versus what's commercial versus what's recreational I would like you know if there was a phase two of this study I think that's what I would like to explore a little bit more and one thing that we've noticed you know over the course of 12 years of of you know public art turning into the commission for arts and culture that there are these and three separate nodes in in Arlington and you know that's right right the heights the center and east and you know how can we bring them together how can we make that you know well or what should you know what to do about those things keep them separate and grow each one or have them or link them together somehow and public art along that corridor was one of the ways we had thought about trying to link them together well I'm dying to hear what you thought about the public art approach from these teams well I you know I think it has public art has really reached a point where it's and that it's like oh of course we would have public art yeah even I thought that that we wouldn't even bother with a slide yeah but you know my experience working with public art is where is the money going to come from it's always the problem you know and and some of these larger things that we talk about are six figure seven figure kinds of you know investments right and so you know we we really want to make sure that we have the funds in the future to understand how important that is to build community and it's as important as the built environment it really is absolutely we hear it all the time how I am delighted to be able to have the teams come back again we're at that big moment when we are going to find out in just a minute who won this competition who was second and who was third place I think they were all winners before they come in though I'd like to just remind people at home that the that this is not an exercise that was commissioned by the town of Arlington to figure out what buildings were going to be built and what was not going to happen in town this is an exercise of some very creative people for what they would imagine might happen in Arlington this is a purely visionary exercise it is not a reality at least not yet maybe by 2040 we'll see some of these things thank you now can I see the attendees come in thank you very much so Petru Sofio from Arlington had to leave we've got Talia Askenazi and we've got Daniel Pratama we've got Jay Maddox and Sharon Hassanfrotz was not able to join us Delepo Peckley is with us John Wildenslow and Phil Reville and now I'd like to introduce the one of the people who made this possible today and the chair of the Arlington board of selectmen also a co-chair and leader in the civic engagement group that helped raise the money and made this possible today Len Diggins thank you miss Dorton he and it's just like a politician how to come in at the end of it and seemingly take credit for it all but but really credit really goes to miss Dorton who he passed or brought the resolution before Tom meeting and and got a vote from the select board and and Tom meeting to to make this happen he and now her personal variance was really a key to this because because he did some it's hard for a town to really pull off something like this on its own you know and so Barbara he really he took the reins in and and led the charge on this scene and and we really were happy to I was happy to support him because what's important about supporting something like this is to make residents of town realize that you have the ability me to to help bring your vision to reality not so much the vision for the contestants but the vision of something that you want to do mean and Arlington is a great town because it will support you in that and that's part of what the civic engagement group is about and that's a lot of what people in town who help lead this town are are here to do and so I really want to applaud miss Dorton for for pushing through and and bringing this plan for a vision you know to to reality so we now will get to announce the winners and this is really exciting for me because I've never done this you know I've always been on the watching that is a so in third place we have Winslow you know and so it's a very modest amount and really appreciate being everyone's participation in this scene and in second place we have the Arlington Heights school students and in first place well it's no suspense at this point MIT students you know thank you very much so on that note once again I want to thank ACMI you know essentially my where I kind of started you know yeah I've been in Arlington for a while but I might my my participation in the town really started with ACMI and so thank you very much me and very short notice me the crew really helped pull this all together at least this final stage made of this design competition so thank you to the judges thank you to the contestants and once again thank you to miss Dorton and thank you for watching and if you're a resident please participate do whatever you want you just tell thank you