 The appointed hour is 6.30 having been reached. I want to welcome everyone to this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals. My name is Steve Judge, as chair of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals, I call this meeting to order. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general law is chapter 30A, section 18, and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This public hearing of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on a link in the town's webpage. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 40A, Article 10, special permit granting authority of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw. This public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. We will begin with a roll call of the regular members of the ZBA who have been in panel for the consideration of the items on tonight's agenda. I'm the chair of Steve Judge, I'm here. Mr. Langsdale. Here. Ms. Omira, I know she's gonna call in, we'll have her announce herself when she arrives. Ms. Parks. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. And we also have associate members who are observing this meeting. Ms. Sharon Waldman. Mr. Barrick. Here. Mr. Greeny. And Mr. Meadows. Here. Also in attendance. Joan has now joined us. Ms. Omira, are you here? There she is. So we have five members present. The zoning board is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 40A of the general laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst zoning bylaw is section 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all of our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and recorded by town staff. Each petition is heard. Each petition is heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merit. And the board is not ruled by precedent. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing after which the board will ask questions for clarification or additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raise hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, present your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and public and input from the public is gathered followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time, it will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition is heard by the board as distinct, the value on its own merits and the board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily, for a special permit, the board has 90 days from the close of the hearing to follow a decision. For a variance, the board has 100 days from the date of filing to follow this decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members and is filed in the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk, there is a 20 day appeal period for an in-grief party to contest the decision with a relevant judicial body and superior court. After the appeal period, the permit must be recorded at the registry of deeds to take effect. Tonight's agenda is as follows. A public hearing to consider ZBA 2020-37, Federman family limited partnerships requests a special permit to allow an increase in the number of residential units, a converted dwelling from one to two, under sections 3.324 and 10.38, located at 1.152 Logtown Road, map 18D Parcel 303, neighborhood residents RN Zoting District. This is continued from our hearing on June 11th. The second item on our agenda is ZBA FY 2020-38, RC retail Amherst LLC, requesting a special permit for the use of recreational marijuana retailer under section 3.363.2, 7.9 and 10.38 of the Amherst Zoning Bylaw, located at 328 College Street, map 14D Parcel 222, and map 15A Parcel 97, in a commercial COM Zoning District. This also is continued from a public hearing on June 11th, 2020. After that, there'll be public comment and other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours. First order of business is ZBA 2020-37, Federman Family Limited Partnership. Are there any disclosures by the board members? Since the June 11th hearing, the board has received additional submittals from the applicant. We received an updated site plan dated June 16th and signed by Rindel Eiser, an updated floor plan for the existing conditions, as well as the changes to the floor plan dated 615-2020. Updated North, South and East elevations, dated 615-2020. Cut sheets for light fixtures, an updated response plan. We also received today, written descriptions of roles and responsibilities of the assigned resident manager. And we've received an updated floor plan showing the electrical inspector comments and existing proposed windows, which are included in the updated floor plan. At this time, I would ask that the applicant wants to speak at all to present anything to the board regarding the submissions or any, and then from after that, we can have board members may have questions for the applicant. So at this point, we should give the applicant the opportunity to speak, to summarize the submissions and to talk about the application. Good evening. Are you all able to hear me okay? I'm using an external microphone, so I just want to make sure it's set up okay. Yes, we can hear you. Wonderful. Good evening, everybody. My name is David Berson. I'm an attorney from Bacon Wilson, and I'm here tonight on behalf of the Fetterman Family Limited Partnership. I believe with me tonight, probably participating in the audience is Elsie Fetterman, who is the managing partner of that partnership, as well as, I believe, Joshua Kenney, is also in the audience who is the contractor who's prepared these plans for the board. So he, you may be familiar with him. Mr. Berson, hold off for just a second. Mr. Langsdale has a... It's the sound quality is very muted. It's very hard to hear him. Let me see if I can get closer to the microphone. Bear with me one second. I have to physically lower the mic, so. Okay, thank you. I hope you'll forgive the microphone. Is that better? Much, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay, wonderful. And now, hopefully you don't mind the microphone hanging at the top of the screen. So with us tonight is Joshua Kenney from Kenney Construction, who prepared these plans as well as the changes to the plan. He was with us at the site visit. You may recall as well, I believe, as Rick McGinn, who is the property manager, which, as we did to make a point of noting, is different from our proposed resident manager who will be the onsite individual. So that being said, we are here once again before the board tonight, seeking approval for a special permit to convert an existing single-family property into a converted dwelling two-family. In accordance with section 3.324 of the Emersonian Viola. As it was indicated, we did submit some additional materials that had been requested from this board. One, just to once again recap on the items that had been submitted, we did update the site plan to include the lot coverage calculations because that was a question and concern of the board as well as the dimensions associated with the parking and drive area, as well as the existing concrete patio that exists at the property. So now we've got a full image of what that lot coverage will look like. Additionally to that end, there were some questions about that, the fifth space, as I don't love to call it, but the fifth space, so to speak, the parking spot adjacent to the northeast side of the house or the potential parking spot, I should say. The plan is to put a trash enclosure in that spot. You may recall when we did the site visit, Elsie pointed out the electrical box on the accessory structure, the exterior electrical box that Josh had made look like the rest of the house. Similarly, he's going to build something for the trash receptacle. So I didn't have the opportunity to actually find a cut sheet for you because we're not buying something pre-made for that purpose. That being said, there's no intent to put bike racks at this time in that spot. The hope or the plan is for that trash receptacle to effectively, and the fact that it's the main, I mean ingressing egress for that patio and new stairway that effectively we're going to block that with the trash receptacle. We don't feel the need to put anything else there. Additionally, you'll also see another change on the site plan. At the last meeting on June 11th, Mr. Waskevitz was nice enough or pointed out that there's got to be a better version of access for the walking up from that bottom outdoor patio exit to the parking area. And I'm not sure if you recall on the site visit, Ms. Fetterman had a hard time walking up that slope herself. So we have proposed, and you'll see it on the site plan and I'll ask Josh and to describe it a little bit more detail as to what's being proposed. But the new plan is to have a stairwell coming up from the existing patio area up to a proposed landing at the top there where the patio would essentially meet the paved driveway area. So we have shown the additional concrete landing area on the plan as well as how that will affect the coverage calculations in the below formula. You can see we're still within the appropriate calculations. Additionally, we've also provided updated floor plans which showed the window that Mr. Langsdale had noticed was missing on the site visit, as well as the plans for the exterior electrical junction box as that's no longer going to be located within the basement area. Additionally, we did provide those cut sheets. The understanding and we expect there's going to be a condition that all lighting at the property exterior lighting be converted to dark sky compliant downcast lighting. So we're more than prepared and ready for that condition. Additionally, we have updated the complaint response plan to include that new resident manager. The individual's name, Stephen Bassett, his information has been included in that complaint response plan. Additionally, we did provide a memorandum that just really briefly gives a description of how the resident manager's role is kind of envisioned. And you will note that if you've had an opportunity to look at it that the primary responsibility is to be the on site point of contact for the community as well as the other tenants to get ahold of the property manager and the owner who will quickly rectify any issues. It's our understanding or we expect that the town will have the updated information for the complaint response plan. As part of any change in ownership in the future, we expect that that would also be an ongoing condition for the special permit. Additionally, we did also submit the, I believe the, before our last meeting, we did submit the tenant notification app that David or right after the last meeting. So I did just wanna provide an update that that was submitted as well. So I believe that's everything that's been submitted. I don't know if there were any additional items that we have not addressed. But that being said, once again, we do believe and we think that this is an appropriate place for our proposed conversion. It's right near right off of route nine. It's right adjacent to a bus stop. It is very minimal exterior alterations would be required to make this to convert this dwelling. And we believe that this is an appropriate place and project for the site. So thank you again and happy to answer any questions. And once again, Josh should be here. So if you have specific questions about the plan, I would just ask that you direct them to him. There you go. Thank you, Mr. Berson. Thank you, Mr. Berson. Two quick questions on my part. And then I'll open it up to questions from the other board members. First of the trash enclosure and the exterior junction box. You don't have a plan for those. Are you going to build them custom? Is that right? So I would, would you object to a condition that has the trash enclosure and the exterior junction box reviewed by the inspection services as a condition of occupancy or before the tenants are in the house? Not at all. Okay. So that's one thing. Since you aren't going to submit a written plan for those, at least they should be reviewed by inspection services. So that's a condition we at least will consider. Are there, that's the only question I have right now. Do any board members have further questions? Mr. Langsdale. Excuse me. Just a little bit on the lighting. On the north elevation, it shows, it says existing spotlight replaced with compliant fixture. It does not say dark sky compliant as the others do. So if, well, along with, there is also no west elevation showing the replacing the carriage style light at the front door with the dark sky compliant fixture. I would, I guess ask that as a condition that it would be noted that the spotlight replacement on the north elevation would be with dark sky compliant as well as the existing carriage light on the west side at the front door also be replaced with dark sky compliant light. We certainly expect the condition on the permit and we can certainly have the, also have that light shown on the plan before it gets submitted to the final plan of the inspection services. So it's also noted there as well. Okay. I just want to make sure that we all understand that all the lights have to be replaced as the others. Okay. Alex. Ms. Parks, I think you had your hand up. Yeah. So I'm just looking at materials that we received today and one of them is from about an electrical inspection. And so I'm just going to assume that you'll comply with the recommendations from this letter from Christina Shen that was dated on May 27th. The concern was that if these electrical services in the basement, the first floor occupants wouldn't have access. Yes. So that's Josh who just jumped on, Josh Kenny, but just to answer the question, so that actually was what prompted the change in the plans to move the electrical box to the exterior of the property. So that is, we would expect the condition in any way that we comply with all building and electrical requirements. Okay. And it does say occupants must have access to their service disconnecting means. So that would be exteriors okay for that? That's great. The landing. All right. And then the others. I've never seen it before either, but yeah. Okay. And then the other letter that I'm looking at is from Erin Jock from June 10th. And it is from the wetlands administrator. And Steve, do you see that? It has some conditions on it, special conditions on it. It's from Erin Jock. Let me take a look. June 10th. They're listed on the screen. There we are. There. And do we need to add that or is that, it's through the wetlands commission is already there? It's a condition of our wetlands permit. So it's, I mean, it's not necessary for you to, because we're bound by that permit as well, you know, regardless of we have to comply with that. All right. And has that's been signed off on? It says it's still circulating for board signature. Is that all set? We haven't received the final final version for recording, but I believe that it should be not soon. I mean, they issued their determination. So it's, it's, you know, literally a matter of us waiting for physical signatures. So, okay. So your representation is that the meeting has taken place. They voted to approve this. You just don't have a piece of paper saying that's the case. Well, I actually believe that this email is probably sufficient to say that that's the case since they actually passed this determination. But my representation is that we have not yet received a final signed copy from the full conservation commission. So we are awaiting that final version for recording. Okay. Thank you for me. Any other board members have questions for the applicant? Okay. Be the time for any public comment. I have no further questions myself. And if board members have no further questions, this would be the time for public comment. If there's anybody from the public that wishes to speak to this, they should raise the hand on their Zoom app. And we will try to connect you. At this point in time, I see nobody that's raised their hand indicating a desire, remember the public indicating a desire to speak. If that's the case, we'll move on to, we must consider the, consider a motion to close the, unless there's any other discussion, consider a motion to close the public hearing on this matter. And then we'll move to a public meeting where we'll consider the conditions and the 10.38 findings that we have to make. So I move that we close the public hearing on this matter and that we move to a public meeting. Do I have a second? Second. This will be a roll call vote. Is there any discussion? This will be a roll call vote. I vote aye. Mr. Langsdale? Aye. Ms. O'Mara? Aye. Ms. Parks? Aye. Mr. Maxfield? Aye. The motion is passed. The public hearing is closed. We're now into public meeting. This is a portion where the board discusses the application for special permit and any conditions that may be imposed. Do any members have a general comment they want to make about the application for the special permit? I'd like to hear those first and then I'd like to discuss the conditions that we've identified, that have been identified for staff for our consideration. Is there any general discussion? If not, staff has identified I think 14 conditions and we also had a couple that we noticed tonight. I want to run through those briefly so that we all agree that these are the conditions that we place on the application. First is a reflective street address sign for each unit that shall be installed on the street in a manner ensuring their visibility for public safety personnel from any approach. Secondly, all grass and if anybody has a question or problem with this is raise it as I raise the condition. All grass areas shall have a maximum height of four inches. No more than four unrelated individuals shall occupy each unit. Parking shall occur on improved services only. The parking area shall be maintained as needed and the parking and drive area shall be constructed within the requirements of article 7.1. All parking areas shall be clearly delineated and shall be provided with permanent dust-free surface and adequate drainage. Individual parking spaces shall be painted, marked or otherwise delineated in the manner sufficient to visibly identified said places. Each room in the house. Go ahead, Mr. Langsdale. Excuse me, I'm not sure if I heard that correctly about the parking spaces. Do they need to be resurfaced? Is that part of what we're going to say that they should be resurfaced and marked? We say they have, I think I read this as saying they need to be marked or otherwise delineated and manner sufficiently to visibly identify the space. And I see that this condition, condition number four requires that the parking area to be maintained as needed. But I don't see that they have to be refin I don't see that this condition so far has required refinishing of the parking spaces. All right, thanks. Each room shall be used as labeled as shown in the approved floor plan. We normally have a condition where the number of overnight visitors per unit is limited and the number of stays, nights of stay is limited. We discussed this at the last meeting. I don't recall that the applicant gave us a limit on the number of people, visitors and the length of time those visitors could be there per unit. This would be a time for a proposal from the applicant as to how many people they would like as overnight visitors and for how long they would like to have those visitors stay. That's a great question. I mean, I think I'm going to have Elsie probably step in here if she's around because quite frankly, I think we're going to be limited just based on the size of these units as well as the parking area. I mean, Elsie lives right next door, so it's not as if, you know, she's very careful about choosing her tenants so we don't expect there to be any parties and the like next door. So that being said, you know, we hadn't really given it much thought. Well, if I can just provide a guidance in the past, we've talked about having an additional half a person per resident. So if you have four tenants in a unit, two people for a week is what we've used in the past. That isn't a hard and fast. And we'd certainly consider whatever the applicant wants, but the notion is not to have long-term additional people living in the space above the four tenants in each unit. At that point, we're losing money. So we certainly have no opposition to that. I think that sounds appropriate. You may as well just use the guidelines that have been used in the past. All right, so we'll have two people, the maximum number over, yes, per unit is two people for seven consecutive nights. And the other issue is the maximum number of people in the property at any time. That's typically, again, we discussed this at the last meeting, we didn't come up with a number. That's typically to avoid large parties. So at least has to be four, eight, 10, 12, but there should be some number larger than that, but larger than a large party, or smaller than a large party. Yep, our lease specifies 10. So I think it probably makes sense to have a consistent with our existing lease. Maximum number of people on the property at any time is 10. So there are only two guests. It's per unit. Per unit. Quick question about that. You know, is that each unit can have up to 10 guests at any given time, or is that 10 maximum? That's how the, so the lease reads as 10 guests. So I thank you for this. So then that would put that number at 28. Am I correct about that at a maximum number of time? Yeah, it'd be at least 28, right? It'd be 10 plus four plus two, yeah. That's the maximum under the lease. It'd be 32. 10 plus four plus two, right? 16 for each unit. So you have four residents, possibly two guests, and then an additional, oh, I see an additional 10, it was me 28, you're right. I'm sorry, Dylan, maybe 28. That seems like a lot. It's not gonna happen. I think Elsie's indicating we were okay with the lesser number. All right. Well, that happens. Well, I personally, I like to say 28 is a perfectly acceptable number to me, given that it's split between two units that any individual unit wouldn't exceed 14, which I imagine would be in your lease, of course, if you want to lower that in your lease. That would be your decision, I think, as the board setting a limit. I personally think 28 is a very reasonable number to set. And then after that, the landlord could certainly go down if you wanted to. I will. There you go. What do you want, Ms. Setterman, as a number there? I live next door, I'm 93 years old, and if they have, I work with David Burson on the lease, but we're certainly not gonna have the largest number that we talked about if they have one guest for one or two nights. Right now, I see the university's not allowing anybody in the dorm to have anybody there at all with a virus, but I have lived here since 1986, and I've never had people have very many guests over at all. So it's gonna be very low, the number very low. I tell them they wanna go visit somewhere else, but not here, it's a residential area. Let's keep it, let's say 20? No, not 20. Just, it's okay, let's go, let's, okay. Okay, I mean you might have two parents, two parents for each kid, and they wanna say, congratulations, you graduated, you know, so we deal, 20 people, that's it. 10 per unit, we're done, all right, 10 per unit. If I may, I just simply don't want to put a limit on that from the board, and again, Ms. Thetterman would like to lower that number, absolutely. I would just like to come in from the board that it could be 28, and you are free to lower that in the leases you so choose. Well, I think- Mr. Lamesdale. Incumbent upon us, as it has been in the past, to make a limit, and then whatever the owner wants to do below that is fine, but I think it's incumbent upon us to set a limit. All right, so if I gauge the consensus of the board, we know we don't wanna go more than 28, and we wanna allow this person to do, allow Ms. Thetterman to do less. So let's use maximum number of people on the property at any time as 28. You can do whatever you wish, in terms of the lease, to do less than that, but it seems that that's the consensus of the board at this time. Number 11, the approved management plan and complaint response plan shall be followed at all times. Any modifications will come before the Zoning Board of Appeals of the public meeting for review and approval. All exterior lighting shall be designed and installed so as to be shielded or downcast. To avoid light trespass onto other properties, lighting fixtures shall be selected according to the dark sky compliance recommendation of the ZVA rules and regulations. So to be clear, that condition will read that all exterior lighting shall be dark sky compliant. Including replacing lighting that exists. Yes, Mr. Linesville? Because their plans, I mean, if one of the conditions is going to be that all the changes go according to the plans, there are those two things that are not indicated on the plans. I would like them in the condition. Well, we'll make sure our conditions be affected, they'd be added to the plans or all lighting fixtures be added to the plans. But we're doing the conditions right now and we're going to then vote on it. And if we don't put that in, then we have no recourse if you don't do what you say you're going to do. So I would like that put into the condition. Well, the only other option is to have them come back with new plans. Oh yeah, no, I was suggesting that the conditions suggest that they be provided to build the inspection service of prior issuance of the building permit, which Mike. Well, but specifically the exterior light on the west side of the front door be replaced with a dark sky compliant and the one on the north elevation, the spotlight on the north elevation be replaced with a dark sky compliant fixture. I'd like those words in it. Okay. Because otherwise they're not on the plans. So let's do this, Mr. Langsdale. Let's see if this meets with everybody's approval. All exterior lighting, including the extension light on the exterior light on the west door and the spotlight on the north side shall be designed and installed so as to be shielded or downcast. Just say including those. So it's all lights, including those lights. Dark sky compliant. Yeah, well it goes down here. Lighting fixture shall be selected according to the dark sky compliance recommendations of the ZBA rules and regulations. Okay, thank you. Okay, did you get that Maureen? Okay. Any other comments on lighting? Any dwelling unit on the property being rented shall be registered and permitted in accordance with the residential rental property bylaw. The property shall be free of trash and litter. Under the special permits, the house located at 152 Log Town Road shall be owner occupied or have a resident manager and as one of the residential, in one of the residential units at all times. And then we have, we wanna have the trash and cloaker and the exterior junction box inspected by inspection services before certificate of occupancy is issued. I think, I mean, that's fine for us. I think that will indicate that, it won't be usable until there's proof that those items are working. Or that they're- That they meet the requirements of the inspection services. I did have, if I may, and I apologize for interrupting and going back. On condition 11, regarding the updated management plan complaint response plan. I'm wondering if it would be possible, certainly understand the management plan coming back before this board at a public meeting. But as far as the complaint response plan, I guess, well, I guess it doesn't much matter because if we're up, my thinking is if we're updating the complaint response plan because we have a new tenant that's a resident manager, we likely don't want to be bothering this board with a public meeting request, if it's just because we have a new tenant in place acting as resident manager. So I'm not sure if it just wants to, we want to make it so that we have to update that with inspection services as opposed to coming back to the board, specifically just the complaint response plan for the resident manager portion. It seems to me that, what seems to me that the town's interest is served by having the inspection services department notified of the change and submitting a new complaint response, an updated complaint response form. I don't think we need to see you for that once a year when you have a new tenant or a new college student living there and being the resident manager. I agree with that. So Maureen, you can figure out a way to, say in the condition, something to the effect that the approved management plan should be followed at all times. Any modification accept, should come to the board, the ZBA accept the change in the name of the resident manager, which shall be submitted to the inspection services. Does that meet with the approval of the rest of the board members? Okay, good enough. All right. So those are the conditions that we, are there any other conditions that board members want to consider? Well, there's one more, if I might jump in. The first one. But that was, oh, the most important one, that the project shall be built according to the approved plans and maintained as needed. Any deviation from the approved plan shall come back to the ZBA at the public meeting. Okay, and then we list the plans. So those are the 14 or 15 and two additional conditions that we have for this application. So now if there's any other, if there's no more discussion, we have to do our 10.38 findings. Let me just find those. Those were in the original project, I think Maureen. Yes, they're in the original project application report. Yep. So findings for, first we have findings on converted dwellings, section 3.3241, converted dwelling standard conditions, standard one, an existing residence, a structure attached to an existing residence or the detached structure may be converted into a dwelling unit or units provided all other zoning requirements which would apply to converted dwelling or met. We find that this application has met this requirement. Standard two deals with a converted may use, a converted dwelling may use the conversion of one or more structures on a given property which will not result in a total number of dwelling units and exceeding what would otherwise be allowed. Staff review has found that 152 log town road is located within the RN Zoting District. The applicant is proposing two residential units. The applicant meets the standard. Standard three in the BL, BVC and BM districts, which this is not, so this standard is not applicable. Standard four is there's no significant change to the interior of the building except to the special permit granting authority may authorize modifications or alteration of the building of such modification or alteration does not substantially change the building's character or its effect on the neighborhood. Only changes made to the existing structure will primarily occur within the existing building. The only alteration to the exterior of the premises will be the new concrete walkway on the south of the property, the elevated deck on the east of the premises above the stone patio. And now additionally there are the steps. The steps from the new steps from the patio to the concrete walkway. Standard five accepted here and after there's standard five is not applicable. And standard six, the proposed conversion shall be suitably located in a neighborhood in which it is proposed deemed appropriate by the special granting permit authority. The conversion if in a residential district shall be either located in an area that is close to heavily traveled streets, close to businesses or commercial and educational districts and or already developed for multifamily use and shall require owner, occupancy or resident manager in one of the units or B be from one to two units, one unit of which shall be and shall remain owner occupied. The applicant meets this because we will have a resident manager on site. And this is a provision that cannot be waived but the applicant meets this requirement. Standard seven, the dwelling unit shall be connected to the public sewer. The property is connected to the public sewer. The special permit standard eight, the special permit granting authority may modify dimensional requirements of table three, one time only for any parcel to allow conversion that would add one additional unit if it finds that modification would be in accordance with section 9.22 and those zoning districts where two families detached duplexes are not committed, conversion of a non-conforming single family dwelling may result in two or more dwelling units under applicable permit. Staff has found that the applicant is requesting the board to modify the dimensional requirements of table three to a one time only for any parcel in order to allow a conversion under section 3.3241 that would add one additional unit. In order for the board to make this finding they need to find the modification would be in accordance with provisions of section 9.22 which states the following. The special permit granting authority is authorized to act under the provisions of section 3.3 of this bylaw may under a special permit allow a non-conforming use of a building structure or land to be changed to a specified use not substantially different in character or in its effect on the neighborhood or property and the vicinity. Set authority may also authorize under a special permit a non-conforming use of a building structure or land to be extended or non-conforming building to be structurally altered enlarged or reconstructed provided that the authority finds such an alteration enlargement or reconstruction shall not be substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood than the existing non-conforming use or non-conforming building. This property currently meets the minimum lot area for single family dwelling units located within the R and district by adding another dwelling unit to property the application does not meet the additional lot area needed however, standard eight allows the board to modify the dimensional requirements of table three to one time only for any parcel in order to allow a conversion under section 3.3241 that would add just one additional unit. The property is located in a residential neighborhood. The proposal would not be substantially different in character or an effect on the neighborhood or in the property and the vicinity. For the property would not be substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood than the existing non-conforming use or non-conforming building. A residential use currently exists at this property. The applicant is proposing one additional residential tool at this location. Standard nine is no detached structure can be converted under provisions of section 3.321 or less advised by provisioning condition five. This just the detached structure abides with by the demolition requirements of standard five there'll be more than 350 square feet of habitable space in each dwelling unit. The management plan is defined when the rules and regulations adopted by the special permit granting authority should be included in an integral part of many application. The applicant has submitted a management plan standard 11, staff review. I mean, standard 11 is a landscape plan appropriate for the project shall be included in the application. The applicant has requested a waiver of this landscaping plan. There's no proposed changes. Standard 12 is concerns with open space and sufficient open space for dwelling unit. We've dealt with the dimensional regulations and those are the conditions under section 9.321. We now have findings under section 10.38 and 10.381. The proposal is suitably located in the neighborhood in which it is proposed and or the total town as deemed appropriate by the special permit granting authority. The proposal is compatible with existing uses and other uses permitted by right in the same district. The proposed four residential units may be found to be suitable for the neighborhood in which it is located. I just wanted to interrupt you. That was a typo, it should say two residential units. Two resident, yeah, exactly. Thank you. 10.382, 10.383, 10.385 and 10.387. The proposal would not constitute a nuisance through the air, water, flood, noise, odor, dust, vibration, lights or other visually offensive structures or site features. It would not be substantial convenience or hazard to a butters, vehicles or pedestrians. The proposal reasonably protects adjoining premises against detrimental uses in the site and including air, water, pollution, flood, noise, odor, dust, vibration, lights or visually offensive structures or site features. The proposal provides convenient and safe vehicular pedestrian movement within the site and in relation to adjacent streets, properties or improvements. According to the submitted management plan, existing lighting needs to be changed. According to the management plan, lighting will be all dark scar compliant and existing lighting will be changed to reflect that. 10.384, adequate and appropriate facilities provided for proper operation of the proposed use. The utility services are already provided for the property. 10.386 deals with the proposal insures that it is in conformance with the parking and sign regulations. The application meets the parking regulations. A condition will be replaced to require a reflective sign for the residents' units and striping and maintenance of the parking surfaces. 10.387, the proposal provides for convenient and safe vehicular pedestrian movement within the site in relation to adjacent streets, properties, improvements. If the special granting permit authority deems the proposal likely to have a significant adverse effect upon traffic patterns, it can require a traffic impact report. It appears that there is convenient and safe vehicular and pedestrian movements throughout the site. 10.388, this deals with off-street loading. It is not applicable to the project. Loading and offloading and loading of vehicles is not applicable to this project. 10.389, the proposal provides adequate methods of disposal and or storage or sewage, refuse or recyclables or other waste, resulting from the use permitted or permissible on the site. Since the building are reexisting on the site, sewage and water connections are in use. The management plan will have diesel trucking will be used for waste and recycling pickup, and trash and waste recycling will be picked up weekly. 10.390, the proposal ensures protection from flood hazards. This is not applicable to the project. It was not in the flood zone. Proposal protects to the extent feasible, unique, or important natural historic features. This is not applicable to the project. The proposed use provides adequate landscaping, screening of adjacent uses, provision of street trees, landscape islands, and parking lots. That's for non-residential. Where natural disturb visitation already exists on non-site prior set preparation and clearing the majority of that vegetation may be retained. The applicant has requested a waiver from submitting a landscape plan. The board, I mean, they're not proposing any significant changes to the landscaping. I don't see no need for a landscape plan. So I would grant that waiver. I would propose we grant that waiver. 10.393, the proposal provides protection of adjacent properties by minimizing the intrusion of lighting, including parking lot and exterior lights to use of cutoff luminaries, light shields, lower light poles, et cetera. To eliminate, also to eliminate light trespass onto streets or abutting properties and to eliminate direct or reflected glare perceptible to persons on any street or abutting property, sufficient to reduce the viewer's ability to see. All lighting, including architectural sign lightings, lot lighting shall be kept distinguished outside of those business hours under improved site management plans. According to submitted management plans, existing lighting on the premises are located above doorsways, which will be replaced with dark sky compliant lights. The board will also require that all light fixtures be dark sky compliant and comply with the ZDA's rules on lighting. They have already submitted proposed cut sheets. 10.394, the proposal avoids to the extent feasible impact on slopes, planes, grades. This is not applicable to projects. 10.395, the proposal does not create disharmony with respect to terrain and to use scale and architecture of existing buildings. This is basically about the scale. The only change and about the outside mass of the building, the only change is made to the existing structure will primarily occur within the existing building. The only alteration to the exterior of the premises will be a concrete walkway on the soft patio, an elevated deck on the east, and now some additional steps from the patio up to the new concrete walk. The proposal does not create disharmony with respect to terrain and to use scale and architecture of existing building but is in the vicinity, which have functional or visual relationships there too. 10.396, the proposal provides screening for storage areas, loading docks. This is not really applicable. They are going to submit a drawing to the inspection services for a trash enclosure adjacent to the house as condition of the approval. 10.397, the proposal provides adequate recreational facilities. Adequate recreational space is found, open space is found on the property. And 10.398, the proposal is in harmony with the general purpose and intent of this bylaws and the master plan. We find that this is in harmony with the general purpose and intent of the bylaws and encourages a greater, especially section 4.8.1, which encourages a greater mix of housing types to be found throughout the community. With that, those findings of section 3.241 and section 10.38, and as well as our conditions enumerated by the earlier discussion, I move that we approve this project, special permit application with conditions. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? If not, it's a roll call vote. Chairman votes aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Ms. O'Mara. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. All right. Congratulations. Good luck with your project. Thank you all very much, we really appreciate it. Thank you. Hallelujah. The second item on the agenda tonight is ZBA FY 2020-38. RC, we don't have to, we don't need another motion after that to close off the public meeting, do we? No, it's done. So the second item on the agenda tonight is ZBA FY 2020-38. RC retail Amherst LLC, requesting a special permit for the use of recreational marijuana retailer under section 3.363.2 and 10.38 of the Amherst Zoning By-law located at 328 College Street, map 14B, parcel 222, and map 15A, parcel 97. It's in the commercial zoning district. This matter has continued from June 11th, 2020. Are there any disclosures from any board members? If not, I'm gonna list the submissions that we've received. Just let me get my papers in order here. Since June 11th, we've received the following submissions from the applicant. Stock photographs of the proposed roll down security grill, an updated site plan, including sign detail, an updated narrative, a marijuana use memorandum, and a parking waiver request with an updated parking overview. I think that's the entire submissions from the applicant, isn't it, Maureen? Did you mention the updated plan set? I did not. The updated plan set, which is not, which is right here, and the updated plan set, which includes, excuse me, excludes the plan set for the existing retail space. The light of property plan L1.0, special permit set A1 floor plans, internal floor plans, pictures of the external surface of the building, a lighting plan, and a updated floor plan. At the June 11th meeting, the board requested responses to several items. What I'd like to do is go to that in a second, but first I wanna give the applicant the opportunity to make a short presentation on anything that you've submitted, but I thought that we would deal with the responses that you submitted back to the board separately. So this would be an opportunity for the applicant to talk through the submissions, not in response to the board questions from last week, but from last meeting. Sure, so for the record, good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Ms. Pollack, I'm Tom Reedy, an attorney with Bacon Wilson out of Amherst here on behalf of RC Retail, and its application for a special permit for a marijuana retailer establishment on College Street in Amherst. The gang's all here, same as last time, Stan Rosenberg, Jason Adams, Chris Farley, Jeff Robeler, and so we're here ready, willing and able to answer any of the questions that you've got, as you noted, Mr. Chairman, we had submitted, we think all of the items that were requested of us last time, we're happy to take them in turn, out of turn, whatever it is that you would like to do, but we feel very prepared this evening that we have the information that you've requested and that you can ultimately close the public hearing and vote favorably on this request. Thank you. So there's eight items specifically that were requested and responses were delivered. I'd like to go through each one of those individually, maybe the time for members of the board to ask questions about that topic. After we go through each of those, we'll open it up to questions from board members on other areas of the application, any questions that you would have, but I think the way to do this most efficiently is to run through the responses first. So the first one is the stock photograph of the proposed roll-down security grids. Maureen, can you put that on the screen? And Mr. Reed, can you go ahead? Mr. Reed, can you describe that these are examples of the roll-down security grills that are not- Just give me a minute. You've taken the word out of my mouth, Mr. Judge. Examples of those security grids. And I think this was in response to a request from the board to see exactly what it was that, what is it that we're talking about when we're talking about these roll-up security doors? And so you've got a few different examples of what it'll look like. And so if you'll recall, that will effectively enclose the delivery vehicle once it pulls into, I'll call it the delivery portal. You might see these just like a few pictures from a mall. You might be familiar with what they look like, open, airy, but still secure. And those would drop from above and secure that delivery portal to allow secure deliveries to occur in that space. Any questions or comments from board members regarding this, Ms. Parks? And so these are automatic doors. They would be, are they manual or are they automatic? Great question. Jeff, do you know the answer to that or they, is there a push button or do you have to get out and roll them down? Maureen, I don't know if you've made Jeff a panelist. He did, hold on a second. Sorry. Hold on. Bear with me. No problem. I have an additional question and that is, are they- Okay, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, these gates will be controlled by the security guard inside the store. And so they will only go down when a delivery vehicle arrives and they will only go up when the drivers are back in the vehicle ready to leave. The gates will also be connected to the fire alarm system in case there is a fire. During the delivery, the gates will automatically go up because of the fire alarm. So these are not manual. They are controlled by security and they are also activated when the fire alarm goes off. All right. And they're on three sides. Is that correct? They're on, yes. They are on east, west and south. And I guess by virtue of the fact that they're automatic, then they are automatically locked when they go down. You could- That's correct. You can come up and pull them up manually once they're down. No, you can't. The chief Livingstone was very happy with the proposal for those grades. Any other questions regarding the security doors? Second, we have responded to the hours when the exterior light fixtures will be illuminated. Sure. And this is, all exterior lighting will operate from dusk to 11 p.m., seven days a week, which we thought was appropriate given the location on College Street, Route 9, in a commercial corridor and understanding that there is a mixed use building to the rear of the site. So we thought that this was reasonable. And they're obviously, as you see here in the notes, lights will be activated by a photovoltaic cell and turned off by a timer. So they'll be on after business hours to illuminate the parking area. Correct. Correct. Any questions from the board regarding that? We asked about maximum total occupancy for the proposed RMR space, which includes both the customers and staff members. And can you run through that, Mr. Riedi? Yeah, of course. So this has evolved a bit. I think the building code provides one thing. And I think Chris Farley, our architect from Cunardal Architect, was dealing with the building code and what could be allowed. And as recently as this morning, Ms. Pollock, Mr. Moore and I had a conversation and we talked a bit about occupancy. And based on what we've talked to Jeff, we've talked to RC retail and seven employees is what we'd be looking at for staff. And then while we could fit an additional 22 customers, we looked at the space. And Maureen, I don't know if you wanna kind of scroll over to what the floor plan is. Yeah. Along for the ride. So we've got five point of sales systems. And then we've got a queuing, like a serpentine queuing system that you'll see. And then a security vestibule. And I'll talk a little bit about a couple of the, we call the man doors, man traps. You'll see at that secure exit, there's the addition of another door. So there's actually two doors that you'd have to go through. And the same thing, where Maureen's mouse is right now or where it was, even further down Maureen just right there. So there's another door. There's that door. And then to the left of it is another, if you go up, not in the common space. Yeah, right there. There's to the right of it. There is the door. So those are man traps. But when we started looking at the occupancy and talking to Rob, I think that we would be comfortable with saying seven employees in the board can impose whatever conditions that they want. And so we thought it would be reasonable for seven employees and no more than 15 customers. And we would include the appropriate signage on the interior of the building, evidencing that. And so it would be less than what is technically allowed by the building code, but it's something that we think works well for the space, hopefully gives the board a little bit of comfort, knowing that it's not gonna be gangbusters there. And that 15 folks can fit comfort, 15 customers could fit comfortably in that space. So while I know what's on the plan is one thing, I know what Ms. Pollock has put together is something else. And I think we would look to reduce that even more for a total of 22, seven of those employees, 15 of those as customers. So Mr. Riedi, what's, when I'm looking at linear sheet on the queue, you've got five customers at point of sale. And then you have people lined up in the queue. If you go from the, I think is the requirement for 15, is it three by three or three by five space for human beings? That's a great question. I'm gonna phone a friend and maybe tag Chris Farley. Chris, is that what the requirement is? I don't know if Chris is a panelist morning. Or Rob would know too. Yeah, I, hello to the board. And I'm Chris Farley from Cune Riddle Architects. So I did have a conversation with Rob Mora and we agreed that 15 square feet per person for customer queuing was adequate. And I believe Rob agreed that that's, that would be the appropriate number for this type of a facility. So if my question is, if we start from the security vestibule, the entrance, the security vestibule and not include that space for the time being, we'll come back and do that. We start from the closed door on the security vestibule. How do you, can you place 15 square feet for a person at the outside the vestibule up into the first part of the serpentine line? Yep, and then down through there. How many linear feet do you have there? I'm assuming that the width is three feet. So we need five feet up into the opening of the door, the area where the door is open. So does that give you enough linear square feet for 15 people at 15 square feet a person? Well, so the way the total 15 customers would be distributed would be five of those customers would be at the point of sale stations being served. And then 10 people would be in that serpentine queue. Okay, so there, if we did decrease the maximum number to a total of 15 customers, the 10 people that would be in that serpentine queue would each have more than 15 square feet per person. Okay. I misunderstood, that's 10 people in the queue and 15 total, not 15 in the queue. I gotcha. All right, all right, thank you. So total of 22 for maximum occupancy of the building. All right, any questions from board members on occupancy or on the queue? I just said a quick question. What is the maximum amount of people allowed by the building inspector in there? You said you're proposing 22, but what was the maximum allowed? Chris, was that 29 total? So, yes, I certainly don't wanna speak for Mr. Mora. I know he's on this call, but we did agree that when I spoke with him that the total occupancy that would be acceptable and supported by the building code would be 29, seven employees and 22 customers inside the building. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions regarding, yes. Oh, I didn't see it, go ahead Keith. Okay, what provisions have you made for the COVID-19 and social distancing? Yeah, I can't get it out of my mouth. So I think we would just restrict occupancy, frankly Keith or Mr. Langsley, I don't know where the governor is right now of what the total occupancy can be of a retail space. I know that many numbers were floated, 40% of total occupancy could be provided. I think a couple of things, hopefully, a vaccine is found and available and we're not under these COVID protocols. So when this thing opens, we're looking at some time next year. If we're still not out of COVID at that point, hopefully we have more data and understand a little bit more about how the virus transmits, what physical distancing actually is required. And I would suspect there's to be some best management practices that are out there. And frankly, it's probably just reducing the number of people that you allow. And it may be appointment only. It may be just stricter enforcement of when folks pull into the parking lot, you say, sorry, we're at capacity, whatever that capacity is, please stay in your vehicle until we're ready to have you. I know that RISE up in North Amherst had an outdoor line, if you would, people would stay in their cars. That's not what's going to happen here. If anything, I think we would just designate up some space outside for folks to come order online and pick up if we got to that point. But again, I think by the time this is open, knock on wood, hopefully COVID is just a memory at that point. But if not, we'll be happy to work with the building commissioner to implement whatever best practices are at that point. Hopefully that's not too obtuse of an answer, but I think that's probably the general way. No, but one of the reasons I ask is you're talking about 15 square feet, that's three by five, right? And the social distancing is six feet. So that would be 18 square feet. Yeah, and I think what Chris was saying was based on what the code requires, we could fit 17 customers between the waiting queue and the vestibules at 15 square feet per customer. So that's not at the point of sale system. So you'll see point of sale stations, number 104 right there. So there were five point of sale systems. We could fit five folks there. And then in the balance of the space, Mr. Langsdale, we, including that entry security vestibule, at 15 square feet each, we could fit 17 additional people for a total of 22 people. What we're saying is, we'll cut that down. We'll have 15 people there total. And so the five at the point of sale, and then the 10, and I'm sure we could do six foot spacing at that point because we could fit 17 in the same space that we're looking to fit 10. Okay, well that would be really against what the governor has mandated at this point. We'll know what we're saying is we could, so based on the strict calculations, we could fit 17 people each in a 15 square foot space. That's what we could fit. But we're not proposing that. We are proposing to only fit 10 people in that same space. And so I could probably use my calculator because math isn't my strong suit. So in 250. You're saying that the distance in the queue, the distance between the walls is three feet. Is that correct? Chris, the distance there, is that three feet? If it's closer to four feet. And if I may, the difference between 17 occupants, 17 customers at 15 square feet versus 10 is a difference between 15 square feet per person and 25 square feet per person. So you had, unless I'm mistaken, you had said that with 15 people, yeah, with 15 people, they would be at 15 square feet. Per person. Yes, with 17 people in the serpentine queue, each one would have 15 square feet. But we are not proposing 17 people in that serpentine queue. Mr. Langsill, we're proposing 10 people in that serpentine queue. So- Okay, well, this part of this, part of this brings up what I brought up last time is this ATM machine is right where people come in to check in for the security. So, I mean, there's no social distancing there. I think if that's the concern, I'm sure we could implement the appropriate protocols to make sure that we are keeping people socially distant. I think what Mr. Farley was trying to say was in this new proposal, so while we could have put 17 people in there at 15 square feet each, we're actually only putting 10 people in there at 25 square feet each. So we're making, we are social distancing without being required to social distance. Okay, my understanding was that you said 10 people at 15 square feet. So if this heard then- I miss, I'm sure I miss, you know me, I'm sure I misspoke. So it would be 10 people at 25 square feet. Okay, thank you. First of all, you'd have to, you agree you'd have to for social distancing purposes. If the governor creates a standard, you gotta comply by it. Whatever it is for social distancing, right? So that's the first thing. But the question I have, just so we get through with this, and I don't wanna spend a whole lot of time on it, but what is the distance between the, on the top queue, the top of the, the top serpentine line where it says queue 101, what's the difference between the security wall and the extension of the door when it's open all the way? What's that distance there? How many feet is that? Chris, do you know that, that run? The top run. I'm sorry. So the distance between the wall that says. The door of 102, right? Through 101 to that northern door. Yes, to this door, and as the door is open. So you're not encroaching on the door opening space. To the door, it's a three-foot door, I assume. I'm, it's approximately 50 to 55 feet. I would say closer to 50 feet. 50 feet, okay. And then the, go ahead. I'm sorry, I was just gonna say, I'd be happy to get an exact measurement for you, but it'll take me a couple of minutes. If that's, if you look and find it, that's wrong, thought it's noble, it'll take 50. And then the second queue, what is that, 25? Well, 50 feet is the total from, from the second door in the entry security vestibule all the way around. So that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, what is it up here from security 102, the wall of security 102? I see, right, yeah. I apologize, I misunderstood. That's, that is from wall to wall, that's 27 feet. And that door is a three-foot door, right? Yes. So we've got 24 feet where it says queue, all right? And then it's, is that 12 feet where the first bend? If you look at that first bend, that'd be about 12 feet, right? That's about 13 to 14 feet. Okay, let's call it 14 feet. And then you have from this wall to that wall. That's probably seven feet. That's seven feet. So you've got 24, 48, 24, 38, and you have approximately 45 linear feet from that door to there. And if it's, you have 45 linear feet and everybody gets, it's 45 linear feet and you need five feet per person, that's nine. And your 10 is that you got a waiter in the security vestibule, is that right? So you've got nine people in the serpentine line and one person in the security vestibule vestibule. Yes. Five feet, with the five feet spacing for each of them. Yes. Okay, all right, I think we understand that. Any other questions? All right, the next submission dealt with, not the next submission, the next response dealt with the delivery vehicle sign. I don't remember seeing a sign detail. You have it. It's simple, it's simple one by one sign, Mr. Chairman. It just shuts off engine. Yep, delivery vehicle. It's only gonna be the delivery drivers who are pulling in there and so they'll, they'll know what to do when they're in there, but just out of an abundance of caution, you know, with the request of the board, we're putting up that sign as well. Yeah, again, but I just wanna make sure I didn't miss something. It's not, it's not there. Okay, all right. Now we get into a really, I find a very confusing part of the application, which is the parking. Sure. And it could take a long time to discuss this. So what I propose we do on this, Mr. Reedy, is if you can give us a brief description of the parking that you have, the spaces that you think that you are, that you currently have on lot one and two in the spaces that you're going to share. So that we have, so that we can understand what your proposal is, then I think we all, but at least I have some questions about how this is gonna work. So give us a brief overview of the parking plan for this application. Sure. So after the last meeting, we put a lot of thought into how is the parking gonna work on both of these lots? And we were struck by the fact that lot one and lot two use each other's lots interchangeably. And as a result, we took a step back and we looked at lot one and lot two somewhat combined. And so how many spaces are there between and amongst lot one and lot two because lot two likely uses some of lot one's parking, lot one uses currently some of lot two's parking and we would expect that to continue. They're both, they're in common ownership right now and not the fast forward to an end, but we had discussed the condition that if there was separation of ownership that prior to that separation of ownership, the new owner would have to come back before the board and present a parking license or parking easement to show that there was sufficient parking spaces on each of the lots as standalone lots. But short of that, we looked at these holistically. And so we had our traffic engineer put together a parking analysis and what they did was they went out on a weekday afternoon and on a Saturday to count vehicles and spaces. What you have is data that they came up with. And under their data, they have 66 parking spaces available or on lot one existing on lot one and 41 spaces on lot two. Now, Ms. Pollock in her review of the plans counted and recounted and probably recounted again and notice that there are only, and Maureen, I think you came up with 55 spaces. I might have 56 spaces, but I think the difference is maybe that one in the upper left bubble by the transformer on the concrete pad, which in the post conditions, but regardless, when our traffic engineer went out there mid-week and on Saturday, if you see where it says shed, so Maureen, if you could just put the mouse up a bit, yeah, right in there. So in that area, there were three vehicles parked and so that's paved parking. And so that increased the number to 59 and then on the side where it says Batubin bit pavement over there, yeah. So there is parking and Maureen, I don't know if you have the cover page because in the top left-hand corner of the cover page, you'll see perfect that there's some, there's parking that has existed there. It exists if you drive by today. We have photographs, aerial photographs from 1997 showing that those parking spaces were utilized from that point. The problem is that they don't appear to be, as far as survey goes on this lot, it raises an issue of prescriptive easement, adverse possession, which we don't even wanna touch. So this is just all to say you, and we'd be happy to do it as a condition so you have something in your records, just to update the parking narrative. So we go from 66, which practically that's what we have on lot one is 66 parking spaces down to 60 because of the elimination of those six spaces which are over in that gravel parking area. The big picture of all of this is between lot one and lot two, there are sufficient parking spaces for all of the uses on both of the sites. And so that's why we thought the answer was a condition because this is a unique use, it's a shopping center. It's not like we have a standalone marijuana use where we can attribute all of those parking spaces to that specific use. These users may park on lot two right by spirit house, run over to spirit house, stop at RC retail and head over to Kelly's for breakfast or some machination of that. So we thought the best way to do it was to look at it holistically. And so in the post-development condition, so once assuming you approve it, we would have, I believe it's 100 spaces between lot one and lot two combined. The peak time is Saturday, midday, like I think 1130 to 1230 and Jason can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's 1130 to 1230. At that time for the whole site, including the marijuana use, we need 92 parking spaces. And that's for the entirety of lot one and lot two based upon the data gathered on that Saturday in November. So we need 92 parking spaces. There are 100 parking spaces. Mr. Rady, just to say, when you say, when you say you need 92 parking spaces, that means that's what the parking analysis provides, not what the zoning provides. Absolutely. Yes, yes. Your parking analysis provides. Yes, and so I probably use need a little loosely, but it's probably the frame that I see this in. That is what the parking analysis identified, is that 92 vehicle, and I'll back up and say, when we projected and we think conservatively, what the dispensary between 1130 and 1230, it would need 16 parking spaces. On a Saturday, that is inclusive within the 92 parking spaces, total that we're saying is needed for a Saturday afternoon. And so with the 92, there are still eight excess spaces between lot one and lot two on that Saturday midday. And the weekday is much lower than that. You'll have 30 to 40 spaces, if not more available between lot one and lot two. So that's kind of a, and I know it's a little, it's probably a unique way to look at it, but it's a unique property because of being in common ownership and also having a mixed use building at the rear and a shopping center at the front. So we thought this was the best way to look at it because it's what's happening. It's practical data that's actually happening on the site. So you, the applicant controls lot one or they don't control a lot one. The applicant will be on lot one, right? The land owner does. Yeah, the applicant would only be a tenant of that in a 900 square foot space. And on lot one, there are 56 parking spaces by my count. Yes, and we could strike those three in that little nook to get the, we ultimately will have enough anyways, but that little nook is delivery. That's, I don't know, maybe I've been past it. I would look there today. I'm not sure if that little nook is meant for customers. Well, you could be employees though, Mr. Judge, right? Employee park back there and it'll alleviate some of the spaces. It could be. That maybe, I mean, if I was owning a business, that's where I'd park, I think. The parking spots that are not on lot one, which are off to the, I guess it'd be the west side of the property, the gravel over there, those are not property, those are not on the lot, right? And you don't have, that's the ones you don't have control that the existing owner does not have control over. So those don't count on the lot one parking spaces. So if you look at that 50, so when I count this up, even if I give you the two spaces or the three spaces in the shed, when that little cut out, I come up with something like 59 parking spaces at the most, at the most on lot one. Yes. And then on lot two, they have lot two required to have through a special waiver granted by the, I guess by the planning board, they need to have 24 spaces in lot two for their usage. No, excuse me, I'm sorry. 36. 18 spaces needed for their usage in lot two. Is that correct? It's actually 36. 36. 18 twice, okay. Correct. 18 twice. And for the, so I'll back up one step and just say, when we were in front of the planning board, and I think this is in the parking waiver requests that I had provided when we were in front of the planning board, this lot one and lot two were one congruous lot and the whole lot was benefited by a parking waiver. I think kind of for this specific reason, two-fold. One picture of the lot line is a membrane where vehicles are using both of the lots. And then when we had the lots divided in that planning board process earlier this year in April, the parking waivers went along with, and we had a conversation at the planning board about this. They went along with each of lot one and lot two. And so both lot one and lot two are still what I would say under parking waivers. But yes, lot two would with, but one has a parking waiver as well. So what is a number for lot one? There was no number. We didn't say here's what the waiver is. It was stepping back and saying this site works together. The parking waiver is on both of these. But we have numbers for lot two, right? The waiver provided numbers 18 and 18. Yeah, there was a specific number because there are 12 dwelling units on the site. And so under the bylaw you'd require 24. That went down, I believe it went down to 18. I know that the rental permit parking plan shows 18 spaces. Frankly, I could probably look in my file and find the answer exactly. I don't know if there was something specific in the decision back in 1999 that said you can have 18 or if it's just that's what the rental permit has provided. So that's the only number that's associated with the parking waiver. I guess that's a question that we should get the answer to, but when I look at this, it seems to me that under the zoning bylaws right now, we need to have about 82 parking spaces are required in lot one for the use of the 82, 83 parking spaces are needed in lot one. With the marijuana use, I believe. With the marijuana use, yes. 56, 82 are with the marijuana use, 82 are needed, are required under the zoning bylaws. 56 parking spaces are provided in lot one. I'll give you two in the back in the cut out. Let's say it's 56, 58 are there. That means there's a need for about 22, 23 other parking spaces to meet the need of lot ones buildings. And based on the zoning bylaw. Based on the zoning, yes, based on zoning bylaw. And there are 836 required for lot two and there are 41 parking spaces in lot two if I think is correct. That gives us about five we can reasonably move over to lot one. We're still a little short on spaces that under the zoning bylaw for the use on the building on the on lot one. Yes. And you don't have, do you have any agreements or are you looking to get agreements for the unpaved portion that's on the Dunkin Donuts property? So I don't know and I don't want to speak for Mr. Shumway, I don't know of any written easements or agreements to allow that. I think if the Dunkin Donuts property did not, if they have not granted a license, if they have not granted an easement, then they're probably gonna walk into a prescriptive easement or adverse possession issue for those six spaces because they've existed as such for at least 20 years, which in Massachusetts is a threshold for adverse possession or prescriptive easement rights. So that would take quieting title through land court, which is- That's a whole, yeah, but that's not really something that we can deal with here. I understand your point. We're not dealing with that here though, right? Yeah. All right, so it seems to me that we've got some, there's a question about the adequacy of the parking for the zoning bylaws. Yeah, and let me- Percent of the zoning bylaws. And if I could just a bit. Currently, I believe the need on lot one, exclusive of the marijuana space, is 76 parking spaces. So already you're under. I don't wanna say it's grandfathered because that's, I mean, we could look at it that way, but that's not the way we're looking at it. So you're already under the quote unquote required zoning bylaw parking for lot one. In the, dated May 28, 1999, the site plan review project data section, the number of parking spaces that were required under that was 156. And what is proposed was 104. And so if we're talking about just the dwelling units, which would have required 24 and only got 18, that's only a delta of six. So where are the balance of the 40 some odd spaces coming from? To me, it has to be from the site as a whole. And so that's where I say there were, there was a parking waiver associated with these sites. And at that point, it was this site because they were seen as one. And that's how we're trying to look at it through this, ultimately a parking license or easement at the end of the day. But what we're looking to do, Mr. Chairman, is to avail ourself of section 7.9. And that section allows the board to waive strict compliance with any provision of Article 7. And so what we're asking for is based upon the data that we've got of the actual parking need is for you to waive strict compliance with section 7.2. Because when you talk about having quote unquote, five spaces available, that is based upon a strict numerical calculation without more. What we're saying is we've gone out, we've done the analysis, we have the data, and I don't, and we don't think that that's all that's available are five. We are saying, go ahead. So when you did your analysis or your person did your analysis, did they include the spaces on the gravel? They did. Yes, they did. What we've done is we just have to subtract six. Because instead of- Well, at least there are at least six there, I think. Sure, you can subtract seven, there's still enough spaces. There will still, and my representation to you, Mr. Chairman, is that even at 59 spaces, right? So 56 plus the three back there gets you to 59, plus the 41 gets you to 100 spaces. On a Saturday at the peak, we need for both sites 92 spaces. And that's inclusive of the marijuana spaces for the marijuana use. And so that still leaves with all of the uses that are there, including this new marijuana one, eight spaces available. And if you said take away another one, seven spaces available, but there's still spaces available. This is, it gets really confusing. And this is one of the reasons I think we need a better understanding of the parking there. And I don't know how we get that tonight. We'll have to keep working on it. But you're, we even have your proposed need for marijuana parking is 16. And you've got seven employees. So they'll take some of that parking. And that leaves you, let's say that you've got 16, let's say you have 10 total customer parking. You have at least that many people in your occupancy of 22 in the building. So I, you know, the question is on Saturday peak, your peak hours, you're gonna fill that place up and you're probably gonna have more parking than the 16 that's hit there. I mean, that's the- I don't think that's, Mr. Chairman, if I may, I don't think there's a chance. If you, stepping back, if you required every business to have parking for their total occupancy, you would have just a sea of asphalt in town. I mean, it's just, that's not how the bylaw is set up. But it's just the reality of it. And again, a lot of the shine has worn off this use. I mean, I- No, I understand. I'm just looking at what your parking person is proposing is the analysis is that you're gonna have 10 customers at the least, at the least 10 customers. Nine, assuming seven, so 16 people, seven employees, nine customers, right? And you're gonna have, but you have more than that in the store. So dealing with the peak, right? I know, I know that's what's difficult about this. I mean, I respectfully disagree. Okay. If you, if I think the board is mistaken to think that we are going to have 15 people in there on a continuous, I mean, if so, then this town is gonna make so much money at that, with the taxes and the host community agreement because this thing is gonna- But it's not all the time. The thing isn't all the time. The thing is that that's the peak. And at the peak, there are still, there's still a release valve, even if you had 16 spaces. So there are 16 spaces identified. Let's say you have some more people there, there are still enough spaces on the site where people aren't gonna have to park somewhere else, which I think is the purpose of all of this, to make sure that there's adequate parking and our representation to you is there is adequate parking. I appreciate your representation. All right. Are there, does anybody else have questions regarding parking of the board members of questions regarding parking? Rob or Maureen, do you have any comments regarding parking before we leave to go to other matters on their responses? The next response, I think Mr. Riedi, correctly if I'm wrong, we've done the parking. The next is the list of proposed auxiliary activities, I think located outside the building and associated with the retail being proposed as part of the special permit application. Yeah, yeah, yes. So it's product delivery, securities cameras, securities enclosures, HVAC, dark sky, wall compliant, amount of lighting, signs identifying the store, awnings, 12 by 12 sign, mounted outside, customer employee parking, parking lot of tendons you'll have there, pedestrian queues, and non-marijuana containing trash and recycling pickup, which is behind the building. Those are the activities that take place outside the building, is that correct? Yes. Any comments or questions regarding the activities outside the building? Ms. Parks. So I just wanna clarify, is there gonna be an awning or not an awning? Great question. Maureen, I don't know if you've got any feedback from the fire department on the latest memo that we sent over, but Ms. Parks, I don't know how much of this has been shared, but we had submitted these plans, I think sometime in May if not earlier, we didn't get any feedback and then recently we got some feedback from the fire department where they considered the awning to be what's an addition to the building. And as an addition, they said because the building is 21,000 square, 21,000 plus square feet, if you are adding on to the building, any building over 7,500 square feet under mass code requires sprinklering. So to put fire sprinklers within the building. And so that is an $1 million plus dollar request, essentially of this applicant for a 900 square foot space, they would be required to sprinkler the whole building, which is frankly just a non-starter. I mean, they're not gonna be able to do it. So we remove the awning in hopes that the removal of that awning would suggest to do or get the opinion from the fire department that it no longer was an addition and therefore we would not need to sprinkler the space. And so that's why we removed that awning. And we thought that if we can talk about queuing at some point in the future, but we removed that awning because of the effect currently from the fire department of what it required with the sprinklering of the building and the cost associated there with. Okay, and then the other concern I have is about the queuing. And so I'm hearing that you may have someone managing the queuing outside and you may not have that. And so I guess what I'm wondering is, are you gonna have somebody outside managing parking and queuing? And Jeff, can I say yes to this? Do you, I don't know if you wanna handle it, but I think the idea would be yes, we'd have somebody managing the parking and the queuing. All right, and then I will throw out that I also have a concern about the queuing being within some of the setback. Being within the potential setback. Let me respond to the first question is yes. In our plan, in our narrative, if we have a lot of customers, we are going to contact the police chief first to help us deal with a crowd. And we are going to turn away vehicles coming to us. We're not gonna queue vehicles. And we will queue people in the front of the store or on the side, whatever you prefer. However, the awning is related to sprinklers, but I see as you're concerned about protection of the queue on the side of the building. So please explain where we're headed. Okay, I'm not as concerned about the awning. What I'm more concerned about is that part of the business is existing in a setback zone, in the residential setback zone. And so that's concerning for me because the business isn't all within the building. The business is now outside of the building because you will have a manager managing the customers that are outside. So can we just pause on that for a moment, Ms. Parks? Because I think it's an appropriate time to start talking about, and this leads into marijuana use and what is marijuana use? And so I think that's a good, Mr. Reedy, I think it's great, we're gonna get into that next. I agree, I'd like to have that discussion, but I think that's gonna take us away from any other questions that people may have on the outside activities. Then we'll go right back to it. If that's all right, Mr. Parks, because I also have questions about that. So before we get into that, does anybody have any other questions regarding security cameras, dark sky compliance, any of the activities that take place outside the building other than the awning and the queuing up and going into the buffer zone? Any members? All right. So I think it's a good place to start then, Mr. Reedy. Talk a little bit about the fact that people will be, perhaps be queuing up outside the building and queuing up inside the buffer zone. Sure. And just so I can not waste time unnecessarily if the board doesn't think it's an issue, is the only issue that we can talk about the common space which I think we can put to rest, but is the only issue that there could be potential queuing within the buffer zone? I mean, is there any other concern with what's happening outside besides the queuing? Well, I mean, what's that, the queuing, the entry to the common area from outside within the buffer zone, that's another area of interest. And then we haven't gotten to the other area about whether it's still be required to do the fire sprinkling because you've enclosed the front delivery area, which is also an issue that has to be dealt with as well. Yeah, absolutely. And so that's outside, but it's kind of quasi inside outside. I don't know quite where to put that. So let's talk about the queuing then let's talk and then we'll talk about marijuana use generally. Yeah, I just didn't know if there was anything else relative to activities occurring outside that folks were considering marijuana use, but assuming it's just the queuing, I think fundamentally we would disagree that it's part of the marijuana use. And I think for support of that, we think of a couple of things. We look at what the cannabis control commission does and what it allows. And you've got Netta out in Brookline, which is on a public road and there is queuing, literally in the public way. And then we also look at locally what the ABCC does for licensed premises for alcohol and also what your zoning bylaw requires for cafes, markets, class one, class two restaurants. And that use does not extend to and the licensed premises does not extend to folks waiting in the line outside to get into those premises. So our suggestion would be no, that's not part of the marijuana use. The marijuana use occurs within the enclosed space where the transaction happens. This all said, if the board just can't find its way to get over that hurdle, we could do, see where that doorway is, we could do the queuing outside of that buffer space, outside of the 300 foot space so that it wasn't down along the side. And that might be the easiest solution for the board. So instead of, yeah, instead of where Maureen's showing because you're never gonna have simultaneous deliveries and customers there, so that whole space is open and the thought would be to add stanchions and to control how many folks could enter and exit and that they would just queue outside of the buffer zone. Again, if that's a concern, it sounds like it is, we disagree, but if it's gonna get us over the hump, then we're happy to queue outside of that buffer. So can I just clarify? So are you saying that people would queue within the delivery area? That would be undercover, yes. And I think it could actually extend, and Maureen, I don't know if you can go to the left anymore. Yeah, and there's actually some space in front of, yes, out there that folks could queue as well. And that's all outside of the buffer. That's a sidewalk out in front of the delivery area, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So there you go, you can see it right there. There you go, great. I think it was the queuing plan for Rise, where so you'll see that ramp right there, you just stack people up on one side so it doesn't impede folks who need to use that ramp. And that's how we handle it over at Rise for outdoor queuing. You were able to separate them with a stanchion in a way where they could queue and still allow folks who are in wheelchairs or need the ramp otherwise to so use it. So I think that would be the solution. What? Question? Yes, Mr. Linesdale. Pariti, what's the width of that ramp? Chris, do you know what the width of that is? Yes, I believe from the face of the building or from the face of that low wall to the curb is about six and a half to seven feet. Okay, just a question. I'm not saying you should do this, I'm just asking. If you have a queue and you run it in the area where the delivery goes, could you maybe bring down that fence so that people aren't hanging outside on the walkway and the ramp so that you keep them in that area? That's not a bad idea. I mean, we'd have to think about it a little bit more. It just struck me, so. Oh, that's a good suggestion. Any other comments or questions from members of the board regarding outside activities? I would just like to say that I would be more comfortable if the queuing were in front and not along that side within that buffer zone. I think there's a reason why those buffer zones exist. And so I think it's important to pay attention to them. But I am concerned about if you queue there, then you're exiting customers and you're entering customers are kind of in the same space. So. We certainly have to manage it. I mean, it really is just setting up stanchions and making sure that folks who are exiting are exiting and folks who are entering or exiting. And I would suspect maybe one of the silver linings to COVID is that folks become much more orderly when you put up arrows and stanchions. And so they may feel a little bit more comfortable working through the serpentine because they'll have seen it before. So I think it's agreed. I think it just comes down to management. Management, yeah, your security people might have their hands full. A little bit more work. People like, yeah, you'll give them more work because you have people who are standing right by the exit door. And it's just keeping it clear. And the things that a lot of us have are from the experience of the shop in Northampton where there's so many people waiting outside and so much traffic. And so that's in the back of my mind. I know that you're thinking that it's gonna be 15 people an hour or something like that. That hasn't been the experience at the other places. And so that's what I'm trying to consider thinking about how many people you're gonna allow outside and how many, of course, keep trying to come in and there isn't space. So I'm just trying to start coming from. Yeah, and I think when you start to think about average transaction time and how quickly these things turn over, I think you're at about, let's say, seven to 10 minutes maximum for a transaction. And so if you were to have 15 people in an hour, that's going to be spread out over that hour. So we don't expect, and again, if it happens as such it would be a very big surprise. But if to have that inside loaded with 15 people every 10 minutes, turnover, turnover, turnover, turnover because you'd have, what's that? 690 people an hour at 200 bucks of transaction, $18,000 in an hour times a 12 hour day is how much are these? We just, frankly, I've worked with RISE for long enough to see their data to know that that does not happen. With all due respect to Red Cardinal and the product that they have, I just don't see that happening. I think it does come down to management and if it's one of those things where relationships matter and if it gets to a point where it's, because they wanna be good neighbors and Paul Schumli wants to make sure that he's not losing other tenants or making other tenants upset because of what's happening. If it gets to a point where folks start to get like that, they're gonna talk to RC, they're either gonna talk to me or talk to the police chief. There's always the escape valve or the release valve of switching to online orders only and just putting, come and pick it up at this time and that way you really manage the number of people on site. And so if it ever got to that unruly point where it's beyond control, I think that's what happens. That's the red button, if you would. I guess that's what I was wondering is, do you have a plan B if it becomes extremely crowded? You know, what's the plan B? Yeah, I think it's on site management. First, let's let humans try to act reasonable to each other as best they can. If it gets to a point where they stop doing that or it could use some shepherding to have the parking, you know, to talk to the police, to have the parking attendance there. If it goes to the next step, to have a detail officer there. And a lot of the time is just having a detail officer there without them having to do anything is enough to dissuade some folks from wanting to go and to go through that hassle. This is also like a lot of things in life, a convenience use. Plus, given that the market has, you know, you have Rise Up in North Amherst, you're gonna have three other sites down on University Drive. You've got the heirloom collective down on Route 9. Unless there's something so special here that those places don't have, there's no reason to go into wait in line here. There's no longer, Ms. Parks, are these vertically integrated where you can only buy what's produced at these locations? There's a pretty robust wholesale market and a lot of the marijuana establishments have a wholesale facility. RC will have one in Worcester and they sell to all different dispensaries. And as a result, you don't have that vertical integration where if I want RC, I have to go to RC. You can go to other places. And similarly, if you want howls, you can go to Rise or you can go to the heirloom collective instead of going to RC. So, and again, I don't wanna keep repeating myself but I think a lot of the shine has worn off with it and it really is looked at as more just a retail package store use. But I think those are the protocols that we have in place if it gets to that point. And a lot of it is in conjunction with Chief Livingstone and the police department. And then like I said, that red button, if it's just out of control is just to switch to online orders only. And the police chief is okay with that. The police chief is okay with having an officer come out or what are they doing, okay. Fine with that. Okay, any other questions on queuing? Those are good. Ms. Parks, do you have anything else? Nope. Mr. Maxfield. Yeah, I mean, I guess if we're gonna be commenting on how people are queuing up in this store or I'm sorry, outside of the store. Personally, I disagree with the idea that we would have to keep people out of that buffer zone to queue up in the line. I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Reed that I don't believe we will be seeing large lines outside of the store. But in some event that that were to happen, I'm just trying to think about the practical idea of trying to make people queue up outside of that buffer zone in some weird fashion. And as people then try to stand on the sidewalk, which we seem like the normal thing to do, if I'm standing in line for the store, I would go down the long sidewalk. I imagine it'd be very confusing to me when someone comes out of the store and says, nah, you can't stand there, why not? Government regulation, you have to stand right over. It seems a little bit strange to me. And it seems a little bit unnecessary because from my understanding of that, that has to be a, you can't conduct the marijuana transaction there. If I'm standing in line there, I'm intending to conduct a marijuana transaction, but I don't believe that would be a marijuana transaction. And in my opinion, if the board were going to say anything about where a line has to queue up, I would want it to be along that sidewalk. I wouldn't want it going out in front of the stores. I think that it's a much more logical place for people to do it. And I think if we were to not say anything about it, that's where people would queue up. And I think our primary concern is, is that conducting transactions? And I do not believe that that is. All right. Any other questions about activities outside? I'd like to pursue a couple of issues, but I want to also open this up to general questions from board members for the applicant. But I'd like to kind of focus on use, Mr. Reedy. That was one of my questions. And so first question I have, I appreciate getting your, first of all, I appreciate getting the memo from Cedarburg, the law firm, it was helpful. The first question I have is, are there any functional, any functions that are essential to the business of the retail marijuana establishment that are located within the 300 foot buffer zone? So I'm thinking things that you absolutely have to have that are essential for the business of providing for transactions, facilitating, administrating, operating transactions, anything that takes place in the buffer zone. Or the transaction, no. Okay. So, but I think that that's the fallacy, I'm concerned that that's the fallacy of the transaction as the characteristics of the marijuana use. Okay. Because one of the things that I think about is number one, you can't make the transaction without your employees. You just can't do it. Employees are essential part of your business and your business model. And your employees must enter through a door that's in the buffer zone. They're gonna come in, they gotta go into that door. That's the only way they can get into the business is going through the- That's incorrect. They can get in through the front door. But you said that they were coming in the other door. That was part of the presentation that that would be the employee entrance. It says it on the, it's key carded and it says it on one of the designs. So one of the plans. So it's not, you're not having employees come through that door, you're having employees come through the front door. I don't see why we couldn't have the employees come through that door, but they have the ability to come through the front door as well. But not when there's, obviously not when there's a delivery, but they could come through the front. So that's, so I guess we have to make sure that that's clear on the drawings because it says employee entrance on those drawings has got a card, a key card thing. And it seems that that's where, but even if it's not where they have to go, they could go there and they will go there. They will enter there. So essential, it seems to me that you have essential people for your transactions. You can't do the transaction without your employees coming, entering through the buffer zone. You're building through the buffer zone. So I mean, if we want to stay on this, then what is essential? And I suppose having customers is essential. And essentially, what does it look like? So if I want to go buy marijuana, I leave my house, I get in my car and I drive there. And if any of those things occur within 300 feet of in the buffer zone, is that illegal to the use that I'm going to? I mean, that's where I think this becomes a slippery slope, Mr. Judge. And that's why we're suggesting that the only logical way is to look at this being the transaction as the use. Otherwise, what I've just suggested where I have the idea of I wanna go buy marijuana, I leave my house, I get in my car, I drive on the roads, each of those things, that's essential because without a customer, the business is not going to survive. I understand your point you're making is... That's why we're trying to say, let's use some reason here. When we look to how has this happened in other parts of Massachusetts, I think we've provided you the memo that has identified at least three spaces, three places that have multi-use, multi-tempted building in common space and... We're gonna get to that, yep. I wanna talk about that as well. But for right now, so let me just continue with my question. One, your employees I think are essential to your business. Number two, you are required under state regs and you commit it under your plan to keep a safe and hygienic operation. One part of that is hand washing. It's specifically cited in the regs, it's cited in your plans. The only place you can do that is in the bathroom. That's in the common area. It's required in your state law. So you're gonna have a basin? Could we pull up the plan, please? So within the marijuana use, there is a, first of all, if this is required, and so we're talking with, understanding we looked at the regulations, I think it's 500, 105, 3B3, or something like that. So yeah, Maureen, if you go perfect, receiving in prep, see that? And I think the way the regs read is that it has to be in a capitalized preparation area, which if it does apply, would be right in that receiving in prep area. And while we don't show a sink, if a sink is required, it'll be right in there. And you'll see that slop closet for the janitor in the common space, butts up right against it. So there's gonna be a water line right in that common wall. You can bring it off and put it right in that, right in that, yeah, you got it Maureen, right in that prep space. So that's proposed change. We're trying to say, hey, the marijuana use is in here, this other stuff is common space. It's not part of the least premises. It's still owned by Paul Shumway. It's available to trade. I'll agree with all that. I'm just trying to get your notions of things that are required or are essential to the business itself. Things that constitute a marijuana, that are essential for a marijuana transaction. I suspect the janitor closet, that's how you'll clean the place. You'll use the janitor closet will be common space so that the janitor closet, your cleaning crew will use the janitor closet for cleaning the space. Or we can hire somebody and they would come in from outside and if they came in from outside, where did they leave to get there? Did they leave a house to get there? If they left the house, is that within a buffer zone? It's just, if we follow this to that, this is a slippery slope that you open. It is, but it's a slippery slope to go the other way and do not say that, well, we don't really, the buffer zone doesn't really mean, it just means the actual transaction. So it's just the point of sale. And the other, all the places in the building, in the retail space that are for standing, for business, for security, those aren't the transactions. The only thing that's the transaction is the actual point of sale. So it's a balance. It's a balance one way or the other. I appreciate the extra points, certainly. I think it's, we've got to find a balance here and that's what I'm trying to find. And I've got to be comfortable with that. And I know, and I don't want to make it uneconomic, but I've got to be also comfortable with the interpretation of the zoning bylaws and the 300 foot buffer. Understood. Okay. So that, well, you committed to do training for your employees, eight hours a year, all that kind of stuff. I suspect it's going to, and you're required to have trained employees by the CCC. Correct. That training, does that going to take place in the conference room? I would, I would expect a common space, otherwise offsite somewhere. Or offsite. It could take place in the conference room. It could. And that would be a logical place if you're doing it. We think it would be fun training, right? Yes. And lastly, where does the security system going to be the controls for the security system? The IT. And what? That would be so both in the IT closet and then also in the security vest, not the vestibule, but where the security officer sits, he will have access to the monitors for those cameras. And then they're also recorded. Those cameras have, I think it's 24 hours, seven days a week, recorded and stored. And those are stored in the IT closet. I don't know that we're linking it to the police department, but we are happy to talk with them if they want to have a live feed to the site. But the monitors for the stored manager are located within the retail space and in the IT closet. So that's where he will come in and view it and the security, excuse me, the computers and all that stuff are located in the IT closet within the space. Okay. I have other questions, but I don't want to dominate this and I want to give the other board members an opportunity to ask some questions and we're getting on towards nine o'clock and I think we're getting, I just want to give people a chance to ask questions. Any other board members? Tammy, Ms. Parks. Yeah, I just have one other question and this just might be my ignorance or whatever, but have the other, I guess they're renters, they're not business, they're business owners, but they're renters of the property. Have they had a chance to say anything about, is there any kind of comment that they are allowed to make or have they made any comment? Sure, so maybe a couple of things. We have posted the tenant lessee notification form or Mr. Shumway did the owner of the property posted it. And I believe Stan, correct me if I'm wrong, you either have attempted to or have spoken with all of the other business owners in that shopping center. I would be very interested to hear what they have said if Stan would be willing to talk about that. I would be very happy to address that. I spoke, I went into each of the businesses, I spoke with the owners who were present, every one of the owners who were present, that was four of the owners, were extremely enthusiastic about filling the space and when I told them the intended occupant, they were extremely excited because they believed it would increase traffic to their businesses by bringing people to the plaza. And I obviously had a certain amount of information from my own research and experience but I accepted their enthusiasm. The couple of owners who were not present, I asked the employees and I gave them my contact information to ask those two owners to communicate with me because I'd like to meet with them and I did not hear from them. I also knocked on the doors of every residence on the three streets that surrounded the property over 200 doors. As usual, a lot of people were not home. Those people with whom I spoke said, well, it's about darn time. They were gonna locate something outside of University Drive for me to shop at for my marijuana products. Okay, good. It was overwhelmingly enthusiastically accepted and if I may, since I've got the floor, may I take another minute to express another thought here? Certainly. Mr. Chairman. So I spent six months looking for a site in Amherst on behalf of a potential marijuana business. It turned out not to be this business, Red Cardinal, but when the business I was working with decided to choose Everett over Amherst, I was referred to Red Cardinal who enthusiastically after looking at the situation said, we wanna come to Amherst. And I wanna say that as an Amherst resident and as a person who spent 40 years working on legislation and working with regulators, I understand the challenges of trying to meet both the spirit and the intent of the rules. We were unable to find a single site in the center of Amherst and I contend that nobody will ever locate a cannabis business in the center of Amherst because it's impossible to do so. We similarly looked in South Amherst and as of this time and into the long foreseeable future, you will not be able to locate one in South Amherst. That leaves North Amherst and East Amherst. North Amherst has a facility. University Drive has a potential for, I think it's three on University Drive plus turn the corner onto Route 9 and you've got her whatever the one in Hadley just over the line across from Stop and Shop. So the only other place that we have found so far is one facility, one opportunity in East Amherst. And the question in my mind is whether we want everybody to go to North Amherst or University Drive or whether we want to look at what's possible in East Amherst and this particular proposal was developed in consultation with town staff. And while they acknowledged that they couldn't guarantee this would be acceptable, it was a creative proposal that met the spirit of the law and the rules and we've now come to the point of trying to figure out whether we can get to yes or no. The HCA agreement, which allows this to be before the ZBA for a special permit sites this specific property, the 900 and plus square feet within this property as being a site for potentially for a retail outlet. And it's the only site in Amherst that is not situated as a separate standalone building with its own separate parking lot. One other property is within 300 feet of residences. Some of the questions being explored in the area of East Amherst are in the area of where we were not explored here, rightly so. We're not explored and resulted in special permits being granted in construction underway under similar circumstances, that is within 300 feet of residences. So all of the questions that relate to 300 feet on that property were resolved by the Zoning Board of Appeals and a special permit was provided. These same questions are arising with regard to this proposal and the board is struggling to understand whether there is something different about this particular property that has a portion outside of the building and a portion of shared space within the building that creates a situation where it should be treated differently than other proposals. So I thank you for the opportunity and for your patience in listening to my presentation but I've been listening carefully and patiently and trying to understand the struggles of the board in trying to decide upon this specific special permit. And those are the comments that come to my mind listening very carefully and having gone through a year of history with this project. Thank you. Other questions from board members? Mr. Langsdale? Yeah, in the packet that we got on this project, a hard copy, there's an exhibit B and an exhibit D. I don't recognize these at all. What are they for? Are you, if I may, are you talking about the Vicente Cedarburg Memorandum? I think that's what you're talking about, Mr. Langsdale. Because it has floor plans. So what Vicente Cedarburg, so they're a cannabis attorney group who has done a permitting across the state for marijuana establishment. What we asked of them was find us something similarly situated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that has received the license from the Cannabis Control Commission that is in a multi-tenanted space with common space. And that's what they did. And they provided the floor plans associated with those approved licensed by the CCC uses in this packet. So that's, if you don't recognize it, it's probably because they're in a different part of the state. But that's what they're there for. That's why it makes no sense to me there, Mr. Reedie. Okay, let's move on. There you go. I think that raises a question about the control of the common space. So let me understand the lease situation. RC retail is leasing the entire vacant property or are they just leasing the front and the cannabis? So we call it the retail space and the common space, right? The retail space and the common space. Yes, so they are renting, Maureen, if you could put it up, maybe this would be easier, Mr. Judge, if I could. Put the floor plan. Yes, please. I just wanna show, okay, so the hatched area, Mr. Judge, that is what will be leased. So everything, yes, everything in there, outside of the buffer, that is all leased. And then the- By RC retail leases that. Correct. Who's leasing the grade area? No one. That is common space that is available to RC retail. And also, if you look to the right of the screen, you've got hatches or diagonal lines going in the opposite direction. That is common space between that tenant and RC retail. And so this is controlled by Mr. Shumway Oneness? Yes. So that the grade area is not, you don't know that, Shumway Oneness, right? So you're not leasing that. Correct. That is not leasing that. The leasing premises will be described as what I've just described, the hatches going from upper right to lower left and everything within the space that we have been calling the marijuana space. That is all the leased premises. The balance, that common space, they have access to and non-exclusive use and control of. So similar if you had an office building in Boston, you going through a common door, you may use an elevator, you may use an escalator, there may be a bathroom, et cetera, but that is used by more than just one tenant. That's what's happening here. This is not part of the leased premises. It's so look, maybe looking at a different way. If it was part of a leased premises, then when that tenant two comes in, RC would have to sublease that grade out area to tenant two, but that's not gonna happen. So they are not gonna have any exclusive right to that common space. It is going to remain with Paul Shumway. They will, RC retail along with tenant two will have the right to use it, but it's common. I don't know how else to say. And tenant two will not have any relationship with RC retail. They will just, you're not subletting that space or anything. Yeah, and Paul has been looking. He doesn't have somebody. He's not, I don't know if you know Paul Shumway, but he's not too much of a lister of this type of stuff. He's an old Amherst guy, a lot of word of mouth. He's had folks looking, it's on the market, but he doesn't go out and say, you know, hey, come in, come and get a 1300 square foot space or whatever that square footage is. But yes, and it wouldn't be RC retail. Okay. Lastly, my question, I have one last question on the arch review. Cedarburg memo spends a lot of time talking about the arch review and how the arch review will make a determination that this is not, that the only marijuana business will be conducted and this is a transaction and it's not something, it is not the rest of the activities of RC retail. But you haven't had the arch review yet, have you? No, we cannot until we get through this. Until we get through this. And so all the arguments of the Cedarburg memo are all forward-looking perspective. This is what your position would be to the CCC. This is not the ruling that the CCC has made on this property yet, correct? That's correct. And I think why they wrote it instead of me is because they're much more well-educated with an experience with the CCC for what has been approved in similar circumstances. And so, well, so I mean, just to walk it forward, Mr. Judge, if the board approves this project and it comes back that the CCC says no in their architectural review, this space has to be part of the licensed premises. We would have to figure something else out because that would be within the buffer. But we can't even get, and we feel comfortable that that's not gonna happen, but that's where it would happen. And we don't get there unless and until you approve it locally. I don't think we'd be at this point. Yeah, I don't think we'd be at this point if we thought that the CCC was going to do that. And I think that's what the Cedarburg memo suggests. Here's where we see it playing out, but it could be that CCC for some unknown reason comes back and says, no, you can't do that. If so, we don't get off the ground. Got it. So that hasn't taken place yet. And it, right. And the assertions in the art in the Cedarburg are perspective as to what you hope, that what they will advise you, that they hope that the CCC would do. And I would say it's what they would expect based upon previous experience. It's like a confidence letter. It's like a confidence letter or an opinion letter, right? In their legal opinion, this is what's likely to happen. You've got it. That's okay. Yep, yep, okay. Are there other questions? Well, one question, I mean, one thing that's new to me is I did not realize until tonight, and it wasn't, I don't think it was specified in anything is that you have no ownership, no less our relationship to that common space, that that is not owned, not leased by you. The common space isn't leased by RC and the common space is gonna be continued with Mr. Shumway, and he will then provide that those, he will take care of that space, he will manage it, all that, it all's done there and that's new information to me tonight. I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear last time. I've not, yeah, that is new information to me. That does make a difference in the way I look at this, but it's, but there's still some uses, some things that marijuana uses that I think are legitimate that are being done in the common area and I'm still, I still think I have some questions about that. Maureen, could I show my screen for a quick second? Cause I just wanna, before we get off the topic too much, Stan had mentioned another project that was approved and I just wanna close the loop on that if I could, and instead of being somewhat of a goose about it. Let me go through here. And so this is kind of a crude markup, if you will, of this is University Drive, North University Drive, Amity Street, the hangers right over here for reference, 2535 University Drive is here and this is the old rafters, the site that was approved for herbology by the zoning board of appeals. What I've highlighted is this is a residential use, it's a residential property owned by the Jones family, has been owned by them for pick a number of tens of years. And what I've done is I've just blown it up to show this is all within 300 feet. And I did not notice anywhere in the discussion or the decision of the herbology special permit, any discussion about any marijuana uses happening outside. It wasn't even a discussion, let alone looking to see where that 300 foot was talking about vehicles entering and exiting, parking here, parking here. That's, I understand that. And I just wanna point out, this is a standalone building. It's not even a shopping center. This is not the issue before us, Mr. Reedy. And we're really running, I understand your point, but it's not the issue before us. It is not a building, it is, and we're not rule by precedent. So we didn't do that. And this is a diversion from, I think. I mean, this could be seen as arbitrary to consider this, the one we're in with now, it wasn't raised, could be seen as arbitrary. Well, Mr. Reedy, this I appreciate. That's, I saw it on that board. I know that it wasn't raised at the time. There were distinct differences. We're talking about the 300 feet intersecting the building. That is intersecting a parking lot. There's some, there's differences there, but we're not rule by precedent in either case. And I don't, and I understand that Mr. Rosenberg's point, but it's not, this isn't what, it's not the issue we're dealing with today. Okay. We're getting on towards nine o'clock and I like to credit and these things by nine o'clock. I'd like to see if there's other questions. I have one last question on the fire department review, but I want to, I've dominated this questioning and I don't want to do, I don't want to keep other members of the board if I'm asking questions. Okay. The last question I have is the fire department review, we might have the fire department may determine that the coverage of the delivery area would constitute an expansion of the building. And that's part of what you're doing. You plan to do that to cover them. And that would result in the requirement to retrofit the entire building for fire sprinkling. Now, they have some, they do have some flexibility that the fire department can determine what he wants. The fire department can determine the schedule and they can make reasonable adjustments, but eventually it has to be done if that's the case. One of the things that you would have would do it would affect the businesses that are there. And cause they would, you'd have to retrofit through their business. Would they have to be, they might have to be closed for part of it. And it's new information to us. I'm sure it's new information to them. And I just had the other tenants been notified of this at all. Have they thought about it? Have they gotten any feedback from them? And should we provide them with notice that this, if this goes forward, they're likely to have their business interrupted by having to have the fire department, the sprinklers inserted into the ceilings of the businesses. I think what I will say, and Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to try to be as unequivocal as possible. If there is a requirement to sprinkler the entire building, this project will not go forward. But that's not a, okay. And I will add that Tom is correct. It, our co-consultant who determined that sprinklers cannot be required based on closing that opening. And to sprinkler that entire shopping center for 900 square feet will cost over a million dollars. And for 900 square feet of retail, our company's not willing to pay a million dollars to retrofit sprinklers. So I think Tom has some alternative language to a condition where we could negotiate with the fire department, which we are certainly willing to do, but we certainly cannot afford to sprinkler that shopping center. Thank you. Yeah. And so Mr. Judge, I think that might eliminate the necessity to notify the other tenants of anything because if it came to that, it wouldn't happen. We have all potential alternative exterior designs, if necessary, we have a potential alternative solution if the fire department was willing to listen to just sprinkling the marijuana space instead of the entire building, which I think if it was just that space, they'd be happy to do. I mean, you just have to put it into context of what the change is and what the request is and it seems a little bit unfair. So I don't know that we need to notify anybody of anything because if it comes to that, it's thanks for the good times, but that's all she wrote. So I mean, that is not the question of whether we, whether you have to sprinkle that whole space is not ours, it's not our decision to make. But the implications of our decision can affect that. And it's one of the implications of our decision. And if you have other alternative designs, we have to look at those and approve those. Absolutely. And so it doesn't sound like we're going to finish tonight. Is that, am I reading? I mean, that's, I'm gonna open that up to the board, but I'm not prepared to make a decision tonight because there was a couple of questions that I have. There's some new information that I've got to think through and I think it's true for other members of the board as well. I'm also, I am not satisfied with understanding the parking situation as much as I'd like to and I'd like to have you work with the staff and come up with a clearer understanding of what we have on lot one, what we have on lot two, how this all works for the surge where that goes. And I'd like to have some more information about the non-betuminously covered area of Dunkin' Donuts parking and how many that is and what's used there on the side. So I think there's more work that has to be done on that. And I think there's more work, we have to look more on the arts review. I guess I have to review that some more but I appreciate the work on that. So at this point, I don't think we're, I'm not prepared to put this in front of the board for decision-making and we haven't even had public comment yet on this from, I don't know if there is any public commenters but we haven't even gotten to that stage yet from this hearing. If you may, would we want to open up to see if there's any public comment before we conclude tonight? Just since there's some people in attendance and they've been sort of waiting along while. But before we do that, I just want to make sure that there's no other comments from the board members before we go into public comment. Mr. Maxfield, do you look like you've got your hand ready to go up? Yeah, I guess if we're kind of coming up to the end here and we're thinking about, you know, what we're kind of getting ready for for the next time we come back. One of the things I guess I, I've been thinking about this since our last meeting on the subject and I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on this too is and you were bringing this up before Mr. Chair but what does count as usage? And I think we need to have both a clear idea of what we consider usage such as, for example, if you have employees in the shared conference room talking in general about the business of marijuana, does that count as usage? And if we have in the case you bring up an employee going into the back door through that buffer zone, will we count something like that as usage? We hear an employee coming onto the site is necessary for doing business. And I just think trying to develop a clear picture of what we think there and really trying to get in a sense where I think of myself if I were an employee at this establishment and I were to park in the back and I've got my key card and I would like to enter but now I have to go around the front because this board were to say that counts as usage. You can't enter through that door even though you're not carrying marijuana you're not dealing with marijuana. I guess I think the thing I really want people and myself too to really consider between now and the next meeting is what we consider usage. So everybody can kind of have a clear picture on that because I feel like it's been a stumbling block for us and I'd like to move through that and I'd also really like to hear the other board members as to what they think that we should be considering so we can move forward on this project as well. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Getting more information on usage would be very helpful. I mean, I think one is getting it from the applicant and perhaps we need to have a conversation as board members after the public at the next meeting more about what constitutes usage. And it's in many ways it's what we determine constitutes usage and not so much. It isn't a hard and fast rule and it is not elastic I wouldn't say but it's not hard and fast and some of that comes to us didn't make that determination as board members and that's part of what our discussion would be once we hear all the evidence once we hear from all the people of the public and we have discussion amongst ourselves during the public meeting phase of the process. I had to just comments. Perhaps since it sounds like Tom you're going to be revising the progressory queuing outside might just wanna provide a narrative of what that looks like or show and update the site plan to show the new location and since you're updating the site plan you could also update the occupancy. And as long as you're updating the site plan put little bubbles around the 15 square feet so we can do that. And with COVID the 15 to 17 square feet you're gonna have nine people where they queue up put little bubbles around it. So for those of us that are hard at math challenges. All right, thank you. But now I do wanna go to the public to see if there's any public comments. We do have someone raised hand. Actually, let me pull up the, sorry, give me a second. I'm gonna show this and then someone has raised their hand. I'm gonna, whoever that is, I'm gonna unmute you if I figure out, oh, it's Craig Meadows. Are we taking comments from non-members? Sure, okay. All right, Craig. Craig, if you could state your name and your address for the record. Craig? I think we're lost in it. Craig? Oh, I was muted. But we hear you now. Craig Meadows at 112 Cottage Street. I'm just hoping it might be able to give you a little more illustration on common areas primarily because I've been dealing with working for the Pyramid Malls for the last 38 years. Typically a mall or a store in a mall has access to the common areas. The stores may or may not have washed facilities within them but behind every store, typically in a mall, there is a common space where deliveries are brought in where some things are stored. They are not part of the lease agreement. And they are not considered part of the store and part of the area where the transactions for the store take place. However, the common areas are those areas that are available to all of the stores in a mall for transportation of goods, also for the use of the employees for entry and exit. So this is really not a great transition from that. A common area that would allow meeting space for any of the tenants in the building, for adjacent tenants, for even some deliveries, obviously not marijuana deliveries but deliveries of other goods, toilet paper, hand towels, whatever is perhaps necessary for the store. I can't imagine that as it would be for a common mall say the Hampshire mall or the Holyoke mall, those areas are considered not charged to the store. Hope that can be helpful. Thank you. You're muted. Yeah, I can't. It doesn't look like anyone is raising their hands. For some reason, Mike, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Nobody else is raising their hand. All right. Well, I think we're looking at a 918, a little bit after the time we'd like to stop these things. I think we should continue this to the next meeting. Maureen, what do we have for a schedule for the next meeting? Well, on the July 23rd, we have two public hearings for 117 Amity Street and 1-4 offense for 948 East Pleasant Street. So we could squeak Tom in afterwards. We would agree if we could. And I believe everyone is on that panel that's here tonight. I think. July 23rd. Then let's have, we can work with you for the kind of submissions that we need for that date. We'd like to have them a week ahead of time, but of course, and we'll work with the staff to get them so that all the board members can review them and have some time to review them, especially any memos that we have on use would be helpful. All right. I would move that we continue this to July 23rd as the third item on the agenda for that night. Is there, do I have a second to that motion? Seconded. Is there any discussion that this be continued until July 23rd? This would be a roll call vote. I vote aye. Mr. Limesdale. Aye. Ms. O'Meara. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. All right. The motion passes. We'll see you on the 23rd. Thank you very much for all your time. We appreciate it. Thank you. We'll talk to you then. Okay, good. Bye. The next order of business tonight is public comment on any matter, not before the board tonight. So the public has the opportunity to speak for three minutes on any matter that is not before the board tonight. Is there any member of the public that wishes to speak? I see none. And there's no other new business that was not anticipated in the last 48 hours. So if I have a motion to adjourn for tonight and resume with our next meeting is when? Is it the 23rd or do we have one before that? The next is the 23rd? My third. Yeah, the 23rd. So we'll resume on. If you all have next week off. Yes. So we'll resume on the 23rd. Do I have a second to that motion for adjournment? Seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? It's a roll call vote. I always have a hard time with this. I vote aye. Mr. Langsdale. Aye. Ms. O'Mara. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Well, we're all happy about this ending at this time of night. Well, thank you all for again, thank you all for your work on this, your time you spent. Thank you to the staff. We'll talk next week. And we hope to have more information for you that you can review before the 23rd. Thank you again all. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Good night everybody.