 June 15th, 2015, this is not our typical meeting. Tonight we are here for a design standards presentation by David Gamble of Gamble Associates, and I am going to, well first, this meeting is being recorded by ACMI and also by Chris Loretta who informed me at the beginning of the meeting that he will be recording portions of the meeting this evening. At this point I'm going to hand the microphone over to Carol Kowalski to tell us a little bit more about what's happening this evening. Thank you, I'm Carol Kowalski, Director of Planning and Community Development. Thank you very much for coming out on a very misty Monday. You're very good to come out and be part of this evening. I wanted to tell you the purpose of this gathering. The Arlington Master Plan recommends some zoning changes in order to foster better redevelopment that fits the community's needs and desires. Generally speaking, zoning regulates uses and dimensions. In the near future, our zoning should do a better job of describing to the property owner what is allowed and what future development might feel like to the public and people next door to it and do a better job of showing what new buildings might look like on the street and on the land. Earlier this spring, we received input from the public during three tours that Gamble Associates conducted of commercial areas in Arlington. Tonight we seek to build further on that input. Once the design standards are prepared, we would then try to write zoning regulations intended to produce the community's preferred types of designs. I'm going to then turn it over to David Gamble and Brian Gregory from Gamble and Associates. There'll be lots of time for a question and answer and I anticipate that we will probably have a question of how design standards might differ from zoning, but I'm going to hold that and let, so please, as questions come to mind, please make sure you jot them down because we really do want to hear your input and I'd like to introduce David Gamble from Gamble Associates. ARB member Mike Kair points out that because ARB member Bruce Fitzsimons had an unexpected delay in real estate closing today, it was supposed to be scheduled at one o'clock. We don't have a forum of ARB members, so that means that the board can't vote or can't take action on any agenda items tonight. Okay, thanks, Mike. I think we'll go over there. Good evening. Thank you very much for coming. I guess the absence of the one ARB member indicates how robust the development climate is at the moment in Arlington. So thanks a lot for coming again. My name is David Gamble. I'm an architect and urban planner with Gamble Associates based in Cambridge. We focus on neighborhood revitalization and community development. I'd also want to highlight Brian Gregory, a designer in our office who's produced a lot of the graphics you'll see tonight. How many of you just at the outset have participated in the master planning process over the last couple of years? How many of you attended one of the public meetings? Okay, it looks like about two thirds of you. Well, I'm not assuming that you did and so part of what I want to do is just to talk about the relevance of design standards as they relate to that very robust and remarkable effort for passing the master plan. It's actually a very important step in deciding what the future of the town is. I want to cover a lot, however, so if you could resist the urge to ask very detailed questions, I want to give you an overview first of what design standards are. Again, not assuming that you are all professional designers or planners and we're going to go over a very specific aspect of Arlington that we think can make these design standards not only precise to Arlington but why this could actually be a model for other towns and municipalities. There's, so we're thinking about development that's highly place specific and if you were involved in the master planning process, clearly the street right outside of us, Mass Ave, and in fact, Broadway, these primary commercial corridors with the transit is one of those places. The Mill Brook, which is a remarkable but largely untapped development opportunity and as well as the bikeway, which is again maybe a generation ahead of its time and a generation from now will be even much more cherished than it currently is. These are three things that in different moments intersect along the town, east to west and all hold some potential for unleashing where the town can grow. Then we're gonna look at a very specific example, a long Mass Ave where we think these standards could apply and round it out by looking at some general application of that, okay? So bear with us for about 45 minutes and as Carol said, there's lots of opportunities to questions for questions. We were also, by the way, sub-consultant to RKG on the master plan so we also participated in the three public meetings and were involved throughout the last year and a half, two and a half years. So despite this might be your first introduction into design standards, have no fear. I think that the master plan actually has a lot of community engagement over that time and what we've tried to do is identify ways in which these design standards could leverage and build off of that public engagement. Here's, as Carol said also in April, we did a bus tour, we did a walking tour. Some of you here were present. Carol, it looks like they're pointing fingers at you. Already, it's great, frankly, to work in a town where people care a lot about the fabric of that town. It's not always taken for granted and the fact that there is such strong sentiment about what people love, what people dislike is encouraging and it's something as a consultant that we enjoy working in places like that and I hope you have ideas tonight. So the one, two, three, four. Of the five land use recommendations, three of them actually have to do with developing a higher quality of design standards for future development. So again, this is a direct outgrowth of the master plan. We hope you see these standards as building off of that engagement and help to visualize maybe more than anything else, what design can be like in the future. So what can they do? Well, there's really, there's probably more than this but we listed five. They improve the character of development because they actually demonstrate what is expected of developers. Okay, so first and foremost, developers wanna know what can they do? How long will it take? What are the expectations of the town? And by developing design standards, they actually have to clarify that. That's the most important thing, actually. They raise the standard of quality, therefore. They provide examples and we'll show you some tonight about other cities and municipalities that we've looked at. What are the current trends in zoning? What makes sense in terms of design guidelines? A big difference is they actually help to spatialize and graphically represent what is otherwise, frankly, fairly difficult language to decipher. I mean, personally, I find zoning bylaws and ordinances confusing at best and design standards can help to clarify what those expectations are and represent them. Therefore, bringing clarity to the process and in some cases, if done well, can actually expedite the process, not always but in some cases. And they can also go too far. Well, what does that mean? Design standards can go too far. Well, they can produce stuff like this, actually. How many of you know Seaside, Florida? Okay, just a couple. Well, it's one of those places that has highly detailed design standards and guidelines for every new building. On the one hand, you might say, Arlington's historic, it should actually codify and extend that design language, but you also don't wanna create a Disneyland either. So one thing at the outset, I'm gonna say lots tonight that will probably upset you all, but I'll try to disperse it so not one individual is really upset. But this is one of those things that design standards aren't really about style. They can be, but they can also go too far. So in other words, what does that building look like? Well, you can say it needs to have a base and a middle and a top and the top should have a cornice and et cetera and et cetera. But where do you draw that line in the town's evolution? What's an appropriate date for a historical building? So embedded in the standards are some principles, but we're not suggesting that you actually codify or regulate what the building looks like per se. And I think hopefully with some examples, you'll see what we mean by that. Here's what they can't do, actually. Despite what we said in the beginning, they can't really regulate use. I mean, the zoning does that in a way, but design standards are less about that in a way than more about the expectations of design. They can't replace zoning. They actually have to be delicately feathered or integrated into the existing bylaws. For example, how do you measure a building height? Well, every town actually does it differently and you have to make sure that when you say a building should be no more than X feet and X stories, that has to be calibrated with the language that's used. I say height because that's usually one of the most conspicuous issues in every place that we work. They don't actually deal with streets per se. We'll talk about a way of zoning that does, in fact, talk about the design of the public realm, but it's primarily what can a private property underdo if she wants to redevelop a property? That's really what it's about, a private property, and they don't necessarily master plan areas. Although you may wish that the Milbro Corridor got master plan, that's not essentially what these design standards do, but they help to clarify what could happen if in fact the developer were to come forward. And on this way, this isn't a new idea. This is something that's come up a number of times over the last, well, three years or beyond. Here, in fact, Andy, I think you presented this. In this room, three years ago, which was brilliant. It was looking at the threads between Massav and the Milbrook and the bikeway as a place that the town should redevelop. Why? It's near transit. It's near the natural assets. It's near the corridor of the bike path. Cities and towns across the US are looking at these corridors for recreation, for investment, for leveraging proximity to the natural systems. This, again, is not unique to Arlington, but you have a very particular benefit because it's actually a very big area. Now, that's not all park. It's identifying a place to develop. So it's difficult to spot zone. You don't wanna say build here, don't build here, everywhere, but you can begin to think about a way, a structure for the town's redevelopment that allows it to grow and therefore preserves what people feel are most important. So design standards can help to channel and direct where that growth should occur. And I think this is a brilliant drawing because it gets at the heart of that. Go back 40 years almost beyond that. This little drawing from a Tufts, I think it was a master's thesis, in fact, that says redevelop along the Milbrook. Wouldn't that be great with this little sketch? So again, I take issue with the fact when people say, look, there's nowhere to build in Arlington. Arlington's built out, that's actually not true. You just have to build smarter and in the right areas and that's why these types of initiatives make a lot of sense. I mentioned that a lot of different towns and cities are looking at this, I'm gonna call it infrastructure, although that's too simplistic of a word. What are some other places doing and why? I came back from the Atlanta Beltline a few months ago and here's a 22-mile rail line around the entire downtown. How many of you have heard of this? Raise your hand. It's a, you will in about a year, it's now become a rails to trail and they're starting very small. This is only, this is the east side trail, this is only a mile and a half, but it brings thousands and thousands of people there every day. They drive to run on the trail. That's how much of a benefit it is. And this is what it looked like in 2005. So they're starting small, but the grand ambition is to link this region wide and it's already brought over a billion dollars of investment in the last seven years. That's another lesson here, is that this took almost 10 years to plan. The interesting thing that's when I was there is that you see all of these little industrial buildings that are turning their fronts now towards the bike path because in fact, there's lots of people out there. And think of all the little buildings out there now, this is near the Mirac site, that are just waiting for that to happen, you know. Small buildings, easy to do, not humongous developments, but enough to get some stuff happening. And that's, I think, a big lesson in Atlanta. Just get started. And I think there's a couple of sites where that can happen. These not being two of those, but maybe this one. The whole industrial buildings that are next to these corridors that could really be something remarkable. And in fact, reusing those buildings in ways that allow them to be celebrated. So another paradox is the fact that new development and respecting Arlington's history can actually happen in tandem. And in fact, it's more interesting if it happens in tandem. That selectively certain projects get redeveloped because they can be reused and celebrated like that. Green Bay, a different scale, that's 100,000 people. But this is what the river looked like there, the Fox River looked like there about seven years ago, eight years ago. There's a big dead mall, everything that was wrong about urban planning in the 70s and 80s was inhibiting that just about a mile and a quarter, I think it's six blocks long of a new public realm that engages the Fox River. I mean, imagine something like that here in Arlington. You don't have a river of that dimension. I just like this image because it talks to program because these places become interesting places that people wanna visit and organizations get built around this stuff to help program and be a part of them. Even at the entrance, our practice is in Cambridge. If you come from Cambridge, either on Mass Ave or Broadway, the first two things you see are things like this and this, particularly at the gateway from Cambridge. One-story buildings just don't cut it, honestly, and they shouldn't be one-story buildings or the fact that major portions of the Millbrook are covered over. Gold's Gym, here's the Mirac. Now, these are people who are maybe waiting for the right time. Eventually they'll change, but if you start to stitch these things together, the hope is that the sum is greater than the parts. And so the Mirac site, I think it's, she was on the bus tour, right? 20-some acres. It's not like they don't want to see something happen, but the timing isn't right. So part of it just takes timing and the standards can help unleash and unlock that potential, honestly. A couple more, the Houston, how many of you know the Buffalo Bayou in Houston? Okay, well it's flooded now, but they've taken into account of that with the design. This was about 15 years of advocacy on the part of people in Houston to take this sewer. It was literally a sewer and turned it into a recreational trail. And one of the first things that the Buffalo Bayou partnership did was they cleaned it up and they had a competition for this little skimmer boat called the Mighty Tidy. That was the high school students that won the naming competition. And they had all kinds of activities that program it and get people out there and just raise the consciousness of this corridor that was really, I mean, it's stunk. It was a combined sewer outflow for 70 years. And so a lot of that is just the programming and when you walk by the Millbrook now and you see, gosh, parking lots, detritus, dumpsters. I mean, you think, oh my God, just imagine how much that can change if new development addressed it in a way that enhanced it and didn't simply guard against it. That's what happens here when you have surface parking lots abutting and draining in fact into a natural resource. It shouldn't happen. And this is what it looks like now. It's again, a small part of a 33 mile vision but man, is that place active at all times a day. And it's just nothing more than a minute man bikeway, honestly, but it connects all these neighborhoods along its lane. Last one, you may say, well, Arlington's not that scale, maybe doesn't quite match. Here's San Francisco where this highway was demolished. What are they doing now in an area where that demolished highway came down because there aren't development pressures. They took two blocks and brought in some shipping containers and made that into an initiative called proxy and proxy is just a placeholder for development yet to come. And so that's actually a fitness group that leases space by area and they program it every day. There's events that happen there, a beer garden. I mean, these are literally shipping containers that people come out as a coffee shop. There's a yogurt place and it doesn't take a whole lot. And so you might say, how does this relate to design standards? Well, it relates insofar as it seems unimaginable today that there could be a corridor, the length of the Millbrook or the bikeway, but if you start small with interesting projects and committed, honestly, advocacy, it can make a big difference. And actually, one of the members of the ARB gave us this one. I didn't know this one in Greenville, South Carolina, the Riverwalk, slightly different scale perhaps along that corridor, but nevertheless, wouldn't it be remarkable if you had three, four-story buildings with public access, a dedicated right-of-way, a naturalized, terraced condition that gets you down to the Millbrook above the floodplain? All of these things are possible and it really just takes standards, frankly, to regulate and anticipate that growth. Just a couple more precedents specifically about design standards and how that might relate to the research, to what we're doing now in Knoxville, South Waterfront. More and more towns are moving away from traditional zoning. Why? Because the character that everybody says they love is actually more about the place and the form than the use. Uses change, an old factory becomes an office complex and it becomes a residential building that can house high-tech startups. Uses change, but the form endures. So I'm not sure where the town will go with this, but our recommendation would be thinking more about that as a paradigm as opposed to the euclidean, as opposed to the notion of zoning residential here, industrial here, et cetera. More and more people have been talking about mixed use. I mean, that's really what makes a corridor active and that requires moving away from other ways of dividing up buildings and spaces. And so in Knoxville, actually, this was a three-mile riverfront, but in fact, it's subdivided because in a form-based code, you can say, what is the character of that neighborhood? What is the character of this neighborhood? And design the zoning in a way to appreciate it, build off of it, embrace it, et cetera. And so here, there are eight different sub-districts and they're all divided and they all have different requirements about use, about public interface, about streets, et cetera. That's one way in which you could think about it. And this is just a little poster that describes what the private developer can do and then what the public sector can do in terms of streets. So a form-based code, I'm sorry if this is coming across as too much of a lecture, but this is an important point. It's different than zoning. It actually encourages greater emphasis on the public realm. It's about form, obviously. There is increased public engagement because if you said Arlington Heights, what is the character of your neighborhood? What is the scale? What is the appropriate relationship to the street? All of that can be both elicited and formulated to allow for a character that people feel as well more attuned to that environment. And they tend to be highly graphic and as designers, it's something that we embrace and you'll see some more of that here. Lastly, I think the town is gonna put this on the website. We did, we looked at about, how many brains? We scoured the cities and towns to say, okay, what are the interesting things happening? Those are three of them in Milwaukee. We'll show you what they're doing here. Basically, moving away from two-dimensional views and thinking more about perspectives. We said, well, that's kind of interesting. Let's try to do more of that because that's actually how you see things from the ground. We got this from San Antonio, labeling, again, drawings more from how you perceive it and see it as a pedestrian. We also like this drawing, which is taking a quintessential public space in Arlington and diagramming it out so that you understand there's a row of trees, there's a sort of interstitial zone, there's a zone for seating. You may not be able to see that from the back, but we're trying to better understand the character of what you have to hopefully extend it beyond today. So these are the three primary themes and we hope you agree with these, but if you don't, please let us know. So the commercial corridors, and we mean primarily Mass Ave and Broadway, although I know that there's some sub districts that could be part of that. So we think that requires a certain relationship of the street. It demands higher density, more height. I know density is a bad word, but it's the best word I can think of. Landscaping, open space, et cetera. This is an idea that should be advanced and I guess I need a better picture of Mass Ave, but in fact it does look like that in quite a lot of it. One-story buildings, lots of utilities. I mean, this is a major asset, frankly, over time. And it should look different. So here's the drawing of those two Broadway Mass Ave and the areas that might be part of that. This is what everyone loves about Mass Ave, actually, or most people when you ask. Do you like this? Is it okay? Well, yeah, but that's also four stories. Next to a two and a half-story building and another two-story building. So that's another dangerous thing about design guidelines is if you regulate it too much, everything starts to look the same and you want to make sure you embed some flexibility within that so not everything looks the same. The bikeway here. Actually, maybe a better term is the recreational trails because it's not just the bikeway and there's lots of perpendiculars that are important too. But notice this building, which I can't remember. That's Brigham's Alta. Brigham's Alta, okay. Pretty big building, I think it's four stories, parking below grade, brought new residents to the area, increased the tax space, all that stuff is good, but here's our problem with it. Is it set back about 50, 60 feet? So you lose that opportunity to leverage its relationship to the bike path. And if I was living there, I'd want to be able to go from my apartment out to a little bridge that gets you onto this bike path because that's how you're gonna get there. Why does a developer not do that? Well, maybe because it's not regulated or required or they don't receive incentives by doing so, but you can build that in. So we're not saying that that's a bad piece of architecture, we're just saying its relationship to the asset or to the right of way is undermined. And then finally, the Millbrook, which we were admonished when we first presented this to the AirB because we were thinking too much about corridors, this is a very large area. We don't want to suggest it's just the line next to the waterway is in fact a much broader area here and it requires a lot more work on our part to better understand that, but we just want you to remember that we're thinking of these three geographies, this might be the best term. And that's right near the high school, just amazing potential. Okay, so with those three categories, we're gonna introduce seven themes. And we feel that these seven themes help to clarify how a developer would do a project along these areas and each of these would change. But understandably, a building setback is one of the most important things to get right. And here just in front of not your average Joe's great space, I probably should have got it with a lot more people, but how to get that dimension right is makes all the difference in the world. And you can in a design standard say, any building that faces Mass Ave or Broadway needs 50% transparency at the ground floor. You can regulate that, you can require it and in fact, you should. Because you want to get a mix of uses, you want transparency, you want a vibrant street life. Now here's the paradox. This in my mind is almost too much. Everything else stays the same, you've got lots of frequent entrances, you've got shops, maybe there should be more stories or certainly this. There are dozens of buildings like this along Mass Ave. It's just astounding how many 1970 buildings are set back like this and it's a lost opportunity for public life, frankly. So building height, that is a major category and we will think about that in relationship to those three geographies. I'm sorry, building setbacks. Okay, the relationship of the private property to the right of way. The next one and maybe we should have started with this is the building height. And again, here's that key gateway opportunity right along another major corridor. Nearly every developable site is car related, isn't that interesting? Are any of you owners of car related industries here? No, maybe it's the next meeting. It's just the way things are evolving honestly but a lot of them have lots of surface slots. And it's not that height needs to look like this either and we certainly wouldn't recommend 10 or 12 or 15 stories buildings like this but a lot of it has to do with how it relates to the street and how you taper, frankly, building heights as they relate to existing neighborhoods. The rub in designing the right standards is relationships between things as much as you are defining the thing itself. So again, it's another paradox here because you certainly don't want more of these but how the next project relates to the existing neighborhoods which is 90% or 80% of the territory of Arlington is really where you have to get it right. And you can do that with building setbacks and stepbacks. I hope nobody, does anyone live in any of these? Oh, okay. All right. Okay, yeah, well, again, more modern art or some people like that stuff. Here's another counterintuitive thing. As much as height is important, honestly it doesn't make as much difference as you think it does. Why? Because you perceive things from the ground and actually this is our office right there in central square. That's a one-story building next to a 10-story building. You would never wanna do that but I tell you from the street, this is perfectly fine. It has to do with the use. It has to do with its relationship to the street. That's really what's most important. So don't get us wrong. We don't think a 10-story building is appropriate anywhere in Arlington. However, I think one's fear of excessive height is often exacerbated by the worst case scenario. And if you design standards appropriately with enough specificity, then the worst case example will still be acceptable. There's only seven of these. This is number three, the public realm interface between one and the other. Again, lots of places like this. We're developing some small icons that are generic enough that people can understand what the theme is and we'll start to create some architecture. Don't be confused by this because it could look like anything. It's more the principle of how it relates to the street. Tamara probably likes this. Somewhere in Holland. But there's all kinds of things like this too along Mass Ave. Buildings that are suburban that are set back from the street with easily accessible surface parking and pole signs. It shouldn't be allowed, period. It's not appropriate and even here, the mill building along the Millbrook. Today, would you allow a building that close to the Millbrook? Maybe? Is this that bad? Actually works pretty great and it's 100 years old probably. Parking and access, I think for a lot of you, parking is maybe a driver. People are concerned about new development because of the negative consequences of parking and access and circulation. So there's ways that you can design for that. Primarily thinking about hiding the parking, anticipating where it can go, lowering parking standards which actually is recommended in the master plan. And the surface parking that you do have, it's good to make sure that it's done well. And there's, I can think of four examples in Arlington where you have lots of this stuff when the parking is even on the side, which is better. It can be in the back, but so maybe that'll grow in, but I live in Watertown and there's a couple of these and boy it makes a big difference. So that can also be codified. A design standard can say every single surface parking lot needs a vegetated buffer of drought resistant native plants, a period of X amount of canopy. So all of that is possible. Another point that was reinforced at the ARB which I think can't be stressed enough is the fact that we're talking about these three geographies but it's the cross streets between them which is really what's most, holds potential, those linkages between them. This is just from last weekend, I was just driving down and I couldn't believe how many opportunistic paths there are to the bikeway. I mean that can't be code compliant, right? But imagine just a little bit more investment in those perpendicular linking the bike path, linking Mass Ave, linking the Millbrook. My favorite space in Cambridge is in Harvard Square connecting to JFK Park. It's only a right of way about 40 feet but boy do you wanna walk down there because it's just a great place to be at all seasons or here at the Arsenal in Watertown. Again, investment in the public realm which fosters connectivity which leverages Arlington's greatest assets and you can entice developers to do this. What does that mean? Well, maybe they get another story of height but in lieu of that you get an active public realm that everybody can use. All of these things can be delineated and need to be frankly. And again, I just cribbed this right out of the Millbrook study. All of these things have been thought about. Now use the standards to advance that planning. One of the more difficult ones, the facades and materials. Again, I feel that design standards should stop short of saying what a building should look like in terms of its style but you can regulate what materials are prohibited, vinyl sliding, chain link fence, et cetera but you just have to give a recommendation of what its replacement is. Conversely, inexpensive materials can make a nicely proportioned building look really cheap and there's a bunch of that, surprisingly enough. And that leads directly to signage. I mean, you can't look at these buildings without thinking they could do that better or they should be doing that better and so even a one-story building can do signage that's quite nice. It's done with tastefully. It can be regulated. It should be regulated. Design standards, we're saying there is a category for signage and wayfinding that relates to these three geographies. Each one should be slightly different and less of this. But again, here's another paradox because in some signage ordinances, things like this aren't allowed because they're actually a little too funky and you can design standards that are too closely tailored. They have to be a certain dimension. They have to be backlit. They have to be X, Y, and Z and then you lose the opportunity for things like this which frankly are kind of cool and another slippery slope in terms of where do you wanna take these? You can do it too much and you can also not do it enough and you have to hit the right balance. So here are, at the end of this, we'll give you a handout. We really wanna get your feedback on what other themes do you think should make it? Are we getting these geographies right? So here's a handout where we want you to write some stuff in. But as a transition to how might these overarching ideas relate to the main corridors, these are three initial concepts of buildings that relate to these seventh categories along the commercial corridors. I know it's too tall. Bear with us. We can find an appropriate dimension but we actually think four to five stories is not too much density along Mass Ave and in fact along portions of Broadway. By doing so, it alleviates pressure in other areas and therefore the think of it as a release valve. And if it's done well and with the right uses, with transparency and the right signage and the nice facades and set step backs which above a certain story you set back 10 to 12 feet. Makes all the difference in the world. A building's height will come down visually from the street. These are principles that should be adhered to of buffers with adjacent residential areas. So this is just the first pass and how we might start to represent this. Bike paths might be difficult to read the lime green in the back, but this would be a better place. This would be a better place at the bike path if there were connections to smaller scale buildings that were set back from that space which I believe is owned by TCR, by MBTA. MBTA owns that but nevertheless there's a right of way on either side of that center line where buildings actually could engage in. Again, connections to the next adjacent corridor or the Millbrook where if one used, and this is the challenge here because the topography changes so much along the town, but if you leverage the topography as it relates to the Millbrook, you can actually bring development up to a level that's both safe because it's outside the flood plain but allows for a public space adjacent to it. So two to three stories we think is an appropriate height for new development. If it's less than that, there'll be less interest in development, frankly. It can be done well and look, that's probably a 75 foot setback from the center line of the water course. Would every development look like this? Absolutely not, but maybe there's a way to start to visualize how development should occur. Okay, I feel like I'm going on too long. Just two more points. One is a very specific example and I've covered up the name to protect the innocent here but there's all kinds of projects like this not in just in Ellington but in many places. A large surface parking lots set back from the street. This is in Mass Ave. So between Spipond and Mass Ave, just half a mile from here, that's what it looks like today. So we're just gonna show you a few images that hopefully relate to these themes. So you don't wanna do that, that's looking south towards Spipond. What could it look like? Well, again, bear with us but you would wanna put density along Mass Ave. You want active commercial uses. The colors represent housing is yellow, office could be blue and red is retail or commercial space. Now any developer who comes forward would choose whatever uses they feel they can get away with or make sense but there is a desire to increase the commercial tax base. You could imagine residential there but you could also imagine a series of buildings and here's the key that make a connection from Mass Ave to the Spipond because you just can't get there from here. What that would mean is that, well, the guideline actually says connecting cord or the Spipond or connecting the water system to Mass Ave should have a public space of a certain dimension and that would help to structure a project like this. On the other side from the bike path, this is what you see. Well, this is what you see. It's probably one of the most spectacular potential views in the town but you're looking at the backside of a suburban commercial space. Now, Walgreens doesn't know that we're looking at this but you have to think that if you drive down Mass Ave, this space should be something different. It could look like something like this which is to say as the building relates to a natural water course, it tapers down in height and this would allow for a cafe or some type of amenity space, a terrace, steps. But here's this path and as a planner, frankly, this is maybe more important than what the architecture looks like. You're creating a linkage that's publicly accessible and beautifully designed upon which development actually helps to relate to. So that's the view from that or be better than this because you'd be higher. It's fascinating along Mass Ave that you see the towers. They're usually civic buildings or religious buildings but they help to create points of interest and they terminate views. At this site, Mass Ave actually bends around from Cambridge towards Arlington Center. It has a bend to it. That would be a place to put height. The design standard should say additional height might be warranted to terminate a view corridor. We've written that in other instances. And so this is an instance. This is why we think five stories at that location could be allowed because you're actually site specific. You're creating a linkage that relates to, you'd see the fire station off in the distance here. So it would create a series of nodes along the commercial corridor which is why we think additional height here could be warranted. And it could look something like this and actually we've left out, Carol will scold me later because we didn't make it look more historical. It could look like anything. I mean, it could have slope pitches and everything. We just drew what we're used to and so don't get too upset about the contemporary architectural expression. It wouldn't look like that. And then lastly, if you're looking east towards the gas station, this is the gas station. Here's the Walgreen site. That's what it looks like now. That's five stories which honestly is not too tall and this site should actually have that amount of height we believe. And so because of that, if you allow that height you can get something like this because developers will be incentivized to create public connections that they wouldn't otherwise be required to do. And so that's why, that's the quid pro quo. That's the, if you do this you get that but that is actually pretty remarkable. So here's the terrace overlooking the spy pond. Here's maybe a commercial use. Legal test kitchen. I mean, it's like there should be a great restaurant or bar there, not bar, something there. Bar bar is good. Okay, so again, just a little cartoon that could look like. As a way to summarize and then we do have a couple of questions to ask you anonymously and we wanna maybe use that as a transition to getting some feedback. So this is not a place specific instance of where the design standards relate to a project but it models the manner in which a development might move forward. Again, a corner site. Here's a major road. That could be the bike path. A traditional developer is gonna come in and propose something like this which is to say, this is happening in Watertown where I live, a CVS right on the major corner of a major road. Surface parking lot, pole sign set back. That's maybe a 5,000, 7,000 square foot commercial building. Immediately that needs to come up to the street edge. It's like rule number one, public room interface. It addresses the street. Parking goes to the rear. Number two, there's shared parking. Parking should actually be shared across sites and not just looked at the individual properties. You share parking, thereby alleviating the parking burden. Office uses and residential uses overlap. You can calibrate that. You actually increase density and maybe that's enough to get parking below the building or maybe the topography allows for parking underneath. You set it back a certain distance because this is an intersection. So step backs are set backs above a certain floor. Set backs are the distance to the street. You require that. You modulate the building massing so it's not 180 foot long facade. You create variation in the building elevations. You recommend a certain material pallet. You ensure that it's highly sustainable and that alternative energy sources are used in the project's implementation, solar, geothermal materials again. And that the landscaping, which always comes at the end, the landscaping is related to the building and it's not thought about as an extra but the landscape and the building form actually are designed synergistically. Okay, I see a question. We do wanna ask you some very specific questions if we can, if we may. I'm not sure what time is it. Can we just pass out some handheld clickers and it'll only take about 10 minutes and then we'll go into questions, can you wait? Okay, right there. So I think most of you are probably familiar with these handheld devices. Use them at town hall. Use them at town meeting? Yeah, town meeting, okay. They were really cool about six or seven years ago. They kinda lost their allure because more people have them but you'll see how they work very quickly if you're not familiar. We do now have a form. Don't press any buttons yet. We did this a year, just about a year ago for a visual preference survey as part of the master plan. It was actually very helpful. We'll also post this online to get more people's feedback. Okay, so the way it works is there's just five questions here. Please choose the most appropriate answer. It's like the ACT, everything might be right but you have to choose the best one, okay? So what are your expectations for the design standards? Vote one if you think they will raise the quality of new development. All right, is anyone pressing? No. Can you define what would be my expectations do you mean what we expect will happen or what we desire to happen? Uh, good question. What was the question? What you desire to have happen. First of all, you expect what will happen. Oh, okay, hold on, let me do this again here. See, I didn't know the answer so I just stopped. You know, so I pulled this slide and my laptop died and I had to rent a new laptop and the software that we saw here is new. So we can take a break, we can just restart the computer and then, you know, if you guys wanna do these questions we can continue, can we do that? Yeah. We'll be able to get your input on these questions. Yeah, okay. Carol, I'm gonna have to restart. Just don't play these please. I'm just gonna stop the signage. We never have to go for as much. Don't play at all. Yes, so we're just gonna restart the computer. I think that's the issue because the program is new. Okay, so the point was can you require higher sustainability thresholds? Can you require a green roof so can you incentivize green roofs? Absolutely, sustainability could be its own category here, but we left it out as its own category because we think it's embedded in every other of the seven. But yes, that is exactly something that you can say, a developer with a green, you know, that's an incentive. If they give you a green roof, you can, you know, whatever. I think they asked us to. Yes, as long as we don't have a break, I just asked a question. I'm still fundamentally confused about the process. So stores that are single story now, suppose they wanted to stay there, so they didn't wanna knock it down. They wanted to add something to it. Is the reason they're not doing it now because just because of zoning issues or is it a financial issue? I mean, what would we have to provide additional incentives in that direction? Right. So why isn't it happening now? So the question is, why do you still have so many one story buildings along Mass Ave? It's a variety of factors, primarily as there may be multiple property owners along what would otherwise be a single development project. So someone would have to go in and actually aggregate multiple properties together in order to create the density. When we asked in the visual preference survey what people liked, nearly everybody said the Capitol Theater. Great, but that has no parking, right? So a developer may not propose to do other than on street parking. The width of the parcel is not deep enough to accommodate a surface slot or you can't get the density to park it, to self-park it below grade. So a developer is not incentivized to build a new building because they feel they can't park it and they think that everybody needs to park. I just don't get what are the incentives then for these existing, I mean, they have to all agree to sell their buildings to some developer that's gonna knock it down or is there any way for somebody to say, I wanna add a couple of stories up here and throw some apartments up there? The answer is yes. If a developer thought that she could build right outside is a series of one story buildings across from town hall and including a drive in bank, like that should not be across from the most impressionable building in the town. How do you incentivize that? Well, first of all, you develop standards that encourage it, you incentivize it, you lower parking standards so that developers don't feel they have to meet all their parking on site. It may require multiple properties to be aggregated together. Languages to the millbrook should be made. There are things that need to be described that can help clarify and incentivize. Well, you're doing tonight a question. There are examples where if a building is structurally sound and can support additional stories, a building in Austin recently added stories and kept its existing first floor. I've seen it done in other cities and towns. It depends on the building and it depends on the owner's intentions, but it can't be done. Who owns the millbrook right now? The names, the long, the bill, are represented by many, many property owners. So right to the center line of the waterway? To tell you the truth, I don't know the answer about the water force itself. I think I can find out for you, but the important part is that there are many landowners who own the land right along the edge of the border. And is it clean water? It depends on your definition. It's been the most part of cleaning the tits. I don't think we have a lot of 21 east sites along, but actually 21 east sites along the border. I have another question. It might be coming in a little late, but can you just describe where in the process the design standards are right now? Is this, yeah, just where in the approval process all that? Right now they're still being prepared. That's why I think it's so important. There are categories that have been proposed and you'll probably hear a little bit more about those categories. One category is parking, one category is signage. We will very likely have a survey monkey online for input as well, as do presentations like tonight's. They're not etched in stone by any means. But has the town decided that they will implement some design standards? It's just unclear what those will be. That's correct. There is a recommendation in the master plan to adopt design guidelines. We wanted to do the design guidelines before zoning because the design guidelines should really inform and be part of the zone. So the public property owners know what to expect and what things will look like and should look like. I have two points, but one is first question. Will the design guidelines be submitted to the town meeting for approval, and grossing or something? I'm hopeful that they will be worked into a zoning bylaw amendment to approve the town meeting. If yes, so yes. The second point is in Capital Theater who relies on Capital Theater, that's one of the things that's parking situation. But that doesn't mean you won't have them aligned with Capital Theater, definitely. That's right. And I just ask you to think of this image. Think of that Saturday. Think of that Saturday in Lexington. Think of that Saturday in King. Which do you like better? I don't think that's what we have to, I don't think we have to choose between those two. I think there's a lot in between, and I think that that's very important to provide some flexibility for creativity and for what works on a site environment. I don't disagree with that, but there's a lot of developers, basically no kids, that they became bigger and better. Those of us who were more, you know, just aesthetically, I don't think you could drive past and get very far into these directions and say, well, I don't think you used to look like this before we went crazy with all these conversations about this. Isn't it nice? Just to interject your answer to that, the way that the design guidelines can help to be maybe a little slice of specific, is that in effect, is that you guys do sit sort of between these two paradigms and continuing on through Cambridge and ending in Boston. So there is sort of these thresholds that you meet and you guys sort of fit in one of those steps. And so I do think perhaps further up towards the heights, you start to get towards the character going out towards that, but down towards the mine piece, either down towards what the building is, closer to Cambridge, the development might be different. And I think that's the rubber design guidelines in a way, is just trying to describe these corridors so that you get sort of a continuous transition that's appropriate for sort of your proximity to the metropolitan area or rural conditions. So that's that site specificity that you sometimes don't get with the zoning that you can get with design guidelines and that they want to achieve. So you can sort of dictate different heights, setbacks, so that the character transitions as you go along. A great example, perhaps not for the buildings, but for the changing characters, is Route 1 North. You start out as very urban and you end at the top school, but it's not. And you don't necessarily want those up-stake house, but I think the idea is that a road can have a lot of different characters and that a gradual transition is desirable. While we're waiting, there is a question back here. Yeah, actually, an interesting question was, do you have a timeline for this kind, these design standards to be implemented? Is there like a general year or so that you want to have these written out and implemented into new projects? We have a few milestones. By the end of this month, we hope to expect that we will have a product. Oh, thank you for that. By the end of this month, we will have some draft at least of these guidelines to work further on. I'm hopeful in the best case, I'd very much like to have something ready for town meeting next year. Next year? With a zoning change. That's gonna take a lot of work. It's very ambitious. Interesting. I have a question. You know, before there was the master plan, there was the, it was called the Economic Development Center. Now talking about pre-commercial centers along that stand, I'm hearing more about the first quarter. I have a question whether town can support commercial development along with the kind of a mass-out. It doesn't seem to me right now that we have a lot of huge demand for commercial uses on the first quarter for a lot of parts of mass-out. And as you know, when you get these new developments, they're always going to be turned into high strats for that commercial space. I'm concerned about sort of going this route but there seems to be this desire that every building on mass-out has commercial use on the first quarter that you're gonna have a lot of big distortions. I don't think that, and I hope that we won't have anything that asks for the whole length of mass-out to have the same quantity of commercial necessarily or the same range of mixes. I agree with you. I don't think that's what this will achieve or seek to achieve. Well, it's not just retail, it's offices and shared workspace. Right now we have a very low vacancy rate in office. We're at a point where typically new office development will be triggered, so office could be appropriate in some areas, more appropriate in commercial and others and the mix of uses and others. And in some parts of mass-out, it may be appropriate to kind of leave it as it is. I think one of the nice things that design guidelines can do is be both a carrot and a stick. I think that if you were to look at zoning, it tends to be more the stick. You shall not do this, you will not do that. You cannot be totally this. And I think what David was alluding to earlier with the sort of flexibility is that you can go back and forth. So you're sort of using both. So to your example earlier about both green roofs and solar, I think one's a carrot and one's a stick effect sometimes. You can demand a stick that people do a solar assessment for their property and then they can have a conversation with the town. The onus falls on the developer to do that. The carrot mentality would be in terms of a green roof. Well, maybe a percentage of that counts towards your open space or permeability requirements. And so it changes maybe a little much of the, how much of the site can be developed or there's sort of trade-offs like that. And in a similar way, I agree, you can overdo commercial and that would be the worst, but design guidelines can maybe talk about instead of use the level of transparency. So it's more about incentivizing a public use because above a certain level of transparency, you can't put housing there. It would just, no one wants to sit behind a glass window on the street. So the hope would be it incentivizes maybe, maybe there's a community space. The developer, if they're required to do that says, okay, I'll give the front of the building. It's programmable for community art or it's, we allow certain setbacks maybe if you have outdoor seating so that makes it worthwhile to have a cafe because they can gain some of the sidewalk space. So I don't know if that answers it exactly, but I think it's that level of flexibility allowing the conversation between the town and developer to happen that hopefully leads to a better result than being overly prescriptive. So how are we doing, David? It's a nice blue screen. Yeah, it's not like, come on, this is a program issue. No, no, so I apologize. It's, of course, we do it 100 times in the one time. But, so here are the questions actually. What are your main concerns about new development? Are you, do you feel, so let's just ask you that, okay? What is your biggest concern about, what's your biggest anxiety? Is it the amount of new development? Is it the scale of the buildings? The quality of the public realm? Or the lack of a coordinated vision? So moving forward, knowing that the development pressures will increase of those, new development, the scale of buildings, the quality of the public realm, or maybe the lack of a coordinated vision. Which one are you most concerned about, or is there something else? Yes. So my biggest concern is how to make the Mass App more walkable and feel more friendly and neighbor-ish, neighbor-leaf, good-ish. It's really fun to walk through the lesson from, you know, from many walks. There's benches, and there's little trees, and there are cafes, and there's a lot of, everything looks really nice. East Arlington is pretty good, and it's gonna be a lot better after the project is done. But as far as from here up to the heights, it's basically a smooth way. You just drive this road. It's really not pleasant to walk. From here to the heights, even for those of us who like to walk, it's a nice distance. What would make it better? I don't know. Maybe I'm in pocket parks along the way, maybe I'm in benches along the way, some cafes. So I wonder, as part of the guidance, maybe you talked about this under maybe a double-ground interface. I got here late. Is there a concept of, if somebody's gonna be putting up a building, what can they add to the public space between the building and the road to make people wanna walk along there? Okay, Carol, can we hand these out? Can we pass these out? I think that that is one of the most important issues to get right. And the thing is, not every space is well-used or well-programmed. So if you allow a developer to maybe build another story because they create a pocket park, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that over time, it may not be as public or as well-maintained as you actually had hoped it would be. And so therefore, where do you regulate additional open spaces? How big are they? How do you ensure that a developer will continue to maintain it or the town will maintain it? It's a great question and unfortunately, it's very difficult to identify because if you say you will be given an additional story, for example, I use that example because it's maybe the most often-cited. You can, if you create a half-acre park, you can build another story. Well, that one half-acre park may not be appropriately-cited, or it may not be as lush as one would want it to be. So it's the right question to ask. Unfortunately, it's just one of a series of decisions that will ultimately make it clear whether or not it's a good project or not. It's how you would make the walk from here in the heights more pleasant as a result of the design standards with those, with your being in a relationship with those two types. Yes, and I think it's the public realm interface that's maybe most critical to get right because if you're walking by surface parking lots and one-story buildings and it's not a very pleasant place to walk, you're not gonna do it. Other thoughts about things you're anxious about as it relates to development, not in general? Yes? I just wanted to add that it would be important to note that a lot of times it's overlooked that when new developments are created, the driveways to them will be very close to intersections, which causes a lot of backups and frustration with people because people are coming in, you have to keep track of way too much at the same time. So I feel like it might be important to add to some of the design standards that any driveways should be a certain amount behind the intersection so that there's enough time for the decisions to be made without interfering with traffic in the actual intersection. Great point. Curb cuts are definitely those to pedestrian movement. And the Walgreen site has four curb cuts over the course of probably 400 feet. So at most there should be one and if so it should be designed well. Yep, good point. Yes, sir? Yeah, I'm not gonna... I'm just wondering if you can move. I hope this is, I hope it's okay to move off of Mass Ave and then brought away for a minute in the middle of the... But in terms of design guidelines, one of the big problems in US people in the residential neighborhoods, the big problem that they're facing is they tear down a little house next door and put up some monstrosity. And there are zoning methods of controlling this. Some reason Arlington has done nothing to control it and maybe it's design guidelines, maybe it's just more zoning. But from what I hear around town, people aren't worried about how many new shops they're gonna have in Mass Ave or how high the building is gonna be that's gonna happen on Broadway. They're worried about their own block and how did that horrible big thing get there and put shadow on my garden and so on? Again, that's another great point. I might, should have maybe underscored at the beginning. These guidelines are looking primarily at those three geographies, knowing full well that 80% of the town has these development pressures. It's unfortunately, this is an inadequate answer to your question, but it's outside of our scope to address the McMansionization or the teardowns. I think ultimately the town's gonna have to address it and sooner rather than later, that's not part of what we're looking at, unfortunately. I'd like to try to answer that if I may. The Arlington Master Plan has over 100, I think 140 recommendations. Several of them do address residential development. One of them is to develop design guidelines. So Gamble Associates contract was to work on the design guidelines for other commercial areas, Millbrook and the, but I hope you will follow the implementation of the master plan, so please stay in contact, check the website. No wonder. You had four comments or five comments on there. What was the last one, if you will? Other. Next to that, one up. A lack of a coordinated vision. Okay. Are you anxious about that, yes? The way I interpret that is do nothing. Now is that exactly what you're shooting for? Because I'm not sure that we're trying to accomplish much if we just sit back and don't do much. I would much rather see some progress along Mass Ave whether it's walkable or not. I'm not, at my age it's never gonna be walkable. But there's obviously some things that could be done along both Mass Ave and Broadway that would enhance what we're seeing now. When we saw that in those walks that we did last April, you could see some wonderful examples of what could be done very nicely. But I guess if I had my drawers, I'd scratch out that one that says do nothing. Because I don't think that's where we, I don't think that's where we should be going. Yes, it's a throw away. The last thing you wanna do is have a moratorium, even if it's legally possible in some ways. You need a good test demonstration project that follows the design standards. A modestly scaled, implementable, well-designed first project that says look, we can do this even if it's just one small half of a block because that will encourage other developers to follow suit. So my concern, I guess, would be parking. And not the quantity, but actually the way that when you get a certain amount of density, which I personally totally support, it ends up having this parking problem with sites where when you develop them incrementally, that suddenly just doing what you were drawing where you have some sort of commercial and then the housing on top or the office on top, which is all great, it makes the whole street more vital, requires the parking that you can't get on the site. And so it actually turns around and de-densifies everything that you wanna achieve. And so back to the lack of coordinated vision, I think the opportunity here of thinking about sites, not just as individual pieces, but as how they can work together. Maybe there can also be some sites that are thought about more as it densifies, you'll have some structured parking or something that will alleviate, that will allow the residents to have a place to park or just I think parking is just a real conundrum for towns like ours where somebody, people do have cars, but you don't want to drive down the density to such a degree to make the ratios work. Good point. Yeah, the Walgreens site does in fact have a slope of about 12 feet from north to south, which would allow below grade parking essentially, which would then encourage greater height, but there's no parking structure in Earlington, is that correct? Not a single one. Not no public center. No public, yeah. Yeah. Behind the back holds a warehouse filled with most of the, I think it's two levels. I mean, the way about someone said they love walking down Lexington, it's definitely because it was planned so that all the development is along the street and all the parking is in the back. Yeah. And the only way that happens is if you aggregate a certain amount of sites in order to get that big parking lot. Yeah. So yeah, it's just, you gotta believe in it. And the way to sell parking is not to provide more of it. Developers are actually finding that they don't need as much as they thought they would because if they live along a transit corridor, not everyone needs 1.5 cars per bedroom. Just it's actually going the opposite trend. Yes. Yeah, so actually I have a question about how design standards relate to affordability. And so I actually have some friends who've had to leave Arlington because it's so expensive. And I think building new development is one way to address that. And along the Mass Ave corridor is the right place to do it. I guess my question is what can we do with design standards to help encourage developers to put in units that are affordable, whether it's smaller units, whether, and maybe parking place, requiring less parking place into that, but also not having design standards that encourage such a high, I mean, we want good looking development, but not such a high quality that people are priced out all over the place. Yeah, it's another good point. You can incentivize smaller units, which will attract a different demographic and maybe alleviate some of the burden with cost associated with bigger units. I mean, Arlington is a very desirable place, as you know. Just look at the school enrollments, right? So it's one of the carrots that Brian talked about, allowing a certain percentage of units that are not just affordable, but a certain size that will help to lower the number, the cost. Are we in Arizona in the lobby, so the rest of that with the new development, are we in Arizona? I'll say at the very least, because I think our region in Arizona is very good, but we do have, we do have that as well. So that's important to remember that. Well, I can't just say, in crucial rezoning, in crucial rezoning, it is very desirable, but it has to be enforced. In fact, developers have found ways around that occasionally, and it's not enforced by our powers to be to inadequate, especially with small developments of around six, where it kicked in. So a lot depends on the officials and their willingness to oversee and enforce standards of all kinds, which is not being done right now, including in small development. And you're not alone in that respect. The design standards will only be as strong as the mechanisms to enforce them. And most municipalities do not have a design review process, I'd say an outside design review process. We ask developers to do extra transportation planning scenarios. How often is it designed? Well, much less. So part of the effectiveness of these design standards will be the way in which they get enforced by the town to ensure that they're met or encourage the developers to do the right thing. It can be new staff. It can be outside review bodies, usually an architect or a planner or landscape architect. It can be a consortium of people to review projects of a certain threshold, above 10,000 square feet, mixed uses. You can regulate that. That's actually part of, this needs to be discussed because this is part of the implementation, is how will they projects be reviewed and by whom? Is it part of the special permit process? It can be. It can be. Or the town can simply say any project of a certain size will now go through design review and you have a checklist with the design standards, okay, public room interface, parking ratio lowered, et cetera. You try to make it as least discretionary as possible. Can you bring your presentation up again? Probably not. I'll try. I wanted to ask you about your vision for the Walgreen site. In part because I live very close to it, but somebody asked about parking. When I looked at that, I said, well, where's all the parking for all that space? Well, just, I know we've talked a bit about parking and in terms of the buildings and facades and public areas. One thing I don't think we've talked about very much is just how the buildings and the related stuff around them integrates with transit. So it's, I know that Ms. Stamps would like to walk to places and she might like a bench to sit down on if she gets there a little early. I tend to commute by bicycle. I think there's room to improve public transit in Arlington. There are three main bus routes and to be honest, they haven't gotten, they haven't really, they've kind of gone downhill over the last couple of years, at least in my experience. There's, it would be nice to, you know, not just to think about the places as destinations where people want to go, but also to take into account how people are getting there. Because we didn't do this as a test case, there's more information here than you could decipher, but we didn't go into it. There's, all of this is basically on a parking plan. You park underneath, part of this development is you sneak in behind here and there's about 75 spaces that are essentially below grade because this site slopes 13 feet from north to south. There's an additional 20 some spaces here and it works because if a developer were to propose this project each of these buildings actually has a core that comes up from the below grade parking or the deck if you think of it just one level that gets you into these buildings. So it could be phased or you can access each of these from below. It just works on this site because of the grade change. Yeah, that's, I didn't determine that, but this is probably, it's probably comparable. I believe this is about 20,000 square foot Walgreens, which is a medium size footprint building of this type of use. We have 18,000 square feet of red and purple here. So it's just a little bit less. The red is retail commercial space. I think we've added this as well, which could be a restaurant or another type of public use. Your question is does this project as it's drawn meet all of the parking requirements for the uses that we've shown? I would probably say it doesn't meet all of it, but it's probably pretty close. So the question is if the town would be willing to reduce the parking requirement for these units because you happen to be right along a major bus corridor or a bike path. So it's not 1.25 per unit, but 1 or 0.75 that might actually pencil out. The best concern is what the requirement is in the lives of what requirements are liable. And that's the sedentary concern I have. And I guess another concern, legitimately about these types of things is that planning tends to go with trends. We talked about the 70s and 80s. I mean, I'm certainly old enough to remember when we were in the mall, we were going to get rid of the cars. But that's been friendly for all the rage. And how many of those have been taken away because they've led to deaths of people in the streets? And I don't even real fear about that. And maybe some of us have been going too far and reversing things like the reverse in the Broadway class. That was, I'm sure, very trendy. How can we be sure we're not going to have that? Well, it's a good question. And every generation is quick to criticize the previous generation, right? But undeniably, what's attractive to people of all ages is to be in environments that have a mix of uses, that have relationships to public open space networks that leverage existing spaces like Spipon, like Milbrook, that are within walking distance to commercial centers. I'd like to believe that those are timeless. It's certainly what people have said they cherish here. And this site, because it's a five-minute walk from Arlington Center, demands more than what's there. I think also to your point a little bit with this development is what Tamara was also speaking to is a holistic sort of view of how a site is used. So the parking ratios are usually sort of siloed. Commercial has this, residential has this. And what David alluded to earlier is if there's a restaurant use here, assumedly it has the inverse parking needs of the blue, which is the sort of office space. You typically leave office, go to that. So the idea would be, and this hasn't been tested, and this one precisely, the onus would be on the developer, but there may be incentives for the developer to do these types of plans where these sort of rubrics exist to sort of test the needs so that at any given time they're satisfying the sort of parking demands of the site but not over parking and building because they're anticipating them all being online at once, which is mildly implausible. I just wanted to say a couple of things about, thinking about the corridors, I think it's a great way to think of the town of Arlington because there are three very distinct corridors or linear forms that pass through the town. I think we tend to, when we look at maps and so on, we tend to think of these corridors as proceeding from one end to the other, almost like the lady back there, thinking about walking from here to the heights or so, and I actually think of these corridors more in terms of how they, sort of their gravitational effect, how they pull from the residential neighborhoods surrounding and which is why I think your idea or your interest in the connections and the way that you get to the corridors is very important and the public realm along the corridors. I think probably maybe only a few people will actually walk the length of Mass Ave, but a lot of people may walk from their house out to Mass Ave and walk a block one way and maybe a couple of blocks the other way and then go back home and so that's kind of, it's a different experience but it's the quality of that public space along the street has to be able to be varied enough and interesting enough and personal enough that it will draw folks from their residential neighborhoods or if you're thinking of, for example, the Mill Brook, that there's something that draws people to it and away from it. Of course, there's always the big dilemma of the speed at which you experience one of these corridors so if you're driving, you probably don't want all these pedestrians crossing in front of you and so on but at the speed that people live in and walk, it's a very different experience. I think it's a very good gnarly problem to deal with is those interfaces. I do want to say also one of my fears or my biggest concern about the master planning is manifested or in the design standards is manifested in the movie Back to the Future or maybe it was Back to the Future 2 where you see, I think Marty goes into the future of those who are as big a fans of Back to the Future as I am. Marty goes into the future and Biff has taken over and there's Biff Industries, Biff is the bully and so everything is just awful and overdeveloped and so on. It's an interesting series of movies to watch in terms of urban design and urban evolution about how wrong things can go and then also looking backwards at the little country lane that became a, so I'd recommend looking at Back to the Future. I don't want to gloss over it. I think this is a very difficult problem and as much as we talk about the corridors, they change, it's episodic, one size doesn't fit all. What we're trying to do is advance actually what's been thought about before and represent it in a way that entices development to achieve the principles that people outlined in the master plan. That is the bottom line I think that one could aspire for. I don't think that every developer is going to, it won't be a one size fits all. I think it's too episodic. It depends on too many variables, but if you can again take, is it old colony, like of a project like that, that's a lot of surface parking, that's low density, that's big enough that a developer can sink their teeth onto it. If you do one right and it touches these, where they get really close, it could unleash a lot fiscally, physically, environmentally. I was just wondering how in the town you can incentivize that kind of development to happen because right now it's individual landowners and if the numbers work for them as it is, unless they change his hands, it may be just easier to leave it as is and I'm just wondering in these, doing the guidelines, is there some more incentive that would sort of engage some of these properties that are just sort of dormant because they're working for the owner right now. Right now we have setback requirements that wouldn't get, wouldn't achieve what we understand the community wants. Our zoning was overhauled in around 1974, and what the community desires now isn't found in the dimensional requirements, the setback requirements. So one of the things that can be done is to change the zoning, very simply, but I think, as I said earlier, I think it's very important to do this first and to fold this into the zoning. And I will say that it's a bit of a chicken and an egg. A developer won't do this because it's illegal at the moment, so you have to change the zoning. But you can bring a developer on board and do a test case and demonstrate how you can achieve a certain density that you wouldn't get otherwise and overlap the two. We actually just did this in Watertown. We took a 300-unit housing project and related it to design standards and guidelines, improving the project, keeping the same number of units, but meeting all of the aspirations of the connectivity. So you can be proactive in that way. So don't leave with the clickers, even though it didn't work. If you're waiting around, I've given up on that one. We'll do it another time. I've made up for all of my questions. Just a few things I'd like to ask you to stay just a moment longer. I want to say that I'm going to try to talk to David about getting his questions onto the website so that you and other people can answer those questions. I'd also like you to feel free to add to this sheet. You don't have to do it tonight. If you want to do it tonight and leave it for us, please do. If you want to add to it, drop it off in the planning department or mail it and however you'd like to get it to the planning department, please do that. You can address it to... My name is longer than Laura's, so I'm going to give you Laura's email address. I'll give you mine, but it's a literal last name. Laura Wiener L-W-E-I... What? L-W-I-E-N-E-R at town.arlington.ma.us. Also, we hope you will stay engaged in this design guidelines process and in the zoning amendment process. We did ask for your emails. I'm glad that you've given them to us. This is very valuable. Everything that I've heard tonight, I appreciate so very much, and I really appreciate that you've come out on this kind of misty night tonight. I hope you will do something else. Right now, there are four boards and committees that are related to planning that have committee openings. The Redevelopment Board, the Master Plan of Implementation Committee, the Community Preservation Act Committee, and Housing Advisory Committee, which will be just a one-year commitment to help us update the housing plan. All of that information is available on the website, but if you want to get it directly from me, you can contact me in the morning. So, please check, if you aren't subscribed to the town notices, we also send out information about Master Plan Implementation. You'll hear about follow-ups on this presentation if you're subscribed to ArlingtonMA.gov slash subscriber. Scroll down to the bottom and subscribe to Master Plan. Do you think we'll be able to get some of those questions on to the... Okay, and we're pretty sure we're going to work on a survey monkey as well. So, thank you very much. Thank you very much. We have another question in the back tomorrow. I have a question actually, but it's just because you started the question period by asking what the concerns were, which really means, like, what are we afraid of and sort of negative things. And I just wanted to just give you guys a really positive comment, which is that it's really exciting, I think, what we're seeing and the way that you organize the presentation in terms of some of the other places around the country, what the potentials of doing this are. It's just really exciting to think about some of that happening in Arlington. Certainly, like, along the Millbrook, thinking about that as a walking spine of interesting stuff, it's just really cool. And your guidelines are really thoughtful and the sort of notion of being able to shape, you know, not just the zoning, but really the physicality of making these places is... I applaud you. Great. You know, keep going. I just want to say some positive reinforcement and not just to what we all fear. Thank you. That's great to hear. Thank you, Tamara. So, thank you all very much for coming and we'll stick around for a little while if you have any individual questions or conversations. Thanks so much. Last on the agenda, next on the agenda tonight is a discussion of a walk-through on the proposed buger site. So, we're taking that last agenda item. So, June 23rd, Tuesday, June 23rd at 10 a.m. so we need to determine which board members, if the whole board is eligible to attend the site visit because you meet the conditions of being a, quote, local board under the Code Masters regulations that governs the 40B. So, I just want to be sure of who among the redevelopment board members will attend the site visit. It's Tuesday, June 23rd, 10 a.m. I will attend. Okay, so Andrew will attend. I will attend. I'm going to try to attend. Okay. It is. It's Tuesday, June 23rd at 10 a.m. on the site. I suggest that I let them know that there's a possibility there will be five of us. That way the board, I'll post it as a site visit. The board obviously can only receive information and ask questions you can't deliberate or take any actions or any votes because it will not be a meeting, but I will post that the board is conducting a site visit. So, that way we're covered if the whole board wants to attend the site visit. Sounds good. And I would only ask, you have a meeting on June 22nd, the night before. So, if you could, you do, yeah, there is a meeting June 22nd, and we do have several agenda items. If we could just make a point that evening of updating your plans and intentions for the site visit the following day. We don't have any EDR hearings, but there is a facilities study that we'd like to tell the board about that we would like to pursue for renovating the senior center, Andrew Flanagan, and acting director of public health Jim Feeney would like to come to the redevelopment board and tell you a little bit about what the scope of that and because it's related to the central school, which is one of your buildings. There are two other agenda items, but none of them are EDR hearings, no special permit hearings. I think it can be a short meeting, but we have kind of backed up a few items. So, we really should technically... Okay, let's move to a short meeting. I'm sure we'll be able to stay here. Yeah. Okay, any questions? Any... I'll move through there. All in favor. Aye. That's it.