 Welcome everyone to the May 1st meeting of the town of Arlington redevelopment board. We'll call this meeting to order. This is, we'll go ahead and just to quick introductions. I'm Rachel Zunbury chair of the board. Hello. Eugene Benson. Steve Rovellac. Join us. We have Claire Ricker. I'm the director of the department of planning development and assistant director. Welcome and thank you for joining us. So let's move right ahead into our agenda, which will be an abbreviated meeting as we will adjourn the town meeting. The first item in our agenda is a review of the MOU for ARB properties that's related to the three articles that were recently approved by time meeting related to the transfer of ARB properties back to the town. Claire, who has been reviewing the draft with Doug Hyde. That's right. Thank you. So what you have before you and was included in the agenda is the draft I received back from attorney Hyde. After initial an initial draft that I had forwarded to him and the town manager. I gave a few weeks ago that we looked at as a group. So this is the return of that draft with Doug's comments and changes. It doesn't appear that he is included as a red line. He's, in fact, rewritten much of it. I think there are. There's not too much to point out here. I believe this says, you know, we will item for the town manager shall afford the redevelopment board or it's designee the opportunity to participate in any future solicitation of leases for tenancy of any kind and each or any of the properties, that were ultimately voted to transfer. I'm hoping or I think that that's what the board was looking for. I think in retention of the rights to approve or at least discuss leases prior to execution. There were another piece in there. Can I know you had said, let's not. Let's not lease to excuse me. That's not least to any more town departments. I, the manager pushed back on that a bit. But, you know, I think that you can see an item five here at least at some mention of the intensity of the properties of offices for town department. One bit I threw in was that I did not want to see any parking rights assigned to 23 maple to then be reassigned to another entity say the central the central school building. I know the senior center has had concerns with parking over there, as well as, you know, for other events and things like that. However, I think we should not entertain or I think that it would, it would, would not be good to entertain this, this idea that well, you know, we could do a leasing of the parking at 23 maple for the benefit of the property. That is something that I put it. I think generally, those were a few items that I had put in there also I wanted to make it very, very clear that any, you know, any service of leases, any kind of administrative work related to the kind of work that goes along with leases collection collection of rent, you know, renewals things like that would become would not be the responsibility of the PCD office. And that that would be taken on by the facilities department so those are some of the highlights I don't know how much of an opportunity you, you all have had to review this latest draft but I thought we could take some time to sort of discuss. Thank you so much for your work with this point. So we'll see if there are any comments and I'll start with you. I do have comments. So, I, I have to start by reminding everybody, I thought it was a better idea to have a more useful approach. Two of the three properties and not turn over maple street. Also, you're welcome to ignore all my comments. But I'm thinking through based upon what the vote was what would make sense. The first thing I'm concerned about is the second whereas he says a redevelopment board success when you're sort of redevelopment such properties. So I don't like signing something where there's something that's actually right. So I would say, I would say, you know, successfully stored and redeveloped 20 Academy Street and 611 mess up, but 23 maple streets don't need to be restored. So I would make that suggestion for changing that whereas. As far as I don't really like very much either. I would just change it to, whereas the town now seeks to transfer the custody maintenance of these properties from the redevelopment board to the office of town manager because the facilities department reports the town manager. And leave out all that they're more efficient stuff. Yes. I would just strike everything from the in order for and just change it because the facilities department manager. The fourth whereas one that says the party seek. The problem that I have with that one is says future disposition of properties to other town agencies or departments what happens if the disposition is to a third part. I don't like it to say, or other third party was what happens if I don't sell it to a nonprofit to a developer. So I would put in where other artists on that on the next page. Two things. Here. I don't know exactly how to say this 23 maple is going to have to have a lot of work done on it. I think when town departments move out, unless they just throw some other town departments in there. So if they're going to put together a committee to work on that. That would be have a seat on that committee or base on that committee, as we would have had if we still own the building so I think there should be an add to six, you know, after that one sentence they shall be given the opportunity to participate in any committee for redevelopment. Then the term of the memorandum of understanding. So that one is weird because that one does talk about this is also for a private party, right, even though the previous one didn't. So I think it should say, unless the town meeting transfers any of the properties back to the development. That one. And at the very end, I think it should say, they are devoted to approve this MOU on and put the data. So those are my suggested changes. I would have run that. And then I can any of those are my comments. Yeah, I saw this. This is breaking into two things. One is continue leasing the buildings and yellow ones to sell a bill. So if we sell a building that if you want some part of say, who goes who's going to buy it. And then if they rent the building, which they are, I just want to say that we don't need to talk to about everybody. I just want to, I still feel strongly should put cap on what the percentage that they're allowed to run to themselves. Because you know, it does offices. That was also that was given to the town. And it was given time to use the best of what they can now town offices is not, you know, these are also. I don't want to senior center, I call senior center, it's not really that, but we also become time offices. And that's and not be part of the arts there. The media, they have a media player that costs. They have also other things from on there. I think it reaches the town and it has to build it, but it has a home because we allowed to have a home. I'll tell you all this little story or just take a second but related to about 25 years ago or more. I was, I was chair of the board of the mystical watershed association. And we got a grant to hire our first executive director but we had no place in the office. We just become chair, I won't go through the nation. So I spoke to the then planning director and said, is there any space in the town that you're not using you haven't been able to rent out where we could like put this new or not a new organization. There's this place. We haven't been able to rent out and for about the first decade, the watershed association was there and didn't have to pay rent eventually. But that was one of the advantages of having you be exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I don't want to go away. Well, yeah, that's a problem. We were the shepherd of that. Right. So one of the things that Claire and I talked about and I think what was in Claire's first draft, Doug was a cap at 30%. In terms of the percentage of any of these three buildings that we occupied by town departments, unless otherwise engaged in a discussion with the ARB. So one of the things we could talk about is how hard we would like, obviously that is not in this now. So we could push harder for that and discuss whether or not Claire and I decided on that percentage of a first, you know, opening for any discussions with the town manager and and attorney time. But we can certainly have a discussion around whether or not that is the right number and it's so that if having a specific question is something we'd like to push for. I would like to have a threshold I would like to push for a special. You're asking for 30% is fine. I think I'm willing to sell. See what the rest of the board is. Just so it doesn't become a burden on the town. Yes, we don't want to do this, but I'm just trying to be fair. And then I also like what you said about the park. The property on 23 maple. It should be with 23 maple, because otherwise, if you do anything else hamstrings that potential potential. We don't have property there man. You already just wrote the fate of that property already. What it is. I have been just going to take that building and make it the town offices. You know, and they won't do nothing to it. You know, they already got the handcuffs sent it already. They spent a bunch of offices in there in the college day. You know, and I don't, I don't think we should do that. The first floor could be that but let's have it something else above you know, we don't have it. I don't know we don't have any emergency shelters right now. In this town. If there was a fire. And a house burnt down with the family for a month. You know, or, or any natural disasters or anything that happened, gas explosion or we don't have any of those facilities. And I think that could be a potential does not be open all the time, but we have that facility there. You know, the, the bottom shelf, you know, the wall is the water and stuff below there and you know the desk, you have to hide under so you can say, you know, but you know what I'm saying. There's some of the things that we do about it we had the space and we thought about it. And so I've just taken it up as that. Your point is well taken and I think it's probably not the worst idea for us to push back on that I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the budget document tonight but they have they are seeking to appropriate funds to repair the HBC and installing the elevator. So it does seem like they could attract new leases, hopefully for from nonprofits or private, you know, tenants. Yeah, not 23. Not 23. I don't think sorry. They're not scheduled to move out until next year. The growth street. Yeah. I, I've seen some plans I've seen some conceptual plans for housing. I don't know how the board feels about that necessarily but I do think that you know certainly have a word in this position and what how would you think about that or just thinking how would you feel about there's the set. What if we were to say 23 maple and its disposition. We should not be town offices but maybe not include that sort of cap where the same is right now is that an interesting opportunity or should it be across the three properties to put a cap on town basis, leasing to town departments. I think that was that it was across all three right properties, because that was, they're also different. Right. And one of the things that has been to this board, for example, is that the town spent all of that money on that commercial kitchen. I'm not realizing where revenue from from the event space and opportunity to to utilize that space. So, to not put a cap on that seems like a miss because I think that we want to make sure that that is still space that has the potential to be broadly utilized by the community. So, let's say, let's limit town leases that the senior center building the central school would that would, would that then extend or even one of the 23 maple what, and in a disposition situation where we dispose of it to let's say a private entity at some point, the board be interested in lease back to town offices. See, for example, we dispose of it to just thinking the island and housing corporation, right, the housing corporation, excuse me, and the deal with how with them was hey let's build senior housing with some office space to be rented by, I don't know, the future housing department or something like that something. That would be an interesting discussion. I think the point is, you know, again to have the board way in in that no discussion. Okay, across all paper. I just don't see how housing housing authority want to do that. Yes. What would they gain from that. I think they. I think the cost of unit housing is too high. Their money that they have set aside for their housing is spent, that's spent on other projects. I don't know there. I just throughout the name. I know, I'll just, I'll just, I'll just say I'm just running when numbers saying, you know, if I was. I wouldn't do that, at least back stuff because I just wouldn't make sense. It's not the best bang for the dollar, the little dollars I have to make more housing. I don't know. What do you guys think about that. I'll just see it that way. I mean that was so hypothetical, but yeah, but I just really went on that particular item but I think the concept is, is interesting. I think we should be part of it. So, I'm going to ask Steve or because you haven't had a chance yet to share your thoughts. One suggested that if the very last sentence on page one, a capital planning committee as appropriate consistent. Yes, there's a word missing there. Yeah. Thank you for explaining the, the motivation for parking rights. I was, I was wondering, I was, I had that had a note there to ask of what. As far as I mean 23 tables and it's art. It's zoned our seven. But not large enough to actually build an apartment building. It's, it's sort of an eyeball like that. I guess regarding leasing to town bodies. I like the sort of civic aspect of having a place that we can lease out at lower cost to it to a nonprofit or whatever. But I, you know, I feel like I need to know what the town's like space situation is, and I don't, because I wouldn't want to, you know, my concern is that we were in a place where we find ourselves in a place where we need more office space and then have to go and rent it out from a private, you know, either aren't able to get it or we have to rent it out at, you know, market rates. I was also curious about the mix if there's if we know the percentage of the community center that's released out to Tom bodies. I don't have a cup in my head. I don't know, but I, it's likely 60% more in terms of square footed. Yeah. Yeah. So there's yet and I mean, this is I think the challenge with 30% is okay, you do have the council on aging is there health and human services is there. I don't know what other, you know, what other but if you were to say impose 30% cap and you had to move half of the town offices out. We're, you know, there's all that preexisting. Okay, yeah, but you see where you see what I'm getting at. It's the language that had originally been inserted was not that it was an insurmountable, but that that percentage that precipitates a conversation is really the threshold and the language that was there was, you know, currently says an understanding of moving forward. Yeah, you know, let's, because we DPW will eventually be out there, but then we'll have to have a conversation. And if once that building is vacant, if we only wanted, let's just say it's three floors, one floor is okay for town offices but we'll do something different with the other two. Yeah, yeah. So I'll bring that back up. Yeah, so are you, are you bringing up 30% or No more than the current percentage. The problem is. No more than the percentage in the other two buildings. And 23 maple has to be a conversation. With the board. Instead of setting a specific threshold. You know the goals. Find another way to work flexible numbers I'm not trying to say, you know, you're stuck. And I know, I think the Jefferson cutter house is sort of the flip of that where I think that's all pretty much all not. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We keep like one small room or something. I'm not even sure more conference room amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so a set of percentage no greater than today for the two properties that have already been rehabbed. And a conversation to point to her. All right. All right, any other comments or sort of bring back to sign by us. This is something that's under it says honor before June 30. Okay, so we do have time right now. We still have some time. And I can bring it back to ask you some questions. Great. Go. All right, any other questions or comments on agenda item number one. All right, then let's move to agenda item number two, which is an update on MBTA. Fantastic. Okay. As this board has requested when we established the MBTA communities working group and launched the MBTA communities process. We were asked to bring back updates and, you know, share where we are. And so with that I'll turn it over to Kelly and to Steve Revillac who is a representative on that working group. Okay, sure. Thank you for the overall schedule and then you can. Okay. So we have closed the community wide survey was a visioning survey that was pretty open-ended and really had a lot of mappable elements to it so that we could hand the results from that survey over to the consultant so that they could start to understand based on the community preference, community vision, what is the potential best location or locations for a district or districts. That community survey closed just over a week ago. And we've also released to kind of cover the gap between then and when we come back with alternatives. So we're inviting the community to host their individual meetings. We have a meeting on Thursday night with the working group and we're going to really that meeting is exclusively focused on engagement. So we're going to be talking about how to encourage people to schedule these meetings to get them set up so that they can get the kids back to us, get the content back to us before May 19. On May 16, we have a separate working group meeting where our consultant UTL will be coming back with like a draft of what we will eventually bring to the community so that way we can run this through. We can run this by the committee and get preliminary feedback. And then UTL can take the feedback from the working group, but then they can also take any final comments from the meeting in a box or visioning kits, and then do some final revisions to those before we come back to the public. We're looking at. Oh, sorry, yeah. Okay. Okay, all right. We can also see about I think that boards next meeting is May 15 so we can see about bringing that to the board on the 15. Yeah, yeah, we can do that. Okay, so, because we don't have anything else on the agenda for that meeting either so on the 15th they would come to the air be on the 16th there would be a working group meeting to review the draft. So basically between the 15th and the 19th is like incorporation of like final things. UTL then will take that and prepare a final revision for looking at June 8 for a public meeting where the recommendation based on what we've heard from the community, the outreach that's been gathered today will come back to the community. We're not going to be the final version at all. This is just like, we need to bring we haven't talked about locations. We've gathered visions about locations but we haven't like said. All right, here's some points in the sand as far as where this thing is going to go. And so this will be like the first time we're going to the community and saying alright, here's the side here's the district locations or districts locations. Now this is when I think we're going to get a lot more feedback. So we've gotten a pretty good amount of feedback so far but this is when we're really going to start to hear from people, I believe that we're looking to have a survey that goes out with that public meeting. And so this will be an in person public meeting. I don't think hybrid is necessarily going to work so if we need to do a separate virtual meeting, kind of to run those two side by side will figure out how that will work but I think what will be great is if we have like here's the scenario or scenarios and we also have like just a general map, because people are always going to be that people are going to have ideas that maybe haven't been considered, and they can start to mark mark those up as well. And then at that date that's when we really started to do engagement around the draft and looking at iterating on that and coming back with a final scenario probably by the end of June, which is when utils contract needs to end. Any more technical zoning, like tweaks to the zoning adjustments to the zoning, those can likely be done without util at that point. Because I think people here like on the board they're like zoning experts who are working in the working group and they can start to like finalize the zoning before it goes back to town meeting. But really the point is to use the month of June to really get to location to get to massings and get to like the visuals that we need to then go forward and do more education around around what's ultimately going to come to this board in the fall. I have a couple of questions. One is, you said at one point scenario and another point scenarios. Yeah, we don't know yet. Yeah, no, and that's where we've given the survey results to util. Who was actually a little bit surprised at some of the vitriol in the open to the comments probably worse than what they've seen from other communities. Yeah, exactly. No, they were like, whoa, um, people. In a way like comforting that other people had that response because I've gotten into a dark place by looking at survey results. But yeah, we, we don't know yet. So util is going to take a look at it if things obviously cohere around a very clear option, then that's what'll come back if they're sort of like, there's two different versions that the town could go with, then we'll work through that with you will work through that with the working group. Before we figure out how we're going to present it to the community. But I think either one of this and if there's more than one scenario, util has said to us that they are going to make sure that it is encompassing a lot enough that it will, even with some refinement, meet DHCD requirements. So we're not looking for something that only nominally complies we're looking for something that definitely complies. It's just a matter of how you see what happens to West. Yep. Yeah, yeah, we're not doing that. Although that was just with their action plans on them. Yeah. Yeah, one is, I think some time ago we talked about creating an overlay district that would be eligible for 40 hour. Is that still on the table or is that off the table. It's on the table. It's a separate process. I'm concerned that a smart growth district may require a two third vote. I'm not sure I want to bring that to town meeting at the same time. It doesn't mean that we couldn't use the NNBHTA communities overlay to drive establishment of 40 hour. Yeah. And we could look at that next spring, or, you know, something like that, but I think initially we'd like to get it in place and then we could look toward, you know, two thirds votes changes updates whatever, like 40 or 40 s smart growth district. So, so if I understood correctly, they're going to come with one or two scenarios, which is this is where the districts could be. Yeah. Are they also going to say three family four family six family townhouse, or are they going to do a Lexington. They don't limit the number of units. They just do it by height and density and stuff like that. So that's sort of one question what comes along with on June 8 with where, yeah, what comes along with that. So we discussed this at like an earlier awarding meeting and one of our consensus was, you know, the first product from the retail should not look finished. We want to give some we want to have, we want to show the community something that, or we don't want to create the impression that okay here's, here's, you know, here's a plan. You'll see this and there'll be room for another iteration and, you know, it was primary the request with the ask is primarily to focus on location, and not so much like number of units heights. But if, if I were coming to this meeting as a member of the public, I would want to know. Yeah, yeah. What, what are you proposing. Yeah, where is. Yeah, and I think we will have some of that it's just like we don't. Part of it is that like they're reviewing the survey results right now to try to understand like we had questions about like affordable housing people, the community was like overwhelmingly in favor of affordable housing but it's going to be like you know, if you really want to see inclusionary zoning triggered, you're going to have to allow six units. I don't think we're talking about anything much larger than that we're talking about missing middle housing, and we're talking about like, we're not talking about larger towers we're not talking about significant development, like, in town which is significant and is usually 20 to 30 units. Those are separate processes and I think what we've been trying to be clear about is that this and we take communities as one piece in a housing puzzle. So it's like this, this isn't, we've been careful to try to not load too many hopes desires dreams wishes into this 150 to 130 acre districts, which is really about missing middle housing. This is another thing that we talked a lot about as a working group and know things that we wanted, you know things that we could do but in the end I think there was a pretty strong, you know settling down of this let's just focus on housing near you know it's the other stuff is nice but just housing near transit is going to be difficult it just by itself so let's do that. And I think that's what the survey results bear out so you know Steve had shared with you just the kind of highlights from the survey and I think the housing near transit is really high priority sustainability is a high priority. Yeah, so the, it's interesting the housing near transit was got to both sustainability got got the most most favorable response, housing near transit, the first question was also fairly favorable and I mean if you added up, you know important you know, secondary. It was the percentages were quite high, but once you broke it down into, you know, in commercial districts near commercial centers. Yeah, you know, when you when you started actually get put location behind it, the report, you know, it got less support but you know still still fairly well. Um, I did mean to ask you, I had started, you know, coding and tagging comments, would that be a useful exercise to continue. Yes. Okay, yeah, if you have the bandwidth to do that that would be really helpful. It'll be a launch time effort. But you know, the other thing that's, you know, I've, I've gotten through one question's work. And one of the, the thing that's a little interesting is if you is comparing you know, you have for each question, we have a set of categorical responses. If you do the same thing but only the ones that submitted comments, they're far more negative. So you get you get the sense that, you know, some of it. So one expectation is I go through the other 12 is that, you know, people are going to use the comments to, you know, to express this content. But some of them were also rather good. Yeah. And one of the things that I had to think about, you know, I thought about doing word clouds, but you take more like density. Oh yeah. There were some people, there were a number of comments that had mentioned density in a negative way, but there were also quite a few that had positive things to say about it. So I'm, I'm trying a word cloud with, you know, pro with with sentiment on top of it. I will say so I have had a meeting with Beth lock from the chamber also talked about this briefly with the Chamber of Commerce, the board of the Chamber of Commerce. They are very eager to be a part of this conversation. They definitely have said the Chamber board has said, we want to see more density around our businesses. We don't want to see a loss of commercial space. So they're trying to balance that need. And I think we've, we've been aware that that's been a part of it, but they want to, they want to help support us. So they are very like, and they feel that MBT communities is part of the economic development bill. This, this law and our compliance with this law will help our business districts. So they're very excited about it. They just had a lot of questions. I mean, I think zoning is hard. Yeah, please see because we're going to, yeah, we're getting one is I agree, but I think Steve is correct. Maybe to say quite the way you want to hear, but we are not providing a finished product. I think, I think that's so it's more close because that's one of the things that we didn't like the past week that we caught the patients. I have one question is, you said you to detail is done with their commitment in June, the end of June, unless we can find more funding, right. I have concerns about that because part of making the successful is having proper graphics and representation. And ideas. And ideas are not ending June, we still got months of development of this stuff here, and we need to present it in such a way that we can understand it. So I feel like, if your funds run out of June, we get to get more funds, or find some some other way of producing our ideas. At the end of September, this September is when we're going to that show. And if we don't have the proper graphics and all we have is graphics in June it's not we're not going to win. So, can we find funding somewhere else. And how much funding. What does you tell getting right now. $20,000. It's not much. No, no, and so we've, I mean one option is applying again through MHP for more technical assistance. Another option is applying for district local technical assistance through MAPC. It's, it's just a challenge because we just don't from the town don't have funding to do the project. So if we ask the town where I think we need to know at least 20,000 20,000 just to get the proper graphics together. So we get this and it's important enough where if we don't get our right we're going to lose this thing. And so we have money set aside for the commercial design. We do we really cannot. It's a special appropriation. Yeah, we cannot repurpose the special. I was hoping to do the business district so right so we could do just round that truly it should go for commercial design. Yeah. I am not sure where we are in terms of the budget for CBBG there is allocation in there for planning studies and things this does not quite fit because it's not an affordable housing, you know, policy. So, you know, that's, that's probably not the best fit you will. But I can certainly ask where there may be some additional funds. I was going to, I need to apply to MAPC for direct local technical assistance related to the business. So, you know, I'm happy to put in another application to look at, you know, continue for funding the communities. I'm also happy to talk to the director and the manager about additional funds. So MAPC did the last thing first. No, no, no. So, so if they did, if we had funding for DLTA from MAPC, which is a lot of acronyms, we can talk about they tend to use consultants to to implement that work so it wouldn't be MAPC staff doing it would just be funding. The other thing, it's not time to figure out what it is. When we know what's going to happen, it would be helpful to think about the theme for this. You know, like I've said a lot of times, we could think about this as 15 minute, things like that. So, you know, thinking about some sort of theme. Yeah, that could go on with it when it's presented, you know, and then Yeah, all right. So we are going to wrap up so that we can adjourn to town meeting are there any other comments on what has been shared so far. Okay. So let's close agenda item number two, you know that we're going to be meeting again just speak about that on the sheet with the draft report. I'm going to move to agenda item number three new business you see. I have nothing under me. Great. So let's see just looking ahead at our I do want to just look quickly ahead of our schedule. So we have May 15 coming up right now. I believe that the MBTA communities is the only thing on that agenda. And then our, that's our only other meeting in May. 20 seconds. We do have the 22nd. Actually, yes. Right. Thank you because. So right, let's hold that and as we get closer, we'll see whether or not we need that meeting. And we've just had an application from Kalex peak. The third host community agreement. So that will be coming to the board in June. Okay. If I ask. I know you guys are really busy. It's like asking that you say you're too busy. I don't mind where you from next open slide. Just an update on what's happening to all all projects we approve today. I would like to go and see like the hotel. Alexis is that you can talk about that on the 15th. No, I'm just saying, but yes, that's just an example. You know, what happened to the tango, I know what happened to send, you know, updates all the projects we approve where they stand. Just, you have to look back in order to go forward. I also like to add that at what house to that to understand the. The historic commission and the stalemate between the historic mission of developer developer. Well, but that's the last that came to the board. And so let's, let's find out specifically where that is and. If you're busy, don't do that. I don't add will burn. Would you have it now? I appreciate it. That can wait till June. Yeah, just. So, So is it 750. Is there a motion to adjourn to tell me. So I'm watching. Move. Second. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I mean as well. Thank you. Thank you.