 To share screen, but it looks like it's recording now. Recording now. Yeah, that's great. I don't, you can see that it's recording because I don't see that. Yes, I see it's recording. Okay. There's a little cloud icon with the. Oh, I see it now up at the top. All right. Usually it's down at the bottom for me. Okay. We have, we have, we have 30 attendees, 31. All right. That's nice. So I should start with my introduction. Yes. Yeah, actually wait. Well, Chris, you want to wait just a minute? Um, I'm going to take some minutes for people just to get into zoom. Sure. So thanks everyone. Well, it's 633 on my computer. I'm not sure that's as accurate as anyone else's, but we'll wait a minute or two. And then Chris Brestra, planning director, will give an introductory remark. Okay. We have a lot of people here tonight. That's excellent. Now we have 41. So Pam, are you still there? I am. I was, I thought I was waiting for Nate to. Why don't we go ahead? I think Nate might be dealing with some family issue and then we can get started and he can join us. All right. And then back then Pam can leave. All right. So the only thing that I won't be able to do is because Nate shared his screen. I won't be able to get to Karen and David's. Set a slide. So we might have to wait. I'm back. I'm back. It's fine. Good. Good. Challenging, huh? We're good. We're good. Nate, are you staying now? Should I leave? Fine. I was always logged on. It's just, you know, my wife's had soccer practice and trying to get some other kids set up. So. Well, I, you can text me if you need me to come back. Okay. Oh, no, thanks. Yeah, I'm all set now. All right. Bye everybody. Bye. Thanks Pam. Thank you. Welcome. My pleasure. So I'm going to open the meeting now. My name is Chris Brester and I'm the planning director for the town of Amherst and I want to welcome everyone to the fourth community housing forum. The smart growth chapter 40 are right for Amherst. Based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. General law chapter 30 a section 20 and signed Thursday, March 12 2020. This public forum is being held virtually using the zoom platform. Panelists, if technical difficulties arise, we may need to pause temporarily to address the problem and then continue the public forum. If you do have technical issues, please let Nate Maloy know as he is acting as host for this meeting. We will provide an opportunity for public comments and questions after the presentation by consultants Karen Sonneberg and David Eisen. If you wish to make a comment during the public comment period, you must join the meeting via zoom via the zoom link teleconferencing link. This link can be entered into a search engine by typing it. And you can see it in blue on your screen right here. The link is also listed on the town website through the calendar listing for this public forum. Please indicate that you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when the public comments and questions are solicited. If you have joined the meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Tonight we have with us Karen Sonneberg of Karen Sonneberg consulting and David Eisen of Abacus Architects. We also have with us members of the planning board and members of the municipal housing trust. And we may also have members of town council and other boards and committees in addition to residents. I think we have about 50 participants. Wow. Really good. Two members of the housing trust, John Hornick and Rob Crowner have been involved in this project from the very beginning, working with consultants and town staff. I wanted to give you some background information on this project, both for the public, for whom this may be new and also for the planning board and housing trust members who have been following this project more closely. In 2018, prompted by the Amherst Municipal Housing Trust, the town applied for and received a grant from the state entitled Planning for Housing Production. The goal of the grant was to investigate sites that might be appropriate for housing, for affordable housing, and to study the issue of Chapter 40R and whether it's often called Smart Growth Zoning and to determine if it's right for Amherst. So the town hired the consultants, Karen Sonneberg and David Eisen, who helped us with our housing production plan in 2013. Karen is a planner and David is an architect. They've been working with us since the summer of 2018 on this project. So far, the town has held three public forums in 2019, on April 4th, June 4th and December 19th. We heard about what is Chapter 40R, what is Smart Growth? Why is the state promoting this type of development? And we heard about how this type of zoning might fit into Amherst. The consultants and staff received a lot of input at the public forums. Then at the request of the planning board, the consultants gave a presentation to the board on May 6th, 2020. The planning board wanted to have an opportunity to hear directly from the consultants and to talk to the consultants and among themselves about what was good and what wasn't good about the Chapter 40R proposal. After the consultant's presentation, there wasn't much time on May 6th for a planning board discussion. So the board decided to hold another meeting for that purpose, for the purpose of talking about what they had heard. The planning board invited members of the public to submit comments and some planning board members themselves also submitted written comments. These comments have been posted on the town website and circulated to the planning board members and to the consultants. The planning board held a robust discussion at its regular meeting on August 19th, 2020, about the Chapter 40R proposal. Now we're embarking on our fourth and final public forum for the consultants to present the changes that they've made to this project based on the input and the comments that they've received. What's being discussed tonight is not a formal proposal as in a formal zoning amendment being presented to town council. It's an opportunity for the public, as well as members of the planning board and housing trust to hear a final presentation to help us evaluate is Chapter 40R right for Amherst? And do we want to pursue the creation of a 40R overlay district? There are many arguments in favor of the 40R district. Amherst and the Commonwealth need more housing and this is a mechanism for providing more housing. A 40R district allows denser development of housing in already developed areas in exchange for providing affordable housing as part of a 40R project. It also provides design standards and dimensional standards for the plan approval authority to use in reviewing any proposed project. We won't be making any decisions tonight, but I urge you to keep an open mind about Chapter 40R. We may decide that it is right for downtown Amherst. We may decide that we like 40R, but it's better located in another part of town. This is a conversation that residents and members of boards and committees in Amherst need to have. If we decide that 40R is right for Amherst, then we need to focus on how to shape it to be exactly what Amherst wants. Some people are worried that this project is a fae accompli or something that's already been decided on or that the process is happening too quickly and they haven't had a chance to participate. So there's still plenty of time for the town, the planning board and the public to consider this possibility, this proposal and to decide if it's right for Amherst. We need to decide, first of all, is it right? And secondly, where should it be located? The town may decide that the downtown is the right location, but the proposal needs to be revised. Perhaps it shouldn't take up the whole area that's proposed and a smaller area might be better or the whole area might be what we want to go with. Dimensional requirements or design standards may need to be changed. The town may decide that another location, such as East Amherst Village Center or Pomeroy Village Center, is a better location. If the town decides to pursue a 40R, a zoning amendment would need to be developed and presented to town council. The town council would then refer it to the CRC, the Community Resources Committee and the planning board for further study and to schedule a public hearing. Eventually, the town council would need to vote to adopt the plan and the state would need to approve the plan. There's a long way to go, but if residents of Amherst find that this type of development is appropriate and right for Amherst, the planning department and the planning board are available to work and continue to work in coordination with the Housing Trust on this project. So now I'd like to introduce Karen Sonneberg and David Eisen for their presentation. Thanks, Chris. I'm going to take a start at this presentation and David and I are planning to move through it as expeditiously as we can. So there's plenty of time for questions and comments. Hey, and thanks for your very thorough introduction really provides a great background context for what we're going to talk about tonight. And I also want to reiterate what Chris emphasized, which is this project is a work in progress and the town will have to go through further deliberations to decide whether and if so, how 40 would work best in Amherst and there will be many opportunities for community input during those deliberations. Let's go to the next slide. Hold on a minute. I'll get this. There you are. All right. This slide just summarizes some of the key components of the project work and talks a little bit about how 40R has been an effective tool for promoting affordable housing and smart growth. Certainly focusing development in areas that are considered suitable for more compact denser development while protecting open space, importantly, mandating affordable housing as part of new development, really promoting mixed use development, and integrally, design standards become very essential given the by right nature of the permitting that makes it easier for developers and property owners to process applications given that all the applications have to comply with the 40R requirements. Chris went through some of what we've done, but we have held today, and we'll go into some a little bit more detail, three community meetings and early in the project, cast a wide net to housing stakeholders to get input, not just on 40R, but also on other development opportunities that might become or be available in annahurst that could include some amount of affordable housing. It actually turned out that there weren't many suggestions of such great locations, and the project has really focused more on the 40R piece. And we did go through a process of getting input on potential 40R locations and went through a site analysis strategy. And we did some zoning analysis and some policy and procedural work, and the draft design standards which we have revised based on public comments. We also prepare a draft bylaw that has also been revised based on public comments and these design standards. And the bylaw will continue to be revised as the project moves further along. Next slide. So briefly, what we're going to go through tonight is just take a quick look at where 40R is currently working. Talk a little bit more about the planning process. We want to really focus on the comments that we have heard since the initial planning board meeting and how we've responded and go through some key, the major components of the zoning bylaw and design standards. Next. So this map just shows the pockets of where 40R is currently located in the yellow. You can see they're in 42 communities. They include 49 districts. So some localities have more than one 40R district. It's projected that these districts would create 19,000 units and almost 4,000 have either been built or under construction. So it is working in other areas of the state. Next slide. And areas that are adjacent to or nearby Amherst. East Amherst, I mean East Hampton, for example, has a four-yard district. And you can see in the map the areas in yellow. It is a fairly extensive 40R district. And like most 40R districts, they're making incremental progress based on how projects evolve. They have 50 units that are completed, and other 18 units that are approved, and then probably at this point nearing completion. Next slide. North Hampton also has been involved with 40R. And pretty early in the process, they identified the redevelopment of the former state hospital as where they wanted to focus their work. It involved also an incremental approach of the first phase, included work by the community builders. They started with a home ownership project and then moved on to a larger rental development. Second phase involved mass development, which is a kind of quasi-public state agency taking over the reins and guiding the development. I should also mention that another 40R district was created to evolve only one project, a 30-unit single room occupancy project sponsored by the Valley CDC. That city actually decided that instead of going the chapter 40B route, that it was more efficient to use 40R. They had a good working relationship with DHCD. They had been through the process of establishing a 40R. And so they decided to take that option instead of 40B. And in fact, the numbers of 40R districts have in the state involved a one project, although most of those projects are relatively large in size. Next slide. So Christine covered some of this work. We're going back to the first community meeting that we held in April of last year was kind of an introduction to the whole issue of smart growth in 40R and this particular project. And we got in based on some small working groups, we asked folks for input on whether they thought 40R might actually be a good tool to use in Amherst and got some initial feedback on what criteria the town should use in identifying a location for a 40R district. June 4, we held a second community meeting to obtain input on priority site selection criteria and locations. And with that feedback and going through a kind of ranking of criteria, the downtown became kind of edged out the other locations and was determined to be the place that the town should look to to start exploring actual bylaw for a 40R district. December 19, we held a third community meeting to review the locational decision and the selection process to obtain further input on how 40R could work best in Amherst. And we got into some of the design standards. As Chris mentioned, in May 6, we presented a very preliminary 40R bylaw draft to the planning board for comments. And we received a lot of comments. We have sorted through those. And tonight, which is the fourth community meeting, we are going to present information on what we have heard and how we responded through changes to the bylaw and design standards that will then be held forth for a greater scrutiny and deliberation by the town. Next slide. So these questions represent those that came up most frequently in the public comments following the planning board meeting. And the first one relates to just the fundamental question that we opened with early in the planning process was, does 40R make sense in Amherst? Is this appropriate tool, zoning tool, for accomplishing some town goals? As we've pointed out, it has worked in other communities and does bring meaningful advantages to communities that have established these districts, such as it brings financial incentives to the town from the state. It puts the town in a more competitive mode for obtaining state discretionary funding, such as MassWorks infrastructure grants, for example. It has been a good mechanism for downtime revitalization as it guides development to appropriate locations where greater density and compact development make sense, while simultaneously avoiding areas with green fields and where the town or locality wants to protect existing open space. And very importantly, it includes an affordability requirement. 40R, at least 20% of the units must be affordable throughout a district in projects. We have decided, like most of the communities in the state that have developed 40R, that at least 20% of the units in harmonious projects will be affordable, while 25% will be acquired for rental units. And that puts the town in a situation where all the units in the rental developments would count as affordable and for inclusion in the subsidized housing inventory. And with any discussion of housing development and amherst, the question of students comes up. Can we prevent the new housing from being occupied by students, while 40R cannot dictate any exclusion in the market units based on state affordability requirements, the affordable units cannot be occupied by students? Another number of comments related to the current pandemic and why are we even contemplating zoning changes given the market uncertainty. And it should mention that changing zoning now will prepare the town for better guiding development when the market does kind of rebound. Planners, we like to say that actually the best times for planning are during downturns in the market so that better strategies can be in place when things get back to some amount of normalcy. Next slide. And the question of why the downtown, when there are other locations where some development, smart growth development in particular needs to be encouraged, like North Amherst, East Amherst, or Pomeroy Village. We, through this site analysis strategy, determined that certainly all those North Amherst, East Amherst, Pomeroy Village would all be good locations for establishing 40R. But in the analysis, the downtown edged out the other locations. In particular, given ongoing community concerns in the downtown, in the fact that it lacked mandates for including affordable housing and concerns about a couple of new developments that many residents felt were inappropriate for the area, 40R would be a way of addressing those concerns because you have to include affordable housing and design standards are absolutely essential components to any of the zoning. So we really looked at the downtown being having the 40R actually being a real opportunity for the downtown and also promoting a number of smart growth principles that would make the area more vile. Another question was given the relatively high units per acre requirements under chapter 40R, where could multifamily housing be developed in the downtown? And there are minimum thresholds, density thresholds, given the type of housing that is being proposed. We certainly believe that most of the any development will be part of redevelopment efforts. David will go into it some length, but we've isolated a sub-district one where there is greater density in the town center area and a sub-district two where it's kind of a buffer between the town center and low-density residential areas. We expect that in the sub-district one, development will occur in the redevelopment of existing underutilized properties, mostly into mixed-use properties with retail in the first floor and housing above. In sub-district two, with this limited to three floors, we expect that the development would be primarily residential. Next slide. So David's going to take over on this one. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. It's been a very interesting process. And thank you for the questions and the comments. They have all been read quite a few times. And they really guided the work we've been doing since the last community meeting and the previous two. So to continue addressing some of the concerns and questions that have come up, there's a lot of concern about retail, about restaurants, about vitality. There is a sense of sadness that beloved stores have closed. This was pre-COVID. Things are only tougher now. And there are no good answers for this. There are these concerns everywhere about retail, about big box taking over. There is not much zoning can do to affect this. The current zoning, the 4DR zoning, these issues will remain. So developers can subsidize retail. The community can subsidize retail. Different kinds of supports can be built in. This is definitely an issue of concern and that should be pursued. But I think it virtually always is separate from the question of whether you adopt 4DR. The parking is similar. Parking is a very big issue. To a point, there need to be requirements associated with individual property owners and developers. There's been discussion about a parking garage. There's on-street parking. To what extent will a parking garage solve a lot of the problems? Take the burdens off the on-street parking. Take some of the burdens off of property owners so you have less asphalt, more housing, more retail, and stores. So this will continue to be thought about as the 4DR gets refined, but it will be thought about in relationship to bigger picture questions, which I think need to be looked at in parallel. And as Chris and Karen said, no decisions are going to be made tonight or tomorrow night. This is going to continue to be evolved, and this should continue to be a front burner issue. But I'm hoping won't interfere with some of the discussions of other issues that are very much a part of the 4DR proposal. Open space, a huge issue. So we've made a pretty substantive change in the design guidelines. As written previously, they said that front facades of buildings needed to be spaced back a certain distance from the property line. That makes a lot of sense in a downtown where there's a consistent setback of the property line from the curb where sidewalks don't get wider and narrower. That has been changed so that there's a 15-foot sideback setback from the curb. So on North Pleasant, on both sides of the street, you'd have building facade 15 feet in which you could have places for walking, landscaping, sidewalk dining, mailboxes, benches. Then you have the street, the same on the opposite side of the street. If buildings are set back too far, you lose some of that kind of vitality you get when there's a little bit of kind of compression, but that 15-feet from the curb will ensure that you have wide enough sidewalks that accommodate walking and other uses. In the residential districts, it's very different. In the design standards, it's the requirement that new buildings be set back the same distance as the properties on either side. So if you have big houses, little houses that are set back 25 feet, that setback will apply to new residential in the residential zone, sub-district. And very shortly, we're going to look at a map, which will make this a little bit clearer. So we feel like these changes really will protect community character in terms of setback and open space. There are other kinds of open space. We've required green space and parking lots. So you can't have endless swaths of asphalt. And some of these can be larger so that there are playground areas. And this will depend on the particular kind of development. But I think built-in are the kinds of protections that we think are appropriate. Next. So a big issue was Cottage Street and other residential areas but the 40R. So there have been changes in the sub-district design standards, but also changes in the outlines of the sub-districts, which we think better protect of residential neighborhoods. So Cottage Street. Earlier, sub-district 1 allowed five-story buildings, came very close to Cottage Street residential. That's no longer the case. That area, you could call it, is down-zoning. It's now sub-district 3, maximum three-stories. We think that the new sub-district design standards and outlines protect all the residential neighborhoods. Continue to look at this. There are, if you live in the house next door, you see this out your kitchen window, you'll have a different perspective. But we think there's been a lot of progress in this direction. 40R threatened historic districts. There are no historic districts in the 40R proposed overlay district. And because of the way we've set up the design standards and the sub-district design standards and setbacks, we feel not only are the historic districts but historic areas that are not designated historic districts will be protected in an appropriate way. So again, this could continue to discuss this, but I think we've made refinements. Five-story buildings, another hot button issue. So the existing downtown zoning allows five-story buildings. We are proposing in sub-district 1 that five-story buildings continue to be allowed. But there's a big difference between the underlying zoning and the proposed 40R overlay in that there are design standards which require certain kinds of design elements. And one of the biggest questions about the 55-story buildings, and not so much questions, criticisms, is why are they allowed to be so overscaled? Why do you have a five-story wall that goes from the ground up to the top, that this seems oppressive in a pedestrian zone? So the design standards say that it needs to be a recognition through architectural detailing through change in material, through change in articulation between the first floor and the floors above, and between the second, third, and fourth floor and the top floor. So this is the way traditional buildings have been defined for a couple of thousand years. We are not dictating the kinds of architectural character, but we feel like these design standards will prevent the design features that people like the least in the recent five-story buildings and will tie them into the buildings that people tend to like a lot more. Next, why can't design standards allow buildings like Newberry Street and Boston's Back Bay? Really good question. I'm on the Back Bay Architectural Commission, even though I live in Cambridge. I love the Back Bay. What makes the Back Bay so wonderful is that you have these broad flights of stairs, half a floor up to stores, restaurants, and residential, and then half a flight down to restaurants and stores. So you're activating the street from two levels. What a great thing, except if you're in your wheelchair, what a horrible thing. So that vitality is a social good. Accessibility, ADA, MAAB, Mass Architectural Access Board requirements are considered a higher standards. So the Newberry Street buildings could not be built. So we've tried to set up design standards and a 40R that encourages vitality, but not by having steps to prohibit people from wheelchairs or strollers or crutches or any kind of mobility issues from entering them. 65 feet, really good question. Lofty first floors are nice. Lofty second, third, and fourth, and fifth floors are nice. It does seem a little high, so we've lowered that to 60 feet, which allows a taller first floor in standard size, 10 and 1 half feet for second, third, fourth, and fifth floors and a pair put on top. This does not include mechanical equipment, which is required to be set back from the street. So taller buildings, it's a whole floor of building systems. Those cannot be visible from the street. There may be cases where it's impossible to hide them. A waiver might be requested. These are design standard requirements. Next. So if I've gone on and on and on, it's only because there are serious questions, and we're trying to get really serious answers. So these are the components of the bylaws. I'm not going to read through these. These are set up by the state in order to make sure that all issues are addressed in a thorough and consistent way. And the very last one is design standards. So next. So here's the new 40-yard district boundaries. And can I, is my mounts visible as it goes over this? Is can that be transferred to me? If you, I did, if you, I think you could hit annotate, if on the screen, and you could then draw on the screen. I think that'll work. Annotate. Yes. Mouse. Yes. Thank you for that reminder. Let's see if it works. I haven't tried it, but four of us. Can you see that now? Because I have mounts. Can't see that. I can't see that. OK. I see a black mouse, but it's not mine. I can always just follow you. OK. Why don't I talk through this? OK. At the north, the north, all the way north at the top. So sub-district two, let me start at the beginning. We've gone from three sub-districts to two sub-districts. One is a town center in yellow, which is really the downtown areas. And sub-district two is residential neighborhood. It's really abutting the smaller-scale neighborhoods where people live. We had a third sub-district. It didn't seem to be working effectively. So north of Triangle, that is now sub-district two, which is three stories with very different setback requirements that are based on the abutting neighborhoods. So you're not going to have five-story buildings tower and over Cottage Street. And the very north edge of that has pushed back a little bit. The outline has been pushed south to better protect Cottage Street and the residential properties there. Then below that, you have sub-district one, which is overwhelming what you would call a downtown area, where five-story seems appropriate, buffered by the three-story neighborhoods. In the southeast, that's been changed a little bit, so that it's sub-district one only right along North Pleasant Street. And to the east of that, it's sub-district two. It's closer to residences. It's closer to smaller-scale non-residential as well. Across the street remains sub-district one. And again, this has been changed 15-foot setback from the curb, not from zero feet or five feet from the property line. To the west and north of that is sub-district three, with those protections put into place in terms of height, in terms of setbacks. And there's a requirement dropping down near the property lines with adjacent properties. So it drops down from three floors with some sort of element like a slope roof, like a dormer. So it comes pretty close to matching the abundant properties. Excuse me, David. I just want to interrupt for a minute. I wanted to say two things. I think you referenced sub-district three when you were looking at these green areas to the west. And I think you meant to say sub-district two, because we've dropped a third sub-district. So that was one thing. The other thing I wanted to do is to let the participants know that there will be time for questions and answers when the presentation is over. I see that some people have raised their hands already. So we will certainly acknowledge those raised hands when the presentations are over, and we can go back to any of these slides at that time. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chris. I apologize. I'm so used to it being sub-district three. One more correction on my screen, Karen Sunderberg is labeled David Eisen. I think everyone's figured out that there are two of us. We look a little bit different. Maybe that's what I'm saying on my screen. So I'll try and accelerate this a little bit. I want to make sure it's time for questions next. So I think. I'll take over on this one. So we're just going to summarize the key sections of the by-law and want to emphasize that the state requirements under four-yard state that the by-law has to be all-inclusive. You cannot reference other sections and standards in the existing zoning by-law. It opens with a purpose, a statement that says that the four-yard district will foster a range of housing opportunities, along with a mixed-use development component to be proposed in a distinctive and attractive site development program that promotes compact design, preservation of open space, and a variety of transportation options, including enhanced pedestrian access to employment and nearby services. It then goes on for a list of objectives. And I'm not going to read through the specific language on these objectives, but I do think that they're important to recognize. I'm just going to kind of skim over the important language on some of these, which is to encourage a diversity of housing opportunities at a variety of costs to increase the supply and diversity of housing for households of variance, incomes, ages, and sizes, to ensure high-quality site planning, architecture, and landscape design that is consistent with the distinct visual and historic character of the downtown, as well as predictable, fair, and cost-effective development review and permitting, to promote low-impact green and sustainable development, as well as pedestrian-friendly development, and to allow context-sensitive design and creative site planning in the reuse of existing buildings, and then to create positive tax revenue. So the main focuses of the purposes. The bylaw also includes a list of definitions as basically those bylaws do. In the section three, the physical boundaries of the zoning district are referenced, including a reference to the zoning map. There are a dissection four that this section does emphasize the all-inclusive nature of the zoning, and also very importantly states that the provisions of the For You Are Smart Growth Overlay District can be used, or the developer and property owner can choose to use the underlining zoning. There's a choice, and there is flexibility built into the zoning. In regard to section five, this section deals with permitted uses. Residential projects include multifamily, and multifamily, we're talking about two-family, three-family, or four-plus units. Mixed-use development that includes multifamily, housing of two dwelling units or more, as well as parking in other accessory units. We kind of try to include a framework for further discussion of key issues that have come up in the comments that will involve further deliberation, and the town will need to revisit the non-residential uses that might be allowed or decide to rely solely on the underlying zoning. Next slide. Section six goes at length into the affordability requirements, and once again we state the thresholds based on homeownership or rental, and as mentioned earlier. Section seven deals with the plan approval and provides that the planning board is the plan approval authority and that permitting will be done as of right. Section eight goes through kind of procedures involved in the plan approval process, read through those pre-application concept plan, application submitted fees, circulation to other boards for reading and comment, public hearing, and peer review is allowed. Next slide. Then on plan approval decision on the focus of section nine, it states that plan disapproval, because this is by-right permitting, is only allowed when the application is incomplete, does not meet zoning requirements, and it is not possible to adequately mitigate significant adverse project impacts on nearby properties by means of suitable conditions. The by-law states that waivers are allowed, but exclude, they're not allowed for affordability requirements. I gotta say that we received numbers of comments on waivers, and this is another issue that the town will want to kind of continue to discuss and deliberate on what potential waiver restrictions it might decide to invoke as part of the by-law and even excluding waivers. One example for consideration is that the waivers could be limited to relatively minor features that accommodate the specifics of a particular site or use, but don't set a precedent for similar waivers on future proposals. Project Facing is also allowed. Under section 10 involves changes in plans after the planning board approval includes minor changes or major changes. Minor changes are allowed without need for another public hearing. I gotta say minor changes are just, are not substantive. They're administrative, typically administrative changes. There's anything that has a substance of bearing on the project. It has, it's considered a major change in this process as a new application. The next slide is David. Okay. And I think most of what is here, I'm not gonna go through this. People can read it up in the screen, but I think most of this we've gone through. So I wanna sort of translate this into really plain English and go back to the big picture which is the point of all this fine print is to hold developers feet to the fire by making them meet design standards. And in exchange, we make it easier to do development and require affordable housing. So that's the point of all of this to fine print really matters, but this is a lot, a lot of these are about aspirations to get to that big picture. And then there are 25 pages of design standards which are the execution, which people have read and I hope we'll read again and continue to give comments next. And I think most of this have been through earlier in the presentation next. So this is the kind of parking lot that could be required in a 40-hour district. I think this is really much more attractive than most of the parking lots that you have now. There's a lot more green space. It's better for pedestrians. These requirements are part of the trade-off that they go along with a 40-hour next. This is a section through the street. You can see that 15-foot setback. You can see the trees. You can see on the ground floor, it's recessed and it could be recessed. It could be pushed out to acknowledge entries. You can see at the top, it's stepped back. You can see bays. This is suggesting diagrammatically the kinds of features that are being required as part of the approval process. This is baked into the design standards. In a residential neighborhood, it would be in sub-district two, this section would be substantially different. It would be setback, could be 20 feet from the property line. It would be three stories and the top floor would be setback. This shape would be different, but very similar tools to require these kinds of features. If you look at this section, and I think hopefully everybody understands, this is a section sliced through the buildings on either side of the street showing the sidewalk. The recently built buildings do not conform to what's shown here. There's that straight wall up and down, top floor to the bottom. As you can see, those buildings don't conform. This is what's required for conformance. Thank you for the moving hand. Next. Streetscape. What do you do with that 15-foot setback? There are a lot of options. Trees along the street, feature paving up along the street, landscaping closer to the building. That's up at the top. The next one down. And if you have a store or restaurant, you really want landscaping right up against the building. Because where do you put the outdoor tables? How do you look through the window of the store? So streetscaping right along the curb. So you get green, you require the developers to provide this. So you want the 15-foot setback. It's nice to have some amenities to go along with that. Next. So this is not a picture of what a facade would look like. I hope everybody understands this is a diagram. But in diagrams out where you have architectural features, where you have changes in the architecture, where you go from horizontal windows on the ground floor to make it look and feel residential, to more vertical windows up above to make it feel more residential. Up at the top, between the fourth and fifth floors, there are changes. The exact kinds of changes are not prescribed, because you really don't want a building that looks exactly like this. We want talented architects to have room to do really interesting things, but providing what the town is asking for and what we believe the town needs, which is a building scale to the neighborhood, which recognizes the historic fabric while recognizing the realities of construction today. And all of the notes on the left and right pretty much say what I've just said. They're all on file. You can read them. So that's, I think we're at the ends of the slides. I don't know if anyone wants to add anything on our team before we open things up for questions. Thank you for bearing with us. I wonder if the two residents of Amherst who are part of our working group want to say anything before we open it up to public comments and questions. Mr. Hornick or Mr. Crowner. Yeah, I prepared something Chris. Mr. Chair of the Amherst municipal affordable housing trust. I do appreciate the opportunity to comment on the proposals before us. First I want to express my deep appreciation to both Karen and David for venturing into the minefield that is proposing zoning changes in Amherst. The task they have undertaken is not an easy one. And I admire the high level of research, thinking and energy that they have brought to it. What you have seen is actually the third or fourth draft they have developed responding each time to comments with both well considered changes and good grace. They are committed to one more draft based upon your recommendations tonight before concluding, really going above and beyond their contractual obligations. They have done the Amherst community a significant service service in introducing many of us to the ideas and principles of smart growth in developing a path that will allow us to take advantage of the state's 40 art program and in drafting a set of design standards to guide downtown development. I know that many of you have concerns about this, but I urge us all to figure out how to make this work. Let's not belabor whatever shortcomings in the process may have occurred, but rather focus on how best to improve on what has been presented. While critical comments are certainly welcome, let's also use this as an opportunity tonight to identify the changes that are necessary to allow this new approach to zoning, both downtown and elsewhere, to be successful in expanding access to affordable housing and reaching other objectives of the smart growth program. Thank you, Chris. I just wanted to make sure that Mr. Crowner had the opportunity to say something if he wishes to. Thanks. So what I find attractive about 40 R is that it helps us advance three long time planning objectives that the town has had causing lower price units to be included when new housing is developed in the town center, adding form requirements to offset the size and mass concerns that are not addressed by the town center. So that allows us to make sure that the town center is available at the dimensional table and creating transitional zoning that allows the edges of the town center to be redeveloped at a reasonable scale rather than serving as a barrier. So thanks. Right. It does it all in one step. Thank you. So Nate, do you want to recognize people or shall I recognize everyone? This is Nate Maloy. I'm a planner with the town. So it looks like there's about six hands raised. And so if people would like to speak, you can raise your hand. As Chris mentioned earlier, or you could dial in and it, you know, the hands are raised in the order people raise them. So it just goes in chronological order and we'll call on people. It might take a minute. We'll ask you to unmute yourselves and then you'll be able to speak. And, you know, this meeting is being recorded. So the presentation can be put online and then, you know, there'll be, there can be some, the comments can be reported and also the consultants and we'll have those. So, you know, I'm not sure if you have time to answer questions, but if we can, if there's something that can be quickly answered, we can try, but they, you know, the questions will be recorded as well. All right. Identify themselves by their names and also their addresses before they speak. All right. Barbara, you can unmute yourself and you're allowed to speak. Hi. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We live at 135 cottage street. And I have a number of questions. And this is all very new to me. One on the diagram of the subdivisions. Can you please specifically point out cottage street? I couldn't follow where that was. Everyone bears with me for a minute. Yeah. I am. I'm not seeing it, but I don't know if people can see that. Here's, here's. Here's. If you can see that here's triangle street. And then here's cottage street. Heading up north. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then I'd like to know really what affordable housing really means. What is the minimum and maximum rent? And how many years is it good for? I'll take that on. Good questions. Based on the state requirements for the hot affordable housing means those. Who have incomes. Our units are occupied by those of incomes up to 80%. Of area median income. And that's adjusted annually by household size. So that means that the units have to be marketed. Affirmatively. So people outside kind of the normal. Avenues of getting information are notified of the opportunity. And it has to be, the units have to be. Permanent and approved by. A subsidizing agency or subsidized directly. That's so this, all those requirements need to be met in order for the unit to be considered affordable under. State. Requirements. And where is that income? You know, chart. You know, off the top. The income limits vary by. Area. And household size. And I'm trying to. Let's see. I don't have them memorized. I would. What for a household of three? It's probably. Yeah, so this is. Information. 60. Yeah. So 60 one five for a household of three. Okay. And that changes every year. Every year they're adjusted by head. That's right. Okay. And then. Would this, would the town of Amherst be the landlord, I guess, I'm just not quite clear how all this works. Well, if it's a rental project, the property developer would either be the. The manager or they would assign higher a property manager to manage the unit. It's a. Not who manages it. Who owns it. Depends. If it's a rental project that's owned by. Typically the entity that develops it. And can they ever sell it to a private person? They can sell the property to. Another entity, but the requirements of affordability and the requirements of the permitting. Continue with that change of ownership. Okay. Last question. What would the ground floor be? Would it be stores or would it be apartments? Well, it's where this, the 40 hours meant, particularly in the town center to promote mixed use development. So on that kind of major corridor, commercial corridors, spine, you'd expect that the first floors would be primarily retail on the store, stores, stories above would be residential. So, they would probably be mostly residential. Although along the main. Drags there could be some mixed use. Thank you. And I'd like to clarify. I mean, I think that the first floors would be primarily retail on the. Store stores, stories above would be residential in the areas. Outside of. Like in the sub district, the green areas, the green areas, the green areas, the green areas, the green areas, the green areas, the green areas, the green areas. Thank you. And I'd like to clarify. Does anybody else want to chime in on that? Yeah. Your, your, um, second question, just to be clear. Yep. In the United States and certainly in Massachusetts, the public sector, the government. Tends not to provide affordable housing except through housing authorities. We are not Sweden. We are not France. Right. We are the private sector with carrots and sticks. So 40 are the carrot is what carrots and sticks. We ease development, but we make them provide affordable housing. If there's 20, 20% affordable housing, the other 80, 80% who pay market rate essentially pay for that affordable housing and their systems of tax credits. So that's the only way we can get out of the private sector, because in Massachusetts, that's the only way we get it. So. Thank you. Yeah. Good. All right. Leonard. Um, you can unmute yourself. Change my husband's name to my name on the zoom. As I had wanted to. Um, so can you hear me? Am I hearable? Yes. Okay. So I have a several questions and the first may be more directed at the planning board. I'm not sure it has to do with the vision for the future of Amherst. And I guess the question has to do with what we mean by smart growth. Is 1% population increase a year? What's in mind? 10%. 25%. 2%. That is what is the demographic anticipation and on what basis is that demographic anticipation? Uh, presented that is I'm looking at a situation where I think we're going to see plummeting numbers of people connected with the university that is remote learning as we've seen from COVID is going to become more and more the practice. And I'm not talking just about students. I know there's a lot of concern about students and housing. I'm talking about everyone connected with the university, all kinds of staff, all kinds of professional staff and non professional staff, faculty and non faculty, people who, um, may no longer want to work in Amherst. And I don't know to what extent, because of the pandemic, realistic expectations about population growth undergird this proposal and the sense of what lies ahead in the future. Um, I'm uneasy about empty places about, uh, Kendrick place. In fact, perhaps becoming 50% vacant in the future. Uh, and so part of my concern has to do with the town planning and their vision. Um, and then what's related to that is as you anticipate, if you do, let's say 10% population growth per year, whatever, on what basis, I don't know, but whatever basis you have. Um, what kind of housing is really needed? What decisions or what thinking went into the conception of whether it's rentals, whether it's purchase, whether it's single family homes, whether it's apartments, housing, housing, housing, whether it's single family homes, whether it's apartments. And that also then brings me up, want to piggyback through a second set of questions, having to with affordability that I thought Barbara very effectively raised, but I have some additional questions. It's one thing to have a requirement as to the income of a person or students or part time students or staff or whomever. Uh, it's another question to know what the actual price will be of purchasing and renting a place. And whether that is a realistic figure for many people. And that has to do a lot, I would imagine with the size of the unit. So my question concerns density. What is the understanding when 20% or 25% rentals versus ownership of property is computed. Um, Um, you know, one bedroom, five bedrooms, two bedrooms. And where are they located in terms of, I'm thinking optically of sub district two, which is closer to where I live. 66. Um, what is in mind, I would like to see more affordable housing in Amherst, much more. I'm not sure that I understand how that term is being defined. I'm not sure that I understand how that term is being defined. I'm not sure that I understand how that term is being defined. I'm not sure that I understand the specifics of the size of the apartment or the house and the pricing, hence. Of the housing. So that's kind of the second question. And I suppose. The, um, third question that I have that I'm eager to hear response to. Has to do with, uh, the, the question of major and minor with regard to revisions. I'm not sure that I understand how it's being defined. But I think we've already seen that. I think we've already seen that. So I'm not sure that I understand how that term is being defined. I'm not sure that I understand how that term is being defined. I'm not sure that I understand how that term is being defined. We were given a couple of examples, but are there broad definitions. For what qualifies as minor and major. And how the enforcement, the town enforcement kicks in with regard to. Violations of the concept of minor and major. What actually construction begins. So I, I mean, I'm more aware of that. Um, I can answer the last question. And maybe Nate and Karen can answer the other questions. Um, in terms of who enforces, um, whether something is a major or minor change. The building commissioner is the zoning enforcement officer. So he takes first crack at deciding whether something is a major or minor change. And if it's a minor change in his mind, it's a minor change. Um, he's given the ability to grant an administrative approval. Um, but if he has any doubt, he will send the case to the board in this case, it would be the planning board for their decision as to whether, um, the change is major or minor. And if the planning board decides that it's a minor change, they may choose to approve it at a public meeting. If they decide that it's a major change, they may choose to approve it at a public hearing. So it's a kind of a two-layered, um, decision process where the building commissioner is kind of the first line of defense. And he's, he takes a very conservative, um, point of view, I must say. And then, um, if he's not sure of his, um, stance on the matter, then he would turn it over to the board to decide. Thank you. Um, I mean, um, I would say that, um, um, I would say that if the building commissioner is, um, based zoning for the, our zoning, it's exactly the same thing, right? There's no substantive change. In terms of the questions that were asked, I, I feel like either Karen or Nate might be better able to answer those questions. Um, let me start with question number two. Um, the state requirements on housing affordability are very prescriptive. Um, uh, I think the standard for purchase prices and affordable rents are detailed in, um, state guidelines as respect to. Unit sizes. The proportion of affordable. unit sizes in the project. So if there were, you know, half the units were two bedrooms and half the units were three bedrooms and half the affordable units would have to be two bedrooms and half the affordable units would have to be three bedrooms. There's always that kind of proportionate kind of reflection in determining the number and the type and the cost of affordable units. You know, the town has done a significant amount of work on doing market studies and housing needs assessment and so there's a lot of information available about demographic projections, etc. Given the pandemic, you know, I would, Nate, go on and give you some more feedback on your first question, but I think we are entering into somewhat uncharted territory. You don't know how long it will last or what the actual effects would be. I gotta say though, one of the things that we hear, we heard a lot when we were doing the housing production plan, is that the university demand for housing in Amherst put such intensity, intense pressure on the existing housing stock because the demand outstripped the supply that drove up housing prices. Maybe some people could look at this, you know, the kind of maybe some fallout. I don't know, in fact, what the effects on the market have been with the pandemic, but some kind of falloff on the demand that might kind of put less strain on driving up prices is not a bad thing right now, but I think the town folks are best to kind of speak to that issue. Yeah, I mean, this is, Nate, I'll just quickly in terms of, you know, the rental amount, you know, essentially, the figure is that you can't pay more than 30% of your income per month or 30% of your income for housing. And so, you know, there's some allowances for utilities, but you know, essentially say like, so for a two person, if it's 55,000, you know, you can pro write that income per month and then 30% of that, you know, so there's a formula, as Karen said, and so that's how the rents are determined. And then so, you know, a two bedroom could house two or three people. So there's a formula that is all prescribed. So it's not, you know, it's not, I think sometimes when people hear affordable, I think they think it's based on, you know, the landlord or someone comes up with the rent, but it's actually based on the income. And so it works backwards to come to determine the rent. So it's derived that way. I think in terms of, you know, the population growth, I think, you know, there's a few things. One is that a 40 hour overlay district is voluntary. So there's always underlying the base zoning. And so for the 40 hour to be attractive to the developer, there has to be a balance of both, you know, maybe increased density, you know, it's at by right, but there has to be some incentives. And then they're required to have affordable units. So I think it's a balance of, you know, what is the underlying zoning, underlying zoning allow? And then what does a 40 hour district allow? And I think it's a balance. I think there's a number of things that factor into what kind of size or density you allow in a 40 hour, you know, and then we even have differences in the sub district. So I think, you know, there's a number of factors in terms of what what are the right sizes. As Karen mentioned, there's been a number of studies. And so the 2015 Comprehensive Housing Market Study determined that whether or not there are students, there is a large market of people who would want to live in Amherst. So I think student demand does drive housing prices and vacancies, but there's also a lot of people who would probably want to live in Amherst if they have the opportunity. And so I think there's a whole market outside of the university and colleges who would be willing to move to Amherst if more housing was available. And so, you know, they had figures on that plan. But your point is well taken that there could be some shifts in some of the factors driving housing. But I still think that Amherst is a community where we'd want to encourage different families, different housing types, more people to move in. So, you know, there's been a loss of school-age children and families. And so, you know, allowing certain multi-family developments in downtown could open up other neighborhoods in town. So, you know, I think there's a whole market that would be willing to move to Amherst if it's available, if housing is available. I don't, we haven't talked specifically about, you know, certain percentage growth. But I think that is a good question. You know, what is, you know, is there a carrying capacity or an overall growth rate that we're looking for? And I'd like to add a clarification to this. Because all of this is private development, the developer will have to determine whether it's rental, whether it's for sale. The town doesn't do that. And no, the concern was raised, could something be built and remain half empty for years. No bank is going to loan a developer money and no developer is going to develop a property unless he's pretty darn sure that he can make money off of it. This is the way our system works. So, the bottom could fall out of the market. It could be built and remain empty. But it's very unlikely that that would happen because of market forces. So, every developer is doing their own market, set that he's very independent from what the town might be doing. Yeah, my thought would be if, you know, the market, right, if the market, you know, isn't doing very well, then the rents decrease. So, you know, there's some give and take about how they would fill the unit. So, right. The other thing we're hearing lately is that people are moving to this area from the urban areas along the coast, you know, and that is really driven by this pandemic. People are interested in moving to Amherst and other areas in western Massachusetts and places that are not, you know, in the thick of things. And so, that's actually driving up, particularly sales in Amherst of homes. But I imagine it would also drive up the desire to rent in Amherst as well. All right. There's 16 hands raised. So, I just want to make sure we have enough time for everyone. I'm going to move on to the next participant. Thanks for those questions. All right. Jennifer, you can unmute yourself. Yes. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay. I'm Jennifer Talb at 259 Lincoln Avenue. I'll be really quick. This is just my personal opinion, but I would just put it out there that I have, I'm not comfortable with the five-story recommendation. I just think no matter what the design standard that five stories is out of scale, I would prefer three, like the development on University Avenue, kind of across from the bike shop. But I would feel comfortable with five. I know, you know, that there has to be some, I mean, I'd be comfortable with four, realizing there has to be some compromise. But it would just be my suggestion. I don't know how, you know, again, the general community feeling is, but I would much feel much more comfortable with a four-story than a five-story limit. So that's all I have to say. Thanks. Hilda, you can speak. Yes. I have three comments that I want to make. One is I pick up out of the Boston Globe, which I read quite regularly over many years. And that has to do with the sunshine and shadows, particularly in Boston, the shadows on the coming. But here I look at very narrow streets, like Prey Street and Triangle Street. And now with only that one building on the corner of Triangle, and I guess that's East Pleasant now, that street is in the dark, a good part of the winter. And if I owned the land on the north side of Triangle, and my building was in the dark, close to the winter, I would be very unhappy because the value of my property would be vastly decreased. And so that's one thing that I've been rather pushing for the zoning bylaw that we ought to think about is shadows of buildings on other people's properties. And do we really want that area of the north end of town with buildings so high, goes along with Johnny, that the sun is blocked from the buildings across street. I know now my son has an office on Halloch Street and a good part of the winter. It's in the shade when the sun is low in the sky from one East Pleasant Street. So that's something that really has to be looked into how these buildings are designed with narrow streets, how you're going to provide sunshine to the abutting properties that they're not in shade. That's one issue with the design. The other thing is more practical, I guess, in order to pull us off. What's going to happen to the common small businesses that are in these buildings while a transition takes shape, even if it's done one property at a time, we're going to lose a lot more small businesses, I think, with no place to move to in town while a construction takes place. And then will they be able to afford the rents to go back there once the expense of a new building raises the rents a lot higher. And then the third issue is also a fiscal issue is just looking at the properties that have the required affordable housing in it. The paperwork and the expense of the paperwork is really onerous. And just keeping up with all the paperwork that's involved with the affordable tenants is sort of going to make management expenses very, very high for most of us local landlords. I don't know how that can be adjudicated. We can afford to build the buildings. The rents will seem to have to be a lot higher on non-affordable units, which will push all the rents in town higher as the current buildings have already done. In other words, the new buildings come in and set a standard of $1,900 for a studio, makes, you know, $600, $700 studio look really cheap. And that means that that studio can get pushed up to a thousand bucks. I mean, I'm just giving up, for instances. But I mean, this is what happens, that the new buildings raise the rent on everybody. And so these are things that people have to think about and how you're going to deal with them. That's the end of my speech. Thank you, Heather. Meg, or sorry, I'll take Pam. You can speak. Hello, Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. Thanks for listening to us. I wanted to comment and thank the consultants for the hard work of actually taking the time finally to look at the context of what was being recommended and really starting to sort of put themselves in the place. The concerns that were raised previously had everything to do with the look and the feel that was being suggested. I think looking at caps of three-story buildings against all of the outlying neighborhoods is a good start toward a conversation. I think one of the concerns I have and somebody perhaps can tell us in a little more detail if, by right, construction or a proposal is being made for whether it's a sub-district one, sort of the town center, or in the currently the limited business districts, what you're calling sub-districts two. I understand that the planning board would be the sort of the reviewer. By right, they would be allowed to build the three-story buildings. It's very difficult, as you said at the very beginning, it's very difficult to dictate design. So how would the planning board be able to, what leverage would they have on a the look and feel of a building in the context of a neighborhood? That's sort of the gist of it. They're not the design review board. I understood from reading the draft proposal that there in fact is no design review board involved in this process if it were to be accepted. So again, how does the planning board enforce the correct look and feel? Because you said one of the objectives was to guarantee a high quality landscape and a high quality architecture. So how does that happen? Thank you. That's really a question for David and and Karen, I think. Because I haven't had any experience in this type of development. Well, fundamentally, the planning board reviews the application to ensure compliance with the 40-hour zoning. So in compliance with the design standards and the other requirements of the zoning. And there's some, inevitably, there's some subjectivity involved in this and some judgment. So different people have different interpretations of what they would like to see built. So I think the word insured was used. It's tough to ensure that any particular person is happy with the results that come out of this. The design standards can't guarantee fantastic architecture that you like. What they can guarantee is that you don't have a five-story building facade that goes unchanged from the ground up to the sky. So you're asking really good questions to which there aren't definitive answers other than we try and tighten this up as much as possible. So it would be possible to meet the letter of the bylaw, but not necessarily the intent? I don't. It depends what you define as intent. If somebody's interpretation of the intent is that the new building looks almost exactly like one of the older buildings, then that's probably the case. If the intent is that their proportion scale material recognition of the ground floor setbacks from the curb, those can really be guaranteed. Those are built in. Those are baked in. Things that can be described in numbers can be absolutely guaranteed. Other issues are more subjective. It might be noted in change in architectural detailing that doesn't prescribe exactly the kind of detailing. So I think it's hard to escape from the intent. The intent is laid out. The intent is in the design guidelines and then there's specific requirements. So what we try to do is navigate between the qualitative requirements that we start out with in the very specific requirements in the details. I don't know if this is helping to answer the question because it's such a good question that anyone who writes design standards spends a lot of time agonizing over whether they're sitting at their own computers, whether they're sitting with their partner, or whether they're talking to a meeting. Thank you. All right. Michael, you can speak if you unmute yourself. Can I be heard now? Yeah. Okay. This is Michael Grinnebaum. I live at Tenchadwick Court in Echo Hill. I have several questions which I think are not really disguising what they really are, which is concerns. So one of my major concerns is that downtown Amherst, the town center, unlike any of the other districts that you might have considered, I think belongs to the whole town. It is the place that is meant to serve the whole town. And therefore, I'm very concerned about treating it as though it were another district. And 40 hours owning that I might be very happy about elsewhere. I'm not very happy about downtown because I think the more housing we build downtown, even affordable housing, and I very much regret this puts me sort of opposed to John and the municipal housing trust. More housing we build downtown and the more parking is associated with that housing, the less desirable downtown will be for the rest of Amherst. And many years ago, I was part of the town commercial relationships committee in the early 90s. And our concern there was primarily to try to improve the commercial environment for small businesses downtown. In some ways, increasing housing stock downtown might seem to do that. But in other ways, I suspect it's going to drive away more customers from downtown businesses than it had to. So that is one kind of concern. Another concern may be slightly more cynical. And that is, we heard in Amherst about developing an urban corridor along North Street, long before our districts were in the news or long before there seemed to be a trade off between big buildings downtown and affordable housing. So I think there is a natural impetus among developers and builders to have those five story buildings, which I don't want at all. I don't want them in the sub one district or the sub two district. And I think that there is a sense of unease throughout the town, but this is being driven by the needs of developers and builders to increase their income rather than to try to build in accordance with the character of the town. So that's one great concern that the proposal does talk about the character of the town. But it makes no suggestion as to how its proposal is in keeping with the character of the town. And I think a low rise downtown is in keeping with the character of the town. My last concern has already been raised. And that is making the approval by right. I mean, I was, I'm not in love with the zoning bylaw, haven't been for a long time. But at least it made the process of appeal for special permits and appeal from disagreements of by right or what counts as by right made it clear. As David said, there's a lot of subjectivity here. And I ordinarily in favor of that. But I am now very much concerned that we have not put off safeguards in to preserve the character of the town. Well, I certainly realize the rights of builders to build on their property. The last question I have is a point of clarification about the design standards and its relationship to the whole 40 r district. I have found nowhere going back to the 70s scogs report where people who talk about density talk about how dense is appropriate. And I see nothing in this 40 r district proposal until we get down to the design standards, which talks about the height of buildings. So I gather that the height and density issues are matters of design standards. And what I want to know is, can design standards be changed if the town were to accept a 40 r district downtown. Thank you. Can I address this last question? 40 r does have minimum density requirements based on the type of housing. If you're looking at multifamily, if you're looking single family housing, it's eight units per acre. Town houses, it's 12 units per acre. In multifamily housing, it's 20 units per acre. So that does shape some of the design issues, but that's fundamental to 40 r requirements. I see. But that doesn't talk about the height. The density standards don't, requirements under 40 r don't have any height requirements, but you've got to kind of project how you can get to the 20 units per acre. And it should be mentioned that the existing zoning under the general business is five stories currently. Well, I know, and that's another story, but let me just say something. So the minimum density says it can't be too small. And the height requirements or height limitations say it can't be too big. So it sets the top and the bottom. And I think all of your questions are really good questions. They, we do believe this is an improvement over the existing zoning. Whether it's perfect in every way, we continue to be discussed. Can we improve it? That should continue to be discussed. But we think it's a big, big improvement over the current zoning and provides more protection than you now have. Thank you. Gene. Good evening. I'm Heaney Hardy. I live at 116 East Pleasant in Amherst. First of all, I want to just thank the architects because I really do feel that you listened to the community input and you made changes in your design that I think a lot of people really care about. So thank you very much for that. I have three questions and comments that I'd like to make. I haven't heard any time during these discussions about requiring underground parking. So one thing that would really make the downtown better and more walkable is if there were requirement for all these new buildings to have underground parking. Instead of you showed us a picture of a parking lot where it looks like, you know, it wasn't very dense. It was pretty because it had trees, but it's still a parking lot in the middle of downtown. So I'm concerned about adding new construction, especially new high density construction without adequate parking. My concern is about whether the town should have to pay for a new garage so that developers can make money from high density units. Why can't the 40R laws or bylaws, I guess, require the construction of underground parking sufficient for all the units in the development? My second question is, so we heard that in perpetuity rental properties that are designated for lower incomes will be preserved, but if a low income person buys a property, are they then not able to sell it at market value? How does it work for purchases? That's my second question. My third question is sort of fundamental. There's been so much, so you told us that 40R districts have worked well in other parts of western Massachusetts and you gave examples of North Hampton and East Hampton. In both of those cases, they identified regions that really needed revitalization. You showed us a picture of an old abandoned mill and you talked about an old abandoned hospital. And so those were used as 40R. We're talking about taking the most vibrant core center of Amherst, which is the part that people identify with as the heart and soul of Amherst and making it easier to make large buildings in the middle of town. And I just continue to wonder, I know you said in your presentation that many zones like Pomeroy and East Amherst were considered. I just am wondering how come even given all this public comment, we haven't, we're still talking about downtown as the 40R district. Thank you. I'm happy to tackle a couple of the questions. What is on the issue of in perpetuity? Home ownership developments units have deed restrictions and they are often now in perpetuity too, which means that when the property turns over, the affordability restrictions remain with the property. The resale price is indexed to changes in area median income. And so they are remain as affordable as time goes by. So people cannot put their affordable units on the open market. The market value is actually determined by the formula for the resale price included in the deed rider. The other issue regarding the example of an already built area, actually a lot of the 40Rs, we use the example of the nearby communities, but a lot of the 40Rs are based in areas that do have compact development, often near transit in main areas where values are high, where mixed use makes sense. And so there are plenty of examples, probably even more examples of those types of projects than the others. And I can touch on a couple of the other points. I mean, in one, this is a minor issue. What we are proposing isn't so much a design. It's really design standards, but I appreciate your comments on it. So it's a tough balancing act. If we required, if the town required developers to provide underground parking, it's reasonably likely that they would say the only way I can afford to do that is if I can develop six, seven, eight, nine, 10 stories. I'm already providing the affordable housing. I'm already having to raise the rent or the purchase price on the market rate housing, and that's been commented on. If you make me provide underground parking, I'm going to have to raise the rent or the sale price even higher unless you can give me seven or eight stories. And I can't say exactly what these numbers are, but that's what you're likely to hear. There's only so much you can get out of developers. So if you want the affordable housing, they're going to have to be trade-offs. Now, if there's no place to park, that's a big problem, but it's conceivable that part of the town's obligation is not to provide affordable housing, but to provide parking with the parking garage so that the developers can provide affordable housing. These are really complex equations. Some are financial, and some are the quality and character of urban life. How do you get the best of all of them? And this is what we're trying really hard to do, and your concerns are appreciated. And I hope there's the understanding that we need to find that balance recommended to you and that the town needs to find the right balance between all these competing concerns. So I'd like to give a practical response to the question of why are we still talking about 40R in the downtown. I think that many of us do think that there is reason to think that a 40R in the downtown might be a good idea, but the consultants were hired by the town for a certain limited amount of money, and I think they've already gone beyond the amount of money that they were hired for. So we would need to hire another set of consultants, or perhaps the same consultants, to look at the possibility of a 40R in East Amherst Village Center or Pomeroy Village Center, which we may choose to do. But for this particular project, for now, we're focused on the downtown. This is the last public forum. After this night, the consultants will write up what they've learned and give us a final product. And then the town can choose to determine whether we really want to pursue a 40R in the downtown, or whether we want to switch gears and pursue one elsewhere. But there isn't enough money left in the consultant's contract to ask them to do that for us at this time. And let me throw out another way to look at this question. There are parts of downtown that are really quite wonderful. As you move further north, there's areas that are pretty big swaths of asphalt, surface parking, one-story retail, and there's nothing. Yeah, I think that cursor's moving around in that area. And I want to be respectful to the property owners and the people whose stores are there, but it's conceivable that redeveloping that with parking in back, with stores and restaurants up against the street and housing up above would create a significantly better downtown. That's the entire point. So that is why we have been recommending the consideration of a downtown 40R. All right. Looks like Dorothy. You can unmute yourself. Okay. Thank you. I'm Dorothy Pam, 229 Amity Street, and I live in a major historic district in the town of Amherst that goes right up to this area. And I'm speaking as a private citizen. The need for affordable housing is strong, but we do not need to do 40R to get affordable housing. The town just has to make a decision. They'll change the zoning and include inclusionary zoning, which has been suggested by many boards and committees to perhaps not 20 to 25%, but say to 10%. And if we'd had that in effect for all the new construction in the past several years, we would have many new units of affordable housing. So we don't need to do 40R in order. It is not the only way to get affordable housing. I do appreciate the response to the many comments about setback. I think that's important and very major, but I did not see the design of the, that last design on pages at 17, perhaps, I did not see much difference in that design from a warehouse or a hospital. The setbacks are not very big. There's almost no ornamentation. There's a small variation in windows, but it does not relate to the wonderful buildings that are on main and south pleasant around the town green, which are serviceable and look good and make you want to go there. The other aspect of the mixed use buildings is the buildings that I've seen built under that so far in Hammers, they're not inviting the main floor businesses, whatever they are, they have no personality. We just see a big plate glass window. There's nothing that says, oh, go in there. This is an interesting unique place. So I'm not really sure if that does increase our commerce. I'm talking about who is coming to Hammers. I think that there's a big movement going on of people, families, wanting to come to Western Massachusetts from some of the more densely populated areas. And I do agree. I think we're going to see a major restructuring of how the university uses dorms and how many people are on campus and still employed. But families, I think, are very eager to come to Hammers to small, well run, well regarded school district. And we know that there's a great shortage of housing for them. So if you're going to have housings for families in your buildings, affordable or market rate, where is the green space? Where is the private green space and a shared green space for the people who live in the apartment buildings? The only green space is for the shoppers. So I don't see those as really being homes or residences for people for whom that would be the main place that they would live. So I also, I guess I'd heard it before, but I'm upset to hear that the design review board would not be part of this project. I think that requires us to trust too much and gives away too much power. And as the consultants have said, there's a lot of subjectivity and what is or is not a design that fits. And I think the design review board really is an important role in that. Otherwise, we, the people of Hammers, we don't own that land. It's private property. And we do understand that, but it is in the heart of our downtown. We lose too big a part of having any kind of say in what would be there. And it'll be my right. And that's what it is. I also agree that three stories, the better height, the fourth is the possibility. I mean, you've talked about incentives so that the area where you have something to play with could be the fourth story, but not the fifth or the sixth story. I do agree totally with Hilda that sunshine and light are key. A place is not inviting if it's in the shadows. We've already lost a lot of sunshine downtown. When you come down from the north, all of a sudden you see that the downtown is shaded with just the new buildings that exist now. So I think we have to really be concerned about it and not go into the 40-yard downtown at this time. I do think in a different place, East Amherst, perhaps, where there's more land and it wouldn't, there's more possibility to play with this concept. But for downtown development, I would say townhouses would be much better than apartment houses at this time. Thank you. Just two clarifications. What is shown in the graphic design standards, those are by no means designs. They're very much diagrams. So I hope people aren't looking at them and thinking that is exactly what we're telling people to build. These are setting design parameters for developers' architects to embellish. And the second point is, in the design standards, there are requirements for open space associated with buildings. So you can't have parking lots going right up to the face of the buildings. And I showed a diagram of little bits of green space in the parking lot, but there are also requirements for larger green space areas associated with buildings. And in most places, they would be, certainly in Sub-District 1, they would not be along the street. They would be behind the buildings. And if you look at, we had some earlier diagrams suggested where these could go. So we think we've built in a reasonable amount of green space in a variety of different areas. And again, this is in the details that the design standards has written. And I encourage you to look at them to see if they address the issues you're raising or not. And if you don't think so, continue to let us know. All right. Thanks. There's still 10 hands raised. So it's about 8.30. But as Elizabeth, you can speak, and I hope we can get through everyone. Yes. Are you getting the horrible echo I am? Yeah. Do you have your phone on or nearby? Sometimes that's the cause of it. Do you want to try again? You could make a phone call. One of us could, and I think that would get through to us. And do we have the phone number for this meeting, Nate? I don't know if we have the phone number. We'd have to go back to the... Yeah, we just had the link. Let me see if I can find the phone number. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could try one more time. I'm not sure why there's an echo. Sometimes, if you have another device near the computer, whether or not it's on or not, that can cause an echo. So it's still an echo. Would you mind... Can we take the next attendee and we'll get back to you, Elizabeth? I can't find a phone number. I cannot do that. Gene, you can unmute yourself. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thanks. My name is Gene Genecchi. I rent a home on 33 Memorial Drive. I highly agree with Michael, Gene, and Dorothy's concerns. So I assume that all downtown buildings will be demolished. These multi-story buildings will replace them. I did not attend the other meetings. It seems such a shame. Of course, you're creating a whole new town and the Amherst harm will be destroyed. The new buildings that are there now that were put up recently are so unattractive. And I would hope that the other buildings, these new buildings would be more attractive than those. It really is not inviting. Those new buildings, as others have said, are not inviting at all. It doesn't seem that there are any plans drawn for other parts of Amherst that were perhaps considered so that we can compare to see what that would look like. If that would be more appealing than putting these buildings in the town, in the center of town, there's a way of nothing to really compare to. Even though you've talked about that, no, it's not a done deal. It pretty much seems like a done deal. That center of town is in the only place. So what would keep Amherst, have Amherst keep its unique and picturesque town feel if all these buildings look the same as maybe another of the other developments that they've talked about for the 40R? I'm very supportive of affordable housing, but I do feel it would be better in another part of town. You said that there are successful 40R developments in downtown areas, but again, it seems like we already have maybe not as vibrant downtown as we need, but there might be other ways to make or keep our downtown vibrant than putting it in these type of developments that I think would, in my opinion at least, and in others, it seems would be better off in another part of Amherst. And just another question that was already asked, but not really answered, perhaps you don't know, but how affordable would the business and the store and the restaurant sections of these buildings really be, especially for those businesses that are forced out because of their original sites being destroyed? Thank you. I mean, I'd like to respond quickly. I think we want to have quick responses. The 40R, I don't believe will unleash a wave of development that wouldn't have happened anyway. The only differences, the major differences with 40R, their design guidelines that you don't currently have. So I do believe this is the intention that 40R gives you more protections rather than less. Developers right now can tear down half or all of downtown if they own the property and do five-story buildings like the ones you don't particularly like. I think we give you more control over that. That's certainly the intention, not to lead to the result that you're describing. And I think the 40R deserves real scrutiny to try and anticipate what will happen and make sure what you don't want doesn't. Thanks, David. I just want to say quickly, for Elizabeth, for the call and number you could dial 312-626-6799 and you'd be prompted for a webinar ID and it is the 885-625-06992 on the screen. So if that may work. I see you have your hand raised. I'm going to allow you to speak Elizabeth and see if you've figured out the echo. I think I fixed the problem. Awesome. Yes, it sounds like it's gone. Yes, this is Elizabeth Veerling and I live at 36 Cottage Street and I just wanted to say again that I really appreciate Christine's introduction to the project and I do appreciate also the consultants having altered some of the design standards. However, I still think that they don't really go far enough to protect the character of our town. So I had a number of questions but I think probably the most important given that the time frame that we're at right now is my understanding or perhaps you could clarify for me is that the 40R overlay which would now part of it is overlaying the general business district as what what I understand is that the developer could choose either 40R or the current zoning standards and since as was mentioned the current zoning standards have given us these charming five-story buildings on what it seems to me that there's really no reason that the developer is going to choose 40R instead of the zoning standards that exist. So it seems to me that the first thing that has to happen is the general business district zoning standards need to change otherwise 40R will have no impact in the general business district. I also wanted to so that's sort of a question common I don't know exactly what so so along with that then it seems as if 40R is really targeted to the limited business districts that's where it does become a carrot for the developers because the developers right now are very restricted in those limited business districts so so that's one thing that I guess I would like to have commented on. My second concern goes along with the comments that have been made about the narrowness of our streets and this is particularly to be noted at Triangle Street and it's something that I think needs to be thought of overall in the town but for example one concern or one thing that goes along with smart growth is transportation. Triangle Street is completely inappropriate for bicycles for example there's a little white line on the road it's 12 inches from a curb it's not a bike lane. Triangle Street is extremely narrow so putting any kind of tall buildings there is a real problem. So I think again given the time that we're talking about I guess I would just like some comments on those issues that I've raised. Yeah I mean I think this is Nate I'll just say quickly that right so 40R is a voluntary overlay that a developer could use and so I think your assessment of you know where it is most incentivized is the limited business owning and I think you know to the comments by Dorothy Pam about you know there could be other zoning measures that could work I think what's great about having these forums and this 40R discussion is you know helping Amherst aside what is right for downtown so is it adopting a 40R or is it adapting pieces of 40R in other zoning measures so I think that's a really good point. I think that you know the 40R in the sub-district one which is over the BG may not have enough incentives to entice a developer and that's something that would need to be discussed more. You know moving on to the narrowness of streets the one thing that the design standards have is a 15 foot curve to building front dimensional standard which isn't in zoning so I think and that could be examined it could be made you know wider on some streets but you know currently we allow a zero setback to the property line so if the property line is five feet from the curb you get a building that's five feet from the curve but the 15 feet you know is independent of property line it's really from the edge of the curb you know the street to the building and so you know it's a different way to measure setback and yeah I think I I I guess I understand that which is what I why I'm pointing out the fact that putting overlaying 40R on the general business district gets us nowhere so just for general the general public to understand that that and also I mean I've taken a tape measure out into central Amherst and 15 feet is not a lot I mean I have 15 feet between my property line and my neighbor's property line and it is not a lot it's not really a a distance that allows a sidewalk and we've seen how great it would be if we had space for outdoor dining that we've experienced now with COVID 15 feet does not allow that with a sidewalk and any kind of other landscaping so um I just wanted to bring up that yes maybe that's better than what we have but I personally don't think it's good enough right thanks I'm gonna yeah we still have a number of hands raised I'm gonna allow the next person to speak thanks Elizabeth Alex you can I can unmute yes I want to go back to almost the beginning when somebody was asking about uh rents that was very early on I'm just gonna quickly can you just introduce yourself oh yes my name is Alex Hor I live at 42 Cottage Street and I want to go back to um a very early question that was being asked about affordable housing what were the rents uh incomes and all that kind of stuff after the plan was put out and we were writing comments on it I went down to university drive and looked at 70 70 university drive and I looked at housing down there it's set back off a university drive doesn't it's not in anybody's face and I drove in and inquired how much rent was 70 main street has affordable housing a one bedroom and I may be off a little bit on these numbers because this is from memory but a one bedroom was $2,400 a month mm-hmm that's $28,800 a year a two bedroom was $2,800 a month that's $33,600 a year those are New York City prices my son has an apartment in Brooklyn he pays $1,900 a month it's it's it's it's expensive to rent in Amherst and when we had a conversation with a major developer in town when we asked them to put affordable housing in and he's locked into a certain price what he does is he increases the rent in the other units to subsidize the affordable housing which is why they come in and ask for an extra floor and that may be a variance and then the variance has been you know can be granted by the town so the affordable housing that you ask for is subsidized by those units that are not affordable housing and as I just said from the prices they're expensive so if we're going to have in next to Cottage Street dense housing um I I am I am one to say I would rather see downtown vibrant business for everybody in town rather than developing Amherst as adjunct to the the campus and essentially subsidizing the housing for the university by changing our downtown into a dense housing unit I think there are other places when I just mentioned one where it could fit in very nicely and I uh for one really don't want to see downtown turned into um a residential center thank you thanks when you were talking about the one bedroom uh for $2,400 that was the market price I assume because it's not the it wouldn't be the affordable price by law it wouldn't no I disabled this talking but yeah no that'd be the market the market I did when I did hear that the affordable units right are um and those units I think are less than half the price of the market rate so there is a big you know discrepancy in the rental amounts between the affordable and the market rate Nate I see a number of people whose hands are raised who have spoken already but I also see a number of people who haven't spoken so maybe we should choose the people who haven't spoken yes we're approaching um a quarter of nine and maybe nine o'clock should be our cutoff um sure yeah we have seven hands raised right now so I think um I'll just go down and right choose who hasn't spoken so Ira um you can unmute yourself okay hi my name is Ira brick I live on strong street and just uh some quick comments I appreciate some of the design elements that you added into that I understand diagram that people would embellish um I do think that that does limit people to providing better aesthetics than the five-story buildings I also agree with everybody that has said and I have said for a long time five stories is way too tall for the scale of downtown it's a short downtown when I'm in a town like Evanston Illinois larger than us a college based town and I think why does five stories look okay here the streets are much wider they're longer this just looks like you're creating a big canyon and I just want to point out that in your PowerPoint on page 51 where you give examples of how facades could look using your design elements most of those are four stories your examples and um also the question of form-based which I've done some reading about but even in your materials form-based is described as having a relationship to the street architectural character community context town character I think that some of the buildings that are in your presentation of examples of four stories are much too modern if you have uh one of each of those downtown it's really going to look quite motley in my opinion I would aim more towards New England the last thing is I know there's been a lot of discussion with the five-story buildings that basically are private dormitories that you can't mandate use that anybody could move in there and yet they're designed for student life they are four bedroom apartments rented by the room I have a four bedroom house where I raised my family I did not rent by the room to my family members and I don't know how you get it so that they are designed and marketed towards the young families and the young professionals or the retirees that we say we want and to not have people skirt all of what we're trying to do to just make different looking dorms thank you thanks yeah all right um Robert Greeny have I to speak hi I'm Robert Greeny that live on Collin Street and um in the interest of time I just want to go on the public record as affirming very strongly all the comments unanimously that had been made tonight every single one of them is I agree with from Jennifer talking about the buildings being too high right down to Ira talking about five stories being too big what I want to add to that is that the even when you have rules the rules have to be enforced and the adjudicating agency or the enforcement agency is the planning board and those of us that have been following recent town happenings around the planning board have no confidence zero confidence that the planning board will represent the interests of the people that have spoken tonight uh except with one exception I don't think there's anyone on the planning board that would reflect and represent these opinions so if we're going to have any confidence that whatever we do is carried out in the interests of all the people of the town we need to have a planning board that is populated by the diversity of opinions and people in this town uh thank you thanks uh john can you hear me yes uh this is john page 683 east pleasant street speaking as a resident as an individual um I'm kind of surprised by the opposition to this proposal best-case scenario we have more housing units more affordable units more prescriptive design guidelines including green space and potentially state bonuses for bringing in families with school-aged children worst-case scenario the status quo so why not adopt this people have talked about shade configuration of units exactly who will live there if I was housing insecure homeless or had children who wanted to go to school here in Amherst I'd be worried about a home in my personal opinion the phrases protecting neighborhoods character of town are dog whistling and inherently have a certain racial undertones I've also heard talking about places for private vehicles but not about places for people which by the way if we're talking about the destination Amherst proposal that's about privately developing a parking garage why do we care about cars and not humans I'm carrying out people we're talking about aesthetics I'd like to talk about lives and livelihoods those of us who live in Amherst cannot raise a drawbridge and never allow anyone to enjoy the privilege we have of living in the beautiful community we call Amherst you all raise how high Amherst prices are the solution part of it is this this is a public policy tool to achieve all of our goals and as I've said before I ask people to say yes and to question how not if I would like to see Amherst and Amherst where we welcome all people like we like we say we do that wants people to live here where we bring people more into the fold 40 hours of strategy a technical one a multi-year one at this point to do that via zoning policy and I hope we start with downtown and then we use it in East Amherst Pomeroy Village and beyond thank you all right jack you can unmute yourself how you doing um jack gem said 76 mount holy oak drive I'm on the planning board and what an interesting evening it's been I learned you know much more by viewing this presentation this revised presentation but um kind of taken it back by the comments but I guess at this hour I'm not going to get into it but I do I'm offended by some of the comments with regard to the players and I'm I'm very happy that John Page spoke before me so I am not I'm not going to get into that but what I was the majority of the folks that have spoken tonight have offered some consistency perhaps in their opinions but we started off with with John Hornick and Rob Crowner who are two very respected folks that contributed a lot and for one I kind of wanted Rob Crowner to develop a little bit more because I really respect his opinion um with regard to the you know how the 40R fits but um I do I'm I'm a little taken aback you know the dorm statement for downtown has been addressed by folks in town council I wish that would not be used because it's it is um it's inaccurate and offensive to the people that live in the buildings and um you know I'm sorry one person spoke that had that zero confidence in the planning board uh I feel we have one of the best planning boards uh that we've had in a very long time but at this point I'm going to be quiet because I know it's approaching nine thank you for letting me speak but I would like to hear some closing statements by John Hornick and Rob Crowner based on all of the comments that we've gotten because I'm I'm a little bit different place with regard to the 40R proposal for downtown than I was six months ago thank you uh Winifred Manning you can speak um yes I live on 61 Fearing Street um I'm in very um this what I would have to say is really something that's more of a detail but due to the two people who just spoke I'm I'm just very sorry to hear that they're taking all of the comments in such a negative way I've really learned a lot of and heard a lot of very interesting suggestions and all that and I haven't taken them that way at all but one thing I do uh living very close to uptown and that's there's a lot of talk about the the physical design of the outside of the buildings and I think there's one thing that's very very important to that is the infrastructure the things like the sound the sounds that of large building developments impact the town with HVAC systems a lot of extra lighting you know so many developers think everything has to be completely lit and I I'm thinking of the people who now live on on Cottage Street and um how that would change their view and their their neighborhoods so I think those are things that that should be thought about and I know that's a detail and we're talking big issues but that is something that I think should be woven into the plans and the restrictions that might go along with some of that so thank you very much for all the information that has been shared tonight and the chance to hear that thank you just really quick note in the design standards there are requirements for HVAC systems there are requirements for lighting to control exactly what you're talking about are they strong enough are they robust enough I mean we could certainly talk about that but in efforts being made to address those issues they're really important issues I know that there's a building up at the end of our street that over the years has you know I walk by it and I think oh my god if I lift this side that it would drive me crazy because all summer the air conditioning is going outside and I think that is something that's really important in any neighborhood yeah thank you um let's see we have um two more Allison you can um unmute yourself hi um I'm Allison Ozer I live on Middle Street actually in South Amherst um but I've been um I'm a retiree in a sense I've lived in Amherst a long time and I've been for the last few years actually trying to explore whether I can afford to stay in Amherst and where I might want to be and I grew up in the city I've been attracted to living perhaps in town and what I've noticed in terms of the development is as many people have said a lot of the development lands up being um apartments or housing for more affordable for students with rents and prices that are almost geared to either um two income I'm a single person two income families or multiple students so that they can afford higher rents or higher costs there's been very little um that has been very appealing towards actually even staying in Amherst so I'm sort of excited to hear more about this and actually disappointed to hear more about this because I do as many of the people have been saying feel that or even or but certainly five-story buildings will change the character the light the openness the feel of the town and I think part of that is the drawer to living here to feeling sort of a sense of of size um that is different than being in a city a sense of town instead of a city street um the other part is the the density where I think you know personally I think maybe having housing that's affordable more towards the edges or in other areas might be more welcoming especially also if there's some more open space and this I'm thinking of in terms of families as some of people have mentioned um I'm not exactly sure that um those who might not qualify for low-income affordable apartments or units that they might buy would actually be able to afford the ones that are not and that would be me included but also that the design would not necessarily be all that appealing towards a sense of home for either families or even older persons like myself who want a sense of community rather than just sort of being in something that might feel more like a dorm in town whether it has students or not so I just wanted to say that I this is my first time hearing about the plan I think it's interesting and I really appreciate the efforts made to try and have setbacks and open up space and that there's a lot of room for design changes but I think even just the notion of self is sort of maybe missing um some response to this to other needs that exist in this town and um so I just want to say that I think there's a need almost for more perhaps even I live in South Amherst like around Palmer I've thought about that North Amherst affordable but housing but affordable also for people who don't quite qualify for low-income that's something I want to put it thanks now we have two more hands raised Cinda you're allowed to speak good evening thanks for doing this um I'd like to see this happen I live downtown at 232 Amity my name is Cinda Jones and um I appreciate how downtown has traditionally been built to advantage public green space and and that's what a downtown is you have the commons and Kendrick place and you have pretty good sidewalks at east pleasant street uh one east pleasant street and um and you have the benefit of the public green space um I think a lot of green space other than that downtown um isn't smart growth so much and I guess that's why I like North Amherst and we have a park too and and trails that go through town to South Amherst so it's a different kind of housing you can choose to live in the woods or you can choose to live downtown it's two different choices and it's not for everybody but I think it's attractive for many um if I were to try to rebuild my grandfather's 1951 story building on 29 Cottage Street and try to do something better than what it is now and it it's kind of like puffed in village it wasn't meant to last this long how could I think could I am I somebody who could figure out 40R or is this more for Beacon or a major company who understands paperwork and promises and reporting it intimidates me and I would like to think I'm smart enough to do it but I I keep doubting that so um that's my question would either Karen or David like to answer that yeah it's a really good question these requirements are not meant to be onerous because it's not in the state's interest to make them onerous however they're pretty tight because they demand accountability I mean Karen what do you think could a small developer I mean bringing in necessary consultants um you know make all of this work with with with 20 25 affordable housing without being a Beacon communities or a large development company I mean my my perception is yes you can hire people to do it Karen would you do you think would you agree you know this has been an issue for a while in the community going back when we were doing the housing production plan it came up and it came up also in the interview process for this particular project typically to do the necessary marketing and follow the requirements for the affordable use units the best thing to do is to hire the expertise and there are individual consultants that can do that for small-scale projects and then there are other non-profits that have capacity to do it for larger projects um it is a huge issue it is an expense and um it you know it will be included would be included in the building development costs and um it it is a requirement for in the 40-hour district based on state regulations as architects we did a 20-unit development uh mixed income um in medford and at Beverly we did a 28-unit mixed income development these are relatively small they had affordable components and the developers hired the consultants to right to do the work than they did we done right and I don't think 40-hour makes it much more complicated than that no it's the same fortability requirements the state same state requirements have to be met all right thanks Cindy the um Barbara you're the last uh one with a hand raised Barbara needs to unmute herself yeah you you spoke earlier Barbara maybe you I think you raised your hand again maybe you didn't but it's Celia it's not Barbara sorry yeah sorry I'm on Barbara's computer um I'll pass oh okay to um Rob Crowner or John Hornick wish to make some closing statements as uh Jack Jemsak suggested yeah I would um thanks Jack I know how difficult it is to actually serve on the planning board um and I but I did find most of the comments uh interesting and helpful um I would say that a lot of people seem to think that this is a plan it's not really a plan it's it's describing how um how we want the downtown to look what where the downtown is uh how it how it moves from one part of the town center to another um and so so we're describing uh an ideal and the the existing zoning that I admit that I was a part of of pushing and implementing didn't always work the way we thought it was going to work and and and so we need to learn from our mistakes we need to make them better this I think um is a step in that direction it it it recognizes the problems with the setback recognizes the problems with the height of buildings and it says this is a better way of doing it um so um as I think one of the commentators Elizabeth said we want to find a way if we if we just if we leave the existing zoning as it is we're going to be stuck with the existing zoning and that's what people are going to choose possibly I think we need to find a way of um of changing the existing zoning so that so that this is so that a 40R um choice is a better choice for for all of the downtown I'm not just the center but also the the uh the uh neighborhood areas um and people have have made suggestions for ways that this could be improved and I think I think we should take a look at those and and and try and get there but we're not what we have now is not ideal people have clearly said this is not ideal um is is it is it not the case that 40R would be a better situation than what we have now I think it would be so let's let's try and figure out a way to make it work I'll just add a brief comment Chris um in my earlier remarks I mentioned the minefield of zoning in Amherst and my appreciation for Karen and David and trying to walk that minefield I think what we've heard tonight is really an illustration of the fact that this really is a minefield it's very difficult to navigate very difficult to negotiate and in part because people say well here's what's important to me and actually I'm not looking to give that up and when you add up all the things that people are not willing to give up then it becomes impossible to do any rezoning whether it's 40R or anything else that you can imagine as David said a number of times there are tradeoffs you have to kind of strive for a balance and what I wish I'd heard more of is I'd be willing to give a up if I could be assured of b but mostly what I was hearing was this is really important to me I really like downtown the way it is I really just can't stand the idea of another five-story building and so on and so uh I really feel that it's going to be very difficult whether it's the planning board or town council to move ahead with changes that in fact will improve things both in downtown Amherst and elsewhere and particularly to enable us to expand affordable housing so thank you well I would just like to say thank you to everybody for attending tonight this was a really great discussion we had good presentations by David and Karen that went far beyond what they had presented earlier and lots of very heartfelt comments and questions from our attendees and we will take this under advisement and work with Karen and David to come up with a final report and project and then we'll see where we want to go from here and you have any Karen and David do you have any further comments or Nate no I just want to thank everybody for participating you know thank you very very much for the comments and just one quick comment on what John said maybe there are fewer minds out there than are imagined everybody needs to think to include in us what will likely what could blow up and be horrible and what maybe is not so likely to be the landmine we imagine it to be and I don't want to suggest that any of these issues are really important issues to think about and we're certainly going to think about them yeah no I took good notes I can get those to everyone the consultants and I think everyone I also think you know to Rob counter's point you know I think zoning is you know challenging and it's kind of esoteric but you know I think now I mean I'd like to think that we can change it so you know we could try something and if it doesn't work we can always change it so even if we adopt a 40R as a community and then we want to change it we could do that so you know I you know I sometimes feel like we think it's set in stone and it is a difficult process to get it approved or changed but I'd like to think that we you know as a community we can make the changes we want to see so you know I don't know exactly what that means but I think you know I'd like to think that we could try something and and adapt it if it's not working so I'm confident that there will be in touch thank you everybody thank you so I'm gonna end the meeting for everyone I'm gonna stop sharing the screen and then I'll just end the meeting so and I guess I need to stop recording right oh yeah I don't yeah thank you