 James Fleming, Precinct 3, Article Component. This picture was taken a few weeks ago when the sign for the Heights pub went up over the old Five and Dime to great praise from local residents. Locals also remember how long it took to get approval and that it might not have happened at all. What was the problem? The store was built around 1970 before the current zoning by-law and, importantly, before minimum off-street parking requirements. When Five and Dime closed and the pub wanted to open, the pub was on the hook for adding parking to comply with the by-law. Look at the building. Where would you add parking? There's no room at the back and no one would spend money demolishing part of the building to add parking. The requirement just makes it harder to start a business, so storefronts stay empty for longer. Luckily, the ZBA was able to make it work, so the pub is going in, and Article 20 passed in November of last year to allow removing parking requirements in court business areas by special permit. Problem solved, right? Well, not really, because the same problem can happen elsewhere. In Arlington Heights? Near the High School? In East Arlington? And in other pedestrian storefronts and neighborhood offices around town totaling 384 properties. This article would allow for a special permit authority to remove parking requirements in all business zoning districts if they find creating more parking is impractical or unnecessary. In effect, this extends Article 20 to all business zoning districts. This proposal doesn't affect other types of districts on-street or accessible parking. The goals of this proposal are one, to make it easier to comply with parking requirements, and two, to preserve existing building value. Let's talk about that one for a second. This is a section of the zoning bylaw that describes the parking a business must provide. In some cases, a business must provide parking nearly equal to the square foot of actual business. To show the effect that this has, here's a comparison of two stores in town. On top is Walgreens in East Arlington, and below is Regina's near the High School. According to town records, Regina's is worth a million dollars, and Walgreens four times that. Sounds great, right? The thing is, Walgreens is a huge lot, and Regina's has a tiny lot. Walgreens pays four X the tax revenue, but uses 18 times the land. Think about that. Regina's, built 100 years ago, provides more than four times the tax revenue for the land it uses. It's a financial powerhouse, but you couldn't build it today because of parking minimums. Based on its value, we should want more buildings like Regina's. In summary, this article would let special permit authorities remove parking requirements in all business zoning districts, if they find that creating new parking is impractical or unnecessary. You should support this because the requirements make it hard to reuse some buildings, and because businesses which actually meet the requirements are less valuable than they could be. Thank you.