 All right, good evening and welcome to the March 1st meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board. This open meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The meeting, the Redevelopment Board is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Before we jump into the first item on the agenda, I will take a roll call to confirm that all of the members of the Redevelopment Board are here. We'll start with Ken Lau. I'm here. Great. Thanks, Ken. David Watson. Present. Gene Benson. Present. And Melissa Tintacales. Present. And Melissa, did I say your last name correctly? Yes, Tintacales. Tintacales. Thank you very much. And I just want to, before we get started with our first agenda item, welcome, Melissa, to the Redevelopment Board. This is her first meeting with us. And we're thrilled to have you join us to bring your expertise in economic development and land use development and planning initiatives to the board. So I don't know if you have anything that you would like to say before we get started. Thank you. It's an honor to be, you know, kind of part of the board and I'm excited to kind of contribute kind of my expertise to the town and I look forward to kind of getting to know you guys as a board. And then kind of getting a better pulse of kind of the community as we go through this, through the different projects. So, thank you so much. We're so pleased to have you with us this evening. All right. Jenny, any other announcements? Otherwise I'll jump into public hearings. No other announcements. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, so the first item on our agenda this evening is the opening of docket number 3647 10 Sunnyside Avenue. Jenny, I will ask before we turn this over to the petitioner. If you or any representative from the planning department have any, anything that you'd like to say. I don't have anything to say about this particular project that I haven't already prepared in the memo that was provided to the board. I think we can jump back to any additional staff comments after we hear from the applicant questions. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And so who do we have with us from the applicant who would like to speak this evening. Yes, you have the attorney for the applicant Robert Nessie. You also have the architect will show on. You also have Colin BD one of the principles. You have Jim McIntyre one of the other principles. And we also have Joe Walker, I believe, who is the going to be the contractor for the construction. So, Mr. Nessie, I'll just remind you, if you could try and keep your remarks to around five minutes. We have a very, very thorough package, which I very much appreciate. I know that the other members of the board probably appreciate as well. I'm going to make a very short opening statement and turn it over to Will. So we'll can talk about the architectural aspects, which is more important. I think what I'm going to have to say. I think most of you on the board are familiar with the site. The site is a blighted site. It was an automotive garage for many, many years. And the matter came before the ARB, but a year ago, and it came before the board maybe longer than a year ago, with respect to the possibility of 21 residential units going at the site in at the site. This proposal is totally different. We're talking about five condominiums. We're talking about utilizing the existing garage at the site, constructing a new building to house the five condominium units. The garage would be used in conjunction with column health and the condo units would be probably used by employees of column health as well. The garage space would consist of 8000 square feet and would be used for meetings from time to time for office use from time to time for column health and for storage. And Will will tell you there'll be a greenhouse on the top of the garage. The five residential units will be encased in a five-story building surrounded by commercial properties in some close proximity to residential. But we believe that we have enough information for the board to conclude that there'll be no adverse impact on the abutting residential properties with respect to what we're proposing. We do believe that if this proposal is approved by the board, it's going to transform that blighted area into an area that's going to be much more compatible with other uses in the neighborhood and perhaps be much more beneficial for the neighborhood. With that having been said, Will, I would like you to jump in and tell us what this is all about. Sure. Thank you very much, Bob. My name again is Will Shelfant from Colsa Design. We're an architecture firm located in Somerville. And I'm not sure who's controlling the screen, but if you could just scroll back up two pages. Jenny is controlling the screen. Oh, sorry. Thank you, Jenny. Yeah, right there. That'd be a good place to start. So this is an illustrative site plan just quickly outlining the project to the left hand side is the existing garage. We have sort of a connecting bridge there and read that goes from left to right. And this is our new residential component on the right hand side. This is really kind of an interesting project because it's both an adaptive reuse as well as a new construction as Bob mentioned, you know, this is a sort of industrial zone, this part of sunny side, not a lot of street activation, limited landscape, etc. So this is intended to sort of revitalize and activate this the streetscape a little bit. So in the center of this project is a driveway we're utilizing existing curb cut, but really the whole lot is actually one giant curb cut I'll get into that in a moment. But we're planning on utilizing the center of the site here to access, and they'll be parking at the rear of the building this tandem spaces in the back right thank you, and then there's more vehicle there 18 other spaces within the garage where we're utilizing car stackers. So, you know when I first got involved in this project, I spoke to Colin and Jim, and I wish all clients were this interested in doing a very unique project. I had a lot of great ideas, and they threw them at me fast and quickly but I think we've got all of them. And I think it's a very unique project not only for Arlington but for greater Boston area in general. So, as I mentioned, it's an existing auto body with this vacant lot. So the intention is to utilize the existing garage as much as possible. There are some sort of additions over the years and the rear portion of the building that we are removing. But in general we're keeping the footprint as is, and we are eliminating a lot of the impervious material on the site whether it's gravel or asphalt. If we go to the next slide please. I can keep going. Sorry, next slide. Overview quickly of the residential portion on the top right is the garage. Actually you know these are the area plans I apologize if you just keep going we'll get to sort of the nitty gritty and Okay, here we go. Perfect. So this is the ground floor level of the residential building sunny side of us to your right hand side. The intention is for this building to be wrapped by a concierge of sorts and that's important only because we've got these car stackers which can be somewhat finicky in nature and as far as how they're utilized if you're not familiar with them. And that's why we have this attendant this attendant will be not only a concierge but a ballet, which will get cars in and out of these stackers and brought brought to the door for the tenants and members of column health adjacent. So in our entry lobby we've got a bike room, as well as some common bike racks out front elevator buildings fully sprinkler but we'll have be serviced by two stairs and elevator, got a trash room to the south. And as we continue further down on the page we can see that the drive while separating the office and residential. Next slide please. So, these are, as Bob mentioned five units are really all quite large in size these are intended for the column health leadership team I believe already four of the three or four of the units have been spoken for an interesting corporate board meeting discussing who gets what, but these are all large units with extensive outdoor space. That's very important for the client here is to have these outdoor areas for each unit we've we've got nearly almost 6000 square feet of outdoor space between the four floors of the building. Keep you can keep going to the next slide. Thank you. The second floor is comprised of two units and then the third floor has three units, two of which are duplex units with the top floor if we keep, if you scroll onto the next slide, we can see those units. And these units are for Jim and Bob that are on the call here. We'll keep moving along there so nobody knows where they sleep. And then on here we've got the common roof with these are these are you rooftops for the penthouse units, expensive expensive space, we're showing a lap pool for each, as well as some outdoor workout area and outdoor kitchens, Jim and Jim and Colin really like to entertain. But another important amenity here is a lot of the green space and the use of green roof or intending to have seetom along with some other options once we get into the details to help with the energy consumption of the building. This building is really going to be a energy efficient building it's going to be certifiable for lead gold. We're utilizing geothermal on site as well as like a large solar array, which is intended to run a lot of the, you know, common use space within the two buildings. We're showing sunshades we're utilizing solar heat gain as well as some large overhangs for shade. There's a lot of recycled aspects to this between the existing garage and the use of a shipping container that wants to be used as the bridge between these two buildings. So it's really kind of a unique space and project as a whole. I'm sorry to cut you off it. We are running a bit long. No, it's okay. There's a lot to go through here. So if you could just hit the high points I'm sure that we'll get into a lot of the details to during the questions that would be appreciated. Yep, I apologize for that. I have verbal diarrhea sometimes so we've got a lot of luck going on here obviously here's the greenhouse along with an outdoors space for employees to sit we keep scrolling down all of our solar panels on the right hand side on the roof of the existing garage. You can keep scrolling. Some elevations of the building very not a script. We'll get to the renderings shortly. That's probably actually let's jump right to the rendering so we keep going. Keep going a little bit further. So here's some perspectives black and white just to start with so on the top left image you can see the new greenhouse going on the roof of the existing garage. We've got the shipping container sort of connecting the two buildings, and you can see these large terrace spaces and keep scrolling down. Thank you. Just an intern interior vignettes keep going. And here's here's some of these next few shots are more realistic versions of with the existing context of sunny side. So, again, here's the existing garage the new building in the background one of the things that we really want to sort of emphasize here is the lack of pedestrian friendly access along the front of this site so we're proposing obviously to add a sidewalk here and some street trees to soften this this portion of sunny side and keep going. So again some views this is from looking from the opposite direction looking towards the southern end of sunny side. The building is going to be a concrete and steel structure we've got some pretty serious cantilevers here which will require that construction. And our exterior material cladding is still someone up in the air only because material prices are fluctuating so much right now but it's between either a insulated panel, something from like a king span or possibly a separate material which is a composite material excuse me. It's available in a lot of different colors and tones so right now we're showing a sort of a bluish gray with masonry along the ground floor, keep, keep going. And again, these are sort of some again perspectives obviously without the context around them but just to give you an idea of how the building works in conjunction with the existing garage and the streetscape so with that, I apologize for going on, keep on to the questions. Thank you so much I really appreciate it. We will start, we'll run through the, the role call for the board for questions for the applicant, and we will start with kin. Hi. Thank you it's a very, very nice presentation you got here. Very complete presentation. A couple of quick questions. The garage for in the new building where you parked the cars. Is that in close garage. Yes. How do you plan to ventilate that garage. So that's going to be mechanically ventilated with the events for that will, depending on when we work with RMP engineer will more likely be on the rear of the building. So we will have to ventilate towards the street. So either in the side yard or the rear, there will be an air exchange because we will absolutely have to ventilate that. So when you do that. You're close to zero a lot line almost. Well in the rear I've got close to 16 feet. So I've actually got a little bit of space back there. On the right hand side, adjacent to the existing oil company I believe I'm closer to five so it's still taken there it is tight there, but I don't foresee that being an issue. So you're going to use going to put movers there and just blow it off the side. There's not going to go up to the roof. I'm not sure you can do that. Well, we've got to I mean, if we were not going to be simply blowing it out it would go through filtration system if we did need to go to the roof. We certainly have adequate space as you can see these units are large enough to accommodate a vertical shaft. So we could do that. We haven't gotten to that level detail yet, but it's a good point. Okay. That was one issue. The other issue is on the top level. I know you did some shadow studies and so forth like that. Is there an attitude to maybe the head house there making a sort of lighter and more not as massive as when you look at your 3D models from the ground. Those are pretty. You can see that fairly well. Is there ways or maybe setting it back a little bit or changing the color or something so it doesn't look so tall. I mean if you stress the major corner some on on that roof line there and I think that should define the top of the building, but then I see these two massive powers behind it just makes it. So I think from the from the elevator standpoint I don't have a lot of options because of the overrun on the shaft but I can certainly treat that with a different material that would allow it to sort of to your point fade into the sky but maybe that's you know using a lighter color or something of that manner the the stair head house. I can look at relocating it maybe more towards the center of the building so that to your point it's not as visible from the street. I mean, well one of them is angled actually the one along sunny side is angled I'm not sure if you can see the top right or the either of the right images on this slide sort of shows it's sloping down with the run. But we can we can look at it certainly you know moving those inbound a little bit you can yeah you can see that image in the top right that's. It could come down probably another foot or so. Yeah I'm just trying to minimize the stuff you got up top to you know the green up there is beautiful but just these massive blocks up there doesn't. Yeah, it just puts the building taller and more out of scale than you really should be. Okay, we certainly look at that look at ways of removing those are relocating them. The other question is your. You have two balconies on up on the second floor. Or third floor floor floor. Does that encroach upon setbacks. Would be yes but I believe that, well, this is the board to ask I believe they were exempt from that but if not that we can certainly pull them in, remove them. In my experience of, you know it depends on the municipality. So, if they're not allowed to encroach. We will pull them back. Jenny, did you take a look at that. We did look at that and we didn't note that as being an issue but we can go back and check again. Okay. I just remember having those. Another project where the balconies were overhang right hanging into the side yard step back. At minimum provide exterior sprinkler heads for those if they were just based on proximity to the lot line, but depending on staff findings we can revise that. Okay. I think that's all I have for now that I mean the all the all pretty technical questions. I mean, I love what you did it's a very handsome building. Thank you. And I think it's going to change the whole area there quite a bit. So I'm, that's all I want to say for now. Thank you can David. Thanks Rachel. It is a really interesting project and has a lot of has a lot of great ideas. I have to ask, as an initial question, what is the purpose of the greenhouse. So, I would really should defer to the owner on that because it was a request by them but it's my belief that they intend to grow a lot of the plants you see on this project in that greenhouse as well as food. It's truly self sustaining in that sense, but I don't know if Colin is online if he wants to chime in on why he wants that. All of you there. Yeah, I am. Yeah. We've got different areas planned out in the greenhouse, some fruit bearing trees, flowering trees. I have my eye on a very ornate substantial olive tree for the centerpiece there. It'll have seeding areas so it'll be a an area for relaxation and area that'll be warm and and available and green for the winter time, which can be a little long. So for us, it's, you know, basically for my core team of seven or eight executives and just a place to go and, and something that can also generate some some good food product. Hey. So, with respect to seeking approval under the mixed use by law. Did you explore whether this project could be constructed without resorting to the mixed use by law. Yes, we did. And we think we have to use the mixed use by law to construct the project. We took a careful look at the definition in the before zone with respect to the intent on the part of the town to, in fact, get rid of automotive uses we had too many in town in to convert automotive uses to residential uses if we could. We thought that the mixed use by law would be the most appropriate way to do that. And as I've explained before, it's my position that the ARB has a much more leeway under the mixed use by law than would otherwise be the case. With respect to granting relief for a particular project and I, I premised that upon the argument that I've made previously and I even did today in an email I've sent to the board on two articles 3940 with respect to sections 3.4.4, where the language in the bylaw under review talks about the the ARB being created innovative and and the like. I think that combined with the mixed use by law, I think is most appropriate with respect to what we're trying to do as far as the site is concerned. So yes, we did consider whether we could go without using the mixed use by law, but I think we're more constrained in terms of what we'd be able to achieve if that were the case. Well that that's exactly the issue. I know it is. And I think if I guess my one question is, do you have a plan B if we were to take the position that this is two structures and not within the definition of mixed use. Firstly, I don't think that you can conclude that it's two structures, if you if you're interpreting the bylaw with respect to the language in the bylaw. The definition of a building attached in the bylaw is a building have any portion a building having any portion of one or more walls in common with adjoining buildings. This building does have an adjoining wall in common with the with the other building. And I don't call it other building. I call it one building. I don't call it two buildings. And I think if you look at that definition in the bylaw. Let's talk about literally reading the black letter in the bylaw, the black letter law in the bylaw is what I've just read to you. And that to me indicates that we're okay with that that in fact, the building is connected, and it's connected appropriately with respect to the language in the bylaw as passed by Tom meeting. I hear what you're saying Mr. Nessie. And I'm just letting you know that it is something that I am considering because I don't feel that it's as clear as you're making it out to be. It's all clear. The language is clear. Okay, I mean I'm reading it, and you can read it as well. And if you can read it any differently than I've read it. I'd like to hear that. I'm going to, I'm going to move on for the moment. With respect to the upper stories. This building as presented does not have upper story setbacks. And I wanted you to talk about that a little bit. So I believe zoning does not require that. And the applicant really wanted to maximize their square footage for their units on there. We try to sort of give some relief to that street with these cutouts for the balconies long sunny side. This is the size units that the applicant wished. I would, I would contend that the zoning bylaw does require them and you would have to be granted relief by, by us in order to not include upper story stepbacks. Okay, that wasn't brought to my attention by the city. So I will certainly. It's a town by the way will notice the town. All right. With respect to the, the parking. I'm not really familiar with how the stackers work. I've got a general image in my mind of, of some mechanical, some mechanism that lifts cars up to a, and then talks another car underneath it is that how they work. Correct. Are with the three tandem spots in the back, were those included because they were needed for a purpose for, for an operational purpose or merely to meet the minimum requirements of the parking bylaws. We have an excess of one spot so really we only needed to in that instance but the feeling the feeling was that. So your first part is to meet the requirement the, the second would be that the nature of the people parking here is such that it was felt that a tandem spot would work in this instance because they're literally working next to each other. And it wouldn't be a burden to move. It gave us a place in the rear to put them and allowed us to have we previously had parking adjacent to the existing garage where we have a larger green space we thought that that would really be a nicer item for the project as a whole opposed to putting more parking there. Okay. I believe from the proposal that the project does not meet the requirement for usable open space as presented. And so I was, I was thinking about opportunities for creating more open space. The first thing that occurred was, we, we are pretty amenable to granting parking reductions in many cases, particularly where there are other options for transportation and, and a high level of sustainability built into a project which this already does. And as Mr and SC knows, it probably would not be much of a stretch to bring some transportation demand management practices into a project that's already this sustainable. We could certainly do that. Mr Watkins. All right. Another thing I, you know, I understand. The intention that that the company's leadership team would be living in these units. And, and they're certainly very, very nice units. I'm a little bit torn because you didn't refer to the earlier proposal for this site that would have brought significantly more housing units into Arlington and these units are certainly far larger and far less affordable than the than the units that in general, we would prefer to, to see being constructed in Arlington at this point. So I'm, I'm considering that. But, David, I'm sorry, I know we have a hard stop at eight. Do you have any more specific questions for that the applicants. No, those are the major issues that I wanted to raise. Okay. Yeah. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you. Jean. Thank you. I also agree it's a really nice innovative project I love that it's going to be at least lead goal and can help make a big difference in a positive way to this part in Arlington. I do however have a number of questions and concerns about whether it's actually consistent with the zoning bylaw and I just like to walk through and get some answers for that. One of the first has to do with the floor area ratio. Mr. Nessie, if you could take a look at the requirements for floor area ratio for the before district building. So this mixed use is, if it is a mixed use building, it's greater than 20,000 square feet. I think it's about the lot, the lot is less than 20,000. I believe the lot is what drives that that's, that's correct. But the building itself is about 27,000 square feet of 27,000 28,000 square feet. Before district, a mixed use building of greater than 20,000 square feet has a maximum floor area ratio of one and not 1.5. So I'm wondering how you square that with what you told us Mr. Nessie. I did what Mr. Benson. I just swear the the the building district height and floor area ratio regulations and before district with your statement that the far is 1.5 and not one. In fact, we need relief for that. That again comes under mixed use. And if the board in its wisdom determines we do need relief for that. And I need to look at it more carefully but if the board does conclude that we need relief for that. Then I would suggest to the members of the board that under mixed use, they do have the ability to grant that relief. I think, yeah, I'd appreciate if you're looking at a phone next meeting and Jenny I wondered if you were the staff and taking a look at that. This was in our memo, a number of comments that have been made already we're in our memo and we've also noted them with the applicant. Okay. Next, for both the open space landscape and open space usable. I would have found it very helpful and I think if you come back to actually have a chart that shows where they are because I could see various pieces of it. It's difficult for me to put it all together so I think if you could come back next time with a chart that shows where the open space. We can try to be more more helpful in that regard Mr. Yeah, that would be very good. Thanks. I didn't see any electrical electric vehicle charging stations do you intend to have any there. We have that can be part of any transportation management. I think that's a procedure I come back with. Also as part of the energy code were required to do that. At least provide to do it for sure we're going to be doing it, but it would be helpful if you could show that. I am a little bit concerned about the section 5.3 point 19 about the setting with the setback with the for a number of reasons one is it would have been really helpful to get a shadow study showing what the actual shadow effects would be in the R one district when you're within the buffer zone. So I think you need to come back with a shadow study. So with that I discussed that with the architect Mr Benson and that that's certainly something we can do. It's actually done I just couldn't get it to planning in time so I sort of didn't understand your statement which basically says it's the position that the impact of the building not significant when in the context of the plans, when we haven't had a chance to look at the shadow study. You may have seen the documentation that was put in by one of the residents that showed I think two of the buildings on the street that backed on it had solar panels on the roof. So I'd like to see whether the shadows would cast on those at any time of year. And if so, what the impact would be on those. It would be helpful, I think, to get a planting and landscaping plan that shows the type of plants, the trees, things like that. That's also in process. They were lacking. You might have seen in the staff memo, the issue about the signage sign and the materials. We would be just see that in the next draft. I think we'd like the Department of Public Works to take a look at the stormwater management plan, which seems very extensive, but they're the folks who should take a look at it and be comfortable with it. I think the balconies may be an issue with the setbacks, Mr. Nessie. So you might wanna take a look at the section of the zoning bylaw about that, which is, I can't find it right now, but you'll be able to find it in the zoning bylaw. Let me get back to whether this is actually a mixed use project because I'm leaning the same way Mr. Watson goes. If you take a look at the definition of mixed use in the bylaw, it doesn't refer to building. It says a single multi-story structure. And at least as I look at this initially, there are two structures. And one of the structures is not multi-use. It's only residential. And the other one is the office with the greenhouse. So I raised the same concerns that Mr. Watson does as to whether when we have two separate buildings that just are connected or two separate structures that are just connected by a sky walkway, whether they really meet the intention and even the exact wording, the black letter law where it says mixed use. So I would like you to take another look at that also. There was one other thing I wanted to mention. Oh, the fourth story, step back. Yes, it's definitely required. As you know, through some things that have happened, there's an error in the zoning bylaw. And the step back is required to be on the fourth floor, not the third floor. And as you know, I was the one person on the board who voted against the special permit for another building because it didn't have a step back. My other colleagues felt that there were mitigating circumstances because the building was pulled back from the lot line sufficiently to have the equivalent of a step back. You don't have that here. So I'm just sort of putting you on notice that I have grave concerns about approving this without a step back, even if we do have the discretion to do it without a step back. So let me see if quickly, if there's anything else that I just want to mention. I mean, if there is, we still have to do public comment plus another hearing and I have to start the warrant articles at eight o'clock. So is it okay if I come back to you? Yes, that's fine. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Melissa, any questions for the applicant? Just real briefly, in terms of the live work, I mean, I also think it's, it looks like a great design and a unique way to blend a mixed use project. In terms of the live work space, it seems that it's designed for the employees slash owners. And I don't know if, you know, the two Colin could speak a little to maybe the, just the business model and understanding how the live work relates to this and how we ensure that, you know, the idea is that the employees work here, live here. Is that made for improprietivity and how do we, you know, ensure that and do we want to ensure that? I don't believe it would be in perpetuity. I think we need to understand that column health is a longstanding business in the town at a different location. So actually what they're trying to do at this point is to continue that relationship with the town by having this location where they can have a meetings in one portion of the building, office meetings, perhaps in that portion of the building as well. And at the same time, provide housing for long-term employees and themselves in the building. But that doesn't mean that in perpetuity, that would be the case. And if the matter is approved, I would certainly not want to see that as a condition in any approval. Yeah, I could just add to that, thank you Bob. We start a column health in Arlington on Mass Ave. That was our very first clinic. I also was part of our corporate office. We've outgrown the corporate office from the leadership team. So this office is designed just for the leadership team, just for those type of office interactions. And then myself, my family, we're gonna be in one of the units, Colin. And his family's gonna be in the adjoining unit. And then Ray or CFO is buying one of the middle units. So it truly is a work, live, mix use plan for us at Colin Health. Okay, thanks. And then maybe the architect, we talked a little bit about the wall that's shared. So just how I could, if you could walk me through that where it is adjoining and so I can kind of see the connectivity between the two. Sure, so I think on the page that we're currently on that bottom left image, we've got a bridge that connects the second floor of the residential building to the second floor of the office portion. So I'm not sure, Jenny, if you could just take your cursor and kind of hover over the, there you go, thank you. That's the connection is that skybridge. Okay, okay. Those are my initial questions. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. So I believe that most of the questions that I had as well have been asked by my colleagues and I've been keeping a list of the items that we will circle back on at the end of this discussion. So at this point, I think I'd like to open this up for public comment. And I would ask that any members of the public wishing to ask questions or make any statements related to this project, please use the raise hand function in the participants section at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Any member of the public wishing to speak will have up to three minutes to speak. And I'd ask that you please identify yourself by your name, first name, last name and address. So I will take the speakers in the order which the hands were raised, the first being Leah Broder. Hi, Leah Broder here from 44 Michael Street. So just down the way. And I wanted to say that I really appreciate all of the work that has gone into this and also the clear commitment to sustainable principles. I think building a project, a lead gold project in this neighborhood will be transformative. I also, in terms of considering the mixed use of this building and considering it a single building versus two buildings, I guess I would ask the board to consider the intention of the project and to recognize what is happening the other options for this parcel might be. We've had this bladed parcel here for quite some time. My concern as a neighbor is that another project might make a giant structure that takes up more of the lot. The use of the roof as green space and all of the balconies I think is pretty spectacular and will really have an impact from the street and this building is seen on all sides really at least as the neighborhood currently stands. So I think this is pretty impressive and I'm really pleased to see it. I guess the concern that I have would be about in terms of thinking about the longevity of the project and the post column health life of this project, what if it is approved as a mixed use project what the future of that currently garage structure would be and I guess the fit out is currently for office. Does that mean in perpetuity it's office or is there a possibility it could turn to commercial or retail space? I just don't understand. I don't know. I'm not familiar with the mixed use bylaws. So that's it. Thank you for your effort and presentation. Great, thank you so much for your comments. And to the question about the use in perpetuity that I think that that gets to the question that Mr. Nessie was speaking to. We certainly know how this is intended to be used now but there is no guarantee that would be a continued use at that time. Let's see, the next speaker will be Don Seltzer. All the Rachel, if there was to be a change of use I believe they would have to come back and modify the special permit. Absolutely, there is a process by but it doesn't mean that it can't be changed in the future. Thank you for that clarification, David. All right, Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair, Don Seltzer Irving Street. Initially I thought that this was an excellent proposal for mixed use, a health services office building and five residential units as a secondary use on a 16,000 square foot lot seems very reasonable and desirable. But then I saw the plans and three minutes isn't nearly enough to discuss all of the zoning problems. First, as others have pointed out, this is not mixed use. Mixed use is clearly defined as two uses in one building, not two buildings with different uses. The claim that the pedestrian bridge somehow makes it a single building is far-fetched and be real careful going down that road because it opens up all kinds of other problems with the required setbacks. Useable open space is badly miscalculated counting every tiny patch of greenery without regard to the 25 foot dimension in all directions requirement. Gross floor area is also badly miscalculated. It's hard to give an exact figure because of the missing dimensions on the plans. Again, as other members of the board have said, there is no upper story setback. When mixed use was adopted by town meeting in 2016, it came with the assurance by this board that upper story stepbacks would be required avoiding sidewalk crowding monstrosities. Monstrosities was the word of the board member at the time. The circulation parking and safety are just a complete disaster beginning with the 17 foot wide central driveway. The turning radius of most cars is such that they cannot get in or out of the garage without driving over the sidewalk opposite the garage. Even that won't be enough for bigger vehicles. Inside the garage, the parking situation will be a nightmare because the drive aisle is four feet short of what the bylaw requires. The location of walls in the narrow spaces mean that some drivers will be unable to get out of their cars because there's no room to swing the doors open. And where is the required loading space for the office building? And what is gonna happen when the UPS truck or some other delivery van pulls into the driveway? It is physically impossible for such a vehicle to turn around. They will have to back out onto sunny side blindly. And my final comment is for the architects. They have picked the worst possible spot for the solar panels in the shadow of the 36 foot tall building next door. I'd be glad to answer any questions at some other time from the board and go into specific details on these points. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Steve Revillac. Good evening, Madam Chair. Steve Revillac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. As someone said earlier, this property has been somewhat blighted for a few years. And in fact, this whole end of the street is just a lot of pavement. And I am really glad to see something happening that promises to break up that massive pavement at the end of the street. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker and last speaker will be James Fleming. We have one more hand after this. Excuse me, sorry, James Fleming. That's okay. James Fleming, 58 Oxford Street. I walk by this area a lot. My gym is right near here. And I agree with Steve Revillac that the area is pretty much just sort of a concrete, I don't know if wasteland is the right word, but it's really uninteresting. And that this building as shown on the screen is much more attractive than what's there. And personally, I find it very nice. To the architect, the applicant, my recommendation for you on parking is to reduce the number of spaces to only as much as you think you'll actually need and to not go with what's in the zoning bylaw as a hard requirement. If there really is such a need, I think you'll add them anyways. And if you don't, then I'm sure the board will be willing to work with you to reduce the number. Thank you. Thank you. So we are unfortunately coming up on time here. And I would like to request, I believe we have three hands that are currently up. If I could request that any questions that you have, if you could please submit those in writing to the board or we'd be more than happy to take your questions and comments at the end of the meeting during public comments. I apologize, we do need to wrap this up and I need some time to run through the list of questions and requests for the team before we start our warrant article meeting at eight o'clock. So I'm just going to run through Attorney NSE and the applicant team, the list of comments that I've been keeping from the board in terms of items that we'd like to see studied further. It looks like we would most likely be continuing this to a future hearing date. So what I would ask is that my fellow board members, please let me know as I finish running through these if there are any that I have missed. So the first item I have is to review the venting for the garage, whether it is to the side or rear of the building or through the roof. The next item is regarding the top level penthouse towers looking at the materiality, the location relative to the perimeter of the building and the height in terms of reducing the overall massing of the penthouse elements. Look at the balconies that are currently overhanging on the side of the building in terms of their encroachment on required setbacks. Look at the required setbacks in the zoning code at the fourth floor. Look at the parking, the tandem parking that is proposed as a trade-off for including additional usable open space, knowing that you have the possibility of looking at a TDM plan for the site. Review the FAR in the section of the code that was cited for you by Jean, whether the FAR is one versus 1.5. We have a request for a chart of the open space locations and I requested those specifically be identified for those that meet the 25 foot length requirement. We've addressed the electric vehicle charging stations that was stated that those would be included that provide a shadow study relative to the adjacent residential district, provide a planting and landscaping plan. We understand that that's currently in progress. Review the signage size and materials to ensure that those meet the current signage standards. Let's see, review the mixed use definition again for compliance and that is everything on my list. Board members, did I miss anything? Jean. You didn't miss anything, but there are two things I didn't quite get to that I'm going to add right now. In addition to the FAR on the same chart, if it's mixed use of greater than 20,000 square feet, then there's a different maximum height and maximum number of stories. So they do need to look at that also in addition. And then Mr. Nessie, a couple of times said, well, we have the authority to waive or modify some of the requirements. It'd be really helpful if he came back next time and told us all of those that he wants waived or modified. Thank you. It's like we need to come back with some what, Mr. Benson? The requirements that you think will need to be waived or modified to approve this project. And I would say the reasoning behind those, whether it's a heartbeat or a hardship. Thank you. David. I just wanted to add a couple of the comments we heard from the public. I thought they were well taken and should be investigated. One was the geometry and circulation for the parking and access to the site and whether it was actually sufficient. And the other was whether these solar panels proposed for this building may actually be shadowed by the neighboring building. Okay. So I'll add solar panel placement and the geometry and circulation of parking and site access. All right, anything else? Ken, sorry. Sorry, just the building materials. Yes, building materials. Anything else? Okay. So Jenny, I know that we have a pretty full schedule coming up if we could identify a date so that we can take a motion to continue the hearing. At this point, I would actually say that since you've requested a number of items, many of them were noted in our memo, but I would ask to see if the applicant can perhaps work with us to get maybe to the 15th, but we would have to add it at the end of our meeting. 15th of when? March. The 15th is our next meeting, but the only way for you to come back is at the end of the zoning warrant article hearings. Will, I know you are calling. Will, how are you with that? When would I need to have materials to the city? Would it be a week prior or how do you operate? So if the meeting's on the 15th, when do I, when should I get that to you? You would need to get them to the town a week prior. Yes. Fingers crossed. I think we'll do our best. If not, we can accept a continuation letter and we'll figure it out that evening and continue it from there. How about that? We will do our best. And if we need to ask for a continuance, a further continuance, we can do that. Sure. Thank you. So the 15th. Yeah. Great. Thank you. So do I hear a motion from the board to continue this, continue this docket number to March 15th? No, it's okay. Second. Okay. We will take a roll call vote. Any discussion? Okay. We'll take a roll call vote on this motion. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Jean? Yes. Melissa? And I am yes as well. So we will be continuing docket three, six, four, seven to March 15th. Thank you very much for the presentation today. We look forward to seeing you in a few weeks. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Let's see. So for our agenda items, Mr. Ineszi, I am wondering if I could move the 400 to 402 Mass Ave to the end of the meeting after our warrant article public hearings, because unfortunately I do need to begin those this evening. So we could do one of two things. We could either continue this, which I would hate to do because I know we had you come back specifically tonight. We can certainly contact you if you would like to step off until when we're getting towards the end of the warrant article public hearings. But unfortunately I do need to move to the warrant article public hearings as they were advertised for 8 p.m. Well, Ken and Cynthia, how do you feel about that? Are you there? This is Ken. I can go either way, Bob. Cynthia? Either way, I'll leave it up to Ken, whatever he feels comfortable with. Well, let's try to hang in and let's see where it goes. Okay, thank you. I'll do my best to keep moving this portion of the meeting along. Thank you very much for your flexibility. Okay, so with that, we will also move item number two on the agenda to follow the warrant article public hearings as well. All right, so with that, we will move to item three and we will now open the public hearing for the warrant articles related to the zoning bylaws for Springtown meeting. So we will be holding four nights of hearings as published in the schedule on Nova's agenda for a total of 22 warrant articles. Consistent with the past, the Redevelopment Board will be hearing from the article applicants and public wishing to speak on each of these articles as scheduled. Applicants will have three minutes to address the board. The board will then pose any questions to the applicants followed by a period for open public comment on each warrant article. Note that the board will reserve final discussion and voting on each article until the last night of hearings, which is on April 5th. Let's see. So before we move into the first item, article 39, I just would like to speak to the public hearing, how we'll be conducting the public hearing this evening. So the subject matter of the hearings is posted on the agenda. Any person wishing to address the Redevelopment Board and the subject matter of the agenda shall signify their desire to speak by raising their hand when I call on you for consideration of those items. Again, everybody will have three minutes to be able to speak. The board may receive any oral or written evidence, but such evidence is restricted to the subject matter of the agenda item. Inmaterial or unduly repetitious evidence may be excluded. Those people presenting at public hearing are requested not to applaud or otherwise express approval or disapproval of any statements made or action taking at such hearing. Hearing participants shall refrain from interrupting other speakers and conduct themselves in a civil courteous manner. And speakers should address all questions through the chair. Speakers shall not attempt to engage in debate or dialogue with the ARB members or other hearing participants. Questions may or may not be answered during this public hearing. So with that, we will move to the first article on our agenda, which is article 39, which has been inserted by the request of Christopher Loretty and 10 registered voters. Mr. Loretty, are you here with us this evening? I am, Madam Chair. Okay, wonderful. If you could begin any remarks that you've prepared, that would be fantastic. Great, thank you. Christopher Loretty, 56 Adams Street. Give us the limited time for the public to be heard. I'll try not to repeat what I wrote to the board, but I do wish to correct some misinformation that others have provided. This amendment does not create any new use restrictions. It merely clarifies that the use prohibitions already in the zoning bylaw apply to mixed uses, exactly as the ARB explained to town meeting. When the mixed use zoning bylaw amendment came before a town meeting, I offered a similar amendment based on the belief that developers could use the loose language of the definition to sneak prohibited uses into mixed use developments. The ARB responded, and I quote, that's not correct. We've worked with both inspectional services, the head of inspectional services, as well as town council, on the wording that's before you. And only the uses that are permitted in a particular district are the ones that can happen in a mixed use in that district. So just to clarify on that point, end quote. Any claims that the ARB thought it was granted permission by town meeting to include prohibited uses within mixed use developments are completely false. They're belied by ARB's own statements at town meeting. There was no need to adopt the amendment that I offered at town meeting based on what the ARB told the meeting. The town zoning bylaw provides the ARB flexibility to grant special permit subject to EDR. This amendment does not change that in any way. EDR standards are in addition to the regular special permit criteria, not in lieu of them. EDR does not allow the ARB to pick and choose which uses are special permit uses and which are not. That power belongs to town meeting. Mixed use projects go through the same EDR special permit process as any other special permit use acted upon by the ARB. They get no special EDR review. Neither town council nor anyone else has cited any case law supporting the claim that zoning bylaw requirements can be waived as part of the special permit process, absent of variance. Staff seem to misunderstand the scope of this article. Residential development is allowed in all business district as indicated in the table of use regulations. This amendment does not change that in any way. Residential uses are so allowed by the bylaw. The amendment is not limited to developments on more than one lot and has nothing to do with conflicting zoning district. It applies to all lots when mixed use is allowed. It merely says, for example, that since town meeting has determined auto body shops and welding shops are not allowed in any business district, you can't sneak them into a business district by combining them into a mixed use. The master plan was created to guide changes to the zoning bylaw. If there are additional uses, the ARB deems desirable in a particular zoning district and you only submit a warrant article to amend the table of use regulations just as it always has done so in the past. Thank you. Thank you. Before we move to the board for questions, I'd like to see if Erin from the Department of Planning has any items from the memo that was prepared that she would like to bring to the board's attention. Sorry, fumbling with the mute button. Erin's Worker Assistant Director of Planning and Community Development. I don't have anything else to add in addition to what was in the memo. I think our memo stands on its own in light of reviewing projects relative to mixed use over the course of the year since this article was first introduced to the Redevelopment Board for annual town meeting 2020. Great, thank you, Erin. Thank you. So I'll open it up to the members of the board for questions. We'll start with Ken. I have no questions. Great, next we will go to Jean. Any questions or comments? Yes, just a couple, Ms. Loretty, thank you for putting in this warrant article and for the explanation. I actually don't see any ambiguity right now in the bylaw. And I think that the board has done what's appropriate. But let me tell you what my concerns are in addition to the ones mentioned by the staff. And this came up with a project that for which we did issue a special permit which allowed two commercial office spaces and four residential units in the B1 zone. And we all thought that was a very appropriate use of the property added to the streetscape. I'm added to the town, provided a little bit more housing. But as I read your amendment, if it's adopted, that building could not have been more than three residential units, do you agree? I do, to the extent that three is limited in that zoning district. Now, if it's not part of the mixed use, that's absolutely right, yes, I would agree. So, I mean, and that's sort of, aside from what the staff mentioned, I wish you had narrowed this more because I think it's overly broad. And while I can understand, in some ways you're saying, look, we shouldn't allow certain things in certain districts. I'm not sure I agree with all of your analyses, but even if I did, I think it's overly broad for that. So maybe you could consider some modification. The other thing that I would ask you to consider is it's really bad form to put a substantive requirement in a definition, which is what you've done. And if you wanted to do this, a much better place would have been to put it in, oops, no, it wasn't my page, my page in the bylaws, but a much better place to have put it would have been in 5.2 where you could have just added something under the use regulations applicable in all or multiple districts because what you don't wanna do and what you've done is basically hidden a substantive provision in a definition. So I'd like you, if you're gonna go forward, Ms. Solaretti, to think about whether it makes more sense to move the substantive provision to 5.2 and maybe make a 5.2.5 related to mixed use. That's it. Thank you, Gene. David. I concur with Mr. Benson's comments. Also, I think that there are already one or two circumstances in the zoning bylaw where a choice was made to specifically constrain what could be in mixed use in a particular district and that if Mr. Loretty would like to propose those kinds of limitations, that would be more appropriate than this overly broad change to the definition. Thank you. Thank you, David. Melissa. I do not have questions at this time. Thank you, Melissa. And I also concur with my colleagues and just note that per discussion with Town Council on this matter as well that our current environmental design review process is oriented towards permitting projects that are appropriate for these districts. So any other questions before I open this up for public comment? Great. Any members of the public wishing to ask any questions or make any comments on this proposed warrant article, if you could please use the raise hand function. I will call on you in the order received. Please remember to identify yourself by your first, last name and address and you will have three minutes to make your comments. So the first speaker will be, I believe it's Patricia Warden. Unless Mr. Warden, I think that might be you. It is Mr. Warden. Thank you. John Warden, Jason Street. Yeah, no, I will not even take three minutes. I wonder if it would be possible for the board or Mr. Wright or somebody to summon Mr. Bonnell, wherever he is to come before the board and tell the board and the public what he meant when he said the words that Mr. Loretty quoted earlier in the meeting. Mixed use will not allow anything in the district, which is not already a permitted use in that district. And then, I mean, those were not my words, those were his because I was one of those who argued in favor of Mr. Loretty's amendment at the 2016 town meeting. And we got all these assurances from Mr. Bonnell and Mr. Kayer that don't worry about it, it's in hand. If it isn't allowed in that district, it can't happen just because we're calling it mixed use. And then, and now everybody seems to want to take the position that well, I don't know, what did he mean by those words? Because those words are not being followed and that is the whole problem here. That's why we're doing now what should have been done at 16 to nail it down. I mean, we were told, as I said, this is supposed to be a society of laws, not of men, but the town meeting thought, well, we can rely on these guys, they're a redeveloping board members. They wouldn't kid us, they wouldn't try to pull something over on us. But now, I don't know if that's true. So I would ask if that Mr. Bonnell could come back and clarify for us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Warden. I'll just address that the specific text that has been cited was part of a much larger discussion. And again, the redevelopment board believes that we are working in the manner in which the town bylaw was written. And again, it is oriented towards the permitting projects that are appropriate for these districts. So we'll move to the next speaker, Aaron Holman. Mr. Holman, you are on mute. Test, can you hear me? I can now, please, thanks. Thank you very much. I will speak, Aram Holman, H-O-L-L-M-A-N, first name A-R-A-M, ending with M as in Mary. I wish to speak in support of article 39. In doing so, I seek to limit housing in this mixed use to the three units that Gene Benson described recently. I seek to limit mixed use to the vision of retail and commercial space on the first floor with a limited quantity of housing above it because wholesale conversion of commercial space to mostly market rate housing is detrimental to our commercial sector. And it increases the already excessive dependence of the town of Arlington on the residential property tax. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Brian McBride. Brian, can you hear me? Yes, we can, thank you. Okay, thanks. Hey, I'm Brian McBride. I'm on Eastern Avenue in the Heights. So I'm just a regular citizen. I don't have a lot of them already. There have been nuances of the zoning rules, but I do have some concerns about the outside developments proposed are happening in the town. I'm concerned about the pressure from the biotech boom and Cambridge on development and other scale housing in the town. That's what brought me to the meeting tonight. And I just wanted to offer my opinion that the board and the town can find a way to manage this development appropriately. I keep the feel of the scale of the community sense of the town without over development. And I feel that this regulation may have some impact on that. Again, I don't know all the rules of the zoning system, but it does seem like there's some opportunity for unintended consequences when prohibited uses are allowed under a legal structure that perhaps I don't understand that well. I hope my message is clear. Again, I'm not familiar with the nuances, but I do have concerns about this regulation in terms of development in the town. Thank you for listening. Thank you. The next speaker will be Carl Wagner. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road in Arlington. I wanted to give a town meeting member perspective from 2016, particularly because there might be some town meeting members here, but also for the board, because not all of you were present or at least presented at the 2016 town meeting where I and many others enthusiastically voted, I think by large numbers to allow the mixed use zoning change. And we did it because we looked at sections of our retail districts in Arlington and said, oh my goodness, we want to provide accessory apartments in those business districts to promote the business districts, to help the businesses out. And we really thought that that was gonna happen. And it seems that somewhere along the line, the speakers that spoke from the ARB and from the town, and the reasons that we said yes in town meeting to that have been lost in fact, I would offer for any of the public and for the ARB who would like to see what actually happened. There is a video at mixeduse.arfr.org. You can see according, it's clear that what Mr. Loretty is proposing brings the mixed use law as it's being applied by the ARB back to the way that town meeting said yes to it, the way that it was voted. I think this is very important that we not go off the rails here. And speaking to new members and individual members of the ARB, I would hope that you don't take this article as any kind of criticism implicit or not. I don't think that's the case. I think what is being asked is to clarify that town meeting said that mixed use legislation should be a certain thing and to bring it back there and to help make the collective decisions of the ARB better going forward. There have been two or three in the past year that are not in the spirit or even the letter of the mixed use law from 2016. So please consider that. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Steve Revelak. Hello, Madam Chair. Steve Revelak, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I was a town meeting member in 2016 and I voted for the mixed use provisions. And I also voted against the amendment which is substantially similar to the current Article 39. Now I cannot speak for town meetings a whole but I can explain the rationale for my own individual votes. The reason I voted the way I did was largely because I knew that every mixed use project would come up for environmental design review and it would have the public hearing process that it entailed, that EDR entails. So there's nothing done by right here. You go to a hearing and you apply for a special permit. I think the board has done a good job using its discretion. I like the projects that have been permitted so far and I hope to see more of them in the future. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. This should really be an easy one for the board to support. It should be viewed in the same way as many other administrative changes that fix faulty wording in the bylaw. In this case, it is the unintended ambiguous language of the 2016 mixed use bylaw. The two board members who presented this article before town meeting were crystal clear in the intent. Only the uses that are permitted in a particular district are the ones that can happen in a mixed use in that district. The same words were repeated over and over again at town meeting. I could play that recording right now, but I trust that all the board members have viewed the video clip. Certainly all town meeting members are going to get to view it for spring town meeting. Another speaker this evening has claimed that the zoning bylaws are really just guidelines that the board has the flexibility to simply disregard any portions passed by town meeting that it finds inconvenient. We will see how town meeting members respond to that argument. The flexibility that is spoken of only applies to the particular qualitative standards listed in the EDR process. It is absurd to suggest that it applies broadly to the entire zoning bylaw, in particular to the table of uses. The flawed interpretation that mixed use means any two uses in any business district is diametrically opposite of what was promised to town meeting. It is really the duty of this board to fix that problem and to amend the language of the bylaw to reflect what town meeting actually approved in 2016. To shirk that duty and recommend no action on this is going to cause great harm to the credibility of this board when it speaks at future town meetings. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak on this article? All right. Any other questions or comments from members of the board? And I apologize. I'm trying to skip through to see if I see any. Okay. Seeing none, we will close comment on article 29. Excuse me. Sorry. I need to get back to my agenda. 39. 39. Thank you. The screen has the next one. Thank you. So the next item on the agenda is article 40 and this article was submitted by John Warden and 10 registered voters. So Mr. Warden, if you would like to speak on this, you may have three minutes to address the board. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, John Warden, Jason Street. And I sent a memo to the board describing the, what I had in mind here. If you didn't all see it or read it, I'll be glad to read it to you. We all received the items that were submitted with this. So any summary comments you have, otherwise we'd be happy to just discuss any comments with you. Well, I, okay. Well, if you read the memo, you know what the position is, that the law presently provides that as of right, doesn't say as of right, but it's not specified. Otherwise, someone who has a building with both commercial and residential units in it may take a commercial unit and turn it into a residential unit. And it seems to me that the two aspects really, one, that that should be by special permit since it was special permit to allow that building to exist in first place. And two, that if we're gonna create more residential units in this town, the only kind of residential units we need in this town are affordable units. And so we should, and that is the other aspect of this article. And I would say that, you know, there's a lot of talk about, a lot of people give lip service to affordable housing. But when the rubber hits the road, where is it? We look for excuses to why we can't do it. It's not practical, it's not just, it's not that. But we never would have got the inclusionary zoning bylaw through if a bunch of people had not felt that we really have to do something positive about this and really push affordable housing because that's what we need. And I just point to the building, that building in Summer Street, it's supposedly a mixed use building. Well, 11 residential units, so the developer only had to provide one affordable. And one commercial unit, the developer's own office. And so under the laws it stands now, he could convert that office into another residential unit. And that is 12, which would have required affordable housing had he done it that way in the first place. So it illustrates rather dramatically not only the folly of the mixed use, the way you manipulated the mixed use bylaw, but the way the inclusionary zoning bylaw is being manipulated. So this is designed to at least have a public comment on the thing and if something must go residential, but let's do it the kind of residential that we need in this town, not more luxury apartments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Warden. Erin, did you have anything that you would like to add other than what was contained in your memo? No, I don't have anything to add in addition to what was in the memo. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Erin. So we will run through the members of the board for any questions or comments related to this warrant article. I'll start with Ken. Thank you, Rachel. No, I used to have two comments. One is, yes, we do need more affordable units and these affordable units are achieved in two ways. One in the public sector, which Pam and her nonprofit organizations are doing a great job on. And yellow is the private sector, which is the inclusionary. And that is the two avenues we have for affordable housing, but I would disagree with Mr. Warden saying that's all we need. I think we need a balanced set of housing, which we'd include workforce housing, the teachers, the firemen, the policemen that can live in this town, if they work in this town. And I don't think just by building affordable is enough. I think we got to do a broad range. And that's all I have. Thank you, Ken. Jean? Thank you. I agree with what the staff wrote in their comments and I agree with what Kindra said. I've spent much of my adult life being an advocate for affordable housing, but I also, as a result of that, understand the realities of what it takes to get affordable housing in this town or anywhere in the metropolitan area. And what this would basically do is serve to calcify development and progress in the town in some pretty bad ways. In addition, I believe it evinces a misunderstanding of how things work. Let's take the Summer Street Project as just one example. It needed a special permit because it was mixed use. They just can't convert it all to residential because it would be in violation of the special permit. Similarly, in this particular situation, the part that Mr. Warden proposes to change is one where either people have the right to have a residential units there or they have to go in for a special permit anyhow. So it doesn't serve the purpose of creating more affordable housing. It does serve the purpose of making progress on all sorts of housing more difficult in the town. And I agree with what Mr. Lau and the staff had to say in response to this article. Thank you, Jean. Anything else? Okay. David. I will agree with the staff and the comments of my colleagues and not repeat them. And simply ask that if Mr. Warden has more information on how the economics would work to allow for housing development at all, even aside from affordable housing, if this change were made, I would be happy to hear that information from him. Thank you, David. Melissa. Thank you. I guess I'm still learning about kind of where our bylaws are on this. I mean, I think in terms of affordable housing, at least something I wanna keep in mind is kind of the end goal with it in terms of helping people. And so it's also, I think someone mentioned, the housing options created, meaning small and different sizes, as well as capital A affordable, lower case affordable housing. So strategies for across the board on that is kind of things I'm thinking about. So I have to consider this a little bit more. Thank you. And I also agree with my colleagues and don't have anything further to add. So any other comments before I open this up to public comment? Okay. Seeing none, I will open this article 40 up to public comment. Any member of the public wishing to speak on this article, please use the raise hand function in Zoom. You will have three minutes to speak and I will remind you to please introduce yourself by your first, last name and address. So the first speaker will be Judith Garber. Hi, can you hear me all right? Yes, we can. Thank you. Yeah, Judith Garber, Massachusetts Avenue. I would just be curious for a little more clarification from the redevelopment board about how requiring more affordable housing will make it harder to create more housing. Thank you. Thank you. I don't believe that, Jean, that I think that that comment was specific for some of the comments you made, although I don't think that that was the intent of your comment. Did you wish to respond? Yeah, I think either I slightly misspoke or Judith slightly misunderstood what I said. I didn't say that the creation of more affordable housing would lead to other sorts of housing. I said that if you put this in place, you wouldn't get either because it's not financially feasible for affordable under the circumstances. So what you could get is somebody who wants to put in, let's say a market rate unit that wouldn't be able to do it as a result of that. It's not going to force people into doing affordable housing because now they're going to choose affordable housing or no affordable housing. Under this proposal, they can't put in market rate, they can't put in workforce housing, anything like that. Okay, that helps clarify. Thank you. Okay. Thank you both. The next speaker will be Carl Wagner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Carl Wagner, 30 Edge Hill Road for members of the public as well as the ARB. I'm sorry to be speaking on two items. Consecutively, and I did not intend to, but as there are not others that are commenting on Mr. Warden's reasonable amendment article here, I just wanted to put in my understanding of why this is so important. People in the public may not know that in 2019, the town meeting overwhelmingly said no to many so-called density or developer bonuses. In other words, large buildings with much larger height and envelope size, much less setback on the street, fewer parking requirements, et cetera. It goes on and on, you can look at 2019. However, those things that we said no to for apartment buildings and for large new structures, those things are basically in mixed use law. So developers can build large mixed use buildings with all those things we said no to for regular apartment buildings in 2019, as long as they do this accessory apartments and retailer or commercial with it. And as we talked about in article 39, there's a danger that the spirit of the law is making accessory businesses for large apartment buildings. And what I think Mr. Warden is trying to say here is if the developer or the owner of the building says, oh, I couldn't rent out those few retail spaces that you forced me to make, I'd like to convert the building to entirely residential or more residential. Mr. Warden is saying, well, if the law or you are gonna allow them to do that or whoever it is that will allow them to do that, the conversion away from mixed use to entirely or nearly entirely residential has to go to lower the cost of living in Arlington. It has to result in more affordability because as we know, the apartment building that's between the high school and the stop and shop, those units rent at $3,000 a month, which is a lot more than the average of the old apartments here. And so Mr. Warden's amendment is to keep developers from misusing the zoning bylaw mixed use to make large apartment buildings that they could not make under the 2019 laws. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Steve Rovellac. Hello, Madam Chair, Steve Rovellac, 111 Sunnyside Avenue. I'm gonna be a little blunt. There are two reasons why I have seen, I've seen people propose affordable housing provisions for two reasons. One of them is to encourage the production of low and moderate income housing, which is great. Another one is to discourage the production of any housing whatsoever, whether it's affordable or not. So when you require units to be statutory capital A affordable, it generally means that the person who builds it is likely to lose money on it. And you need something else to make the economics work out. So a restriction without something to compensate for the economics is just a barrier. Now, I mean, when our bylaw was passed in the mid-70s, there was a big concern at the time about population growth, a proliferation of apartments. And we changed the bylaws to basically ensure to limit the opportunity for population growth by limiting the amount of housing. I mean, I see this proposal as going in that direction. And I don't necessarily think that, that strategy of 45 years ago is really helping us to take advantage of the economic growth in the region. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Matthew Owen. I am Matthew Owen, 164 Forest Street. And I'd just like to echo what the board members have been saying about this. I think most attempts to sort of limit housing with the idea that more of it should be affordable just usually has the effect intended or not to reduce the total amount of housing and not actually encourage the building of affordable housing. And I would disagree with part of the premise of this in that Arlington isn't in need of market rate housing in addition to affordable, I think it needs both of those. And we should be doing whatever we can to encourage the building of both market rate and affordable. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Elizabeth Dre. Thank you, Madam Chair. Elizabeth Dre, town meeting member precinct eight. I admit to be new to all of these zoning discussions and I'm trying to learn. But I think that I'm not understanding Mr. Revilex's connection or statement that people who are, there's sort of these two arguments for people who wanna get to affordable housing and one of them is working to discontinue the production of any housing. And I'm not really sure how that relates to this particular article or an article because this housing is already built. So it wouldn't prevent the building of this apartment building. And what I'm understanding is then when the builder decides to or interchange the idea of changing and the mixed use the commercial space because they can't rent it or for whatever reason they wanna change it to make a choice to change that to an apartment. Then that's when this is applied. That's when that option is given but only if it's affordable housing. So it's not preventing the builder from building. It's just when they're about to make a decision keep it commercial or move it to housing that's the decision to make. And if we are serious in Arlington about affordable housing then we need to do some really specific measures to get there. And this seems a way to do it. And I do see that builders build just the limit. They build right under so that they don't have to have more affordable housing and that disturbs me that they can get around that in this venue. So I would encourage you to support it. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is James Fleming. Thank you. James Fleming, 58 Oxford Street. This is a clarification on a comment that Carl Wagner made about new construction rents being higher specifically the building across from the high school being $3,000 a month. New construction can't be reused as your baseline for what rent is because the developer has a mortgage. They have capital costs that they've spent. They need to get the money back over a fixed period of time. So they have to charge higher rent. If you look at older buildings they rent for lower because they've been around for 100 years that no one's paying a mortgage on it they're just paying the taxes. So if you're going to use cost comparison you have to pick something that's more reasonable or you have to say, well, what's the alternative for something that's recently built? Thank you. Thank you. Any other, it looks like we have Aram Holman. Aram Holman, 12 Whitmore Street. I am speaking in favor of article 40. A brief response to Mr. Law who wants workforce housing, the affordable housing which is being built in Arlington which I think we can all admit is nowhere near adequate and promises to never be adequate into the far future really isn't affordable. It really is your workforce housing for people in the lower middle and middle class making say on the order to 60 to $80,000 a year. I don't think that's really what was envisioned by affordable housing. So I think we ought to define our terms a little bit more precisely before we start banding around concepts of what the appropriate AMI is for it. I'm speaking in favor of it for other reasons as well my priority as an Arlington resident is what the town needs most of all is affordable housing and more commercial space and our commercial space is continued to either stagnate or decline for about the 20 plus years that I have lived in Arlington. At the same time as we have seen more market rate housing go up for various reasons including some which speakers have mentioned the costs have gone up. This article is basically just gonna limit the ability of the Arlington Redevelopment Board to allow by special permit private property owners to convert existing commercial space into densely packed residential spaces that lacks the setbacks normally associated with residential housing to parse that more simply inferior second class housing. This is really a gross abuse of the mixed use bylaw which we talked about earlier which envisioned a mix of commercial retail space on the first floor with residential space above. Instead, this is allowing the ARB to convert commercial spaces to almost completely residential use with a minimal token and often non-viable commercial space remaining as a SOP to the concept of mixed use and other people have referred to the token offices proposed and this violates one of the basic purposes of zoning to distinguish between residential and commercial use. On top of it, it exempts the development from setback regulations, typically required residential spaces, the kind of things which make decent housing, a certain amount of green space, a certain amount of parking. Article 40 attempts to limit this damage. It specifies that these conversions can be exempted if and only if the residential units to be constructed are entirely affordable. And again, this is what Arlington needs. This is consistent with our need for affordable housing. It is consistent with our need for more commercial space. We should not allow market-driven conversion and it really is market-driven conversion. Let's not allow the sorry excuses of, oh, I can't rent the space. That's not what it's about. This is market-driven conversion of commercial space into residential space and at the very least and I don't approve of it, but at the very least, if we're going to do that, it ought to be affordable housing. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other members as a public wishing to comment? Seeing none, we will close public comment on article 40. Any further questions or comments from the board before we move on to the next article? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on to article 34. So this article is a zoning by law amendment related to marijuana uses. And I will turn this over to Erin for the presentation of the article. Thanks, Rachel. I'll quickly summarize what is in the memo. So in late 2020, the Cannabis Control Commission had opened a comment period on updates to the regulations for recreational use and medical use of marijuana and recently approved and codified updates to the regulations in early January. So this amendment takes care of two items. The first more simple piece of it is to update certain definitions, update citations that are included in the current zoning by-law to update it to the new regulations that were codified and also bring our by-law into compliance with how the Cannabis Control Commission's regulations require us to, or cities and towns to measure the buffer area. So those are the simpler items. First, the more complicated part of the amendment is dealing with delivery of product to consumers. So the Cannabis Control Commission created two license types, the marijuana courier and the marijuana delivery operator. I will note that these license types are only available for economic empowerment applicants and social equity program participants for at least three years. Neither the two, well, the currently operating dispensary in the Heights nor the recently permitted dispensary on Broadway fall into these categories nor do the two other retail establishments that are under consideration for that third host community agreement for a retail space fall into that category. But practically speaking, these two new license types then create three sort of ways to deliver product to consumers. The first one, as I noted in my memo is the Retail Direct Delivery. So this would be a retail shop actually delivering product from their dispensary to the consumer with the consumer not having to come into the store. The second practical use is the third party delivery similar to ordering a pizza or other sorts of food items through Uber Eats or through Grubhub. It is a third party. They pick up the product from the establishment and then deliver it to the consumer. And then the last item is basically a distribution center. So the distribution center is similar to a fulfillment center where that establishment has product for many different sellers. Consumers can visit their website, select what they want and that establishment would then deliver the item to the consumer. I will note that the delivery only or the marijuana delivery operator does not allow public facing space. It is entirely basically online as you might shop on Amazon. So how it breaks down for our zoning amendment is that I created a use marijuana delivery only retailer. I defined it per the regulations and because the land use type is very similar to a production facility, I allowed it by special permit. The special permit is always in front of the redevelopment board in the B4 and industrial district. There's also something known as a delivery endorsement. So the different establishment types can receive a delivery endorsement from the cannabis control commission and that would allow them to pursue a career license. And then the third party delivery, the Uber Eats style delivery, that is all licensing that is handled by the cannabis control commission. Essentially the only space that might be used in Arlington is office space for that so that delivery drivers have a place to rest, recharge and move forward. So I think I'll stop here. I'm happy to answer questions from the board members and from the public on the specifics of this amendment. Great, thank you, Erin. And thanks for all the specificity in the memo. I'll start with Ken for any questions or comments. No, I don't have no questions. Thank you, Ken. Jean? This is a really excellent job in cooperating the new regulations and some of the changes in the regulations. The only thing I'm curious about, I'm not opposed to it. I'm just wondering of the choice of allowing the marijuana delivery only retailer in B4 and industrial zones, but not in other places. Can you speak to that a little more, Erin? Yeah, so the land use type, basically being a large warehouse lends itself to our existing use category of a marijuana production facility, which is allowed in the B4 and the industrial districts. In these areas, you might have the building type or the space to be able to have a warehouse type facility and then associated parking. It didn't feel that it would be appropriate in some of the other zoning districts. Again, following the zoning that we put into place in late 2018, which did locate the production facilities in the B4 and the industrial districts. So really being that the land use types of those two uses were very similar, that's why I selected to limit it to B4 and industrial. Okay, sounds good, thanks so much. Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Erin. David. Thank you, Erin. This is very thorough. Just to be clear, we as a town don't have a choice of whether to come into compliance with these regulations we have to, where we have a choice is in choosing a reasonable way to implement the new requirements. And I think that's what you've done here as you've explained. So I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you, that is correct in the way that you framed it. We can tinker with it, but we need to allow these uses. Great, thank you, David. Melissa, any questions? Yeah, thank you, Erin. I think I'm just curious, has there been a demand for this? Have you received calls for these uses and to what degree? Recently, within probably the last quarter of 2020, we did hear from an establishment that was looking to do delivery. It would really be, it was based on the previous type of delivery or transport operator license, where the only use would really be an office space. The way that the zoning is written is that any sort of establishment needs to abide by the buffers that are included in the existing zoning. And unfortunately, the contact couldn't figure out a good spot for their use with some of the limitations. But beyond that, on these new type of uses, we have not received any increase. Again, it is limited to participants in those two equity programs that I had mentioned and our existing dispensaries do not fall into that category. Thank you. Great, thank you both. Any further questions before I open this up for public comments? All right, seeing none, we will now open this up for public comments. Any member of the public wishing to speak on this article, please use the raise hand function. All right, seeing none, we will close a public comment for Article 34. Thank you, Erin. We'll now move to any further questions from the board before we move to the next article. Great, so we will now move to Article 28, which is the Zoning By-law Amendment for Affordable Housing Requirements. And Erin will also present this article. So as noted in the memo, the section 30 of Chapter 219 of the Acts of 2016 broadened the time period of special permits from two years to three years. And while the section in 335B does correctly reference three years, we noted that this reference to two years should be updated considering the lifetime of a special permit. So it definitely falls into the category of sort of a minor amendment. Great, thank you, Erin. Ken, any questions? Nope, it's mainly administrative. Great, Jean? Yeah, this is fine, it needs to be done. David? No questions. Melissa? Okay. I will now open this up for public comment. Any members of the public wishing to speak, please use the raise hand function. Okay, seeing none, we will move on to the next article. So that is Article 29, Apartment Conversion. Erin, I'll turn it back over to you. So it was pointed out at probably since 2020 is like the missing year now. And it has far back as 2019 that there's no definition for Apartment Conversion, which is a use that is included in our table of uses. So using some clues in the zoning byline, namely the description of the R4 townhouse district and the B1 neighborhood district, the staff and I crafted this definition that explains essentially what an Apartment Conversion is, is the conversion of a larger single or two family structure to divide it up into apartments with no exterior changes. Great, thank you. Ken, any questions? Nope. Jean? Yeah, this is another one that needs to be done. I do have a suggestion though, and I know we went through this some time ago and I maybe should have raised it then, which I'm just wondering whether it shouldn't simply be designed for one family or two family use, but also for duplex and three family. Because if you look at what we're allowing through the zoning bylaw, Apartment Conversion could theoretically be of a duplex or a three family. So I think this is needed. I think we just think about slightly amending this. So it includes those other two types of housing because there is a technical difference in the bylaw between two family and duplex. We should probably put three family in. But with that suggested change, I think this is another thing that's just needed to tighten up the understanding of the bylaw. Thank you, Jean. Erin, any questions or comments back to Jean on that suggestion? No, I don't have, I think it would be fine. It would be all inclusive just for those types of structures that might exist in those zoning districts. Great, thank you. David? I have no further comments. Okay, Melissa. You're good, all right. So we will now open this up for any public questions or comments. Okay, seeing none, we will move on from Article 29 to Article 30, which is the zoning bylaw amendment related to gross floor area. Erin, I'll turn it back over to you. So this amendment includes language in Section 5322 and in the definitions of open space, landscaped open space and usable open space that explicitly explain how to calculate both of those required areas, which is off of the gross floor area, not the lot size. Thank you. Ken, any questions? No, this is a small correction, isn't it? Yes, I would say it sort of falls into that category, but it does require inserting language in a couple of locations. Yep, I'm fine. Thanks, Ken, Jean. Why don't you go to David first, because I just thought of something and I want to look something up. Sure, David. Just wanted to clarify, this was something that was lost during the bylaw recodification and we're bringing it back in. Is that correct, Erin? Yes, I believe that in the prior, the prerecordified bylaw in the Table of Density and Dimensional Regulations, there was a note that it's based on the gross floor area. So it brings that back forward with a circular reference, so it's especially explicit. Yeah, I think just for the benefit of any members of the public who are on who may not have been following the zoning bylaw recodification that happened now a few years ago, which was a complete major recodification of the zoning bylaw. We have found a number of items where in the course of doing such a major reorganization, we have inadvertently left out pieces here and there. And things like this, and I think maybe some of the other ones that we'll discuss later would fall into that category. So this is basically cleaning up after a very complex process that we went through. Great, thanks, David. Jean, did you find what you were looking for? Yeah, I did. And I mean, yeah, David's got it right. This is just clarifying because it was a little bit unclear about what one used to calculate usable open space and landscape open space. So this just clarifies what it is, it's fine. Yeah, it's needed and it's exactly what is needed. Great, thank you. Melissa? Okay, Ken? Yeah, I should look back at my notes. There's one thing I do question. Under 5.3.22, gross floor area. Yep, right there. Elevator shafts and stairwells on each floor. I thought we had talked before that elevator shafts and stairwells would be kind of on the ground floor only because they're a vertical hole all the way up. I'm not familiar with that conversation. Maybe Jenny can jump in. So I think this is in the existing bylaw. We're not adding this text. The only thing that's being added is right here. So that's already existing in the zoning bylaw right now, Ken. Okay, all right, somehow my notes, somehow saying that I thought we talked about the last time we did the qualification. Did we not talk about that? No, not in my, I do not recall that, no. Okay, never mind. But this language right here, very important to note for anybody following along. This is not, we're not adding something new about gross floor area. The parts that are new are underlined throughout this document. Anything that's underlined is new and anything that we're striking is obviously crossed out. But everything else is existing text in the existing zoning bylaw. Thank you. Great, thank you for the clarification, Jenny. Any other comments before we open it up for public questions and comments? Okay, any member of the public wishing to speak or comment on this article, please raise your hand. I see one person, please remember that you will have three minutes to address this article and please remember to identify yourself by your first, last name and address. John Warden. He's still muted. I asked him to unmute. If you could unmute, please, thank you. How's that? Is that better? Much better, thank you. All right, now start to clock over again, please. I sure will. I probably want to not take three minutes. No, I just want to say with respect to the things left out in the recodification, I participated in that process. And one of the things that I urged and pleaded for without success is that you do what we did when a volunteer committee of this town recodified the town bylaws and that is the cross-reference table in which you take each section of the old bylaw and show where it is in the new bylaw. And that gives you a cross check to be sure you got everything. Now, the board and the recodification people declined to do that. They did a sort of reverse one, which was not at all helpful, was a little bit helpful, but not very. And had that been done, we can't go back and fix past mistakes. If that been done, things like this and whatever other things are still lurking out there that were missed would not have happened. So it proves the necessity of getting confident people to do this recodification business and having that cross-reference table, I think is invaluable because that way you don't lose things. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions on this before we move on to the next article? Okay. The next article is article 31, Zoning Bylaw Amendment related to prohibited uses. And I'll turn this over to Erin. Thank you. So this was a suggestion that came in to include something explicit in the bylaw that indicated that uses without a Y as a yes, this use is allowed or an SP, a special permit is required should be noted as a prohibited use. In addition to what is stated in the memo, I'd also like to point out that this is similar to some comments that we heard on Mr. Loretty's article earlier this evening. And this may in fact have the same intended or the same effect or outcome as Mr. Loretty's article, although a little bit more expansive. Great, thank you, Erin. Ken. No, no comments. Okay, David. No comments. Jean. I mean, I think it was understood that if it didn't have a Y or an SP, then you couldn't do it. So it just in a sense makes it clear that that's what it was. Great, Melissa. No comment. Great, thank you. So we will open this up to the public for any questions or comments. Okay, seeing none, we will move on to the next article, which is Article 32, the Zoning By-law Amendment for other districts, dimensional and density regulations, Erin. So the tables of density and dimensional regulations are split up between the residential districts, the business districts, and then all the other districts. This legend appears in the section before the table of density and dimensional regulations for residential districts and business districts, but is missing for the third group of districts, which are the other districts. So this amendment just pastes that same exact legend into that section for consistency's sake. Great, thank you. Ken, any questions? Nope. Jean? No. David? No. Melissa? No. Okay, I'll open up to the public. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, we will move into Article 33, which are the administrative amendments for the Zoning By-laws. Erin? Thank you. So this is five separate amendments all built into one that we've turned termed administrative amendments. There are, as part of this, we are updating references from the Board of Selectmen to the Select Board, removing gendered terms in the Zoning By-law and using gender-neutral terms, updating a section reference, inserting a date, and making a cross-reference update consistent with an article that was passed at the 2019 Annual Tell Meeting that defined the attic space that counts towards gross floor area. It had been seven feet, three inches, that article that passed in 2019, brought it down to seven feet, which, if I am remembering correctly, is consistent with building code. This was inadvertently forgotten during that Tell Meeting. Thank you, Erin. Ken, any questions? No. Jean? No, thank you. David? No questions. Melissa? No, no questions, thanks. Great, and I do not have any questions either. Open it up to members of the public for any questions or comments. Okay, Seeing none, that brings us to the end of our zoning article, our warrant articles, that we are reviewing this evening. Jean? Just a quick thing, should we just take a vote to close public? It's the next thing on my list to do. Absolutely, no, no problem. So any other questions from the board before we move on to taking a motion to close the public hearing? I move. So move. Okay. Second. Okay, so, and I just want to be clear, the motion actually needs to be to continue the open public hearing to the next scheduled date, which is Monday, March 15th. So if we could remove, that would be appreciated. I should have stated it before. We got into the... Well, to continue it, but also to close it on the articles that we've just reviewed. I believe that we don't actually close them on these articles. We keep them open. Members of the public can still speak to these articles while the hearings are open in general. Well, I'll withdraw my motion and put in the new motion to continue this to the next day. Great, thank you. I'll second that. Thank you. Any discussion? All right, I'll take a roll call vote. Ken. Yes. David. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yes. And I am yes as well. So the open public hearing is continued to Monday, March 15th. All right. So now we will move back to the earlier items in our agenda. Thank you, everyone, for allowing us to move through that section so quickly. And thank you, Mr. Nessie, for sticking with us through that portion. We will reopen docket number 3638-400-402 Massachusetts Avenue, a continued public hearing. Yes. Thank you. I'm accompanied by Cynthia Pascuto, one of the principals in Ken File, the architect. I'm not going to get into a long position with respect to the background. You've all heard it at this point. What I did do is I submitted a memo. And in that memo, I basically indicated that both myself and my client were under the impression, perhaps not with all of you, but that there might be a sentiment if we came back with three residential units, rather than four, that there might be an accompanying, more welcoming position on the part with the members of the ARB with respect to our proposal. Now, we have made some changes to the plan, can go through those. I'll outline those in my memo to you folks, and I'll let Ken talk about those. We did also discuss, of course, the last time the building itself and whether plans had ever surfaced with regard to what happened after the fire in or about 1980. I indicated that we were not able to locate any plans in any event. I brought to the attention of the board chapter 48, section seven, which indicates that if the building was constructed as it was in 1980, after that zoning board of appeals decision, and the building department did not come along within 10 years of the date the building was constructed, then the building inspector could not enforce any violations which may have occurred. And I indicated in my memo that I did not concede that any violations had occurred. The result of chapter 48, section seven, is that the property becomes legally, not just non-conforming, non-conforming, but legally non-conforming because there's nothing that can be done to basically disturb the property. It's now protected under chapter 48, section seven. So with that, Ken, why don't you jump in and explain the changes on the plan? Ken? Hello? You might be muted. Ken, are you there? Well, I can talk about the changes on the plan. The revised plans and based on my memo show, the first level of the building will contain an office unit on the right-hand side of the building fronting on massive and a residential unit on the left-hand side. That's a change from the original plan. The second level will contain two residential units. Each of the units are going to be one-bedroom units when I'm looking for any more than one-bedroom units. The bicycle storage area will be located on the first floor rather than in the basement. And that's a change from the original plan. We're now walking up, Mr. Watkins, rather than walking down with respect to the interior bicycle storage. We'll also have bicycle storage on the exterior of the building as well. We are still going to provide an electric motor, motor vehicle charging station on the plans. And that's shown on the plans. Jenny, if you can show us that on the plans, that's shown on the plans. And we also show a covered trash enclosure as well. So I also made the argument to the board that with respect to some of the items we're proposing to the board, such as the bicycle parking, the electrical charging station, if the matter goes back to the zoning board of appeal, and if it does, we would still have, we would have three office units and two residential units. They can't take that away from us. We have that. That's fixed in concrete, okay? What I'm suggesting is that this is an opportunity for the ARB to acquire jurisdiction of this property, because right now the jurisdiction would reside with the zoning board of appeal. I'm suggesting that now is the opportunity for the ARB to take its jurisdiction back because the property fronts on Mass App. This is a logical site for jurisdiction to reside with the ARB. So I'm suggesting to the board if the matter goes back to the ARB, to the zoning board, we would not have an obligation to provide bicycle parking. We would not have an obligation to provide an electrical charging station. So I'm suggesting to the members of the board that it makes eminent good sense for the interests of the town and for the interest of the site itself to have the ARB be the authority that basically oversees what happens as far as the property is concerned. So we're asking that the board approve the plans for three residential units, not for three and two office units. Thank you, Mr. Nessie. I will ask any other comments, Mr. Nessie, or you all? No, I do not. Ken, are you around? Ken, I guess you've gone. Okay, great. So, Ken, we'll start with you. And if you could just identify whether you were able to view the video of the public hearing from last week. Yes, I was. I like to apologize. Personal issue came up and I could not make the meeting. I apologize for that. But I was able to listen to last week's meeting and my opinion on this is that I'm in favor of granting this request for three units of apartments and two office spaces. I think what I'm trying to say is I like to keep on continuing, encouraging, maintaining upkeep of this building since it's right on Mass Ave. And it's a historic building. It's gonna be there for everybody to see. I don't want this, the economics of this building way by because of we can't get the rent and we can't get the occupancy that they're not gonna put any money into upkeep of the building or maintaining anything here. So I think I'm leading toward the favor of granting this relief. I think having two office spaces on the first floor is still maintaining what we're trying to do here. We're just talking about one added apartment building and that's down the basement. Is that correct, Robert? That is correct, Mr. Kent. No, I'm sorry. Hi, Cynthia is incorrect. The residential unit would be on the first floor across from the commercial unit. The reason being that tenants do not like when there is a business above them because that business could be there during when they're sleeping. And so that is why the basement would remain the office unit and the first floor would be the residential. I'm sorry about that introduction. That's correct, that's correct. Is that where it's shown on the drawings? Or I must read that. It should be on the second sheet. This is Ken Fowle, a partner at LYF Architects. That's just the existing. If we go to the second, there we go. That's the, this is the proposed floor plan where the apartment would be on the first floor with the new bike storage. I see, and then the basement would have the existing office space that exists currently today. Okay, so that would not change. That is correct. All right, I see, I see it makes your argument a little weaker, but I can see that. I have no issues. Thank you, Ken, Jean. Yes, yeah, thank you for making these changes. I think that they now, meet what I consider the minimum requirements by having three residential units and two office units. I think we'll have to allow the bicycle parking up a few steps, which we have the authority to do because it's much better than the previous one, which was sort of down a set of winding stairs. I think though, and maybe somebody correct me, I think only five parking spaces are now required. And I think there was some discussion at one of the earlier meetings about removing one of the parking spaces and maybe putting in a little bit of green space. So I think somebody can count, but I think it's one space per each apartment unit and then one space for each office. So that would be five. So I'd say we had talked about having one, oh, this one only has five, so you've done it already. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm okay. I think I'm okay with this with, we will have to okay the few steps up and down for the bike storage. I think it's a much better place. The only thing that I would ask be added in the conditions is that the basement office unit be constructed and let out to rent no later than the first floor apartment unit because I wouldn't want the incentive to be, oh, we'll get to the office unit sometime in the distant future. So with that potential condition, I would be okay with the other conditions we discussed. Thank you, Jean. David. Just a question, is that condition necessary? I thought the basement office unit already exists and would be unchanged. That is correct. The basement unit is existing as it is right now. Oh, it won't change, huh? So that being said, I appreciate the work that you all have done to respond to our various comments throughout this process. And while I think it would have been nice to be able to have both of the first floor units remain commercial, I understand and don't disagree with the comments that the owner made. And I think this project has now proposed more reasonably falls within the intention of the mixed use by law and I'm inclined to approve it in this form. Thank you, David. I also agree, you know, while I wish the two offices were in the first floor, I understand the decision that was made, but I appreciate the changes that were made in this last round of revisions and also feel much more comfortable with this. And Melissa, because you were not with us for the beginning, unfortunately, we'll have to ask you to recase yourself from this discussion. Okay, any other questions or comments from the board before we open this up for public comment? Okay, any members of the public wishing to speak on this item, please use the raise hand function and I will call on you. You will have three minutes to speak. Don Seltzer, one other, please remember to introduce yourself by your first last name and address. Sure, Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I like to say it's good to see that this project has been scaled back to three apartments because that's a use that is allowed in B1 districts. Last week, the applicant was very concerned that they could not make money with this arrangement. I wanna reassure them that with the some numbers provided to this board by their own attorney that it is very much possible. Last October, Mr. Nessie was representing a similar project in a B1 district in Heights. And he told the board that small office space was very viable in Arlington. He consulted with realtor Bob Bowe's and was confident that 475 square feet of space could rent for about $1,000 per month. Using an even more conservative rent figure that is on the low end of the range for Arlington, the applicant can be reasonably expect to rent his two office spaces for about $3,100 per month combined. The three apartments should bring in at least $5,800 per month. So the total expected revenue for the building is nearly $9,000 per month. On the expense side, the taxes on this property are $1,123 per month. The mortgage, well, that was paid off 25 years ago in 1995. There are, of course, other expenses, but the gap between revenue of 9,000 per month and taxes of 1,100 should be able to cover those costs, I would think. One other note, if the board decides to approve it, I would suggest that in the conditions, all three apartment units be required to get certificates of occupancy since none of them have it at this point. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Aram Holman. Test, yes. We can hear you, yes. Aram Holman, 12 Whitmore Street. I live nearby and so I am concerned about this. I have two questions. May I ask them as questions? Sure, I can certainly direct them to the applicant if it makes sense to do so. Sure, when I looked at the plans this summer on the upper stories, they were declaring what would otherwise be bedrooms as studies. Are they still calling these offices or studies rather than bedrooms in order to reduce the property tax liability? So we addressed that, Mr. Holman, last week, we are not looking at the assessing records of attorney and SE, I will turn it over to you, but I believe that these are offices, they're labeled as offices in your... As they're labeled on the plan is what they are, okay? That's all I'm going to say about that. Thank you. Mr. Holman, you said you had a second question. Yeah, okay. I'll see if I can declare one of my bedrooms as an office too. The other question I have is about parking and this was concerned earlier, how are people, how are unrelated parties going to coordinate the movements of their cars? And this was brought into the forefront of my awareness because on my street, Whittemore Street, right nearby, we have a politically-wired landlord who was asking that her tenants be exempted from the four-hour parking rule that applies to Whittemore Street. And her complaint is that as you see here, there is a driveway with three cars parked tandem. And her complaint is that her own tenants have trouble coordinating, therefore they keep their cars on the street, which the neighbors don't like, and to which they get tickets. So she's asking for an exemption for them. Town Manager Chaplain in a meeting of the Parking Advisory Committee was concerned that such a request would set president. So my question is, if that is approved on my street, what is the ARB going to do or what will the select board do when tenants of this building ask for similar comparable parking relief? Notice that this is on Avon Place, which, like my street, Whittemore Street, dead ends at the bike path. There is very limited parking. It's a narrow street. How are you going to deal with their eventual requests for relief because you're gonna have unrelated people trying to coordinate their cars? Thank you. I think we understand the question. So this was addressed early on in Attorney Nessie. I will turn it over to you because I know that the owner had addressed the tandem parking situation with this. We've never had issues at the property with respect to that matter, okay? What you're talking about is pure speculation at this point. We are going to coordinate parking at the site. We've had no complaints from tenants over the years with respect to parking at our property. I don't know about your street because I have no information about your street. All I could talk about is our property. And that's what I'm saying about our property. Thank you, Mr. Nessie. Any other questions, Mr. Holman? Thank you. I would again ask you to be concerned with that lest the residents of Avon Place have to deal with the same situation. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to ask questions or speak on this topic? Okay, seeing none, I will close public comment for 400 to 402 Massachusetts Avenue. Any additional questions or commentary from the board before we move to a vote? Jean? I just wanted to say in response to what Mr. Holman said, we did raise those issues. And if this was a new site, it would be different, but they've had tandem parking there for years with the same number of units. And that went into the decision making. Thank you for the clarification, Jean. Any other questions or comments from the board? Okay, do we have a motion to approve this application as amended for to the March 1st hearing? So motion. Second. Any discussion? All right, we'll take a roll call vote. Although in favor, please say aye. Ken? Yes. Jean? Yes. David? Yes. And I am a guest as well. Congratulations. This has been approved. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. And thank you for sticking with us this evening. No problem. All right, that closes docket 3638, 400 to 402 Massachusetts Avenue. And we'll now move back to agenda item number two, which was an update on special permits issued by the Redevelopment Board from 2016 to 2020. And Jenny or Erin, I'm not sure which one of you was going to take us through this. It's me. And yes, you're welcome. Also, thank you to Erin, always. But I, this of course was in response to Ken's request to take a look at what has been permitted by the Redevelopment Board and sort of he asked actually for just, I think three years, but I went back five. So I looked at 2016 through basically all of last year. And, you know, what I'll say about it is that you can see the, of any of the most significant development, it came out of the mixed use zoning bylaw. The, anything that has an asterisk next to it is something that was permitted as a mixed use development. And you can see that over the years here, what that looked like beginning in 2016. And then the second larger types of developments had to do with the Housing Corporation of Arlington. One of those, of course, was a mixed use development. And the other one is the Downing Square development at 19R Park Ave. But predominantly what the board seems to mostly review given its authority, which is different than other planning boards. That's important to note. Other planning boards deal with sometimes larger scale residential projects, for example, and larger scale commercial development sometimes. But the board seems to do a lot of signage review over the years, even still though we did amend the signage bylaw and hoped to make that a little bit more streamlined. You do still end up reviewing a lot of signage because of the types of changes that are made or changes to a non-conforming sign. So, you know, there are many reasons for that. But predominantly I think what I wanted to point out was that the real thrust of development for the last five years has been due to the mixed use zoning bylaw. So that's just something important to keep in mind as we head into this coming town meeting. And we have a lot of conversation around mixed use, the types of proposals that we're seeing in relationship to mixed use. It's important to just note that that does weigh quite heavily on what we're seeing. And then I think the bigger question is why do we not see any other type of development? What is missing and why? And I think that's clearly a much broader conversation, but it does kind of go back to conversations about what types of development we wanna see along the Massachusetts Avenue and the Broadway corridors, for example, as well as along, you know, in other locations like the Milberg corridor, the Minuteman bikeway, et cetera. Those are areas that typically when there's new development that's being proposed, it will come to the board given its purview. But we aren't really seeing a lot of that type of development and I think it's important to ask why. The industrial use proposal that we have that'll be a future public hearing will somewhat aim to address some of this issue, which is something that came out of the economic analysis of industrial zoning districts. But I do think that it's worth, you know, talking about any of this a little bit further. I know that Ken might have some specific questions since he asked for this to be brought to the board, but I just wanted to provide that summary for all of you. And I'm glad to answer any questions also about just, I know that this is rather simplistic, but I'm glad to dig into any one of them if there are questions. So with that, maybe just Ken, do you have, were there any other specific items that you wanted me to review? Well, I just wanna say thank you for putting this together, Jenny, this is very helpful. I do wanna ask a couple of questions since I don't, this way here. You know that daycare center that we approved, the expansion, is it listed here? It is, it was the 93 Broadway, it was last year, the school edition. Is that happening? I don't see anything happening there. I requested an update, but my understanding is that the, you know, due to the pandemic, there have been some changes with what they, you know, the, how much they've been able to utilize the school, and then that has an impact also on their financial planning potentially for anything else at this particular time. Doesn't mean that they've decided to not do something, but, you know, that the plan is currently on hold. That doesn't mean anything necessarily, it was only approved in 2020. And I think, you know, to the point about how long a special permit is effective, it's good for three years. So they do have time, but I will continue to find out if I can get any sort of update and of course report back to the board should something be different. Okay, and then my follow up with that is, what about the animal hospital on Broadway? The animal hospital, yeah. I think that they just have simply scaled back what they've been able to do right now, but they do have an intention to do more at a later date. That also is a business where I think, you know, they wanted to take their time with that renovation project. And so, you know, it's an approved project. And I know that they intend to follow through with it, but they're taking it in phases. Okay, are there any other projects that we have approved that's sort of on this hiatus that I start thinking of a tough on my head? No, although there are some things that we've approved that either have since closed, the business closed, or the business never opened. Okay, I remember the lobster shop, yes. That was 478 Mass Ave. There was also the 30 to 50 Mill Street kiosk was permitted, but did not proceed. You had the ice cream, too. And then there was unfortunately 190 to 192 Mass Ave. Adventure Pub has since closed. What about the restaurant on Heights? That is in progress. And they're, you know, they have a building permit. And my understanding is that they're working on the fit out under construction. Okay. There was some chatter on, I forget if it was the Arlington email list or Facebook group, but that there was some activity in that space recently. They have a building permit. They're actively working on it. Good, I'm just really, you know, the way I feel is that somehow we don't have that many projects being done here in Arlington and you know, you're 100% correct Jenny. I mean, what are we not doing as the development authority to help encourage this and looking back is a way of sort of trying to understand it. That's what I was trying to do. And maybe we can have another form or sit down, you know, with maybe some public involvement saying, hey, what can we do to encourage? As everybody says, they want more commercial space, but you know, just because you wanted it ain't gonna happen. You have to somehow encourage it to make it happen. Or if you want more retail or we want a more lively street, we got to do something to make that happen. And I just want to spend a little more time on looking at ways to do that. And maybe after a town meeting and all the zoning stuff, we can set a few meetings aside, or if we can start a workshop group and to think about that, I would like to do that. I don't know what the rest of the board members think about that and what their opinion is. One thing that occurs to me is we've talked a little bit before about wanting to look at developing commercial design guidelines. And possibly, you know, if we were more explicit about exactly what we would like to see developed, that might take away some of the uncertainty that a developer might feel, you know, looking at opportunities in Arlington if they have a better sense of what we're looking for. Yeah, I agree with David. I think that's a possibility. I could also turn the other way around and say, look, let's see what the developers want to look for when they want to develop the commercial space and see if we can address any of those issues. Yeah, I don't think we should develop any design guidelines in a vacuum. I think, you know, I would hope that we'd get some participation from developers as well as other members of the public in trying to come to some kind of consensus. May I ask a clarifying question? So we have design standards for commercial and industrial areas that was adopted by the board in 2015, actually. So can you express or explain how that would be different what you're proposing, David, just so I can understand what you mean? I think certainly some members of the board or the public have expressed concerns about the look of some of the projects that have been developed in recent years. And I was thinking that if we could provide perhaps more guidance specifically about design elements, if we could, through a process, come to some sort of consensus as to what we would most like to see in town that that could enhance the existing guidelines. And I just add on to that a little bit. We talked a little bit about this at our goal setting meeting in December. And I think one of the challenges to, I think, also what gets to some of Ken's points there is that the number of meetings and the amount of space that we, or the amount of work that we have to ask some of the developers to do to get to a building typology that is approvable could be lessened if there was a more explicit guideline for, to David's point, building elements, materiality, massing, those types of things. There seems to be quite a ways to go sometimes in terms of what we get as the first entry point that could be, that could lessen the amount of time that they, times that they have to come back to the redevelopment board if we had something that was more explicit in the way that the residential design guideline is. Thank you. That was much more articulate than what I was trying to explain. Thank you. I deal with design guidelines on the regular. So any other comments related to this or thoughts, Gene? Yeah, just I wondered about where the former Woodhouse is and its process of going through the demolition bylaw, et cetera. Sure. My understanding is that they have tried to get a demolition permit with a few different contractors and are now on their fourth contractor who is working to get a demo permit. Once they pull the demolition permit, it goes to the Arlington Historical Commission to then go through a delay process essentially. It'll then trigger the demo delay bylaw. So we won't see them for more than a year? No, yeah, correct. Thank you. You're welcome. Bless you. Excuse me, thank you. I thought I hit mute. Any other questions or comments? Can I agree with you? I think that perhaps circling back to this once we get through town meeting with some other ideas, we had some good meeting or good ideas too at the goal setting session that are written into looking at whether it's the business district in the Heights or taking certain business districts and looking at opportunities for encouraging more robust development that perhaps we could circle back to. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. You're welcome. So we'll put it on a future agenda. Great, thank you. Yeah. All right, so that closes agenda item number two. So we'll now move ahead to agenda item number four, which is the review of the MOU and related to 23 Maple Street. So this is an item that actually has no item. I had hoped that I was going to have material to provide to the board on Friday at a minimum, but I did not receive it from the legal department. Unfortunately, they're still working on an aspect that's sort of important to the MOU, which relates to the Verizon lot and parking for vehicles, particularly for staff. They want to use the parking that is right adjacent to 23 Maple Street just for visitors so that we don't have people coming and parking on Maple Street itself. So in order to do that, it's going to take a little bit more time is my understanding. I'm hoping that I can definitely be back on the 15th with something. So I put it on the agenda with the hope that it was going to move forward, but that's all I have for now. We are still working on a lot of details related to what we need to do at the property to get them moved in, just so you know, but in terms of the MOU, that's where it stands. Great, thank you, Jenny. You're welcome. All right, so we will now move to agenda item number five, which is open forum. So this is an opportunity for any member of the public wishing to address the board to have the opportunity to speak. If you would like to speak, please use the raise hand function, and I will call on you in the order that the hands are raised. Okay, first speaker will be Steve Revolac, and I'll remind everybody that you will have three minutes. Please identify yourself by your first, last name and address. Hello, Steve Revolac, 11 Sunnyside Avenue. I have a question for the architects on the board. If you're willing to humor it. For a long time, Brick was a very common exterior material for apartment buildings, for commercial buildings, and that sort of thing. And over the past few years, it seems that fiber panel boards, various cementations boards are more the material of choice. And I was just wondering in your experience, what was the motivation behind that shift? I can start, and Ken, I'm sure you can, chime in too, from your experience. I think cost, timing, both that as well as just in terms of what aesthetic is desired by the end user. Those are really the three big shifts that I've seen impact those types of material choices. Ken? I totally agree, it's, let's say 90% cost and 10% loss trade professions. It's very hard to find a good mason, or a good mason company nowadays. Just, they just don't exist anymore. They just, that's a lost profession. Okay, yeah, I was, my own thoughts was that, it does take a while to assemble a wall in little two inch by four inch by eight pieces. So thank you for sharing that. Okay, thank you, Steve. The next speaker will be Don Seltzer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. Just two short items. One is during the first agenda item for 10 sunny side. One of the members of the public who got cut off and was not allowed to speak earlier, I noticed was a member of the Disabilities Commission. And I believe she had some important comments to be made about lack of ADA accessibility in the unit that was proposed, particularly in the parking and maybe in some other aspects of the building itself. All those apartments are required to be group one under Massachusetts 521 CMR. So that's something that should probably bring up at the next meeting and make sure that there is proper ADA compliance. The other item was just now when you were going over the list of projects that was the really big one is that you happen to skip over is 1207 Mass Ave. And I've noticed that the sale has not been completed yet. The town still owns it. They haven't received any money for the sale and the purchase and sale agreement did specify that it was required that the sale be closed within 30 days of the special permit being issued. So in fact, the developer was here until just a few minutes ago when he left. I had hoped at that time that maybe he could be asked to give a status update as to how he's progressing on this project. Perhaps Jenny knows something more. Thank you. Thank you, Don. So for anyone who was not able to speak, unfortunately we did have to open the warrant article public hearing as advertised. We did remind everybody that they were more than welcome and in fact encouraged to submit any comments written to Jenny who would pass those on to the board. And of course, we do hope that they would join us at the future hearing date, which is the 15th. Any other members of the public? Aaron Holman. I'm not gonna get an answer from Jenny about the hotel. Oh, I don't have an answer for you. Jenny, I don't know if you have any update. I do not have an update. Thank you. Aaron Holman. Aaron Holman, 12 Whittemore Street. I've been attending these meetings for a while and I guess I'll follow what Steve Revelax lead in simply asking a question more about how the board proceeds. I have my own concerns. They typically deal with density, affordable affordability of housing and larger social issues. And I'd appreciate any insight from any members of the board as to how you balance considerations of those against strictly regulatory requirements and architectural design issues. My question is a bit open-ended. However you, any of you would like to answer it. Would anyone like to speak to that? I'd be happy to, but I'd also be happy to defer if Gene or Ken or David or Melissa, I know you're just joining us, wish to start us off. I can tell where I start and where it ends. And that is, we're required to apply the environmental design guidelines and to do what basically they tell us to do within them There are opportunities to look at some of the things that you're talking about. And if you attended lots of our hearings, you see that we have given pushback to applicants when they first come in on things that we think are not within the spirit or letter of those guidelines and the review criteria. And at least for me, that's what one of our major roles is to not go outside our lane and our lane is that. Okay, well, thank you. I'll just add too that I think that really looking at the goals of the master plan of the town, which incorporate many of the topics that you just brought up are also front and center when we consider a lot of these developments in terms of what the uses are that the town has identified are important to the town. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. I'll just add one more thing and I agree with both Rachel and Gene. But I think if you look at how we've approached various projects over the years, what we focus on within our review of both the environmental design standards and the context in which we're making the decision varies from project to project. And sometimes we're more focused on some aspects and other times we're focused on other aspects and it really depends on the context of the project. So I think that's where our discretion largely comes into it while staying within the spirit of the environmental design standards. Gene, thank you. And I'll just add that if you look at those standards and they're pretty broadly written so we can't do everything. Certainly not everything I would like to do in some circumstances, but it allows us to consider a lot of things. Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from any member of the public wishing to speak this evening? Seeing none, we will close public comments. Any other items from either Jenny or Erin or members of the board before we take a motion to adjourn? Nothing further from me. Okay, great. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn please. Second. Any discussion? All right, I'll go through roll call. Ken? Yes. David? Yes. Gene? Yes. Melissa? Yes. And I am yes as well. Thank you everyone that closes our meeting for this evening. Have a good night. Welcome, Melissa. You got a little bit of everything for your first meeting. Great. Yeah, nothing like kicking it off with the town meeting articles. Great. Thanks. It's nice to meet you all. Rachel gave me some time on the phone. Jenny kind of prepped me too. So thanks guys in advance for that and looking forward to working with all of you. Great, thank you. Have a good night. Good night. Night everybody.