 All right, welcome everyone. I'd like to call the December 20th, 2021 meeting of the town of Arlington redevelopment board to order. This meeting of the 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 through the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. For this meeting the ARB 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 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. So allow me to confirm that all members are present and can hear me starting with Kim Lau. President. In Benson. Present. Los Angeles. Present. The Revola. Present. We have two members of the staff from the Department of Planning and Community Development joining us Jennifer rate. Present. And Kelly Landon. Present. Thank you both for joining us. All right. So we'll go ahead and move right into the first item on our agenda, which is the continued public hearing of docket number 3348 for 833 Massachusetts Avenue. And I believe we have attorney Robert Nesty here to provide us with an update on this. This particular properties last visit to the historic commission. Yes, can you hear me, Rachel. We can Bob thanks. Good. My clients and I, my client and I did appear before the historical commission. After the last ARB hearing. And I reported to the commission what occurred with respect to the informal vote of the ARB with respect to the their desire that the building in fact come down. I reported that to the historical commission. And in dealing with them as I have been dealing with them for some time. We got back into what has to be done to restore the exterior of the building. I suggested to the chair, Joanne Robinson, that it might make sense for them to speak with the ARB. In any event, I'm at a point now where the building itself the exterior of the building has basically been resided. Okay. All sides the backside perhaps that leads a bit needs a bit more. We're waiting for windows. We have filed today the demo application with respect to the building coming down that was filed with Mike Champa, my chamber may be on the zoom this evening if he is he can corroborate that. So we are prepared to go forward with the demo app before the historical commission. We are in a situation where they have said to us, they want the exterior of the building put back the weight was previously, we are doing that. So if we have to continue to do that, we will. But I think we're now at a point where we are probably going to pursue the demo application and, you know, through the fruition. So there may be someone on this evening from the historical commission who may want to address that I don't know. I, quite frankly, am tired of being a volleyball, and I am not going to be a volleyball any longer. The only way for that to stop happening is for me to say to everyone at the both boards at this point that we will pursue the demo app. Because otherwise, I go back before historical, and they keep telling me I have to continue with restoring the exterior of the building. I go before the ARB, and you folks tell me, you want the building to come down. Well, quite frankly, my clients preference would be that the building come down, and we construct a new building out fronting on Massachusetts Avenue. So that is pretty much where we find ourselves right now. So, again, if someone from the historical commission is here and wants to be heard and that's that's fine. I have to go back before them again, and I'm prepared to do that. But again, that's where my client is coming from now. I have Monty the architect on board this evening. I have Jeff noise as well. And I have his contract to fill Randall. If you have any questions for Monty, he's here to respond to them. Quite frankly, I was hoping that there could be some sort of an accommodation between historical and the ARB. So that I would not be faced with going back before the historical commission and be be faced with the two, the two year prohibition. I was hoping that something could be worked out. That's one of the reasons I suggested that the folks on the historical commission talk with the ARB. I'm going to find myself this evening with my client. We hear to address any questions the board may have. And I turn it back to you. Thank you. I quite frankly don't have much sympathy for the fact that you needed to go back and forth between the board after years of neglect at this property. The ARB has been consistent in that you need to work together with the historic commission comply with any requirements they have with regard to the repair of the facade that was taken down without permission by any board in this town. And that you work towards should the demo permit be what you ultimately decide to pursue filing that and going through the appropriate channels with the historic commission to review what any delay that they might require of you. We've been very consistent in that review. At this point, I'd like to turn it over to my colleagues on the board for any additional comments. I'd like to suggest that now that the demolition permit has been filed. The next step is for the historic commission to review any contingency they might put in terms of a demolition delay on that property. And any requirements they might have for the continued restoration of the facade during that time, and that we close out the special permit. The open special permit on this until it is refiled with us with the actual application for what is intended to be constructed on that property. That's what I'd like to propose and I'd love to hear others thoughts starting with Kim. I would agree with what Richard just said. And I would add one more thing. While you guys are either in a delay by the historic commission or whatever. I would love you guys to start designing a new project and submitting it in during that delay so we would not extend this project any longer. I'm sure you understand Robert that if there is delay, take the delay work of your architect and get a design in front of us so we can start working on the on the new building if that's the way you want to go I'm okay with that. But let's let's let's try to streamline this a little longer so we don't have an empty building for no two years. I agree with what both of my colleagues just said. I guess the only thing is we kept saying file a demolition permit and part of this much of the delay, I think is attributable to not having had the demolition permit other than adding that I agree with the chair and the vice chair. Thank you Jean Melissa. No comment at this time. Steve. I concur with Mr law. Okay. So that is going to be going to be our recommendation. Thank you. Do you have any questions? Attorney and I see about the sentiment of this board at this time. No, I do not. And if I need, if I need to continue with the historical commission siding and the exterior of the building we will do that. But we still will continue with the demo application. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to ask for a motion to close the special permit docket after we open this up for public comment at this time. So any member of the public who is joining us this evening who would like to speak on this matter, please use the raise hand function. And I'll call on you in order that the hands are raised. I would like to close public comment on this docket. And I would like to see if there is a motion to close. Docket number 3348 and special permit at 833 Massachusetts Avenue at this time. So motion. Second. We'll take a roll call vote. Starting with. Yes. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. The next item on our agenda are the meeting minutes from the December 6, 2021 meeting. Jenny, do you have those that we can pull up? And I'll take go through the roll call and we will see if there are any positions of corrections starting with Jean. I don't have any additions are correct. Great. Thanks. Next weekend. I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. Melissa. What's good. Steve. I have two small corrections. So the first would be the on page four. That's sorry, page five paragraph one. So at the end of the paragraph, it says planting space. I propose changing that to planting street trees. And the second one is this involves some of the open forum comments and this is just a grammatical thing. So I think that's not to it's not done with agreement or disagreement to what was actually said, but one, two, three, four paragraphs from the bottom, Mr. Loretty's statements. The second line reads about this being a great way to gentrifying the town. I believe that would be should be gentrify. Those are those are my proposed changes. Great. Thank you, Steve. And I have no additions or corrections at this time. Thank you. I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from December 6, 2021, as amended. Second. The roll call vote starting with Kim. Yes. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Yes. And I am a yes as well. It closes agenda item number two. So we'll now move to agenda item number three, which is open forum. So any member of the public joining us this evening who would like to speak on any matter at all. Please go ahead and use the raise hand function and we'd be happy to have you speak with us this evening. Give another minute. I can't talk. Can you hear me. Oh yes, is this showing Robinson I'm sorry I can't see who's speaking right now. Is that speaking. It is Joanne. Joanne, can you hear us. I'm not sure if you're having audio issues will give you another little bit to see if you can correct. No, I'm frozen. I, my, my zoom is frozen. It just comes and goes and so I can't. You know, I can't quite hear and I'm, I'm sorry I missed the comment section. When you were taking the vote, but I couldn't hear you. Okay, and it just went bang bang. And that was it. So I will write you a letter. You know, if you'd like to, to speak now would be more than happy to have you, you know, speak, speak on behalf of the historical commission to the, to the board. And, you know, if you're, if you're having difficulties I often find that if you turn the video off sometimes that helps to stabilize zoom might have another unstable connection issues frozen Rachel. Yeah, she goes. Hi Joanne. I was just saying I don't know if you can hear me that if you wanted to turn your video off sometimes that helps to stabilize the zoom connection. I can't hear you. Okay. Well if you did want to submit. I don't know, because we don't have a chat but if you did want to submit any. No, I, yeah, I, you don't have a chat. I was looking for that. Okay, well if you did want to submit comments written following this meeting would be more than happy to receive them. Thank you. Sorry to see that you're experiencing technical difficulties. Let's see. So, without seeing any other members of the public with their hands raised, I'd like to close agenda item number three which is open forum. The historical commission had made a an offer that we would be willing to approve moving the house forward and putting the addition on the back. I think it has not been reconsidered. And now you've taken a vote that I was unable to speak about. And I feel like, once again, you know, there's some. Rachel, do you think she can just call in on a phone. Sure. And I don't know what else to do we haven't had this issue with a bad connection that one of our meetings. I mean the only thing that has happened the only action that has occurred is that you close the hearing. And you're not you were never entertaining last week, but it didn't go very far. So, we're getting like bits and pieces right now. I'm sorry I can't do anything about it right now. You can call in Joanne if you want, you can call the number on the phone. Okay, I have to pull that back up then. Hold on. Okay. Well, you know, we'll, we'll wait for a minute or two while, while you close your zoom and dial in through the, through the phone. Okay, I'll try. Rachel, I just had a quick question for staff on related to this. I just had an email I know from the last meeting Kelly and Jenny you guys were looking for comments. And you wanted them in by the weekend. I can get them. I just it's a few things I wanted to get to you this evening. But since I'm seeing you, I thought I'd ask you on the housing plan. Yeah. Okay yeah if you just send them to Kelly. That was tonight too late or it's okay still. Okay, thank you. Tomorrow begins today. Kelly you got my comments this morning right. Thank you. I did but I think you had the wrong attachment. I wore you back. I will look again. Okay, thanks. So I'll just give Joanne another minute or two. And then I can't do it. I can see me this time. You haven't seen her trying to call in on your. Oh, there's nobody calling in, but also I'm just checking email. I don't see her reaching out. I mean the number is in the right on the agenda. Okay. So I actually don't have her cell phone here with me at home. So I'm not, I don't know how to reach her right now. I have her cell phone if you want me to try and call her. No, actually thanks Mike. She's joining right now. Can you hear me now. Hello. Joanne, can you hear us. Just a little yes I can hear you barely. I'm sorry. But so my, my opinion is is that we since we have had almost no. Kind of conversation about this. I think it's premature. To get rid of the special permit, which you just voted to do because that is what is protecting, you know, is motivating our, our, you know, our moves to preserve the house in part. In addition to that, I have had a lot of number, a number of support for the fact that that is what the historical commission is doing. And that has not been presented. I gave all of that information to the historical commission, but it's not been presented before this board either. And I was going to ask for that opportunity to do that. So I don't know what to say at this point. The only thing I can say is that a demolition permit that is filed is, is not appropriate at this point because of the fact that we're in a process of working with the owner to do this restoration of the exterior of the house. And so we would not in the chain, a demolition permit at this point. And I think Mike Champa has, we've, I've talked with Mike about this and that's the way that our procedure will pro, you know, will move forward. So, can you hear me. So, I will just state that they in closing the special permit all of the original conditions of the special permit still are maintained. It is just not open currently in front of this board in that we are not requiring the applicant to come in front of us on a, on a regular basis, as we would if the permit was was open. So if any development be proposed on this site, they will be required to file a special permit application and come in front of this board for review. You know, again, our understanding is that the historical commission is required to review and act on a demolition permit when it's when it's file. But we have again this this board has has no no authority over those items that come in front of the historical commission so we have closed this special permit. But all of the original conditions, none of them are modified. They, they remain. And I see that the director of inspectional services Mike chamber has his hand raised so I'll call on him next. Mike, go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to clear something up in that the bylaw states that when a demolition is commenced without permission. The moratorium starts upon that action. And in my case when the demolition was started is actually when the clock starts ticking. Is that what I understand that that is how the bylaw read. So, I hope that is a helpful clarification, Joanne as to what we close today, and from Mike as to the steps on the demolition. I understood that but you know we postponed a hearing for the demolition at in July. Or it was August maybe in order to not consider. I mean we didn't have a demolition permit at that point. And we considered and the, the owner agreed to do this instead of, instead of applying for a demolition permit. Okay. Again, we, we don't. I know you don't have any I'm just explaining where the where the historical commission is in this. Sure. Well, they'll be coming back in front of you so we'll certainly wait to see what the next steps are is determined by historical commission. Right. But you know, I feel, I still feel that there might be some common ground that we could work on. If there are representatives from your organization that wants to continue to work with us. Absolutely and I saw the book can and Jean have their hands, hands raised, you know, as the project moves forward in terms of what is actually proposed on that site. That is what we had indicated to the the applicant was was important to us is to ensure that without being specific as to what the elements of the historical character of the existing building are that are maintained that that be reviewed together with the HRB and the historical commission, but I'll, I believe Jean had, you had your hand raised first and then I'll go to Kim for any thoughts you'd like to offer to Joanne. Joanne, thanks for bringing this up. I didn't quite understand one statement that you made, which is that the historical commission, you didn't say exactly this but something like is relying on the fact that there is this historical permit. Can you clarify what you meant by that. Well, it is. We have over the years tried to work with the redevelopment board to preserve this house because of the fact that the property at the first level to try to move the house off of the property, then that didn't happen. And the special permit, which I believe, specifically, specifically indicates that the property that the house will not be demolished apparently agreed to that in the special permit. And so that's why I felt that we should be working together on a solution. Joanne, I have a slightly different reading of the special permit. As I read the special permit, it doesn't prohibit the demolition. It just requires the property owner to come back to the ARB to get approval if they're going to do a demolition. So it's not a prohibition in the special permit. It just requires a return to the redevelopment board at that point. I, you know, the, the interpretation I guess is probably a little bit different from what the historical commission believed was in the special permit. I guess maybe we on the redevelopment board might want to send a letter to the historical commission, since it's our permit, explaining what our permit means on that basis. I understand what you're saying, but I also feel that that the design of the special permit, from my perspective, they had a deadline to apply for, didn't they have like a 24 month deadline? There was a condition for what would need to happen should they act within that time. It was silent on what happens after that time. All right, all right. And I, and I think, I think repeatedly the redevelopment board had been asked to re evaluate that. And that never happened, of course. But we have been, you know, operating under the idea that the house itself has historic value. And, and we had hoped to work closer with the redevelopment board on this. Thank you. I just want to clarify, I'm not aware of any request that have come before the redevelopment board until the redevelopment board actually chose to reopen this about a year and a half ago. Ken, I'll take it over to you. You have one comment. And then I think we need to wrap up and move on to our next agenda item. Yeah, I've been on a sport about maybe six years now. Is that close Jenny? And in the six years times, I have never heard anybody try to reach out to us from the historic board about this house. We, we went. Well, let me finish. I will let you, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't see you, I apologize. And no one has reached out to us. The best I know of, okay, I'm not saying you did or did not. As far as I'm concerned, the time I've been on the board. There has never been anyone reaching out to us about this project. That's what that brought us up and push the owner to get something done. And that was about two years ago. So that's my interpretation of what's happening there. We also had a meeting last week with you. Yeah, one members and Mike, and we, we made ourselves fairly clear. Okay, it's up to you to grant him the delay or not. That's not within our jurisdiction. But we said that we would consult with you guys and we said that. And we said, and we meant that. Okay, so I don't see why you need to ask us again. You know, that we include you, we said we would. And, and so we will once they present something. But until they do, we have nothing to talk about. That's all I want to say. Now, I understand that we worked through the building inspector's office and wrote letters to the building inspector for. And I have letters that were written during the time that the house was not being taken care of. And so that was, you know, the way that we expressed our, our willingness to, to try to see if there was a solution. But I don't think it was ever translated to tell you the truth. Anyway, I think, I think we can all agree that overall it's an unfortunate circumstance that we find ourselves in today with, with this house and the condition it's in and that I want to show you that the ARB wants to do the right thing for the town, which is to ensure that this property is developed, and that it's not continued to be in disrepair as, as, as it has been for the, for the past number of years. And to Ken's point, you know, I think what we've made clear to the owner is that we, we do look forward to working together with the historical commission. Once a plan for redevelop for the development of the, of the property comes in front of us that we absolutely intend to work together with the historical commission for, for review of that, that proposal. Okay. Okay. Thanks. All right. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak with the board this evening. Seeing no hands raised, I will close agenda item number three, which is open forum. And at this time, what I would like to do is. To propose to propose a to see if there is a motion to adjourn the public portion of the redevelopment board meeting and preparation for moving into executive session. We will separately take a vote to move into executive session for the purpose of approving meeting minutes from the executive session on October 4 2021. So first again, we need a motion to adjourn the public portion of this evening's ARB meeting. The most and there's a second thank you. We'll take a roll call vote starting with Ken. Yes. Yes. Awesome. Yes. Steve. Yes. And I guess as well. So the public portion of the ARB meeting has been adjourned. And I would like to see if there is a motion to move the ARB into executive session for the purpose of approving the meeting minutes from the executive session on October 4 2021. So motion. Second. Thank you. We'll take a vote starting with Ken. Yes. Melissa. Yes. Steve. Yes. And I'm against as well. So we thank everyone who has joined us this evening. And if you could drop off the zoom, the ARB will now be moving into executive session.