 Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of March 29th, 2023. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst planning board, I'm called 707 PM. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media minutes are being taken. This planning board meeting is being held in person in the town room. At town hall. However, this is a hybrid meeting members of the planning board and members of the public are also able to attend via zoom pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts 2021 and extended by chapter 22 of by chapter 22 of the acts 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 16 2022. The planning board has been given authority to hold meetings via zoom. The zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting, or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. In person attendance of the public is permitted at tonight's meeting, however, there is limited capacity in the town room. Due to the COVID pandemic, the capacity of the town room is limited to 40 people, including the planning board members and planning staff. Every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means in the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship, or despite best efforts. We will post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name please answer affirmatively, whether you are participating remotely or in person. Bruce cold them. Bruce is apparently not on the zoom call, and he's not in the town room. So he's not present Tom long present. Tom is present in the town room, Andrew McDougal present in the town room. Janet McGowan, we have been notified is absent this evening. Johanna Newman also is absent car and winter present in the town room. Thank you all. If any technical issues arise we may need to pause the fix the problem and then continue the meeting. Discussion needs to pause it will be noted in the minutes for those participating remotely please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your request and call on you to speak after speaking remember to remute yourself. Planning board members who are present in the town room should also raise their hands when they wish to speak and the microphone will be passed to you to you. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period public comment may also be heard at other times during the meeting, if determined appropriate by the chair. Please indicate you wish to make a comment or clicking the click the raise hand button when public comment is solicited or raise your hand if you are present in the town room. If you have joined the town to zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. If you have called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address, and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can express their views for up to three minutes, or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with the guidelines or exceeds there a lot of time, their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. And I would like to amend the roll call to state that during the last initial comments I've made Bruce Coldham has arrived and is sitting in the town room with the rest of us. So welcome Bruce. Okay, so the time is 712 the first item on our agenda is public comment. Do we have any members of the public who wish to make a comment. Okay, we have one member of the public in the town room and she would like to make a comment. Here's a microphone, which should go green. Yep. And please state your name and your address at the beginning of your remarks. We don't have our usual stopwatch. I think I'll take three minutes more keen at 25 Dennis drive. And I just when I was thinking about your topic for tonight of where to put more housing for Amherst. I thought about, you know, we always talk about housing for families and when I thought about me when I had a small kids or I work with a clt and the last family we put has three small children. They were in an affordable unit at as been the new one as been tights. And it, it really didn't work out for them because the kids made too much noise and the neighbors complain. It was not enough room for the kids to run around so I really ought to. I really think that when we plan. We have a lot of denser housing we ought to take that into account that people need space. They can't all be stacked together unless they're young single people. And you're in dorms and that's just I think most people who live in Amherst don't want to live in an urban area and that's what they want for their living situation. Thank you. Okay, we have two members of the public who are participating remotely I see Jennifer Taub and Pamela Rooney, both of whom are town counselors. Pam is the liaison to the planning board at the moment. Okay, so the time now is 714 and we'll go to item two on our agenda planning for housing and other growth growth. So we have planning board members to discuss opportunities to for development of housing and other types of development in Amherst, East Amherst Village Center review zoning map and other maps as necessary and discuss potential locations. So, with that, we can start. And the planning board members when you want to speak try to raise your hand somebody will hand you one of the two microphones we have and we can go from there. Anybody want to start. I know. I guess it was after the last in person meeting we had just about a month ago. Tom long and I had one conversation by phone and kind of thought about talked a little bit about where we thought that the zoning could maybe go a little bit higher. And I think we mostly talked about the commercial area. And through the intersection of southeast street and, I guess, Belcher town road or college street, and out Belcher town road to about the eastern end of the loop for the aspen Heights or village or whatever aspen, whichever aspen project is along there. Did Alpine Alpine Commons. Okay. Okay, so we thought maybe that was far enough to think about. I will. I mean, since I have the mic and nobody else is raising their hand. I made a couple of notes about the commercial zone, because I hadn't really we haven't really dealt with commercial zones very much on the planning board and the last during the time I've been here for the last couple of years. So as a kind of follow up to the some of the things that Tom and I talked about. Come mixed use buildings are allowed in the commercial zone by site plan review. Currently the commercial zone has a three story 35 foot height limit. And, and then, if we were, you know, if we wanted to do something to try to encourage housing to happen along there. There is a 4000 square foot incremental lot requirement for each additional unit on that on that. In that zone. And I think the initial minimum lot sizes 20,000 square feet, which is about a half an acre. Sure, sure. Tom thanks for suggesting. So the commercial zone that we were that I guess I'm talking about. Yeah, is along college street. It starts roughly at South Whitney where that intersects college street and extends east through the intersection with southeast street. And then goes a little bit farther east, you know, a few hundred feet down Belcher town road. So just to the along southeast street, just to the south of that zone, there is. Is that a village center. Yeah, village center business zone. And just to the north of it, there's a along southeast street there is a residential village center zone. A little bit west of southeast street there is a another little commercial strip that sort of buried inside of the of the block. And I think I was puzzled by why that was. Chris if you have any idea the history of that little piece of commercial zoning that's orphaned, you know, kind of in the middle of the block behind the north of the commercial. Right there. And if you really if you, I'll give you the microphone if you want it. We have two town counselors who are attending. Yeah, and I don't know if Andrew has the technology. So Andrew is is going to try to bring the town zoning map up on the screen. Well, Bruce has his hand up. Do you want to give you a mic filling in a little bit here just thought it might be worth mentioning as far as I can see. There are only four commercial zones in town, and two of them would seem to me to be more or less what we might call spot zone. One of them, probably down with the Wentworth. Anyways, it's two of them are very small. They seem to be like parcels. So there's only two that are substantial. One of them is the one we're discussing and the other one is essentially in North Amherst substantially the Coles property and the buffer property along old Sunderland Road. So those are, if we're talking about any zoning changes related to commercial or any changes related to commercial that might be helpful to us to recognize that there's essentially only two of consequence. Thank you, Bruce. Tom, did you want to say something. Okay. Yeah, I think when Tom and I were talking we wondered about an overlay and rather than changing the commercial. That would certainly allow us to be more spike specific about where the, the impacts were of whatever we were talking about. Yeah, I was just going to say we're also mentioning something that I think was brought up several times was finding a distance from the street that would be allowable as part of that overlay. So that there could be smaller things behind it, but we could think about how we want to densify route nine along that specific section, rather than have it be a huge swath and land but it could be just the way the commercial district right now. And that zone is maybe 100 feet back on either side. So it has a it's like a controlled zone along route nine on College Street so we can continue that down. It might have less impact on some of the developments that are around there, but actually add some density to the street itself. Bruce, and then Andrew you had briefly raised your hand. Oh, hold on. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Pam. We need to be more speaking directly into the microphone. Okay, so like that Pam. Okay. I was just observing I think to understand what you're saying Tom that that many of the properties currently along that strip that commercial strip of parking in front. So talking about trying to get the building line closer to the street is that is the setback. I don't I'm not familiar enough with the setback is the setback driving it back or is it simply the decision to put parking in front. The setback is only I think it's is a 10. Okay, so it's a design decision. Well the basic minimum front setback and commercial is 20 at the moment. The side and rear is 25, although that has footnote a so that you wave. The maximum building coverage is 35% and the maximum lot coverage. 70% Karen Karen I have, here's the microphone. So I'm, I'm wanting to set include the sidewalk, the setback that you're talking about 20 feet is where's the sidewalk. The setback is measured I believe from the property line. And sometimes the sidewalk may be inside the property or it may be outside the property and that varies around town. I just wanted to say that the zoning in this area is very old. It really complies with the way people looked at things back in the 50s and 60s and maybe the 70s and it was all highway strip. And that's why the parking is in front of the buildings and not in back and people never thought of this as being a walkable village center until after that time. And the sidewalk would be in the town right of way in this location. Thank you, Chris. I'm going to ask you one other question. Janet had forwarded us the housing production plan I believe from several years ago, a few and suggested we look at a few pages that were specific to this area and I think of it around pomerai. When I looked at the housing production plan suggestions or you know vision for that for this area. They actually kept the one story commercial buildings along the front along the street, and then they had behind it, multi story housing. That was more adjacent to the adjacent residential zone. Any idea why they didn't build up the area along the main street as opposed to farther back. I don't really know but I think right now we would welcome having taller buildings along the street we're trying to make that into a walkable village center so pulling the buildings forward, and then having parking behind and having a nice streetscape in front of the buildings is what we in the planning department would like to see happen. Thank you. May I also say that I think we might look at the commercial zoning district as being kind of archaic. And that the business village center is really more in keeping with what our vision of a village center is. So the fact that that whole area is commercial. Maybe we want to consider or you want to consider changing that to BBC, rather than commercial. So one of the things I noticed about the, the commercial zone was that it allows a very wide variety of uses, mostly by site plan review. Is it true that the commercial zone allows a wider variety of uses than the business village center. How Chris, I think that it may allow more things like automotive uses although I'm not. I haven't looked at that recently but there are several automotive uses that are in that area now, but those wouldn't have to go away. If the zoning were to change, if those things were no longer allowed in the new zone, if they're already existing they would be allowed to continue to exist and they could also make improvements to their property, because we have that section of the zoning bylaw that allows changes to be made to non conforming buildings and properties. Okay, so I'm going to ask you a first follow up question. If the owner of that land decided oh I want to tear down the building I have and put a different building on it with with. I have the same auto body shop that's there now, you know, go away for two years and then while I built my new building and come back. Is that allowed, or would they, if it's a new building, it's going to be brand new zoning and nothing's grandfathered in so the use can be grandfathered for as long as two years that's what I understand so if you went away for two years and then tried to come back that would be difficult, difficult but if you went away for a shorter amount of time I think that could Okay, so it. Great. Thank you. Andrew. Thanks Doug. So I actually would you. Yes, thank you, Chris would you would you had mentioned was actually something I was wondering as well as any reason why this would need to stay commercial if we think of this and state I don't know that any of us would really consider it to be commercial. For the sake of simplification it would seem like a logical thing to change. I was also curious, and I'm kicking myself or not have my laptop here as to the extent of the, I believe it probably Amherst College property in the south side of college tree. How far west. Can this reasonably to be developed. I mean, right seeing the kind of the cross hatch on here. It looks like to South Whitney Street is the zone are those actual parcels that could be developed. So this kind of south side of South Whitney here. It's very wet there. All of that Amherst College property is very wet and I think these. Might be the Fort River auto body. I'm not sure. I don't think so I think that's up further because that's South Whitney there. I see yeah. I don't know what that is. Maybe that's just some residential buildings but all of this is very wet and you can see it when you drive by it's really. I've, I've, I've walked through I know, I know exactly what you're talking about. The other thing I was just going to mention going into this as well is that, you know, I think it's appropriate that we're approaching from a residential perspective but I think it's also important for us to keep in mind the commercial and retail that we want like build this out successfully. We really need to have the supporting retail base. I realize it's frankly it may just be like more apartment complexes in this area that we want this to be a functioning village center. I think the pieces are there. Let's just let's not lose sight of that right that we want to have something that combines the two. I think that's it for now. Thanks. Thank you Andrew. Yeah, I guess. We wouldn't want to, I would agree we wouldn't want to do anything that drove these kinds of businesses out of town, particularly because we have such a small commercial tax base to start with Andrew. Thanks again. That's actually something I had heard just in a conversation with someone last week is that the town is in sort of great need of some additional revenue and you know we've got a school vote coming up. You know we can't continue to ask you know residential property owners to carry that burden. This is such a to me this is such a logical place for us to try to focus our efforts and build this out where we can get some diversity in that revenue stream it's you know there's there's benefit not only for the folks who live in this community but for the town itself. If we can get some additional forms of revenue to come in. Thanks, Chris. So mixed use buildings and apartment buildings do pay taxes, and I think they pay taxes based on what their income is, rather than, you know their value. I don't think so, or if it is it's related, it's also related to the revenue that they bring in the rent that they charge. That's something I learned that I wasn't clear about, but that that means that when you build a mixed use building or an apartment building you're not, you're not losing revenue. Right, and you're in you're increasing the number of residential units in town so whatever. So there is some increasing taxes that way to current. So, the dilemma is how to keep businesses from getting crowded out because if it's only if you're, if it's the highest bidder, probably at the moment. A big residential building is going to be able to make more profit than a little business and we would lose these little businesses so we have to be, you know we have to be wise about how we're going to do this. Ruth. I'm mindful of what I heard Nate say last time we did this which is that it was the, and it probably varies obviously from parts of town, but and he was probably talking about the downtown, and this is close but not exactly downtown. And what he said was that it was the residential income that was driving the properties and that the, that the landowners could afford to carry the commercial space on the first floor or the retail, the non residential zone on the first floor. To the extent that that's true, and to the extent that that's true here, here being the strip of commercial. I think we're talking about essentially single story, retail establishments there. I mean that to encourage the preservation of that single story business activity with with residential on the upper on upper floors would increase the value, the income generating capabilities of properties along that street. For me always the magic question is how do you provide, how do you induce people who own these places to take risks, or to match a vision that we may, or anyone might have that's not them. I don't think that's not I don't think that's impossible but it certainly is a challenge that we have to recognize. Okay, thanks Bruce, Chris. I understand from talking to a representative of the of the some way family that they are interested in taking a risk with their property, which is on College Street it's the property that includes the paint store. It's not a paint store it's a flooring store. And mom's house and that whole area. So they're interested in creating a mixed use building in that location. I'm not sure what plans they had for their commercial tenants, but they can't do what they want to do with the current zoning. Well one thing I wondered about was maybe increasing the allow the number of stories or height, but in this zone, insisting on 100% commercial on the first floor, rather than downtown where we've allowed a minimum of 30% has to be non residential. I mean, we could propose that we could, it could get enacted and we could see if anybody finds that economically feasible, but that would be a way to sort of try to preserve the commercial. You know some of the businesses that are there, you know, at least they don't get whittled down in terms of the square footage. I think that the rent might increase if they were in a new building. I see Anders hand and then Karen's hand. I think we just would need to offer up more height in exchange, right so like if we're going to say that, you know, for an economically viable product project they need three stories of residential we say the ground floors got to be commercial then we let them go up for stories. So that they can, they can still I mean we, we need to make sure that that it's, we need to, we need to make sure that we can still provide opportunities for private investors to make that leap and if we want them to take an avenue that doesn't allow them maximize their profits then we need to give them some other avenues to make it in in pricing for them to come in and it would seem to me like I would certainly have no problem with going taller along call treat at all. I mean if we can get development close to the street, get the ground floor retail activated and give them the opportunity to get housing, we're trying to get housing anyway, right so I'd be more than happy to trade off going vertical to enable that. Okay, thanks Andrew I see Karen and then Bruce. So I, the danger is that with one of these new constructions the rent and the commercial space kind of rules out all the mom and pop shops that we love in Amherst and want to keep and the ones that are there now like, like moms and this the, the commercial space is going vacant in a lot of places because I don't know is it the rent, or is it the design again is also so conducive to something like what we have the insurance companies, but where is the knitting shop where are these shops that we really need in a small town like Amherst to make it continue to be a historic attractive town how do we do that. Can we demand that these places be designed in a certain way and that the rent be small. So we demand that it's a kind of a, maybe a conglomerate where you have boosts in there a chocolate ear a cheese place a fish place you know that they can share it. Somehow we have to, we have to be careful because we don't want more of these empty big commercial spaces. Bruce, do you want to be next. Yes. I was co chair of the first time we, not the first time the first time in the most recent round of master planning in the round 2000 or so in late 90s 2000s. One of the topics of conversation at that time was the, the, the, the entry experience into the town. And we, we thought about the various ways that people came into town, the roots and so forth and the one that seemed to be most troublesome, not most troublesome but, not most inspiring, certainly was this route nine from this direction. And it's, it's, it's uninspiring for the greater portion of its length. So we've been not going to solve this problem. If it's a problem, I think it is quickly. But what you were saying, Andrew I think, or maybe it was Tom about accepting height in this. In this conversation we're discussing, I think that would be a significant step forward to defining an entry in, in, in town. And so, whereas height has had problems for certain people downtown where they overwhelming so sidewalks and residential experience and so forth. We would try and improve the residential experience, the pedestrian experience I'm, I'm meaning to say, but I think here. Some heights that define the road and defined kind of a beginning of an entry up to the center of town would actually be a very constructive thing so I would. So, I would personally encourage any kind of initiative that included that sort of thing in the development. Thank you Bruce, Tom. Yeah, and Bruce I think one of the things I just brought up on the screen was that what Doug and I were discussing was bringing that zone which is now commercial which we're thinking about as a residential village center commercial village center I really want to think about it coming around this corner, and actually moving further down route nine, due to the fact that we do have a lot of. Let's call them student dwellings that are these conglomerate houses that have been broken down that I'm sure not broken down in a negative way but broken down into units. So, not run down but but yes, multi unit multi units that run all along, and this would be the east side of Belcher town road so you know those are opportunities for growth for density and and we know that some of those developments are coming. And some of those properties, at least to some degree, but also thinking about bringing commercial down this way, which is something we talked about last time whether those are grocery stores or other kinds of smaller outlets and and current, you know, I think, if there are more shops, they're likely to be more affordable than if there's just one building with three really important I mean maybe that's what happened downtown is that those are prime real estate downtown and became very pricey, whereas a large volume of smaller spaces along this area might have a slightly different value than they would downtown so might be more affordable for some people if we have more of them. All the way down this strip of road here so our question was how far down do we go, and how do we consider the extension of that zone around the corner here. Or Chris, do you need to respond to that or just going to mention the fact that we have a development coming in on the side side of Belcher town road that is the wayfinders development and I think that's three stories if I'm not mistaken so that's going to be an imposing presence on Belcher town where where exactly is that that is just beyond the. The center of this picture right here. There's a building with a white roof. And it's right there. Yeah, and just to the east of that or southeast of that is the property that's going to be transformed into multifamily housing by way So it's on the north side northeast side of belcher town. Yeah, and it's all it's going to be towards the road, we asked to have it pulled towards the road. It's not quite as far as colonial village. Right. Okay. And then there's another one that Amir McCheese planning to build on the south side of southeast street or the southeast side of southeast street, right in back of auto express. Okay, he's proposing to build, I think. I don't really know how many units but I believe that's, he's trying to get a four story building in there, and it's going to be he's proposing mixed use. And that's in the village center of business. Yeah, and he does have retail space in his building across the street which the planning board approved the one that's been under construction. Yeah, so he will have six small spaces in there and I don't know what he has in mind for that but that's an location for potential retail. Great. Andrew. Thanks, Doug. I'm on favor of extending this business village center down belch town road. I think Bruce's point on this being a gateway is a very good one. You know I when I approach I typically think of the gateway as sort of southeast and the Cumberland farm southeast street, right you come around the corner and then here you are presented with an inspiring approach but like that sort of the entry point. So this would give us an opportunity to extend the zoning it actually gives us an opportunity to redefine the gateway to town. Right, we can push it back and we can we can actually try to. We can, we can try to curate that to a certain extent, which is a, which is a marvelous opportunity and I think a wonderful byproduct of this is is allowing us to redefine that. To go back. Also, Karen, one of the things that your comments maybe reminded me of was what Kyle, one of the presentation, I'll Wilson of our Pellego Pellego. You know, as as we're talking about this, it's some of the same conversations that we had for downtown and he was. He was indicating that just how very difficult is to get those small retailers in based on the economic profile of what he could build. And so I think we have to, we have to realize that if we want those small businesses and I think everybody does is we need to give us an opportunity to subsidize that by giving them more residential so that they can offer essentially they need to to get those retailers they're going to need to to offer below market rents. I don't think there's, you know, from what I'll said I don't whether it's below market. It's at least below the actual cost of building space right now. Absolutely. It's, it's, it's something with, they would need to subsidize and I think for us to, to expect them to carry that then you know we need to offer them something in return that's why I was, I was proposing, you know, going hider, going taller so that they can get more, more residential to subsidize that. So yeah, 2 points one, and Kyle, I think, someone who's very vested in this indicating how difficult it is to get small retailers, even downtown, maybe more difficult, I'm not sure, out in one of the village centers, and then you have to just echo what I heard from Tom, and you Doug in terms of your earlier conversations wrapping this extending the business to at least a colonial village, maybe, and I always forget the name of the, that, that, that organic store. Maplewood. Yeah, you know, maybe even go further to Maplewood. Wonderful opportunity for us to redefine the gateway. You know, set this out to be be something that's really, again, kind of a curated design as opposed to just something that haphazardly developed through, you know, zoning that's years old and so forth. Thanks. Thanks. Karen, did you want to say something. Can I say one thing before you do. My experience with, for instance, my tailor, who is in, you know, who shortens my pants because nobody makes pants that way. It's a it's a single immigrant Russian woman down in South Amherst, right near Pomeroy, the intersection with Pomeroy, and she's in a pretty nondescript little commercial strip that's kind of across from the mountain and but that's not new space. You know, and I think I've my experience is that the people who for, for instance, I don't know what I don't remember what it was called but that hotel that was where 11 East Pleasant Street went, where where the music store was and maybe the knit where was there but the carriage shops that's right the carriage shops, you know that was a 1950s hotel. They really depreciated probably no mortgage, and it was, you know, they could rent that at $15 a square foot rather than the going, what you need now which is like probably 30 or 35 to break even on building something. I think that those kinds of businesses end up being in the older buildings that are more depreciated and the mortgages, you know was was done in 1970 and the dollars were fewer and so I mean, I just feel like it's hard to get those kinds of relatively. I don't want to use the murder marginal but they're low. They're they're low revenue businesses. It's hard to put them into a new building, just generally, and they tend to end up in the older buildings on the edge of whatever the redevelopment is happening. That's what I wanted to say Karen. Right, but but we're displacing them to by saying we're going to tear this down and put something else and we can't displace all these little places. It's going to destroy our a lot of town so we have to, there, do we have the power to do things to say okay you can go force, you're going to make your money on the residential but it's a requirement that you have low rent for the, or you design it but it's small. Do we have that kind of power. Other thing that I want to ask is if they're going to build something like this for stories it might be really profitable for them. Can we demand that they also put some money into a fund for bicycling or public transportation into town. I mean if we're a planning committee and we want to go in this direction what power do we have we've got to steer in that direction and it might be a stick in a carrot kind of an approach. So I, I have one to respond to your second topic I was looking at the Arlington zoning code recently, and they have a whole section on bicycles and the required bicycle indoor and outdoor, you know, storage areas that are required and a whole slew of different building types, and I you know I kind of wondered if I had a few extra hours whether I should just copy it and bring it in, and you know we could mold it to something that's applicable to our town and add a bicycle section where we've got a parking section now. So that's something that we could do. So currently I find the financial levers that you're talking about more difficult. I think they're more difficult. I could be wrong, but. All right, any other hands at the moment, people want it, Karen. So I guess, somebody has to research whether this is done anywhere. And I'm willing to try to do that. It sounds like it's kind of like an affordable housing requirement, but for affordable commercial. Exactly. Exactly. Because, you know, if we were, if we were aspen or a place like that, there would be the kind of rich companies that come in make small little places, but we're a college town. And we don't cater to only wealthy people. So we have to have a different kind of an approach so that we can have these kinds of retail that we need. Bruce I think wanted to go next. I'm just thinking further along with Karen was saying about the microphone, Bruce. Yes, I'm having a hard time generating causing developers to put into put money into a pot of some sort. I've often thought that in parts of town where it's not possible to provide parking, because there's no room. It would seem to me to be quite reasonable that developers would contribute to a fund that would be creating a parking garage somewhere that would be of consolidated benefit to the to the total surrounding so in principle that doesn't seem unreasonable and I think we could probably find examples of where that's been done. I expect that all of these things are kind of difficult to do. And there's probably all sorts of reasons why it might not be a good idea but there's probably a few that would suggest that it would be. So then we just move laterally from that to say well what other things might we do with other incentives or whatever the word is for these things that we might invent that would allow us to subsidize support or construct other things as a consequence or as a product of the some other inducements we can put to develop into in the in the bylaw that would says well we can do something bigger, closer, whatever, whatever, whatever is in whatever is in demand, we look at it and think well how can we satisfy how can we feed how can we move toward that demand and what can we get back, and then how can we use what we get back. I think it's very broad sense of strategically but it does seem to me that. At some point we're going to be moving in that direction because we're constantly scraping the barrel you know. Thank you Bruce. Oh, Nate, Nate. You want to talk. Oh sure. So, I guess a few things I was thinking about listening to you is. You know, down on the route nine, I feel like it's a great place for a 40 our zone right so we tried it in the downtown it didn't work because we had a lot of almost complete build out in the bg but right now there is. 40 are would get affordable units we control this on and, and essentially bypass zoning because if they opt into the 40 are with the increased density and other things in my incentive to do that so. I guess that was one I had. And the other one was, I want to lose it of having a student housing zone. So I think it's good to look at the center but I also think that I mean, talk about having a student housing relay, perhaps around the UMS campus. And let's look at both though so let's try to do student housing to help balance the housing equation and then so we're happy for our village. Nate you were a little bit difficult to understand but as I understand it you were talking about a student housing overlay district somewhere in town or in this particular area. And a 40 are zone in this area. Is that correct. 40 are along with nine. Okay, so I've been discussion though, say, changing to the bdc or I'm sorry, but I think that. Okay, so maybe we'll need to get a little more clarity from you at the next regular planning board meeting, when maybe the audio will be better. Yeah, you're definitely, I think we all understood you were talking about a 40 our zone along route nine. And the student housing overlay I'm a little unclear about right now. Closer to the university. Okay. All right, thank you, Tom Andrew. Thanks Doug, that was actually a nice reminder Nate I remember when we're talking about 40 are at the time, it had popped in my mind as well that maybe one of the village centers would be a better candidate for that knowing that there was so much sensitivity to how we manage downtown so I don't need to dust off my notes but I think it's absolutely something that would be worth looking at. And then also I, I know they're very difficult. I mean that's about all I know about them but enterprise zones is that something like we were that that was, I think being used to develop some of the coals properties in North Amherst is, is, is there an opportunity. I know very very little about those. But is there an opportunity to try to leverage enterprise zone concept here. My recollection of the enterprise zone is that that's a federally designated area of town which is an hour one enterprise zone is in North Amherst, and it does include coals. And so, but beyond that I don't know anything about it. I don't think there's restriction to the number of them. As far as I understand that there could be more I think that it was designated, you know, intended for low and moderate income census tracks may not qualify. So there may be some some restrictions but knowing that those, you know those enterprise zones might maybe there's some opportunity to leverage that to help drive incentives as well. Chris. I think there's some different things to look at enterprise zones are one thing, but I think what we have in North Amherst is actually called an opportunity zone, and that is a designated federal zone. I think we're kind of perhaps too far into the time period during which that could happen. It started a number of years ago and I think there was a 10 year time period when you could take advantage of it. Nate actually knows more about that than I do and unfortunately his audio isn't working very well, but at the next meeting he might be able to enlighten us about the opportunity zone in North Amherst but I have a feeling we're a little bit late for that one. Enterprise zones we do have other enterprise zones around town. There was one that was created I believe in that in East Amherst in the vicinity of the PRP zoning district where Ron Laverde owned some property. And another and I think there was one created in or maybe it's that Ron keeps talking about wanting to have an enterprise on there. There's one in South Amherst at Atkins Farm I do know about that one. So that's something that we could look into to try to make that happen again but those kind of require I think they require an economic development committee of some sort to run them to operate them. Okay, that's a possibility. Okay. Yeah. And the, the opportunity zone, which was part of the tax act. We have the one we have to create more would require another act of Congress. Right. Okay. All right. All right, the time is about eight o'clock. We did start at seven. So I don't know that we need to take a break at our usual eight o'clock time tonight. It does seem to be a little bit of a lull in the raising of the hands. What's that. Hold on a second Karen. Do we have any hands raised Pam in the attendees. All right. Members of the public. There are two of you. Do you. Three, there's one here in the room. Do any of you want to make a comment. In this discussion. Okay, I see one hand from. I saw one hand from Jennifer towel, but it went away. So maybe she thought better of it. All right, it's up again. So Jennifer will move you to where we can allow you to talk and give us your name and your street address at the beginning. Yeah. Hello, can you hear me. Yes, we can Jennifer. I don't know why the hand went up and down. Jennifer towel 259 Lincoln Avenue. I am speaking as a resident. And I did, I just wanted to ask us, I did think I heard Nate, although it was muffled. I don't know if Karen heard the same were neighbors. Did he mention the gateway as a location possibly for student housing. And I guess what would concern me is they're currently putting up. I don't know. Again, if this would be considered the gateway where the new student housing complex is going on Lincoln and mass Avenue. But there are 800 students 600 of whom are undergraduates moving basically on to, you know, a residential street. So I would hope we're not looking at jumping into more housing, big large student housing complexes there because it really is on the rim of a residential neighborhood and I think we kind of be blasted away. So I just wanted to ask, maybe Chris knows if that's something that's, you know, being thought about. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. I certainly, I did not hear Nate use the word gateway but I could be wrong. I don't know if Nate use that word or not but I know for a long time, there has been the idea of floating around of having some sort of student housing district close to the university in the vicinity of Ferry Street and Phillip Street. Now that's an idea that's been talked about ever since I got here which was 20 years ago and I think it was talked about before that so it's not something that's new it's not something that is actually being worked on but it's an idea that is often resurrected and I think made is reflecting that idea as an obvious place to have a student zoning district if we were going to have one. Okay, it's right close to the university. Well that certainly was one of the three areas that the you three consultant that did the sort of study of where public private projects might happen that has resulted in one of the three areas that they recommended where was where the housing is going now that the university is building. And then the second one was in in that area along triangle or North Pleasant Street that has traditionally been called the gateway. And then the third one I think was down off of university drive opposite the Southwest dorms on the west side of university drive. Obviously the university decided to go with one of those and hasn't decided to go with others. But there certainly is some public land on the southwest side of North Pleasant Street as you go up toward the university. Chris. Oh, I was just going to say that most of that land between the Baptist church and the center of town is all private land. So the university only controls Gordon hall and karate hall. On that side of the street but on the opposite side of the street where those have the old fraternity properties that's right right that that long lawn. Yeah, is university property to Andrew is a university or is it owned by the fraternities. The old France work is owned by the university now. Okay. I'm not just on that point. To me, like university drive is such a logical spot for it. And I you could, I could envision like just a separate type of village center being built out there with, you know, the land that I think the question I would have for folks and mentioned the last time as with the town line, you know, we're trying to solve our housing we're trying to, you know, keep keep these folks out of our neighborhood, or you're hearing that there's interest in not having student housing really overwhelm the residential residential neighborhoods is, would we be comfortable if that all ended up in Hadley, or on university property where we get no revenue from it. Kind of unrelated but I can remember how I got thinking about this but Chris you'd mentioned back to sort of East Amherst here, the wet property kind of on the south. So there, are there some environmental concerns that we need to consider if we want to build more density in this general area. On the north side certainly on the south it sounds like there might be but is there are there some potential limitations that might prevent us from really moving forward with building density here. Thanks. I don't know anything about those issues. Are you talking about the area at the intersection of Dickinson and oh just the commercial area along College Street. I would say that drainage is probably going to be an issue there. Other than that I'm not aware of any big environmental issues. Okay. I know that the issues down where University Drive is that opposite Southwest. That's essentially the bottom of Lake Hitchcock. And so it has lots of organics and the soil is not very good for foundations. So you have to go deep and it goes expensive. And so this area is obviously up the hill. It's actually up the hill and then back down into a another flood plain. But I don't know what the geotechnical. We, we had one more public person who wanted to make a comment more more keen. I just it makes me kind of nervous when you talk about those one story shops on the one story stores on College Street because those are all pretty viable businesses. I use them all. And when Kelly's when, when he retired it got bought right away. I just think of what happened to the carriage shops. Well Amherst wines and spirits move down there but most of those stores went out of business and went out of town because they couldn't afford the new rents. So, I think by allowing more development, it may just run those businesses out of town too and we'll be all the poor for even if it isn't ugly building. Thank you more. All right, so Bruce. Just to add to what you said more. I think it's probably not just the new property values and the rental increases that go with them or that's clearly some part of it. But on the street and that lower end of college that we're talking about we've got spirit house for example. And my guess is, and I'm not a business retailer but my guess is that the problem there would be the development period that also drives businesses away they may be quite viable in the new location, but they can't be in the new location the next two years or two year period than that I think is at least as damaging so we could be we could address ourselves, perhaps to that I don't know but those are the challenges I think associated with keeping businesses. Thank you Bruce, Karen. I think it's good if we try to stay concentrated on this this East side, a little bit. And one of the things that we all were concerned about is how to get a food retail grocery place in this part of town. I wonder, Christine, what happened to maple wood farms. Is there any way to revitalize that I never quite. Is there a short way to answer that. The issue there is really zoning. And what they were allowed to do was to create a restaurant that was a farm stand restaurant. So they had to grow a certain amount of their things that they served and sold there on the land, and and also within Massachusetts, and they had a hard time meeting that so that couldn't they couldn't really establish a store where they could offer, you know, toilet paper and Lysol and things from Ohio, and everywhere, you know it so couldn't be a regular grocery store can only be a grocery store that was really a farm stand that was, you know, had had things to offer that were local. And that was part of the zoning. Yeah, because in the end zoning district. Yeah, that only allows the farm stand it doesn't allow commercial use so you'd have to change the zoning of the property in order to allow grocery store to exist there. All right, and currently grocery stores are allowed by site plan review in town in the BG, BL, BVC, be in and calm. Okay. Chris, why don't you hand the microphone to Bruce, who's it's got to send them. I remember the issue associated with Maplewood restaurant and so forth and town meeting and the reluctance to embrace what I guess was called spot zoning. And because we, the town wasn't prepared to embrace a spot zone for that location. The business died, there may be other reasons that I'm not aware of but that I think there's certainly one of them. But as we noted, I noted earlier with the commercial district. There are four parts of the commercial zone in town and to them, essentially spot zone one of them is Amherst farmers which is a zone all by itself in the middle of the educational zone and the other is Vita or whatever I don't know what it's now called but the hardware store just on the east side of the railway. That's the other spot zone. So, you do spot zones. I don't see the downside of it. I wonder, Chris, whether you know why do we do we still have this feeling that that maple that product that that that location couldn't be zoned in a way that would make it kind of attractive to what we've talked before about the Amherst co-op. I have no connection with the Amherst co-op, at least none that's relevant here. And, but it would seem like that it should be on a short list of possible sites for that, particularly as we've said earlier that this is a kind of a food desert a bit down here and and if we could attract that kind of business or even that particular business into this location, I think it would, it would, it would move the ball forward in the way we've been discussing. So, if there's more than start zoning, we can talk about that. But for the moment, is there any particular reason why we should not contemplate a similar kind of spot zoning to make it possible to do more on that site than you've subscribed earlier. Chris, you don't have to answer that if you don't want to. Well, I think that's one of the reasons why we're talking about stretching the zoning from the intersection of Belcher Town Road and southeast street east towards Maplewood Farm, because we wanted to include that in the village center. And I don't know if you could zone that particular property all by itself. I could ask KP law. Yeah. Thank you. Karen, you have your hand up. I propose that we ask KP law, whether we could spot zone Maplewood Farm and support the initiative to get that going. It really creates my sensitivities and everything else to go by it. I can see this beautiful place which I remember visiting and having a wonderful time at just molding away when we so desperately need something like that on that site. So I, yeah. Andrew. Chris. Okay. I just wanted to say that we would need to get the owner of the property on board with this idea. So that would be like the first step that we'd have to take is to talk to him about whether he'd be interested in going ahead with this. Andrew. Thanks Doug. Spot zone or I mean where would we, I mean, we could, Why not just make sure you include it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm just wondering. And I'm trying to remember if that's adjacent to, if it's, it's before stand or it's after Stanley right. So coming in, like, I guess where would the lodge, if we just extended this I think we're, we're all comfortable with. I think, I think Alpine Commons, the eastern end was, it was kind of where Tom and I had sort of ended it but you know the next one down is the Maplewood area. And kind of my point is, I think, I agree with you and like, I've thought this would also be sort of Alpine Commons is like a logical spot, but maybe we just pull a little bit further up, and then we don't need spots on right. Tom. It also helps us think about this gateway that Bruce is bringing up because right before that is a series of open land and farms and really quite beautiful landscape and you start getting into the more dense housing and other things and actually spot housing that's happening around there, but that's also an opportunity to think about gateway signage into Amherst or however you want to call it it's a really nice spot moving from the open kind of farmland well it's not really quite farmland but there's nursery on Amherst nursery on the old fairgrounds. Yeah, and there's some some farms before that as well. So I agree I think pulling it down the question was, Doug in what you were saying a moment ago is a supermarket not allowed in. It's allowed in calm. It's allowed in the BBC. Okay. And then then it becomes a question of the maximum building coverage is that big enough. Is that a big enough footprint for a viable supermarket or not. You know, I mean, you look at stop and shop and they have a particular footprint that they usually do. Yeah, big why is smaller. I think it's also possible to imagine a smaller grocery that even had residential on top of it these aren't uncommon a lot of places as well so you don't think we're thinking we need to stop and shop here per se either I think there are lots of other I mean, yeah, I mean, and, you know, we can kind of decide, you know, how much land there is and what what could happen if we zone it that way and how big of a building you could put there but but I do think it would be another opportunity for residential as well if people wanted to capitalize on the land. Okay, Chris did you have you want to say something. Okay, I wanted to say that I think the co op is a possibility for that property. I don't know if they have talked to the owner of that property, but that would take a rezoning to make that happen but the co op is an entity that is trying to create a grocery store of a sort but it's not stop and shop so I don't know if people would. I doubt that people would feel happy if a stop and shop went in that location but they would potentially feel happy to have a, you know, co op store. Nothing against stop and shop. I think I have questions about what our next steps are in terms of okay so if we can all agree to some degree that there's needs to be a change in the comms district, it needs to, you know, we want to think about adding some density we want to think about how we can extend that further down the road so what's our what's that process like what do we need to need to walk away with a drawing today like what's the what's the process to get there. Well, we could come up with a drawing here, at least a boundary. I think it would be the next step would probably be having either planning staff or a planning board member or members draft draft zoning, you know, all change or overlay or what however, whatever the strategy, they wanted to do was. And in the last regular planning board meeting, which I think was the one that I had to leave early. There was some conversation about when we need to open when we need to comply with open meeting law and when we don't. I remember hearing in when I listened to the recording. It sounded like two members of the planning board who want to just go do something and talk to each other and prepare something for the board can do that without violating open meeting law when they work together. But if the planning board formally requests that members go and do something, then open meeting law extends to the work that those fewer than a quorum do. Chris you're shaking your head up and down and you agree with my memory of that. If the planning board designates two members to go off and work on something that those two members become a subcommittee and then you have to post the meetings and be kind of formal about it. So there's nothing wrong with that it's just more work. Right, can't meet casually, but if two members decide to go off and do something on their own, and they don't constitute a quorum, then they can bring their work product back to the planning board. Okay, so, and then in terms of planning staff. I know you guys have been shorthanded for a couple of months at least. When you and I have in some of our conversations about this. It sounded like you were thinking this was productive conversation but it wasn't likely to be something that planning staff could focus on a lot outside of this meeting. I guess for some time because you've got some other, you know, we've got the, the duplex zoning that is has been proposed and is being, I guess, discussed with town counselors. And you, you know, you've been shorthanded so you've got other committees you need to support. So it feels to me like to answer your question, Tom, my, my answer would be if particular members want something to happen sooner rather than later, those members should initiate some work, whether they do it or they twist somebody else's arm to do it. And so that the fastest way would be for the planning board to come up with for somebody to show up, you know, at the planning board and say, Hey, I've worked on this, what do you guys think. And then, but if we want to have the planning staff supported it's likely to be, it's not likely to be the top priority for some period of months. Chris, do you set. Yeah, I would say it's going to be some period of months because we just hired a new planning planner, and he's one of two planners that we need to fulfill our staff. And so he's going to be, you know, getting on board he's not up to speed today, he may be in a couple of months and then we're going to hire somebody else who's also going to take time to come on board so, and we also have two comprehensive permits that are coming before the zoning board of appeals that are going to take a lot of effort, and we have two solar projects that are coming before the zoning board. Those are all things that are going to take a lot of focus from the planning staff, but this is a very good idea. And we have an indication from one of the property owners, the one in the commercial section that they're interested in this. So I think it's certainly worthwhile thing to work on. I believe that the building commissioner is interested in working on it too so, you know, maybe by the end of the summer, we might be able to have some time to work on this. Okay, thank you. I also see Nate's hand. Nate, you want to try speaking to us again. Oh, sure. I switched computers so I think the audio should be better. You sound much better already. Great. Andrew, I was going to say if you're on the property map right there, you can, there's the drop down box so you can hit zoning map where it says property map up in the screen. There's a little dialogue box next to the pan. Yeah, so if you hit that, the zoning will come up and there's also the conservation trails and map. So just show, you know, you can show it right there. I was going to say I like the idea of looking at this area for rezoning. I will, I still like the idea of a 40R in part because it has affordability and design guidelines. And I think whether or not we use a 40R if we go to something like BVC, I do think I would like to have stronger design guidelines. You know, if things are going to be by site plan review, I'd like to have a little bit more in terms of, you know, how we can manage, you know, setbacks and building facades and other things. So if we do want to have a nice feeling along the street, you know, some entryway gateway, you know, I think we need to encourage that. So with, with wayfinders on the Belcher Town Road site, you know, because it's a comprehensive permit and it's a town partnership with them they're willing to, to, you know, change the site design but that might not always be the case. The other thing I was going to say is Andrew you're asking about south of College Street if that could be densified because it is commercial now but I think honestly all of that will be considered wetland. And so I'm not sure that where there's a commercial district right now that any of that is actually build up is really is really buildable. I think you know we could zone it, knowing that maybe there's a potential but I have a feeling that if someone were to go out there and do some checking it I feel like it would probably be considered all wetland. Just, we can do if you do the conservation trails map it shows you some of the conservation layers like mass natural heritage DEP other things doesn't show much actually in this property right now. I was still drawing. Yeah, so you know I think it could be worthwhile but I'm not sure I would assume that there's a lot of potential there. I was going to circle back to the gateway comment. Yeah, I mean I did mention it I do think that the gateway area is actually a really great way to connect downtown and you mass and have some additional vibrancy with mixed use retail commercial. I don't think I'm not advocating for a massive building like they're doing now but having, you know, allowing some some infill and development there I don't you know right now it's, there's some vacant lots and there's some aging buildings and there's some uncertainty before people start reinvesting in things that, you know, if we really do want to have retail and commercial businesses that are viable we need to have more density in the village centers and so, you know, if we can get people off campus and walking to downtown to support stores and retail then I think that's a location to do it. And I like the idea of design guidelines and really working with that but you know when we when Akins move to North Amherst, you know they had ideas that they wanted in terms of number of parking spaces, you know density within the area, and a number of things and so, you know if the co op is interested in whether it's you know the housing production plan showed on the corner of triangle street and is pleasant but or maple would you were talking about I mean I think some of it would be what I'd be curious to know what are the kind of the parameters that co op is looking for and does maple would meet it or if we rezone some areas in East Amherst is there the possibility that that would be attractive to them again I don't know what they're looking for in terms of parking or bus routes or size where foot they need. But yeah anyway so I'm jumping around but I do like I like the idea of East Amherst and I do like the idea still of looking at where can we, you know, right now to taxes, you know, increasing taxes can be important so if we allow all development to stay on you mass and students stay on campus you mess is doing a great job of keeping students on campus with their food services and other things and the new in the new building going up they're having, you know rock climbing and things for students to do and so, you know I think for the health of the downtown I mean it'd be great to get students and visitors in downtown with other other things to do. And that's more restaurants if there's a billiards if there's you know just other live entertainment that could happen that's for students and non students alike I think that we just need to get, we need to be able to have the density and the people that can support that. Thanks. Thank you, Nate. Andrew. Thanks Doug. Back to the comment before that that Thomas leading relative to sort of working groups I'm, I will raise my hand I'm more than happy to, to help and be part of like a two person team with, you know, being able to help refine maybe the boundaries of where this, you know, these changes might occur. So my question for Chris would be, could we use your plotter right so like, I can produce a maps we can do some suret stuff like we can produce get some stuff done and then maybe do some sort of mark up here so yeah I'd be very interested in helping on that front I agree with the design review and I know that you mentioned that as well. And it's almost sounded like maybe there's a couple of small pairs of people like a group that could focus maybe on where another group that could maybe focus on the design, and that we could do some work in parallel and bring that together and a time frame that aligns with resources so I'll put that as a volunteer. And then I was curious also, I've not seen the way finders design but if we're thinking about extending BBC and maybe even leapfrogging that is a way finders design would it would it complement the BBC or would it sort of go against it in which case, even if we extend BBC it still sort of feels it's that makes sense. So, again, I haven't seen I think there's, there's actually different strategies for how to loosen things. I mean one is obviously the overlay. One is to just take the BBC and extend it but BBC may not be quite right for this spot. I think that would be to take calm and modify calm or, you know, or do an overlay I think I mean is probably the simplest way because then you don't have to go into the zoning code and figure out everything that's affected by whatever you're trying to do. Yeah, I agree that that's simpler I wonder is it, would it ultimately, I guess does it become more convoluted is it a bandaid, right and and in terms of I know we've we've talked in this board about, at least, you know, we've talked about but I think we've talked about sort of wanting to present ourselves as open for business. Right. And, and we've heard about some of like the onerous zoning and just the complexity and is is an overlay. I just don't know, would it make it easier or is it like another thing to sort out so. But that said, I, yeah, I've been talking about BBC. But yeah, maybe it's calm, maybe, maybe it's a couple different scenarios. Again, I'm happy to mock some stuff up and if we have access to a plot or I can, I can put some things out there first to consume. Okay. Tom you have Chris. I just wanted to say yes we do have access to a plot or so if someone gets me an electronic version of something I can get it drawn out. Tom. Thanks Doug. Yeah, I think Andrew, you know, think about simplicity. What I was thinking about when we were tackling this particular area was as a case study or as an example for something that could be deployed on Pomeroy and elsewhere. So it's a set of principles and values right for me I'd much rather see an overlay that can then get overlaid and other places around or something that was more strategic that could be redeployed, so that we could have kind of something already in place and all we have to do is reset boundaries in these different areas and we can just kind of plop it elsewhere so we understand how the design guidelines might work in that zone. We understand, you know, the scale size and usages that are allowed. And then we can just pop that around where we want because we have multiple village centers we're trying to focus on in the longer term. Well, I mean in this case it's comms but elsewhere it's not calm right so like if we went in and refined calm here, then we'd have to then turn another zone into calm and so which you could do we could do also. Right. Okay, so different strategies by whomever is motivated to work on him. Karen. Yeah, and in the meantime, if those of us that want to really move on one area and make a change that isn't long term. I propose that we really zero in on this maplewood farm and get that place going. You're right you have to talk to the owner, but that's a doable thing that's a defined thing, and that would make such a difference, while we're working on a long term for the town because it's really so imperative that we get a good food place in the center of town as fast as possible I think. Andrew. Real fast. Thanks Doug. I don't know how long maple line has been vacant. I know it's a long time but I imagine that might be a raise and rebuilds type of scenario not a retrofit. I'm not sure but I like it seems like a great thing we can just turn back on I don't know if we can or not it might actually be more difficult to have someone develop one way would be Karen if you're, you could check with the owner. Like, where are they at are they even interested in this anymore. Well you, you're a private citizen you can look them up on the property card and the address of the owner is there I mean you're speaking as a person you're not speaking for the planning board so. All right, so we've where it's now about 835 835 and seems like we're winding down a little bit in terms of what we wanted to do together tonight, is that true Andrew I see your hand. So we do have two a and ours that the staff wanted to get in front of us to have us discuss and I had mentioned earlier that I thought maybe if we tried to finish by nine so maybe we can wrap this up soon and then do the a and ours. Andrew. Thanks Doug. The only thing that I'm wondering, I think we ended up having this session because of the third Wednesday in March right is that that's why we're able to that's why we've we fit it in to without pushing other business away. Do we know if there's a similar op I mean the this, I've loved these, these two face to face in person meetings and being able to get very tactical. Is this something that we actually within the planning boards schedule is there another opportunity to have one of these words. We can look for for another one soon. I don't, I haven't looked at the April calendar I don't know if there is a fifth Wednesday. But at least recently our, our sort of obligatory business has been less pressing than it was certainly most of last year. So we can look for, you know, whether we could do it on a first or third Wednesday, take, take an hour and a half, you know just sort of do the minimal that we have to do, and then have another conversation like this, then. That that would be fantastic for me to keep the momentum going, keeping them in time boxing so that you know if folks are going to do stuff, they have a date that they can target right and I was also curious and I know I missed the last meeting whether Bruce I know you had a very ambitious kind of side project you were working on in terms of reaching out to communities whether if I missed the update that's on me but we haven't we haven't heard the update. And I, it's a lot so I don't need to push that on you I was just very excited. So, thank you Andrew Bruce. I just want to say I agree with you Andrew I think these are really very positive. I like them for a couple of reasons one. The first reason is, I like. I like being able to sit across the table and, and talk to people and it's much more intimate and therefore I think it's more productive. Certainly that's true for me. And so I would, I would commit time to doing this. And the first one we did was not on an off Wednesday. It was a Tuesday. And so I'm just want to remind us that certainly from my point of view, I can make myself available on other than Wednesdays, particularly for sitting around the table like this I really like that. And as far as my little passion project concerned I've been away for a month in the bombers and I didn't do too many phone calls. I did zero. And also, I missed last meeting to because I got blown out by a, not quite a hurricane but it was a pretty strong winds and I think I only got a first part of the meeting which is why I was logged into this damn thing and then when I saw the town room come up I thought, oh, I'm in the wrong place. So, I don't know too much about what happened last time either, but I'm, I'm continuing. I have my little project I'm about to get back into doing the next step which is to make those 30 or 40 calls. Okay, thank you Bruce. Okay. Maybe for this evening will end that in this topic. And Pam or Chris do you want to talk about the A&Rs the time now is 839. And Pam I assume you can bring the A&Rs up on the screen. You cannot. Okay. We'll need to try to describe them as accurately as we can for the recording and for the public who are, are listening. So, do you want to, well it was, it was in the packet. Yeah, they were, they were in the packet I looked at them before the, yes, they were, they're on the packet. I hope you got them all. All right, so Tom is sharing the screen. And yes, yes. So Chris why don't you introduce this first one. So this is actually a property on old Montague Road. Montague Road is to the right and old Montague Road is the curved road to the left. And there are two properties here and the property to the south is one that has not been developed yet it's outlined in yellow, the property to the north outlined in blue has been developed property to the north was developed prior to there being a requirement for a building circle on each property. So, the idea here is to allow the property to the south to be developed by creating a space where they could have a building circle. So, both properties will be of a size that they need to be in order to. So Pam can you bring those over. Those are the ones that Chris do you want Tom to go to the second. So there's there's the same, there's the same property. That's good. Yeah. And there's that little corner that's being removed. Yeah, so here you can see it well. So the corner is being removed. And then the strip along the strip to the north, which is to the right, the strip to the right being transferred in exchange for that triangle. Yes, to the northern property. So that allows the southern property to have the building circle, and the northern property doesn't need it because it was already developed before the building circle was required. So the building commissioner has looked at this he doesn't see any problems with it it has the appropriate amount of law area and frontage and it's just a question of whether you will authorize the chair to sign this as not a subdivision. So it will require a subdivision plan. Bruce. It looks like that. What was the yellow property has in addition to that slice of the blue property, the yellow property is divided at the left hand side of the circle so now there are three parcels, not to. Yes, that's right. I don't think it affects my witness to support the chair but I just like to know that we've actually got a third parcel that is already developed there's a house on that parcel I think there's a duplex on it. And so it doesn't. Oh, it doesn't show here because it was developed after this aerial. No, wait, wait, wait. No, the duplex is the one that you can see right there that pink building. Okay, that's it. Okay. Do you understand what's happening maybe we should kind of it doesn't it doesn't look like what the other drawing was the other. Maybe the property line's been moved. Yes, you see that's, it's been squished over a bit. Yes. I don't think I need to know anymore. I do see what you mean that that vertical line that's that vertical line looks like a property line. And that did so that makes that parcel different than it shows in the previous slide. Oh, in the colored slide. Yeah, in the colored slide the yellow boundary goes farther south. Okay, so the two a 36 parcel looks like it extends. Yeah. So there's something funny about that. That's our GIS and that's not really official. This was just to get you oriented to where this is located. Okay, general impression. Yeah. So this is what's really being proposed and there is a condominium here you can see old Montague Road condominium on that property. There's a house here. So do you utilize the chair to sign this plan is not a subdivision. So what we usually do is sort of an informal consensus, rather than voting a roll call. And I'm seeing hands from all four other members here tonight so I think we have the consensus for me to meet you behind the building some afternoon. You could do it here tonight. Oh, I can do it here. You've got one of the one of the benefits of being in person. Okay. All right, so that was the first one and then there's one more. The second one is the building or the project that I've been talking about on and off. It is the property that the town purchased with CPAC money. And it's going to its three properties I think it was formerly owned by Keith kinetic. The town purchased the property for the purpose of creating affordable housing here. So this property the three properties are going to be combined into one lot. And it's listed here as lot a 115,418 square feet. It currently has two houses on it and those houses are going to be either raised or taken elsewhere. And then this is going to be developed by wayfinders as part of the affordable housing development that includes the East street school. So this combined with East street I think is going to result in about 70 units, some of many of which are going to be affordable some of which are going to be market rate. And so again, you'll be authorizing the chair to sign this plan on behalf of the planning board and the testing basically to the fact that there's no subdivision required here. Okay. Looks like everybody's fine with that too. Can I Chris asked you on at least one of the recent development proposals that came to the planning board for site plan review. It was the site strategy was established when by the time it got to us for site plan review. And since this is a town project. Is there any opportunity for the planning board to see the project earlier when you're sort of working out the site strategy, rather than so late that everything's totally baked. I think that the site strategy has been worked out by wayfinders already. It's going to be going before the zoning board of appeals for a permit, it will come to the planning board for your review and recommendations but I think they're too far along to you to have much input at this point. I have input about some of the details but essentially the building, the way they had initially designed it was to have the building farther back and have all the parking in front. And we told them we didn't really like that that wasn't in keeping with the idea of a village center. So that they've moved the building forward and the parking is in back. It's kind of challenging because there is a big wetland in back. So they had, they didn't, they don't actually have that much room to work to work with. We will be bringing it to you but I'm not sure what. Okay, but it sounds like you and the developer have already had some conversations and the planning staff at least has had some input on that. Planning staff, conservation staff and building commissioner have had input into this new plan and so has the town manager. Okay. By the way. All right, so good. Okay. All right, so that's it for the two ANRs. The time now is 849. I don't think we have anything else on it that's allowed on our agenda. So, unless anybody has anything else they want to say we can be adjourned. Are we good. All right, we are adjourned. See you all the first week of April, which is next week. Chris, why don't you grab the microphone. Okay, so what happened. The first the planning board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, which is April 5, and we have determined that April 5 is the first night of Passover. We've been encouraged not to hold meetings on holy days like that. So we're going to be canceling that meeting, but Doug and I need to appear remotely, I guess we'll open the meeting and then close it. We need to move the public hearing that was continued to the fifth. If you'll remember, the proposal to change the zoning having to do with duplexes, etc. We started the public hearing on March 1, continued it to April 5, not realizing that that was the first night of Passover. So now Doug and I will be meeting on the fifth to continue it again to April 19. So we will so. I don't think so. I think we can just say well we don't have a corn because it's Passover so we are going to continue it again to the 19. Okay, so we won't see all of you next week. You'll see each other on the 19. Okay, and you and I are going to do that by zoom by zoom. Yeah, that's okay Pam. Okay, I'm just going to help us. I was going to run the show. So that should be one of the shortest meetings ever. I hope so. Yes. Great. I don't know that we're going to ask for. Well, if you don't have a quorum, you can't take public comment. Okay, no testimony without a quorum. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think you can't meet. No. In general. We don't. All right, time is 851 and we are adjourned. We can stop the recording and turn off the microphones.