 Order of the December 2, 2019 meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board being recorded by ACMI. Thanks everyone for coming out and weather this evening. I'm going to hand things off to the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning master students this evening to present us the Broadway Carter student project. So please introduce yourselves and have a welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the Arlington Redevelopment Board for having us and to members of the community who are also here. We appreciate your time taking time to listen to us. We count to you what we've been doing for the last three or four months in our study project. We looked at the Arlington corridor and I'm here to introduce us to you. My name is Ian Ollis and I'm joined tonight by two of our colleagues from the class, Griffin Kans and Kendrick, my many mules. The rest of our class members' names are over here, Wei Yi, Peter, John Fay can't be with us this evening. He's been involved in a vehicle accident. Ogyan, Vakhtang, Kendrick I've already introduced, Paolo and Mary Hanna. We make up a team from MIT and one from Harvard that has been doing a practicum at MIT in planning and our project this semester was to look at a particular project on the ground in this case the Broadway corridor in Arlington. As you can see in our view there hasn't been a detailed study of the Broadway corridor so far that we are aware of. It has been mentioned in the 2015 master plan and the 2017 arts and culture action plan but we in conjunction with the planning department here in Arlington have embarked on this project to just investigate this corridor and study all of the details around it. What is our role? Well to study this corridor we've been speaking to the local community, conducting workshops and looking at what recommendations we could possibly make for the area going into the future and we mapped out for ourselves a study area which you can see is bounded by the blue lines on the map. This is Broadway in yellow with the various bus stops of the T along Broadway corridor and we mapped out that particular study area as an area for us to study as a chunk that is digestible for a team like ourselves at MIT and we've left it there for you the various boundaries in terms of streets and we use those particular boundaries because they made up specific census block groups and tracks which are useful to our particular study. What have we been doing? We began in September with some initial research we met with the planning department, we attended the Arlington town day, we think about it to a number of you there and we began assembling data about the area looking at the census and the community surveys. We've done interviews, you'll see in photographs and slides later on how we've put up tables along the Broadway corridor and spoken to the community. We've met with various community groups, we've emailed a lot of people and asked for their ideas and their suggestions. In November we followed on with additional stakeholder meetings. We had particular public meetings which you'll see in a while and started looking at concepts of what could be developed in this area in future. Tonight we're presenting to yourselves and after some feedback from you we're going to be completing a printed and bound report of the area. So first of all our community engagement. You can see our tables along Broadway on various Saturdays and Sundays to speak to the local community and we ask them questions. What do you like about Broadway, about the area? What don't you like about it? What do you think could see some improvement? We've done some direct outreach with local groups, we've met with Equitical Arlington, Arlington Residence for Responsible Redevelopment, the Housing Corp, the Mystic River Watershed Group, the Thompson Elementary School Parent Teacher Organization. We've knocked on doors of businesses along the corridor. I remember one of our members, Peter, standing over there on a Sunday morning, went and knocked on the doors of a whole bunch of businesses and just asked those who work in their stores and owners of businesses what their views are. We emailed out, particularly asking people their comments on mobility, on walking along the corridor, riding your bicycle, driving your car, riding on the bus, how that feels to you and any problems you might have picked up. We then ran a community workshop on the 28th of October by the elementary school. We had about 24 community members who participated in the workshop and we laid out maps on tables and had people tell us what they thought was good about the area, what needed improvement. They drew things that they thought could be worked on and we've incorporated many of the ideas we've heard from people who attended these various meetings, also done what we call in-reach. So we've met with the Tree Committee, the Police Department, the Transportation Advisory Committee and so on to get in there as well. Out of that, we distilled some areas of focus which we believed needed some more intensive study under three headings, housing, mobility and the character of the neighborhood. And in looking at the housing, we looked at some particular sites along the corridor, what is currently the Lehi building, which to us appears as a gateway into the corridor from the Somerville side. We looked at the streetscape along the corridor and what mobility issues there might be and also the neighborhood character and we focused on the Luciano field area, the buildings around it, what they look like today and what perhaps they could be. Now I'm going to hand over to my colleague who's going to carry on with the housing section of our presentation and he will hand over to our final member of our presentation. At the end, we're going to take questions and comments from you which will be for citative advice as well. So thanks Griffin. Sure. Ian might have to depart early for another engagement thing he has which he'll stick around for a little bit more. I'll introduce the first three the subjects that we investigated as part of this study. These figures sort of speak themselves but they summarize some of our demographics and quantitative findings related to housing around the corridor. Overall the most prominent issue that we heard from residents in person and also in written form was issue of affordability. 37 percent of residents in the study area are what are considered cost burdens so over 30 percent of their household income goes towards housing costs and over 11 percent of households spend over half their income on housing. And in these following figures SA stands for study area. We were comparing the study area the one that we outlined around the Broadway corridor with the town of Arlington and also statewide. The balance of rented versus owned homes along this corridor is very even. Most of the households either a single person or two people and the median age of the built structure of the home is 60 years. For a lot of these homes which are wooden this is approaching the time when major renovations are needed or maybe replacement is needed. This map highlights in shades of blue the density of household units around the town and right here in the in the corridor outlined in yellow is the one of the densest areas of the town and also it's a little bit difficult to see on this projector but the colored dots represent different attractors or things to do amenities people would walk to or buy to from their home and there are tons of lung mass out of course but there are only really five attractors in this corridor. I'm going to zoom in on that and there's three markets there's a pizza shop and there's a Duncan there's not really that much to do in this corridor even though there's a huge density of residents living here compared to the rest of the town and perhaps that perhaps that's something that we're doing is worth fixing providing more things to do or quicker access the things to do around around where people live. These are some new developments that are coming in that are going through the process part in part of this board there's the 117 Broadway project which has 14 affordable units coming in adjacent to the Luciano field which we'll be discussing later and also there is the 8789 Broadway project which is just three units across the street across North Union Street from the Duncan. Oh and something we'd like to point out we we found it we we've difficult we had difficulties cross-referring this but we've read somewhere that there are only 93 affordable units in all of the town. I'll put an asterisk on that because we did have difficulties confirming that but if there are that few and this and this project alone is contributing 14 that means there is quite a need for some more affordable housing units and this is a quarter is an opportunity to bring in a few more. This is an image that we took from a demonstration that sustainable Arlington had at Town Day that surveyed people on what their thoughts were related to different housing and social issues and by far housing affordability attracted the most comments. On the left we sort we summarize what we actually heard from residents in email written form from the tabling from the workshop and of course what people bring up most is the issue of affordability but also the related concerns the concern of having things to do that are nearby within walking distance. The observation that this corridor has a lot it has a lot of infrastructure for the developed level of commercial development that it or the little level development that already has so maybe there is a capacity to densify the corridor in terms of housing up to a threshold but there is room for it and there is room for this corridor to grow and accommodate a little bit more density for the town and this slides recommend this slide summarizes our actual policy recommendations in two different themes we'd like to emphasize the need to incentivize and make financially and zoning feasible affordable housing along the corridor we advocate for reviewing some of the density and height restrictions that create difficult feasibility difficulties for affordable housing projects along the corridor we would like to recommend community processes for deciding how those restrictions might be amended to incentivize affordable housing and we in particular would like to emphasize looking at underutilized land parcels such as the ones the abandoned auto shop next to Luciano field which we'll highlight later and also the huge parking lot at the leaky building site another one of our focus sites that are in our opinion underutilized and could host more more uses to better to better benefit the corridor and we'd also like to advocate the second theme of ensuring a better quality of life for new development that does come in uh on broadway we want to make sure that development has mitigates flutter mitigates hazards due to flooding and extreme weather and that any ground floor uses to contribute to street life making a more enjoyable place to live for the people who do and will live there the second thing that we covered was mobility that was one of my specialties is for the 10 person staff these figures summarize some of our quantitative findings on mobility against essay stands for study area as it would be expected for Arlington and most of Massachusetts car use is by far the most prominent way people get around but surprisingly there is a high percentage of people who take transit or a bike or walk in this corridor probably because it's right near the 87 bus line and it's a little it's a denser part of the town most of the ways people get around to work most people in the quarter work in Boston Cambridge or Somerville but most of the important transportation links are the regional ones the ones that take people half a half hour or an hour out of the town to wherever they're going to work in the in the morning and then coming back to town in the evening so with those are the most important linkages that we're focusing on in terms of mobility in terms of the walk in building network the pedestrian network the quarter has a lot to go for it it has sidewalks in every street which not every neighborhood has so that's a good thing to have there are somewhat frequent crosswalks across Broadway and along it and there is also great tree shading in some spots but there are some weaknesses that we'd like to highlight the shading isn't great in all spots across walks aren't frequent in all locations on Broadway it's a little inconsistent there are some safety concerns intersections such as the Warren street river street intersection which one resident particular described quote unquote as a death trap and these are some of the issues we'd like to highlight in terms of the walk ability network oh and one potential solution that we're just throwing out there is as this image of a curb curb extension this is from Nacto to address some of the the curb the crosswalks at the Warren street river street intersection those curves are cut for the turning radius fair of fire trucks not really for human beings so we're thinking some improvements such as curb extensions ball bouts maybe even daylighting taking away parking one or two spaces in advance of the crosswalk so that there's more visibility of cars seeing a pedestrian waiting at the crosswalk those can improve the safety of these crosswalks greatly we have some data on biking on the left we have an image from an app called Strava that's mostly for recreational and athletic users and on the right we have data from blind bikes that's more on short trip short bike trips but together you could see the coloration is a little bit just a little bit hard to distinguish on this projector but the amount of bike traffic along Broadway is almost as much as the bike traffic on mass av and the miniman trail and yet there's no bike infrastructure of any kind of any kind on Broadway and we on the left you could see these are those are the conditions it's a bicycle you have to ride with traffic or squeeze in between the traffic lane and the parking lane or as these are potential potential solutions just for throwing out suggestions there is space to work with along broccoli there is a space for bike lanes in two directions either painted and adjacent to the traffic lane or with more aggressive approach taking space from either one parking line on either side for separated bike lane these are just potential solutions there's always a trade-off between the space required to implement something like this and the safety benefits that come with it we would like to emphasize that there is a safety need and there is space to work with that bike lanes could be implemented on to Broadway in terms of transit there's just the one bus line to 87 it runs weekdays and Saturdays but not Sundays it just terminates here uh i'm sorry here at Clarendon hill on Sundays and so do the 89 and I think the 88 um this bus line is actually one of the most heavily used east west corridor a bus corridor is in the Boston area and there are a ton of on boardings here in yellow going down to Davis Square with the off boardings in blue and a few more passengers going down to Leachmere but that's an important regional link residence going eastbound in the morning then coming back to Arlington in the evening there aren't many facilities for transit users on the left you can see there's a typical bus stop it's just demarcated with a sign but not really anything else meanwhile just down the block on Mass Ave there are all these different features there's benches there's shelters sometimes there's drinking fountains this is actually in Boston but this is a bus and bike only lane to get the buses to go right up to the front of the intersection and skip all the queues waiting in a red light but these are some potential countermeasures and not all of them require allocating space or taking it away from the sidewalk like a bench or bus shelter is relatively easy to implement as a contrast to a bus only lane we have one oh on on Mass Ave there is on in mornings in the peak direction of travel but not on Broadway one of our recommendations is one of our potential recommendations is looking at the possibility of a bus only lane go approaching a wife parkway here we calculated there actually is room the eastbound lane of Broadway here is 21 feet wide that could fit at 10 foot traffic lane and 11 foot bus only and bus only and bike lane but what I was one of the specific issues that we heard at this intersection there's someone's congestion coming eastbound in the morning that just makes it it's just really difficult to exit Arlington into Somerville and it actually creates turning difficulties for all these residents living here in the north turning left onto Broadway they have to wait several cycles of this intersection here in order to get through we also heard in terms of other location specific issues just merging and visibility difficulties at that triangular Warren Street Broadway intersection the same one that another resident described as a death trap but the acute angle there just makes it very difficult to turn onto Broadway safely and we even heard resident this is a pointer yes we heard some residents come down Warren Street and then turn right on Bates Road and then they make the 90 degree left because it's safer that way but these are some of the location specific concerns here on the right on the left are just the more general concerns residents in all in all the different ways we've reached out to them they've said they would like safety issues and bike safety pedestrian safety issues and bike safety issues addressed particularly crosswalks and especially near the Gibbs school which is just reopened and some of those crosswalks have not yet been tailored to student traffic in the morning I think the transportation advisory community has started looking at some of those issues but not fully and also and this also relates to the issue before of red is up here residents desiring places nearby to go to safely just for daily uses grabbing grabbing coffee or getting groceries or meeting friends these summarize are all our different mobility recommendations corridor wide we'd like to advocate for bike lanes in both directions on the corridor and we have heard from residents posting them the the question what would what would you say if we if one lane of parking was taken away in one direction in order to make the space for this bike lane and a lot of residents have said that would be great to do along this quarter because parking is not heavily demanded along the entire corridor only in certain places for their businesses or where there's high density housing so it is within the realm of feasibility possibly taking away a lane of parking on Broadway to make space for bike lanes in each direction we'd like to advocate for a safer walking routes to and from schools and common communal destinations as grocery stores better streetscape more bus shelters plus benches for transit users night lighting more tree shading and we we don't know exactly what the means of reaching the nbta politically are but we'd like to advocate for a sunday service on the 87 there might be a potential in in order the overton window for that to open up to that because the the green line extension is going to change some of the services on the lines coming into coming out of summerville into arlington so you might there might be an opportunity to advocate for the nba to expand service on the 87 in terms of specific intersections we'd like uh we're recommending a study of congestion at that alewife parkway intersection all the issues of people trying to get eastbound in the morning and we're advocate we're advocating for a redesign of the warren street river street intersection the triangular one there on broadway to address safety for all all different modes for pedestrian issues on the crosswalks bike issues because there is no painted stripes telling bicycles how to get through that intersection and also for vehicles because of the uh visibility uh and merging difficulties through the angle of that intersection there's a lot of different things that can be done with that intersection we look at some ambitions ambitious ones roundabout ish we were calling them but we'd encourage uh maybe an engineering design team to look at that more closely but we do think it would be great to take a look at redesigning that intersection particular that ends my coverage of of this presentation i'll hand it over to kentrick to discuss a neighborhood character and finally our site specific recommendation or our focus sites thank you so we're going to be going into the third and final focus area that the study has um i guess pinpointed and that's the neighborhood character of the quarter um along broadway and so in speaking to residents through community engagement sessions and through outreach um one thing that has been emphasized was that um broadway already has its own specific character and they want to preserve that they don't want to be um a replicate of what the massachusetts avenue corridor is and so um through i guess street walks we have seen that um there are these like street lot tree line streets and distinct housing facades that um are specific to the neighborhood and there are these neighborhood amenities that residents do like to frequent um through just walking and um sheer convenience and as we go into the presentation further we will address the luciano field um but these are just a few of the assets that we have been we have um highlighted and that have come up through community engagement sessions um on the other hand and um on the other hand to kind of like increase and um uh i guess enhance the streetscape of the corridor there are these opportunities such as the vacant lot as mentioned at the old arlington automatic transition site um and there are these large empty yards in front of apartments and buildings that don't necessarily contribute to the um coherence of the streetscape and so moving forward with um these studies proposals we do seek to enhance these um opportunities that can contribute to neighborhood streetscape um and there are already existing activities that are happening along the corridor um some recent ones include the recent developments of the learn to grow daycare um and the much beloved duncan um as a community gathering space um and then uh moving forward the 117 Broadway uh development which will um reincorporate the pre-existing arlington food pantry on the ground level floor making room for um affordable units and the commercial uh ground level activity um in addition to the streetscape uh something that residents deeply um are passionate about is the proximity to green space that this area has access to um and here we see that there are various recreational activities such as the L wife brook um the Crosby park uh luciano field and the spy upon park and to compliment these recreational green spaces there are the non recreational sites such as the uh st paul cemetery and the aforementioned um triangle over the broadway and warren street intersection um however there are uh associated environmental challenges um to these green spaces and so any proposals that we are um mentioning moving forward uh they should seek to address these environmental challenges um such as the flooding along the brook the urban heat island effect and stormwater contamination the last two of the urban heat island and stormwater contamination are the um most pressing pressing issues along the corridor and the um design proposals that we mentioned um stress that uh they should decrease the amount of impermeable surfaces um and increase the tree canopy um within the site and so moving forward residents have said that they would like the corridor to reflect um more of the arlington center vibe to be brought down the street and so um that's something that we I guess um incorporate into the proposals moving forward and so just summarizing the neighborhood character recommendations we have three themes that are guiding us we seek to um transition the corridor from grab and go to come and stay and we accomplish that by activating the ground floor of the streetscape um by encouraging more street um frontage um also we do suggest the activation um however temporary that may be through activities such as street festivals or through design proposals such as parklets um and moving forward to address the um already existing green spaces that the uh corridor has tremendous access to we seek to activate luciano field um and really seek to open it up um to the community and finally we seek to preserve the neighborhood environment um by once again preserving and expanding the tree canopy um along the corridor so moving forward to our specific focus sites um we targeted the luciano field um the lehi site and the third um focus site is the broadway streetscape as a whole um and so our understanding of the design proposals we are mentioning here come from this process of um first understanding the site through the outreach and research field visits that we've been conducting since september um and moving on to the in-class work we've been conducting um that blended the um research outreach and field visits with um design principles um seen here through um iterations of design charrettes um and then finally we uh came up with concept designs that we will go um into more later in the presentation and so for luciano field the understanding of the site um came through uh highlighting the tremendous assets that the park already has such as the neighborhood splash pad and the playground that we'll seek to get updated in the future um and the street visits were particularly helpful for us because um during our initial visits it was hard to ascertain that the field actually existed um and so it was hard to realize that the field existed because there's no park access from broadway um and so that's something that we um see to uh uh i guess like incorporate into our proposals and so this is one possible um proposal that we came up with where you can see this is broadway um and there's luciano and these are the uh side streets and these lines represent possible pedestrian flows that can open up the park from broadway and there's a blend of um i guess public uses that can be incorporated through passing in addition to a community center commercial use and um residential units into the sites and here's a um front-facing view from broadway where the bottom level of the proposal has um commercial activity um as well as a community space here and the upper levels um make provisions for um increased residential units and so this blends our um three focus areas of housing um where we seek to increase the number of units and mobility where we seek to make the corridor more pedestrian friendly and um neighborhood character where we seek to um really provide a space for the community to gather um and this is a side view from the side streets where here's luciano field and um broadway and the uh street facing opposite broadway where the proposal really um seeks to open up the street to the community so that um luciano's programming can really benefit the community um moving forward and there are precedents for something um of this i guess magnitude um so the inspiration for this came from a from busamonte park in santiago chili um where the development blended a library a cafe and a restaurant um that opened um the street uh up to the community so um we would like to envision something like this along broadway and the next focus site that we highlight um is the lehi building and so our understanding of the site um was that there's this large parking lot um and the opposite facing commercial and industrial um uses that don't really contribute much to the neighborhood character or feel of the corridor and so this is one possible iteration that we um came up with where we make well yeah this is to kind of orient to you where this is broadway the cemetery and um the design proposal um and so more specifically this proposal once again blends the focus areas that we've been discussing through this presentation um by blending the ground level activation through mixed use retail um and increasing the number of residential units both above and making provisions for row houses behind and this um particular design um seeks to tear down so as to respect um already residential units that are um along silk street and in the rear of the corridor and as for the flow of traffic here represented with the purple lines is one possible way to address the congestion griffin mentioned earlier um where this side street would be one way and um it would go out towards broadway with um a possible new traffic signal here um in order to once again relieve some of that congestion um note with full recognition that there is a traffic light um I guess uh by the brook parkway so that's why we um made that provision here and this is um just a current image of um broadway as it is um through the street and here it is um from a different angle and so in order to address the um streetscape we proposed this um design uh where there's some bike lanes and um driving lanes with uh full provision for the public um in addition to these more open and pedestrian friendly uses for the street um and so thank you for listening to the presentation and we would be happy to answer any questions that you might have sure we'll start with questions from the board and then move out to the folks in the audience anyone um well when you guys looked at some of these recommendations I think the great recommendations thank you for the work okay except for when you put all of them together okay they seem to lack a balance there's no um trade off because you say okay let's take away some parking so we have a safer bike lane but then you encourage um multi-family and you double load that means that means you need more parking so it's one or the other is there a balance between the two that you guys put them to I'm not saying you know I'm just trying to see if this was you guys look that far into looking at all the good recommendations you have and a balance of the two because you can't have all I don't think and if you can then I like I'd be great please tell me um some of the other things I like what you did with uh lay field where you uh brought the field through back to Broadway but then what you've done then I was put the cars below grade and you added housing above and and put retail down below in in sort of pods and having a filtering system to go to Broadway in the park but that's all one a massive project that's done in one project there there's probably four or five owners there have we thought of doing this incrementally or or a way of having that same goal but doing it so it organically grows as opposed to saying here's a big master vision and let's take over through the three blocks and this is what we're gonna do that to me doesn't seem as realistic as looking at a way of saying here's some ideas and these are great ideas but we can slowly grow it here organically and it'll develop to this way here or here's by triggering this thing here it'll sponsor other things and it'll just grow this way I'm sorry did you guys think of that kind of stuff when you look at this it's a good point I it's fair to say we did stretch the logistical feasibility of some of these designs that's okay that's cool that's cool yeah that's great we we were balanced in our minds we were balancing the logistical realities like the zoning and real estate realities of how development occurs and the need to present a vision to like prompt something necessary to happen on Broadway we decided we wanted to go with the angle of providing something that may not be exactly how might play out line by line in the future but we wanted to present some sort of vision of what might be possible although it is it is true to acknowledge it's the those projects that assemble all the different parcels at the same time for a bigger project are hard to do because it's hard to get all the landlords to line up and be willing to to contribute their land we know for example the the landowner of the abandoned auto transmission shop he has been there have been some difficulties between the town and him and also proposed developers developers interested in the site and creating some project there and so there are some landlord specific issues with every site but we we still wanted to present something visionary and inspiring you've done that and that's very good in terms of practicality in terms of practicality we actually met with the other person spoke to them and actually understood the conditions of the lots and what might be possible possible we met with the owner of the lakey building also to talk and so we did some initial research of where and how things can now from there on of course none of these things need some time and some vision to happen like in the way we presented them but we did some groundwork also and you can mention about the different uses of parking on the street in front of the building right regarding the first comment you had about it is a fair point there is a conflict the conflicting needs between densifying the corridor allowing more people to live in the area versus the constraint of allowing parking and whether the parking can be provided but also space can be provided for bicyclists one one strategy we reckon we're recommending in our report we didn't happen to feature in in this presentation we're recommending a report just to mitigate that a little bit is strategizing which land uses might be better for taking away that one lane of parking than others for example should be preserved in front of commercial uses as we have in just a slide previously here we happen to show parking lands on both sides because this would be a retail destination in front of institutions it would be important to preserve those but from the cemetery there doesn't really need to be a parking lane there and in front of some of the three-story homes parking is needed for guests but it's not exactly one parking spot that's needed for every home so there is room maybe to give one dedicated parking spot for three or four homes we're not exactly sure what the legal means of doing that are the parking regulations but this is still just a visionary approach if you know your point about from the cemetery I drive by that every day that's how I go to work and you need those two lanes even though it's not a legal lane you still need that lane because if someone's taking the left you're stuck there and the queuing goes way beyond the day heat right in the morning because if something can make those turns so sometimes you you got to get on the right hand lane which I'm not sure is it a legal lane or not but everybody uses it and it's like queuing up on that side from lady on on a whole across the whole and that whole traffic situation is terrible you know even if you want to take a left hand turn on the Broadway it's next to impossible because you have to cut somebody off we have to wait for one life second per car yeah that that's potentially solvable through looking more carefully at the signalization because we saw the improvements that happened at Mass Ave and our wife Brooke Parkway from uh from rejiggering the signalization as as part of of the recent projects that was adding lanes or two well it was repurposing the lane figuring the lanes and changing the signal yeah but yeah I um I see your points and I like your points I'm just saying I just want to add a twist to it right I think you've done a great job and and I really commend you for taking a look at part of Arlington that is not often thought of in these discussions and appreciate that you talked with every group of stakeholders that you possibly could um and then you took into consideration environmental issues and sustainability issues and really gave us something to to think about when it comes to all of these various issues that um a lot of the time we have a tendency to kind of get stuck into our own minds and so I appreciate the fact that you've come out uh with this project which it doesn't have to be practical which is kind of the beauty of it it can be as aspirational as you want it to be I think you've done a great job with that um I'm really impressed by the idea of opening up the Siano field and I would love to see if there's a way that we can sort of encourage that to happen in the future even if it's with uh occasional programming with some of the non-development board associated groups in town I know there are some representatives in the room tonight it's a conversation worth having um a really interesting work good job and and I look forward to digging into a little bit more single ideas we can come up with moving on thank you anyone else well I appreciate the amount of work you got done I I realize how challenging that is within the context of a class semester I particularly appreciate um the amount of public engagement that you did and the range of different public engagement activities that you conducted um and I wouldn't necessarily say that your results were were surprising overall um uh from from the public comments with the possible exception of uh receptiveness to parking removal um which I would certainly like to explore more but thank you I don't really have anything to add I other than maybe to say I don't think these things are infeasible as little chunks of things individually I think the challenge for the town will be to take what your final report is and say what do we like and how can we take what we like and make it happen over some period of time with as David says a lot of community input into the process so I think this is a good building block for where the town is going to need to go I just have a question for for you I appreciate again all the comments that my colleagues have made here and I also want to echo the fact that I think it's wonderful that you found an opportunity to include so many different stakeholders and and so much public input um my question is whether it was from the public work session that you put together or your own work sessions in your class what were some of um or was there a you know to your point of you know I don't think anything is particularly surprising here was there anything that came up an idea whether it's in the work session or from your class that was very aspirational perhaps something that was deemed too infeasible but was something that was kind of interesting that didn't make it into your final report that you want to share with us right I I will turn to my team members to ask if they remember some of those I I know there was one somebody has something you really want to say I think because we were talking about that and he didn't made it into the presentation but the war on intersection was the third side that we were looking at and we actually decided to give it up for now because it requires more traffic analysis and other things but we really think something can be done there it's it's very bad design and it can open up a place for public space it can open up a lot of options if you look at that place we might actually include something at the right okay one other partially already in there we did a two hour work design session we came up with this idea of Luciano field of having a kind of overlook on Broadway that would then look out over the park we kind of thought oh what a great idea then that night we went to the Thompson elementary school parent teacher organization and a parent just proposed that exact idea great I mean it was just it was in the air for you have a great change you could look out over the field she was saying she could you know drink coffee while our kids were playing games so it was a dream it was great park street connection that I was cool that people came up after different experiences great thank you I really enjoy hearing again what what did it make it into the page sometimes there's a nugget in there that's good for us to hear so thank you I'll let you folks call on people in the crowd if you want to have um first I I agree with I think Andrew you said and others as well that I love that you brought us a vision because I think Arlington gets bogged down into just discussing sort of nibbling around the edges of what was already there and incremental changes here and there so it's wonderful to have a vision when I read this I was blown away by one or maybe two specific statistics and that is the that in this area 34 percent of the housing units are occupied by single person I think one of the things we think about when we think about Arlington is that it's a town of families and clearly and it's not and and when you add on the number of housing units that are occupied by two people it takes it up to 71 percent of the area so I would love for you to come back with a vision and tell us first of all are those like old people after they've had their family or are they young people before they've had their family or an equal combination of each I mean who what age group and and therefore hypothesizing what are their needs and secondly it does that represent a real demand in housing that people may be living in inappropriate housing units and if we were to build more housing units should they be for that population in that area that's that's an outstandingly helpful comment thank you what we should look into that so even though I'm letting these these folks do the Q&A as usual with public comment public hearing just state your name and address so we can oh sorry that's okay Barbara Thornton 223 Park Ave recent 16 and that's so that you get appropriate credit 10 years from now okay yes uh Leo McHugh I own a taxi business in Arlington Arlington I'm licensed out of the town of Arlington if you go down Broadway and you know what you know where God industry is yes okay if you go down Gardner Street towards Decatur Street there's a section down the end there that nobody it has never been resurfaced you can get down there tonight and there's potholes all over the place and it's like a war zone it's for some reason or another from Decatur Street up Gardner to maybe Fremont Street it's mostly down the Decatur Street end there's a section for years for some reason or another it does not get resurfaced so everybody avoids Gardner Street because it's like you know it's all potholes so there are I would say hundreds of cars if you fix that section they would you get a lot more use and that would greatly help the traffic on Gardner Street because everybody avoids it right we should we should put that in we've been in touch with the the Transportation Advisory Committee and I think although I'm not that experienced in this I think that's within their purview is repaving is that correct that might be a private road it's a private way but why is that a private road why is that section I mean it's why is that section a private road that's it's not for these guys to answer but does anybody agree that it's a big problem I mean it's an eyesore right it's an eyesore among others even if you don't go down it yeah but I think it has a huge effect nobody uses it they go all around that's why you have a lot of people going down Broadway and taking a left on the parkway because they don't want to get out of cognition yeah it would be interesting if it was a private road that was still open to public roadways on both ends so that we should the uh although it's out of our the issue of private roads in Arlington is confusing and long-standing not one that this board has the authority or power to change the court. Hi Chris already 56,000 feet I live just outside of your study area I really wasn't surprised at that 34 figure for a single household remembering that most of the structures in your area are two family homes the first floor of which are two bedroom units they're probably the most affordable housing units in the town so if you're looking to rent there aren't that many one-bedroom places to rent in town or buy if you're looking for some condo that's a lot to go towards I had a couple well first to comment I think your figure for the number of affordable units is way low in the town that might be the number of units at the housing corporation of Arlington the house it's not the number of units the that have been created by the inclusionary zoning bylaw it's certainly not the number of units of the Arlington housing authority you so I would I would look into that you that right that number's much higher but I was I was curious about one thing when you show the development around Elwight Elwight Brook and sunny side out are those five-story buildings the taller ones all right and are they allowed under existing zoning or is that something that would require a zoning change it varies site by site I think one of these buildings right here along sunny side avenue I think already is four or five stories I can't remember but each of these parcels has a different land use type in the zoning code one of part of our proposal is just aggregating that and just making the zoning at that spot a little bit more logical but I don't this would not this entire site would not be feasible under the current zoning regime except maybe for the maybe the townhouses and part of this building and then just one other question you I think you said that you thought the bicycle use of John Broadway was equal to that on mouse and the bike path and wondering where where those numbers came from what's the basis for that statement the the only data that we could look at was the Strava data and there might be some bias with that because the athletic and recreational users a little bit more aggressive bike users so they might be more willing to take a Broadway than other normal bicyclists the other data said was the line bike data I'm not sure I'm not sure why the line strips would be as um inaccurately frequent on Broadway since uh line trips might be users without a bike of their own or short trips um but those are the only data sets we have and the lime one we couldn't actually get specific figures from due to proprietary proprietary limits associated with lime and the town so we we are admittedly limited in the quantitative information that we have about the bike traffic along the corridor and in fact it might be it might not be entirely accurate of us to to estimate a single number because bike traffic varies so much throughout the week throughout the year um but we just had to do we had to look at some data so we use those two data sets and we had to draw from those from that but it is true it's not the most accurate those are not the most accurate figures thanks it doesn't as someone who lives between the two corridors that I would say the bike path and that's probably just a lot more bike traffic in total than I'm done in Broadway does that's just my my unscientific observation yes thank you I just want to emphasize what Mr Boratis said that unfortunately I love your presentation by the way I think the idea of um accessing the park from Broadway love with you but um the need for affordable housing in the entire metropolitan area is very great however your numbers are not accurate unfortunately for Arlington we have over a thousand subsidized affordable units and we have probably several several thousand naturally affordable housing units are very close to the hard drive which actually be greatly endangered for our dense construction because um that would be an incentive for developers to demolish a lot of those with a lot of what's happening as you well know eviction and displacement and it would be a tragedy for Arlington there's no way that we could deal with the tsunami of evictions and displacements in uh developer heavy um zoning change it's that would occur to Gansi Jay we would be a tragedy thank you we should keep that in mind we should bear in mind the effects and potential of evictions uh justification in our housing section housing section housing recommendations we are not proposing a rezoning of the none only of the two sides hi i'm sorry i came in late so i just have a practical question is this presentation available to the public yes i think we um we actually we received the presentation this afternoon and we are we posted it i think to the agenda and then also to the news item which is on the redevelopment board page so there's a at the top of the page okay so right now it's on the agenda and and the and the website there are two locations one's on the agenda and then the other one is on the redevelopment board page okay well thank you will the regular report be available to the public certainly that's how how would that be made in the same way yeah and and we will probably do a news notice like we do a town notice when we you know when something like that is completed and would it be edited or would it be um i think it will we'll receive it at some point soon um i mean wouldn't just does planning edit it or would we actually get no it would be the report from the students that we receive from the students i look forward to reading it thank you i i did participate in some of the um intersessions and i was very gratified very gratified thank you here's a printed copy of the thank you very much yes hi my name is mara baths i live at 77 warren street just outside of the broadway corridor um and i'm curious if you guys thought about communicating with summerville and maybe this is more a question for you because to solve the traffic at that intersection the problem that i see is that you have two lanes in arlington merging into one lane in the middle of the intersection it's two lanes in irlington and it's one lane in summerville and it's also like a bus turnaround and a crosswalk and that it's it's horrible i used to have to drive my daughter that way for preschool and it would take me i don't know 25 minutes to get basically into teal square just you know two miles away um so to fix that intersection you can do whatever you want on the arlington side but if it's not in coordination with summerville it's not going to ease that so i don't know if there's a plan to do that or like who has jurisdiction over the intersection the town manager has actually just initiated some conversations with the mayor's office and their planning department the peer department to start those conversations and really talk about ways to address some of the issues that were raised tonight and then other issues that are that continue along in summerville for that bus in particular but also for bicyclists and others in the in that connect and connection of the road way great and my second question was um did you guys have the time or a chance to consider how the green line extension is going to change that part of arlington since it's going to be that's going to offer another way to get into kendall which is where i think a lot of people in east arlington aren't going right we did we did reach out to the nbt i used some of my strategic connections to try to find someone associated with the better bus project uh to give me information about how all the different bus lines coming from summerville in arlington might be changed over the green line extension and the clear answer they gave me was they they do not know yet they're waiting for the green line extension to open and then they're going to look at the changes and i assume that's going to come with a public outreach process feedback process but then they're then they're going to use that opportunity to change the buses we think that would provide an opening for uh including some of the changes we're advocating for on the 87 uh but it seems like the nbt is just waiting to see how the cards may fall before we're deciding thank you and also related to the alewife parkway intersection to make matters even more confusing there's also that intersection may be under some jurisdiction by the dcr department of conservation recreation because they control the parkway it's yeah yeah does that make sense yes i have one question one suggestion the question is uh and follow-up to uh mrs woodland's question or comment are there uh our length of housing authority developments in the in the area that you described they're apart isn't there and how many units are then that you know it's a big it's a big it's a big it's about a hundred units yeah it goes from uh free one court i mean three one street you take a left out the free one court you can go all the way in and turn it around it's like a you go around there's a lot of units in there's right on the side of the buildings they have the number of units okay it's thanks and the other the other uh suggestion i have is that our linkedin is like doubly blessed by mit in the last few days last week uh kristoff reinhardt came in and paid a visit here and he is the head of the i don't remember which lab he is but he is in the school of architecture uh and works with dustbin and he is big on daylighting and building and has a guy drawings just like that i found his proposals and ideas to be very exciting and i can send you a link because we recorded them on video so he's got he's run a lot of data great i just want to thank jeff levine and victoria evelina and all of the other members of the class team for all of their work this evening it's been a real pleasure to be able to work with all of you for the semester i know you still have some more work to do of course we're going to follow up and thank the board for the great great questions and of course other folks from the audience so i just want to say thank you we want to thank the planning community department it's been really great working with you guys great great clients so we enjoyed it thank you you're welcome we love our instructors can i ask you one one quick question this uh when you were interviewing the people there and uh when they were talking about the cemetery did they view that cemetery as a park or uh or or an open space or a green space it how did he how do people view that um that's a great question that's a good question there anytime when we were tabling anytime we asked someone about the the cemetery their reaction was sort of what oh yeah that's cemetery they don't really seem to notice it i guess um either because of the way it's easily hid on the behind the row of trees or people don't go there that often but we never really encountered any way that people engage with the cemetery we didn't mean anyone who said they walk oh is it i would just stiffer slightly and say that some people did walk through the cemetery sort of possibly it is a nice like green area but um that was relatively unusual most people just didn't mention it the origin of this it's only by right a saint paul's yeah now i hope you and i have um bought a residence there in other words when we go we were going there and we had a cemetery lot i don't want my kids hunting around for a cemetery i come from scotland and um so we we bought um a lot in that cemetery yes it's widely used by people who and who are the place to go when they go is there a large catholic population in orlinton i hope so i'm one of them the green the green line extension the uh it's going to end uh they're going to drop people off at the corner of boston ab and college if you're wondering where the where they're going to drop people can get on and get off and that's the last stop right and it's in medford right that's the one near tufts university right but it's uh it's going to this the stop is going to be at the corner of college and boston that's where the stop's going to be yes sorry uh i was wondering about uh the north union playground or oceano fields that's what you're referring to and opening up to broadway do you have any insight or any numbers as to who actually uses the park whether it's people from the other side of broadway i just sort of have the impression that broadway is kind of a natural divider and the people who live on the south side of broadway probably use other playgrounds on that side rather than crossing them over because there is there is easy access to the playground from the north side of broadway to the residential neighborhood there i'm just wondering what is the rationale for wanting to open it up to broadway itself right i if any members of my team have more information on what are our findings on who uses the park um i don't think we asked uh necessarily where people lived um it but the park was sort of the most beloved asset of the broadway neighborhood from everybody we spoke to everybody that lived in the neighborhood generally in the study area um you know had either spoken fondly of it having gone to school at uh thompson yeah thompson um you know had kids sort of engaged in sports or used the sledding hill at luciano or the splash pad um so i we don't have a good sense of if they were crossing broadway itself um but it was sort of um one of those pieces of the neighborhood that caused people to light up and speak really enthusiastically and i think for that reason because we perceived it as an asset and um you know i think griffin mentioned what the first time we visited the site uh we were walking down broadway and weren't aware that the park was there we walked right past it didn't realize that there was anything um you know hidden behind the duncan donuts or the garage well some people would see that as an advantage to have the park well buffered from a busy um commercial corridor um you know i really don't know i'm just sort of applying the devil's advocate here and saying that maybe having it buffered from broadway is a good thing um and it doesn't really infect access to the park because uh there's that whole other neighborhood of the north side of broadway and it's very easy access on lightly traveled roads for people to get there i just have one thing i think you're definitely putting on a computer by the way of the team you definitely put your finger on crossing broadway could be intimidating a lot of people we were talking with their kids uses on both sides of the street the dance center the ellis school on the southern side and then the daycare and the top school on the other side so part of our recommendations are also to make it easier more comfortable to cross the road um so i don't think you're an actor and saying right now some people find intimidating and intimidating for their kids to cross and some of our suggestions are to make it a little more inviting to go back and forth across the road i would add one more comment which i think maybe i don't want to put you on the spot but um there is there are sort of some access issues on the side streets of luciano field um there is a lot of traffic going to and from tomson school and so we didn't talk about them in the presentation but there are sort of these hot spots where there's maybe unsafe intersections or a lot of traffic um across those streets going into luciano field so um the access to the park um might be a little bit more um a little bit easier on the side streets but um there's a little work to be done there also yeah in particular in the morning at drop off you've got the sidewalk on evred street that kids are trying to get to the path that leads to the school and you basically have to make a u-turn from the street to get up onto the sidewalk and when you're mixing strollers scooters bikes um walking car doors opening it's really uh it could it could use a different curb cut that could be like a very simple solution to that that cluster if you're ever there at eight ten in the morning can you tell them yeah on the evred side um and and in general the um the athletic part of the field is not accessible by any ADA standards um and the entrances to the fields are kind of these like falling apart staircases in the middle so those are little improvements that can make a big difference just to make sure we properly introduce you this is mary hannah smith one of our team members i just wanted to add something yes well this is palo another yeah i think uh when we uh thought about this proposal in luciano field uh we came without this idea of opening to broadway uh thinking of how to bring uh more more vibrancy vibrancy to the broadway corridor using the part we thought it was a very good thing to do uh we opened it catalyst yeah it'll promote other things together people there to create a bright in the middle of the broadway corridor of the area of study so we thought it was a big deal of course these are just proposals we have come to our mind i think that i think what students kept coming back to is that there was what we heard a lot is that there is no place like it's there there to go like the way you have a mass ad and so that that the activation of the front park along broadway near the park could be that opportunity for placemaking and creating a place for people can gather in the community and create a set of amenities that are focused on people that live within within the broadway corridor so it was in response to the three set goals there were you know we maybe had 10 we started out with 10 goals and then narrowed down through conversations so all of these proposals are built on the three set goals that were outlined in this presentation so yes there are a lot of other issues and concerns that could could be addressed if we had a year maybe come back and do it again next fall but it was definitely based on just some of the most heard feedback which is where people felt like there could be more than just one mode that is addressed along broadway which is currently just for the vehicles so can this be a place for people that live and maybe can just walk some of the things that they'd like to see anywhere let's wrap up yeah i'm just curious in this area there's there's multiple property owners but lehi is the big one i'm curious whether you spoke to any of those owners to get their perspective on redevelopment and why they're not pursuing more intensive development now who spoke with the owner of the lady that you did she said she was open to my friends there's a point to change first of all and second one of the locks is actually on sale i think it is either sold recently or on sale there but we have this conversation of what is possible what is not and yeah one of her comments was the zoning currency doesn't allow sorry the zoning currently doesn't allow for it so what changes always would actually allow some of that to happen we don't want to think anymore well no i and i want to thank you all again for for the work that you've done um i have a feeling that these conversations will continue i think you've given us a lot to think about and to work with the department on and to continue to uh talk to the folks in the neighborhood there see how they may want to see things develop naturally over time so really do appreciate it thank you for coming out tonight thanks for everyone who came to ask questions as well it's a good conversation to have i hope we continue so thank you all we're glad to be here all right so jenny uh moving on real quick we have yeah we have uh we have two members of the housing plan implementation committee each year tonight patricia and karen okay and then we'll do the bus attend those meetings so we can give a yeah so i have karen and patricia come up um quickly uh you know i personally haven't had a lot of time to dig into the materials that we provided over the weekend but i'm very interested in this so kind of give us the the thumbnail is that the the housing plan how we implement the housing plan implementation committee is really focused on implementing the housing production plan that's that's the most important thing um so it is really about housing production but we have been focusing on a lot of things that are related to not zoning issues and other sort of programmatic elements i think during the summer we've had somewhat of a spotty meeting attendance but oh sorry so this is a suggestion that i know it's come off a lot in our zoning discussions and i'm really interested in the mechanics of it how it would operate how it would be implemented and how funds set aside and that would be so the municipal affordable housing trust fund is something that the town attempted to adopt in years back at a prior town meeting we've also had some conversations with with dug heim he actually attended the last housing plan implementation committee meeting he's promised us and will at some point deliver us with a sort of a memo outlining the sort of ways in which we might be able to design one of these it really would be under the purview of the select board and so some of the next steps will really involve that i think what we really wanted to do is just update you on that those more recent activities and that's really the one primary proposal that we've been talking about as well as a real estate transfer tax and we don't have information about that here tonight to talk about but those are just the two main things that the group has been discussing i'll actually see if erin do you want to add anything then patricia because i know patricia has been attending all the meetings um yeah so i think that sorry i didn't want to walk in front of the table but i think that um there is uh interest from the committee to move forward on this um improve upon what was presented um a number of years ago and um see if there's a way to combine it with um potentially the the idea of a real estate transfer fee so that that can provide the seed money into the trust which um at this point there's there is limited ways to fund the trust um whether it's uh through the cpa or some other funding source but it seemed like a natural um combination at this time and uh it seemed like there was enough interest from the committee to pursue this and um you know bring it bring it up for town meeting um we as jenny had mentioned we are awaiting some additional information from the from town council um on ways to format the different articles warrant articles that might have to go along with this but i think that um there could be some movement on this um so uh i would be interested to hear the opinions of the arb members after hearing from the other committee members is this something that would be ready for spring 2020 or thinking spring town meeting and um so this is really just to see if the the redevelopment board would be you know if you're supportive if you know as erin is noted there are questions i just want to also see if patricia had anything to add to this because she's been attending these meetings do you have anything to add about the municipal affordable housing trust fund i think it would be very beneficial for the town to have such a trust fund because some of the enabling legislation for various um you know contributions to affordable housing require that the funds be deposited in an affordable housing trust fund so that we could not accept them if we didn't have such a trust fund already in town that's why i think it's important to give maximum possibility for um building some financial capability in regards affordable housing to have this trust fund thank you is this a missed opportunity that we're looking at correcting here it's not necessarily a missed opportunity no but if we're talking about the real estate transfer tax you have to deposit any so if that also was passed through a special legislation i might add um so there's a lot of this in there but it has to be deposited into specifically a municipal affordable housing trust fund it can't just be into the town's general operating fund it has to go to a specific place as per the way that that is written um so that that's one reason i guess the other thing is i mean there are potential opportunities for ways to utilize community preservation act money other resources that the town receives and depositing them into that sort of account allows for the town to be a little bit more flexible and have a little more ability to act upon opportunities when they arise whether it's for rental renter protections to home home ownership opportunities to development so there's a lot of different mechanisms in order to utilize those funds how much of a tax that we're talking about well that's not weren't we we actually haven't talked about anything specific to that particular proposal yet we're not we're not talking about the real estate transfer tax with this right now we just wanted to talk with you about the municipal affordable housing trust so i don't i don't have a specific proposal to share about the real estate transfer tax if i could just say that oh yes um as we discussed in our meeting yeah um we would now be working to produce an instrument that was consistent with the that was possibly on this date that um chapter 55 c of the victim um with a few little tweets maybe requiring um time to take approval here and there or seven approval here and there and um then you could then decide whether you like it or not i would presume you would come back with that's the trust fund but the the transfer tax we didn't talk about a specific we didn't talk about the no no or the trust fund sorry no the reason why i asked is i i'm just going to play the devil's african here and say look if we add another burden on um we used a nasty word development okay and prohibit development then i'm concerned about that and if it's not i'm okay with that but i don't want to put another layer of burden on there saying oh well we rather go the next town over they don't have these kind of taxes to stop so the tax is one mechanism to get resources into the trust fund the trust fund again is a separate proposal and is there for a different reason it wouldn't be burdensome to develop i realized what you're saying okay the trust fund is the trust fund but how you fund the trust fund okay is a question i have right now and how we fund that trust how we fund that is the first part of my question and i'm not sure you know i'm not gonna answer but i'm just saying i have concerns about because i don't want to put additional burdens because right now i don't think we want to do that or if we do want to do that then let's decide openly beside that and then the other one is when we have this trust fund what is their mantra are they gonna develop single point of affordable housing units like they'll build a project or are they gonna try to integrate i know some towns are partnering up with developers integrating and having their part of their fund so the affordable housing are integrated with market rate housing so it's not so there's a blend of neighborhoods in this development it's no longer a project affordable housing that's all by itself it is it's i don't want to create a neighborhood like that i want it to be integrated so i'm just i'm just wondering what the mantra would be say okay this is going to be a partnership or is it going to be so proprietary we're just going to go buy piece of land and we're going to develop it so we haven't got first of all the the trust fund could be designed a number of different ways one of the the documents that i posted with this agenda item is this municipal affordable housing trust fund was fantastic which does yeah it was a really nice good read i'm glad to hear that um because it walks you through kind of the the various ways in which we could design one of these trust funds what they might look like how the level of powers that they might actually have and the ways in which you can actually leverage leverage different types of funds into the trust which are many different you know could be grants it could be donations of land donations of other homes i mean there's a lot of different ways in which to leverage property the goals and the structure design of the trust and what they're actually doing would be designed in the charter that we would need to create so this is really just an early conversation with you to talk about that i guess because i just made one question maybe yeah the reason why we um why we why i feel this is really important is that we have already lost money by not having this fund um and we do not need to pair this up with the transfer fee initiative those can be completely separate if you don't like the transfer fee forget it um but that when i was um watching the 40 b the one the main 40 b we have a battle stream um i found that we um we we were not able to really aggressively secure a half million dollars and excess profits made by the developer because we did not have a trust fund that was an affordable housing trust fund and it requires that those kind of funds be put in an affordable housing trust fund so you know i just having lost money already i i kind of like to be ready for the next time you know um but yeah if you don't like the transfer fee you can catch it um i i like it but i mean i'm not developer well i'm not saying i like it i don't like it i'm just trying to understand the whole thing before you know just not just saying yeah it's a good thing that's all i'm just asking questions right now i'm not saying no to either or both or either or one i guess a few things i agree i thought it was really helpful to get the guidebook and have the opportunity to read it so thank you it was really good um i think having the trust fund is a good idea because it gives the town another tool and more flexibility and in to be able to get money and to spend it on affordable housing um and thinking about that a little bit there are a few things that i would hope are not in there i would hate if things had to go back to town meeting once it was in the trust fund because one of the beauties of the trust fund is the money is in it and when there's an opportunity they can get it right away if things have to go back to town meeting it's almost like ruins half of the opportunities that they're going to have disadvantage have to have to wait that long right as opposed to the board of select the select board which meets every week or two they may be the appropriate elected officials to say something about it but having town meeting having to vote on it basically ties at least one of its two hands yeah it could make things even more cumbersome if if you're funding it from cpa say and then you have to go back to town meeting again to spend money out of the trust fund so that that's one of my concerns that we'd be at least partially defeating the purpose if if town meeting got to step in once it was set up the second is and i know this can happen in the trust one i would hate if the trust fund started taking funds from developers because so they didn't have to build affordable units because that's been a real problem in boston and other places where the money is sort of somewhere in the bpda formally the bra so i would i would not favor a trust fund where that could happen i would want the developers to have to build the affordable units at at the locations and third is to think about who should be on the trustees i think not who but what what organizations etc are designated i think he's going to be a real important decision to make and i'm not quite sure who those all should be other than i think it has to be thought through very clearly but i think it's a great opportunity for the town and whether transfer tax or not i mean my personal opinion is there should be a statewide transfer tax and that's simply one for arlington and maybe the issue should be so the issue should be should our election be pushing its own or should we be pushing our elected officials to try to get one that's statewide but that's a separate discussion yeah that's it my two questions really were brought up by the again the guidebook which i found really helpful so you know my questions really were what what are we really specifically trying to accomplish which you know you identified as something that you'd be working through as part of the charter um and then where the funds coming from so if there are funds that are currently allocated elsewhere i think it would be good to understand where they're going to be diverted from and whether or not that has any meaningful impact or is it really an opportunity for us to secure funds that we haven't had the opportunity to pursue before because we haven't had the proper channels to to receive those generally i'm supportive of the idea i'd like to see a plan that would be you know sort of town specific that we could work with um and and answer some of those questions um but i think if if there are a charge to the committee then you know get to work on it show us something that we can work with them and have a discussion about if it's the select board that has to ultimately approve it um i would hope that they would listen to whatever recommendation that we had to make about it since you know affordable housing is generally our purview you know the management of the trust fund might not be um but i'd definitely like to see some more work done on that and we do talk about affordable housing and i think there needs to be some there do need to be other options out there to fund and encourage affordable housing in town and just the inclusionary inclusionary zoning by law and zoning can't solve all problems unfortunately so it's time to start looking at other other means and methods as well so have that and please look forward to seeing what you come back with great yeah and that's sort of timing wise tomorrow is the opening of the morning for town meeting through january and so that's why i wanted to bring this to you this evening we had actually hoped that tomorrow morning the housing plan implementation committee was supposed to meet to discuss this in debrief and talk about our next steps of course that's been postponed due to this um yeah the snow we have a the town hall doesn't open until 10 a.m tomorrow so we for everybody uh fyi town hall doesn't open until 10 a.m tomorrow so we will not be able to meet and schools are canceled schools are canceled so unfortunately we'll we'll find a different time to follow up that we have enough time to develop the proposal and bring it back alongside the other things which are under your purview which is this opening all right so thank you patricia thank you karen and we'll move on to potential zoning by law amendments for 2020 so jerry walk us through where we are here i know there's some other additional materials and i'm sure there are people that want to speak yes yeah and so what i've provided to you this evening is a memo that i drafted which basically pulled together potential zoning amendments that are coming from any of the committees that we're working with these are sort of town led types of initiatives some of them um you know are coming from either you know groups or committees that we're working with some of them are you know basically administrative items that need to be cleaned up um but it also kind of gave you an opportunity to get a status update a little bit more so than the one that i provided in a previous meeting of what's happening with different committees and different planning processes would give you a sense of the timeline of what you might anticipate some of those zoning amendments coming to a future town meeting or to this board of course first as part of that proposal to a future town meeting um so that's that's primarily what my memo is about that doesn't mean that there haven't been other proposals that have been that have come up from either residents or people at you know in conversations and meetings um one of those more formal ones came from chris already which is a separate memo that i've attached and that we've also previously discussed i believe this evening we received a a copy of something that actually we had looked at previously when we were doing zoning recodification which came from patricia warden and um i know that there have been other comments that have come up from other members of the public those are not all incorporated into my memo my memo was really an opportunity for me to provide you with you know some information about the different types of plans and planning processes that may lead to um some zoning recommendations some of them may not by the way also work but for example the transportation plan i'm sure there will be some zoning recommendations my guess is it will heavily be on things that don't have anything to do with zoning um and then i've provided you with uh an update of the the work that we're doing on the stormwater bylaw the town stormwater bylaw as well as our compliance with the ms4 general permit um and that are those are things that i've talked about in the memo in terms of things that we will need to more imminently address which includes some amendments to the environmental design review um criteria and some other areas in the zoning bylaw as recommended in this memo that's provided by a horsey weight group um i don't think there's anything else that i wanted to add in terms of just a quick overview of where we're at and you know this is really meant to be a a conversation about these potential zoning amendments in the next steps as i mentioned the warrant article is just opening so we have some time to kind of move things forward i guess one thing of of importance is that's not in my memo is a follow-up to the conversation that we obviously started at spring town meeting with regard to housing recommendations and i know that there are there have been many people who have asked about the status of those recommendations what will be happening next um when will the air be meeting meeting with the select board and uh adam and i are hoping that at least we can have a meeting with the select board in january again the date of that meeting is still not there yet the select board in their meeting tonight is talking about their meetings for uh 2020 so they'll be solidifying those evenings and then i'll have a better sense of when that joint meeting might be able to occur um and that meeting is meant to be the opportunity for us to together talk about the plan for how we want to move forward with those different housing actions which could be some zoning and some non-zoning recommendations as well as the community participation plan how we want to engage people what we want to do and how we'll roll things forward to a future town meeting we had of course as everybody knows been discussing a special town meeting in the fall that's not up to this board to decide or call a special town meeting that's up to the select board so i think we'd have to decide on where we're at and if we feel we've had enough or sufficient participation in order to get us to a point where we think we're ready for town meeting got a summer in between there so might be might be a challenging time so we might want to think about that um so that's that's what i wanted to share with you i'm open to your questions i'm sure there are people here this evening who also have things to add just to guess sure um i'll start with a rachel down the other people have questions um i'll be quite honest i'm still reading through a lot of the especially the the strong water piece um so i think it sounds like um there's a little bit of time to continue to to review so i'm gonna defer okay jean so let me start with the storm water which is a lot and you can drown in it but um i guess my i guess most of it or all of it i think does not involve any zoning bylaw amendments it seemed to me that rather than even thinking about amending the zoning bylaw that the current environmental design standards are broad enough so that when we know what the town's um storm water bylaw is or whatever the town ends up doing i think we can just draft a guidance document that says this is how we're going to implement these environmental design standards when it comes to storm water so i haven't sort of thought that fully but as i was reading through the whole in this fourth thing it sort of occurred to me that we we may not need any zoning bylaw changes but if we don't i think we want a document that tells people how we're going to implement those when it comes to storm water right and i should add these are purely recommendations you know it's a bylaw review they reviewed multiple bylaws the town bylaw the conservation conservation commission regulations right and they are recommendations and i think that what you're suggesting gene would be more than sufficient in terms of meeting the criteria yeah and there was one and and they talked a lot about something that conservation commission i've forgotten what it is now already has a responsibility to do under the wetlands protection act so you know i don't know whether the conservation commission needs to adopt any regulations for that but they certainly they're talking about it as well yeah they certainly have a lot on on the um on the on the on the housing ones and i think we've all said this we're not going to be ready to go to springtown meeting with any housing housing bylaw amendments because we haven't done the groundwork for we haven't met with the select board we haven't had a community meetings etc i was thinking what we would do for spring is just go with very technical amendments and things that need to be edited because there are some errata that need to be fixed up things like that and i think most of what you've put at the bottom of page two of your memo are those sorts of things that i think we could probably go to town meeting with um pretty easily the one thing i was very disappointed and i've gone to a couple meetings of what it is the energy the energy the clean energy future committee and that's the name of the and i was going to say something at the meeting the other day but i got called away and put each day through the meeting i think they're doing a really nice job and are very methodical about they're doing and a lot of what they're focusing on is what are we going to do with all the existing infrastructure that's not particularly energy efficient that generates a lot of greenhouse gases and what can be put in place to to make that better but the other piece is what can we do now about new construction and new development i mean personally especially because of the un report they came out the other day this is critical and each year i think more new things get built that don't meet the standards we would want them to meet and i just think the town each year misses an opportunity by not getting some bylaws in now to require new development to be much better when it comes to energy and the two things that i've mentioned this at one of our meetings and i mentioned this at one of the net zero meetings that i think we should be doing is the water town ordinance from last year requiring solar with certain exceptions on larger buildings and brookline beat us to it although i think i might have had the idea at the same time that no more fossil fuel infrastructure for new development because they can do it with electricity now and i think that the town would be making a mistake by waiting a year or two for the net zero plan and that zero plan has a lot to do and a lot of it needs more thought but those two pieces are i think low hanging fruit and things that need to be done right away so i would hope that that committee comes to that conclusion and makes those recommendations to us to do the brookline and the water town pieces so that's the other thing i think that a few on those thank you david i think one thing with the with the brookline bylaw since i um very familiar with that bylaw um that uh i think awaiting to find out if the ag's office actually approves the bylaws is very important before deciding whether or not it's the right thing to do and carry forward there are many other municipalities who are very excited about that bylaw and are also kind of in the waiting in the wings to see what happens with that particular zoning bylaw so i think we should get something on the on the warrant for those two that's my thought anyhow on those two and the and the point i've made here is just that it is part of a net zero planning process where we're looking at metrics we're looking at understanding what is the impact of these different potential recommendations that a whole host and suite of different things to figure out what would be the impact is that committee going to be meeting soon can we communicate that i can we've been the meeting on december 20th yeah they're we both three of our staff okay so we would have time theoretically to communicate that to them absolutely have them bring something to us for spring town meeting i would think i'm not sure about that part um in terms of that committee bringing something to the board but i can talk with them about it of course they're working on the net zero keeping in mind that the warrant is the warrant the actual article is a much different that's a good point idea yeah i think there are other people who are interested in it as well so if it's not sponsored by the redevelopment board it's likely to come up regardless okay david anything um well i'm i'm just cautious about moving about uh about recommending uh the articles we've been on the warrant when we don't have a clear understanding of what the actual warrant article will be because that's that's caused us that's complicated our our progress in the past let me put it that way um so uh i i hope that that whatever ideas are being considered um come come to fruition sooner rather than later um so that we can look at them um before we have to decide whether or not to to recommend a warrant article um i think i i do wish that we'd been able to move forward a little sooner uh with meeting with the select men and um and doing um the um more of the the public engagement that we talked about doing on on uh housing and zoning um after after last spring's town meeting and um i'm um i never thought we were shooting for for for spring 2020 um or not but uh and uh but um i'm i'm worried that that uh we're already pushing the limits of being able to do the kind of engagement that we that we wanted to do before bringing other proposals before town meeting even before next fall um so uh i i think we should we should um proceed as expeditiously as as we can but um make sure that we take the time to um to to do the process as we originally envisioned it um regardless of whether that means uh moving to a subsequent town well and the fall special town meeting thing i mean that's that's been the historic thing until we came along and did recadification in february so um you know there's there's other possibilities in terms of a special town meeting date so let's let's continue there are other things happening in the fall of 2020 that may take the very good point yes special town meeting yes i believe you're correct so i think that uh a special town meeting at a different time is probably wise regardless and i i do think we can um uh certainly move forward with with some of these more technical corrections um and including at least some of the things mr. Loretty um proposed um and we can we can continue to discuss those okay ken uh i i know what david just said as far as uh about discussing these uh more articles or understanding of what we want to present but i want to get stuff further can we set up an agenda or at least try to i mean yes we can't set up an agenda right now with select uh select board but we can set up an agenda with the say all the committees that are involved right now get so we get their input in uh any citizens don't want to put their uh set an agenda for them and then i especially want to set up an agenda for us that we have time to discuss all this amongst ourselves i don't want to say yes or no this is because of what we're saying i want to be able to discuss it and maybe massage a little bit so we have our um uh our views on it and so can i suggest we maybe maybe not December's going to be busy i know that but maybe starting next year we'll say okay you know so this month is for committees that will give them enough tents to get their points across uh anybody that wants to make uh comments or want to articles because they're there and then give us a chance to look at those and look at our own and when does the warrant close um 20 i'm gonna say the wrong day sorry but so it's typically because yeah towards the end of the month so either be the 24th or the 31st i think it's the 24th actually that's what spring yeah for spring anyway we have a fairly packed calendar schedule calendar agenda on our next meeting which is the 16th oh this is the 31st 31st um i would not suggest putting anything else on the agenda for December 16th no that that meeting will be this no no but i'm talking about but i think the first meeting in january we can do that our first meeting in january is january 6th and i think i would like to dedicate that entirely to a discussion of potential warrant articles whether they be from uh proposed by members of the public such as mr already here mrs warden or the department or committees through the department or anything that that members of this board would like to uh send to you and have put on the future agenda that will give us time to uh at least put the warrant article in and again the warrant article is separate from the actual article to be debated at town meeting uh david i understand your point however i think so long as we're careful not to put an entire suite of articles across the board uh that all sort of work together we will be doing each other a favor um and doing things in the way that we've done them in the past uh with some time to communicate and and have some real discussion with folks yep so we'll make sure that january 6th we have that as an agenda item i will say that uh warrant articles are typically filed with with doug heim so i will work in conference in you know consultation with him to see what warrant articles were actually filed by that timeline i mean most people wait until towards the end of the month so we'll we'll see what we can talk about in other words we might review some warrant articles but not everything at that meeting there might be things that are proposed that will come to us in another time i i think having a general idea of what's coming is probably best for all and there are people that wish to speak to sort of garner support for their articles from us or want to go out on their own that would be a wise thing to do at that time that gives everybody plenty of time to put things in the warrant maybe whether they are sitting here or not this evening so all right will that give us enough time to talk about it i think so that'll that'll be enough time for us to talk about the actual warrant articles for the the stumps that go in the warrant for town maybe then we have from january to april to work out the final language that actually goes to town meeting on what the mechanics and the specifics of any given warrant article would be so your your general warrant article would say to see whether the town will vote to adopt a affordable an affordable housing trust fund or take any other act generally there too then you get into the specifics down the road here it's just saying yes we think that we'd like this to potentially be considered a town meeting or pull it back take no action and move forward last year's timeline was different than it has been in the past but i don't want that to frighten us off from doing some of the mechanical things that need to take place and allow for public input on certain warrant articles that will really live or die with the support of the air bay moving forward um okay that i understand if it was worth if you want to make rezoning modifications um what if we're also saying we lost want to look at maybe i'm not saying maybe looking at PUDs in a certain area to that is that on the table that we can talk about i don't think that's on the table right now i don't i don't think we have enough time to do that kind of leg work i got a hallmark for spring town meeting well maybe not spring time maybe fall i i just want to sort of put that sort of on our agenda just because when i look at uh how mass i have and broadway and all these other areas that we look looking at how it's zoned it's like cookie cutters it's all it's all chopped up every which way you can't get anything together you can't do anything so unless we take a broader picture and look at the areas and i'm not saying from one end of mass after the other end of mass have because that's not right either but we just look at and understand it they'll along mass have there's certain nodes that that that may be uh good maybe not be good in certain areas we'll just keep it away this and as we can but i just want an opportunity for us to discuss this and see if there are areas to push that along somehow yeah i think we've got another example was in the student's presentation tonight where it was that the lehi arlington area you don't have to rezone all the broadway to say that those particular parcels need to be rezoned so they can do something else with them yes yeah just agreeing with you okay yeah but i just want to look at you know talk about that and if we all say no it's not the way to go then okay but at least we talk well i think we should i yes i think we should have that conversation i think a lot of that conversation or some of that conversation goes hand in hand with the discussion to be having the select board um not all of it because not all of it is housing much of it is what do we do with these commercial districts um the presentation tonight was sort of a reminder that mass average and everything i think sometimes we tend to think it is but i think that's a parallel conversation to have with the the conversation we have to have with the immediate timeframe which is getting to town meeting in april so yes we will put that on our future agenda item um shortly soon because i don't see that town meeting is necessarily going to take up uh the amount of time that it has the last two sessions two rounds with the recodification and with the housing at spring time meeting you mean this year no no i think there's there's room to have this discussion so i think january six there's a good time to have to pick up what you're talking about now and and expand upon it and hopefully also know when we're going to have the conversation with the select board so okay um i just one other thing i forgot to mention is that the select board actually recently voted to allow for a sort of a reworking of the warrant articles so that zoning is actually going to follow i think it's um you know there there will be other warrant articles before zoning so the order of articles is going to change that's just a sort of a heads up to all of you usually it's always zoning first um so we've in conversations with many people um that was proposed and the select board um recently adopted to move the order of the warrant articles so that's just something i wanted to bring to your attention nothing from me there'll be probably time for members of the public to speak very shortly but if you wish to say anything specifically about zoning go right ahead now this is word no calling you first thank you mr chairman i didn't quite catch what you said it's supposed to be specifically about zoning yes well um i think it probably pertains to it so anyway patricia warden precinct eight um thank you mr chairman i need to remind you that in the special time meeting of february of 2018 you inform time meeting members that you would take up the request to add a definition of foundation to the zoning bylaw at a later time it is now more than a year and a half later and so i hope you can consider proposing an article requesting addition of the definition for the next time meeting the definition of proposed is simple and it's in the handout i um gave you its dates building foundation is the missionary or concrete structure in the ground which supports the building it does not include porches depths shafts patio single story attached garages on slug carports or the life the purpose of this definition is to make it clear that the existing footprint of the house cannot be expanded without a special permit under section five four two b six if you approve this definition probably many will agree with you and we can actually get a two-thirds vote at time meeting we have plenty of small and medium older or antique houses in our region which are reasonably affordable this is despite an unfortunate statement to the contrary made by the planning department based on selective and erroneous sampling not approved by the residential study group these hundreds of small houses have made wonderful naturally affordable homes for downsizing retiring couples and starting couples who can raise the roof to expand for a growing family but these houses are now targeted and brokered just for developers of massive rebuilds and are rarely available on the open market the huge rebuilds that we often see um are the direct result of the lack of the definition of foundation the requirement for developers to apply for a permit if it's spending beyond the foundation's footprint and so create a fake foundation including um including carports that doghouse and so on is of paramount importance and is being bypassed so a butter's rights to a hearing which they could attend and demand reasonable constraints and if necessary an appeal are being bypassed I do know that such hearings and appeals can be successful here in Arlington in one case near my house where a hearing was required the neighborhood included an attorney who successfully argued to bring the planned building size down from around 8 000 square feet to approximately 6 000 square feet please pursue the insertion of a foundation definition in the zoning bottle thank you thank you this is right this year just a couple of comments rather I just wanted to be sure that the board understood that in the memo from the planning director a couple of the things I had proposed in in July have covered in that at the bottom of page two although I think the approach that she took is somewhat different I mean I know it's different and I would recommend that since these were clarifying what the tables are referring to that the explanation that goes with the tables and belongs next to the tables not in the text some pages away so for example the first thing I proposed was that when you have the limit numerical limit for the usable and landscaped open space it doesn't it doesn't say just percent it says percent of gfa it seems to me that should be next to the table and not in the definition of gross floor area which is several pages away which you wouldn't see if you were just looking at the table and similarly for the what a blank means in the table of use regulations I would think should be next to the table itself I mean you already have a legend above all the tables that list some of what the radiations are like SPY though I think those should be moved to immediately about the table of use regulations it seems you end up just to say what a blank means in the same place and again it's just a usability thing I guess not not going to make a big deal about it because effectively it does accomplish the same thing I think from the user's perspective it's easier when you're going through looking at tables to have all the explanation there rather location separately what I didn't see is one of the suggestions or things I would like to see is just the clarification that for in the definition of mixed use that if it's added to that definition as text provided that each distinct land use itself is allowed by writer by special permanent zoning district in which the structure the structure is located that's when I'm not I didn't see in the memo I'm not sure what sense in the department you all have of whether that's something you would support or whether that would have to be a 10 registered voter article but I would hope at least by the end of the next meeting have some some clarification on that and then just the other thing I noticed in your the memo you received about the storm water issues and I'm hoping as Mr. Benson said that's not part of the zoning bylaw but some of these bullet recommendations seem to indicate that if particular measures were fulfilled you could reduce the open space on a lot or reduce setbacks and I didn't understand what that was coming from if I could respond briefly I agree I don't understand why that was coming from I think in my reading that they went beyond the bounds of where they needed to go you know personally that's what I thought I agree so that's all I have thank you thank you other comments about zoning specifically okay we'll take this up again on January 6th so moving on but that's more than a year away so okay meeting minutes from November 4th comments corrections as to those minutes I just had one um page three the first full paragraph there my name is spelled sorry it's not an easy one to get right every time that's okay sorry and then um rather than um just below that we'll get what house has dangerous activities I think I was referring to be allegedly illegal just on the last page I think it should say dover amendment rather than just dover review top sentence I would just say a dover amendment just a dover amendment any last a couple of things um at the bottom of page two uh there are two sentences uh where I'm talking about the cvs signage uh when I'm asking if we have another alternative and there are two sentences one right after the other that are very similar and I think could be condensed into one sentence that kind of repetitive um and then I had something else for the long I just thought you were being wordy I may have been but but but but but I I could I could clarify myself in the minutes um I think um I think there was something else but I can't find it one edit I still need to name is actually I need the name of the breath from that sign company and I was going to put where it says point the name of the sign company I'm going to replace it with the name of the person who was actually presenting um so I just that's like an f that I will amend that separately yeah his first name is Gary and Gary so I move to accept the minutes of November 4 with the amendments made suggested by the board second all in favor okay okay so moving on to open forum if there's anyone who wishes to speak see me separately from what they've already had to say can you just tell us what's on the what do you think is going to be on the agenda for the 16th on the agenda for the 16th is the uh hotel proposal on mass app I believe Mr. Noyes from CVS slash output house is expected to be here and the recreational marijuana dispensary at the swift printing location right it's in the auditorium actually for that reason the meeting will be in the auditorium the auditorium in town hall the town hall auditorium big screen yeah are there revised plans for the hotel that are available now they're not available yet they will as soon as they're available they'll be on the website okay all right second all in favor all right