 Today is Tuesday, June 29th. To call this meeting of the zoning board of appeals town of Arlington to order. I'd like to confirm all members and anticipated officials are present. Members of the zoning board of appeals, Roger Dupont. Here. Patrick Canlon. Here. Kevin Mills. Here. John O'Rourke. I may have to unmute him. I know that Sean is still commuting. Aaron Ford. Here. And Steve Revlack. Here. Wonderful. From the town of Arlington, Rick Valorelli. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. Vincent Lee. Here. Good evening. And I believe Kelly Alinema is on vacation this week. But I think Jennifer Rait may be joining us from this director of planning and community involvement. Okay. Outside consultants, Paul Havity. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Paul, good evening to you. And from Beta Group, I believe Ms. Nover is away this week, but Laura Kraus, Bill McGrath and Tyler DeRoyer. I think I saw all three of you. Yep. Good evening. Wonderful. Good evening. Good evening. Appearing for 1165, I don't have 1165 RMASF. Beg your pardon for Thorndyke Place. Stephanie Kiefer. Good to see you. Gwen Noyce and Art Clipp-Pollis. Thank you. And then are there, I believe there are others from your team here as well. Yes. We have Scott Thornton from Vanessa's here this evening. And Bob Angler is here. And Scott Vlasik is here. And we have a new person, Alan Zimlicchi, who is joining us this evening. Wonderful. Welcome all. We have two other cases this evening, but they were originally scheduled to start at 730. So I don't know if those folks are here. I do know that appearing on behalf of 10 Sunnyside Avenue, Bob Inesius here. I saw him earlier, but I don't believe the applicant for 55 Southern Road is on yet. We are here actually for 55 Southern Road. We are here. Oh, brilliant. Thank you. Are we starting this one now? So you'll be starting at 730. Oh, 730. Okay. Thank you. Sure. So this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with an act extending certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency signed into law on June 16th, 2021. This act includes an extension until April 1st, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, which suspended the requirement to hold all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed to continue to participate remotely. Public bodies may continue to meeting remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom app with online and telephone access is listed on the agenda posted to the town's website, identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it will be broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participated by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference. Other participants are participating by computer audio or by telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folk may be able to see you, your screen name, or another identifier. Please take care to not share personal information. Anything broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you to please maintain decorum during the meeting including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted, the public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. As chairs serve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting and orderly meetings. So for this meeting, just I'm going to pretty much flip the order that we're gonna be seeing and hearing things. So we'll start with Thorn Dyke Place and then we'll move on to 55 Southern Road then 10 Sunnyside Avenue and then closing with the approval of minutes just to try to move people through as quickly as possible. So now turning to the comprehensive permit hearing for Thorn Dyke Place, some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of tonight's business. So at the prior hearing, the applicant discussed several aspects of their revised proposal, which referenced advice being provided by a consultant with experience in senior living developments. The board requested the applicant have the consultant attend this hearing of the board to address questions regarding how the operation of a senior living residence with services on this site would impact parking and traffic concerns expressed at the prior hearing. This will be the sole topic for discussion at this hearing with the exception of planning for future hearings. We'll open with an introduction by the applicant followed by questions from the board. And after the board members of the public will be invited to provide their questions and comments. So Kiefer, if I could ask for a quick introduction and a quick introduction of our new member here. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you members of the board. At the last ZBA hearing, the applicant presented just as a recap that further information on the revised conceptual plans for the property to include the senior living building as well as the six duplex units. That included input from our civil engineer to review the updated stormwater report, updated architectural plans and elevations, updated traffic assessment and then input from the project's consulting geotech expert from McPhail. And then at the conclusion of that last hearing on June 10th, the board charted out the future hearings this evening primarily relating to the senior housing, sort of how that impacts the traffic parking and then a future hearing on the 13th. And so just to acknowledge that within the past two days the applicant has received copies of peer review reports prepared by beta one, two days ago with respect to the civil and wetlands and then the second one received this morning regarding the updated traffic assessment that the AI have provided. And so our presentation this evening is really not to resolve that, but just to let the board know that prior to the next hearing the anticipate having written responses submitted to the board in advance to the updated beta review. For this evening though, the project team were somewhat reduced in scope when we've added somebody. So, and to just kind of set the context in the framework for how we view the presentation this evening, I'm first going to just briefly ask Scott Thornton to just summarize where we were with the traffic in the parking and potentially just a quick reaction to the beta traffic peer review that we received. And then from there, it's really the heart of our presentation, if you will. We're pleased to present Allen's and Lucky this evening from ASZ Associates to provide the board with additional input on the planning considerations for senior living project and community. And as the board, as we've informed the board over the past couple of hearings on the revised program the applicants have been in consultation with an established developer of senior housing regarding kind of the standard parameters, if you will for a senior housing program. And as a part of and an outgrowth of those same discussions, the applicants have sought the input from Mr. Zimlicki who was acted as the planning consultant to that senior living developer. And while the applicant remains in discussions with the developer, we have this evening, the planning consultant Mr. Zimlicki to address kind of planning considerations for senior house. I think as he will probably more eloquently state he has a wealth of experience in senior housing including affordable senior housing developments. And once Mr. Thornton gives his brief presentation I think I will allow Mr. Zimlicki to more formally introduce himself to the board but just by way of brief introduction Allen is a former city planner by training. He had worked in the Cambridge city planning department for a number of years. He's worked for the homeless housing for vets and he has planned the development of a number of elderly housing in the surrounding communities including Concord, Boston, Cambridge, Malden and he's been a long time consultant to senior living developers. And with that said, we recognize that the board may have some specific questions about the proposed senior housing community and its traffic using jitney service. And we've asked Mr. Zimlicki to provide additional information to address those areas. And as the applicant just stated previously that the parameters of the senior living environment are to provide older residents with an ability to continue to live independently and to do so in a community setting where it's attainable and achievable for our older citizens to live independently such as having the ability to have a healthcare provider come on site to have assistance with scheduling appointments to have some uncoordinated social activities or physical exercise activities and provide pleasing spaces to gather with other residents or with family members and to have some dining options and as well as options for laundry and housekeeping. And so while the full list, it's something that's largely beyond the board's role in a comprehensive permit setting we thought it might be informative but it's also these services are also gonna be more fully defined as the management development team somewhat advanced the program. But with that said, we hope that Mr. Zimlicki as well as Mr. Thornton can address the board's questions this evening in our limited presentation with the understanding that the range of services that are provided are typically developed once the project is approved and the management team is formally part of the project. But with that said, I'm going to turn things over to Scott Thornton and then from there we will have Mr. Zimlicki. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kiefer. Chairman Klein, members of the board, my name is Scott Thornton, I'm with VAI. Been working on the traffic aspects, trafficking parking aspects for the project. And as Ms. Kiefer indicated, I'm just gonna give a brief overview of where we stand with regard to some of the trafficking parking issues. Last we had provided sort of an update of traffic generation in a June 8th letter and talked about some of the differences in the project trip generation compared, as it had changed due to the makeup of the project. And as Ms. Kiefer indicated, we are in receipt of the latest beta comment letter regarding traffic. We just received that today and we do plan to respond in writing to beta and the ZBA. So that'll be a formal response from us. And we expect to get that out obviously before the next hearing. But just a few points, we noted and are happy to see that beta concurs with our findings that the proposed plan represents a reduction in vehicle trips when compared with the previous proposal. And obviously the reduction, the change in makeup from the 176 unit development to the duplex project with the 124 senior living units has a huge effect on the project trip generation and the vehicle trips and lessens the impact of this project on town streets. We also note and agree with Betis finding that the project parking supply is adequate for the development based on information provided in the Institute of Traffic Engineers parking generation manual, looking at land use. Land use is similar to what's proposed here. The rates are in terms of demand rates, number of spaces per unit are higher than the parking rate that's indicated in the Arlington zoning requirements. But again, we feel and the rates that the project is providing are higher than both of those. So we feel that by providing the 96 parking spaces we are going to be able to satisfy the parking demand for the project for all components of the development which includes the residents and visitors and then staff that wind up working at the development. There are other requests for information in Betis letter which will be provided. One item involves the provision of a dedicated transportation service or van from a residence to reduce reliance on personal vehicles. The applicant will commit to providing the service and it will be dedicated a dedicated service for residents that can assist with trips to shopping destination to public transit stations or bus stops or medical appointments and so on. With the intent being that this would be an amenity and it would be a service and it would be available for the residents so that they could feel like they don't need to bring their personal vehicles to the site. As I mentioned, we plan to respond to all these other comments in writing. There's some requests for information related to site plans that we will work with BSC on providing. But I think, as I mentioned, we'll get that to the board before the July 13th hearing. And I think that's really the overview for traffic and parking and I'll turn it over to Mr. Simliki and he can go through his presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Alan, if you could just unmute yourself. I don't know if you realize that you're muted. I've got a very loud West Highland Terrier in the other room, that's why it's muted. Well, it's good to see all you. I'm very new to the project, obviously, although I'm not new to Arthur and Gwen, the developers. We started working on assisted living in about 1990, I believe, and there were just a few of us working on it then. And it's good to see that Gwen and Arthur have continued on with their interest because they've done a great job with what they've done so far. As I said, I haven't been on board for very long. I have done quite a few projects. I've done for my client, volunteers for America. I worked on as a development consultant for Neshoba Park, for Concord Park One, Concord Park Expansion, which we're in right now, Forestdale Park in Walden. I've worked with Central Boston Elder Services, which is the largest home care provider in the city of Boston to build a 57-unit supportive housing, a 100% supportive housing development in Dudley Square. I've done a lot of non-profit development stuff such as the Project and Summabill for homeless veterans that was finished for volunteers in America about three years ago. So I have worked with the state funding agencies, the state housing agencies. The city of Cambridge did a project on the 122-unit project on Franklin Street that we completed a couple of years ago, which is elderly housing, independent living, with very limited supportive services, which has a lot of similarities to this project in that a big portion of it is affordable and it's a large project and it works out very well. That's a quick outline of what I've done. I've done a lot of planning. I've worked at the community builders, which is a nationally known housing, affordable housing development company. I worked there for six years and I've done a lot of R&D, office, and so on and so forth. So the first thing I saw after Gwen and Arthur sent me the materials on the project was that the community was concerned with traffic and parking, which is not new. I mean, that's generally the major concern people have when we start doing one of these developments. And in looking at it, I saw that I decided I would download some information from other projects that I've worked on and I called the engineer up and made him confirm, asked him to confirm the unit counts and the parking spaces and he did that for me. And so I looked at Neshoba Park, Concord Park in Forestdale and Dudley, Central Boston, all the services. I'm not gonna get into repeating. A lot of the numbers that the traffic people are gonna, the traffic engineers and transportation engineers are gonna provide you in writing and probably already have. But what I found was that, without a doubt, this project has more parking than any one of the ones I just mentioned. Neshoba Park has like 0.5 parking spaces per unit, basically, Concord has a little more, Forestdale has a little less, and Arlington, the Arlington project has 0.76, which is much better than the others, as you will find out when our engineers write this up. So I'm not gonna get into it in a lot of detail. So with that, I think we have, the developer has solved the parking issue which people are concerned about. And I know that the next area of concern is the impact on the surrounding streets and impact on local neighborhood traffic. I took a quick look at that too, but have pulled back a little bit. I looked at some of the market, some of the trip generation studies that we did in Malden for the Forestdale Park assisted living, which has been over for about a year and a half now. And a lot of the same issues came up there as they did for you folks, as of course they would. I know Lake Street's been a major problem. And the beauty of this is, this project is independent living, which means that it doesn't need a whole layer of people coming to the project that we would ordinarily have with assisted living in memory care. We don't have a huge dining room staff. We don't have a huge kitchen staff. We don't have a lot of personal care attendance because that's an extra if people need it. We don't have a lot of housekeepers that clean every room every other day and go through the list. So there's a huge differential in the number of staff coming to the project. And then we talked earlier a few days ago and today about the facility of having a van bring people back and forth to Aleway Station, which is really wonderful. The station's so close it's five, 10 minutes away. It's so easy to pick up people that are coming to work in the development and so forth. And it's also on the red line, which means that we have access to employees, prospective employees that are living in Boston and Cambridge and Somerville and South Boston downtown all the way into basically into Roxbury. So there's a need for people to work in the facilities and take care of these facilities as we all know. And this allows us to have access to a good, strong work based in a possible employment structure. And my guess is in what we've seen in other projects if a train is available, if the transportation is available, people will use it and they'll pay the fare, whatever it takes to come from South Boston or Roxbury or Dorchester into Aleway, if it's a couple of bucks, I forget what it is now. And then if a van picks them up, there's a whole lot of parking that's not needed anymore. And it's a lot of relief on the traffic counts coming in and out of the development on all of the surrounding streets, including Lake. Also with this project, it's independent living, which means that it's catering primarily to people that are at a point where they no longer want to hang the drapes and take care of everything on a daily basis, but they're basically in pretty good, healthy shape. And a lot of them, at least the folks I know use the bicycle and I think the bicycle path is right there. So that's another major advantage of the project in terms of traffic flow and encouraging it to the neighborhood. What else can I answer? Do you have other questions I can respond to? Anyway, I'll be working with the development team as we go here to shape the staff and to shape the ways put together the extent of the services that are gonna be offered. As you can imagine, assisted living has taken a major hit with the pandemic and a lot of people were hurt by the pandemic that were in assisted living. And this is not assisted living, it's independent living, which is better from a marketing point of view because the people in assisted living or that would be putting their parents in assisted living are a little standoffish at this point, which is totally understandable. I think that market's coming back and probably the next few months once the virus gets totally under control, but in the meantime, independent living is a very, very good use to go with because the need is great around many around. So with that, I will be quiet and look for questions. Thank you. So just a quick question, the parking ratio that you had given before, was that inclusive of all parking on site or just resident parking? All parking on site, I believe that's what you're referring to. That's correct, right? Perfect, thank you. So from your experience with these other developments, so one of the concerns that was expressed earlier with this project where it was just a fully multi-family structure was that a lot of people would be commuting hours late. Oops. Yeah, I missed the question. Already. I was curious if you had some senses to when shifting now to assisted living, excuse me, not assisted living, but independent living, are the commuting hours of the employees different from the standard nine to five positions? No, I think the commuting hours would be the same pretty much the staff would come, well, the staff is so much lighter than it would be in assisted living. With assisted living, I mean, you need a staff to come in and serve the dining room in the morning. You need another staff or the same staff extended into the lunch period, which goes until about two o'clock. And then you need a fresh staff to come in for dinner. And then with personal care attendance, basically they come in in the morning and get people ready and help them get up and help them get their clothes on and so on and so forth. So they have to be there fairly early and then they ease up at the end of the morning and then less personal care attendance come on in the evening because they're not needed. The rooms are clean, people are together, they've got their clothes on, they've had some meals. And then in the evening, it really drops down to a couple of personal care people just to watch over things in case there's an emergency and they have to call in medical assistance or someone has a personal emergency and needs some help. So that staff drops significantly. Obviously the dining room staff with assisted living is larger in the morning and the biggest in lunchtime is the biggest meal ordinarily. That's when most Elgis want to eat. And so they're very busy then with a lot of wait staff and that goes down a little bit in the evening. And then of course they go away and probably after dinner time. So the ones going away after dinner time are primarily dining staff and cook staff and the housekeeping, the cleaners, the personal care attendants, most of them have already gone, they've already done their job, they've left. And so by the time the evening comes, there's very few employees on the building and it ramps up at around 6, 37 o'clock in the morning. Okay. Thank you. Questions from the board? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. The, just as a matter of clarification, the van that will be running for the residents, is that a van that will be available as part of the rent basically to all residents or is that something that is in addition that needs to be separately paid for by a resident? Ordinary when it's built into the performer it's part of the operating, part of the performers in the staff management area. And so they are not, in none of the assisted living facilities people are not charged for use of the van. And the van is used for social activities if you go to the concert or you go to a show or you go to the museum, now you find the van is filled with people and then you can arrange by appointment medical appointments and so on and so forth and the van does throw and bring people around. They don't charge because it's all built into the overall rent structure. Now, with this rent structure we talked about this a little bit today, 30% of the affordable units, 30% of the income of those people in affordable units go for the rent and then they would have 70% available of their income to go for other things. So the mix of what gets included as extra services still has to be hammered in, hammered down, but something like the van, what everything I've seen with the assisted living I've worked on which are several it's always been part of the rent package. It's always been part of the services problem. So what there's, I guess my concern, one of my concerns at least is me if most services or certainly all of the fundamental services are all sort of part of the basic operating cost and they're not of extra cost to the residents of the affordable units, you don't have or you have a minimal amount of invidious discrimination, so to speak, against the people who are occupying the affordable units. The more the ordinary services of life, the things that make the independent living situation attractive to the extent to which those things are sort of a la carte, you come to have a sort of a class structure within the building. And what I'm sort of wondering is first of all, kind of what is the experience and the other things you had which you've done with the independent living with an affordable housing part and how should we as a board be thinking about this? Obviously the potential for discrimination against the affordable units or the sense that they don't really belong is a concern that is not just ours, but it's a concern that's really built into 40B itself. But at this point, everything seems sufficiently unco-weight that it's hard for me at least to understand what it is I'm looking at here. Yeah, I think you're doing very best in terms of architectural entering the building and the unit types. And actually it's against the law to discriminate in any way with different unit types or different levels of services for different people. And so you really, and you don't see it. I mean, I don't see it very often unless there's some crazy thing where you've got a high rise and that's got a separate entrance with an awning and then you've got your low income independent living and you go through a back door. You know, that's ordinarily a no-no in Massachusetts and people don't do it. And I'm not on the floor of all these assisted living and independent living projects I've worked on. I'm not there every day. So I can't say that there isn't discrimination, but I've never heard it discussed as an issue. And I mean, our prospective manager is 18 of these, I think it's 18 now of these things, including four of the ones I've done. And I've never, and I'm on the board of Conker Park and I'm on the board of Inshaubar Park and I'm on the board of Farstdale Park. And this has never come up as a point of discussion in any of our board meetings in all the years I've been on those boards. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm sure it does, but it's not very obvious. And the people we have involved here are going to do their best to make sure that it does not happen. And I think if I just dovetail on that, the services that are provided as part of kind of the built in and then if there are extra, that may be additional cost services, that's, it's the same consideration I would suggest or a similar situation that you would have with any apartment rental. You know, there may be an ability because where the proximity of the apartment building is, if it has an affordability thing, somebody may hire and bring in a private yoga instructor and that doesn't mean that the building is discriminating against one person versus another. And so there's a baseline level of services that are provided. But you're right, Mr. Hanlon, that there are a range of all the services that one may avail themselves to or not avail themselves to. But I don't, I think that the people going into an independent living facility are choosing to live in an independent living facility. They're not choosing to live in an independent slash assisted slash skilled nursing facility. So it's a choice that residents are making when they're coming in that they want the independent living. And so when there's additional services that get layered on if they're coming from third parties or outside sources, I don't think that that's distinctly different than in a, you know, a multi-family apartment building that has an affordability. Thank you. So I have one other question of Mr. Zimliki. I wonder if you could sort of describe the age structure and the health of people who are inclined to be, who are part of this. I get to be one of the people on the board who is closest to, I'm sure I would qualify. And I'm relatively healthy and get around and don't have an ambulance coming to the door constantly. But there at times we've been sort of thought that the standard sort of model we should keep in mind is a very elderly person in their 80s, possibly someone whose spouse has passed away. And I think what I'm trying to sort of get at is understanding the kind of the demographic of the people who are, for whom independent living with services is attractive in the way in which that may differ. Obviously there's some really high-rise things around here of like Brookhaven that I assume fit logically in the same category and may not be typical of what's involved here. But it's one thing to think about something where you have people in their 60s, 70s and maybe some people in their 80s. And another thing if you think of this as largely people who are older than I am and I'm in my late 70s. Well, the demographic is all over the place. I mean, I think for independent living, well, for assisted living, I think you're looking at someone in their 80s, early 80s probably is kind of an average person going in. For independent living, I think you're looking at people in their mid-60s to late 70s, maybe early 80s that are in fairly good shape. Like probably you, like I'm one of those folks too, I could go in except my wife keeps making me go and carry sandbags in the back of the house here, keeping shape. But so I think it's a healthy demographic. People that are still maybe harshly involved in their work and totally involved in other things, other organizations that have a fairly good life. They probably have lost a spouse possibly and don't wanna take care of the big house anymore or they're at a point where they really feel like they wanna move on from the big house. Kids are gone, maybe the wife is gone or maybe she's not, but you don't wanna have to maintain it anymore. I think a lot of those people are out there, especially in the neighborhoods we're talking about, especially like when Concord and Cambridge and all the communities around you and Arlington. I think that's a demographic that's probably very strong in these communities. And actually, when you think about it, there's not a lot of independent housing out there. You know, we have the independent housing we did in Roxbury, we did 57 units, but that's all for people that need supportive housing and it's 100% affordable. And some of those people are a little more frail than the ones that would be going into this independent living. I think the people going in here we probably could be some of the same people that are going to Florida in the winter for a couple of months. You know, they just don't wanna take care of the house anymore, that's what I've seen. They're all kind of all over the board. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, bye. We have no more questions. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Are there other questions from the board? Yes, Mr. Chair, I have a couple of questions. Go ahead, Mr. Mills. Yes, Mr. Zimliki, we very much appreciate your expertise and information you brought forward. I just had a couple of questions. You gave us parking information and figures on several other sites that I'm not familiar with. How would you say they compare to this site as Farrer's location? This site being somewhat distant from mainstream, although it will have a public service. How would you say this site compares to the others you referenced? I think this is an excellent site. I mean, it's close to Alewife, so you don't need a car and just shoot over there. It's close to the bike trail if you wanna get on bike. It's close to downtown Boston, if you wanna get in the red line. It's a nice site surrounded by the water and the parks. The ones I can compare to, the Concord Project is in West Concord Village, which is beautiful, which is nice, but not any better than the site that we're talking about here. Yes. I'm really questioning more how close are they to commercial areas, downtown, public transportation? You know, here it's a half a mile roughly to get the public transportation, whether you go to Mass Avenue or Alewife. These other developments, are they closer to public transportation in commercial areas? Well, Concord is in West Concord Village near the train station, but that's not really... The trains are a lot, you know, they're expensive. They don't run the same ways or subway and all that stuff. So that's where that is. And then the Showa Park is on the old air public hospital. It's on a hill overlooking the town. So, you know, it's about a mile down the hill to the town where the town hall is. Let's see, the one in... There's the one in... What am I looking at here? Maldon Far Still Park is a little bit out there. It's on the Melrose Line. It's right next to a very large public elementary school. It's about 600 kids in school. It's got a street that goes along where the cemeteries run up there. I don't know if you're familiar with the Melrose Line. So it's not... But it's close to public transportation. It's close to the Orange Line. If you can walk a mile, or three quarters of a mile, you can get on the Orange Line, take it all the way downtown. It's good bus stops that go through up and down Forest Avenue, Forest Hill Avenue, that take you to the Orange Line. So it's not bad, but it's probably not as convenient as your site. Just one more question. And forgive me if I miss this information. At these other sites, do you offer... We'll call it a jitney, if you will. Providing... Do you provide a jitney at these other locations? Yes, we do. I think Conker shares it within the show sometimes, but I think it's... They be pretty much scheduled and coordinate the scheduling of it. With the one in Maldon, I'm not sure of the scheduling on that one. I'd have to check and talk to the director about it, but yeah, they all have access to it. Well, Central Boston Elder Services Project in Dudley doesn't have a jitney, because the home care attendants work with the people in the building, supportive care, to set up their appointments, their doctor's appointments, and bring in meals on wheels that they have to. It's a 100% affordable project. And it's also right in Dudley. It's right on the... It's right where the bus station is right there. The orange line is a little too far, but the bus is right there across the street. Well, thank you very much, sir. Your information's been very helpful in illuminating. I'm all set, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Mr. Revillac, I believe you have a question. Yes. Again, I'd also like to thank Mr. Zimlicki for taking the time to attend tonight. I just have one question, which was brought up, I believe, at our last hearing, which was just generally, how does one accommodate residents whose need for services may change over time? Thank you. Well, what I have found in all of the developments I've worked on, and in very personal life, I mean, we're involved in this stuff, is that people are okay in independent living as long as they can get around. And they're okay in assisted living as long as they don't lose their mobility. When they lose their mobility and they wind up in a wheelchair, it's okay for a while as long as that's all they've lost. I mean, you can be wheeled to the dining room and wheeled back and so forth. But if you get to a point where you can't go to the bathroom yourself, you can't do anything yourself. Basically, you need help with everything. It starts draining the staff. A huge amount of staff goes into maintaining that person. And it's also demoralizing to the rest of the people in the facility because people are very sensitive. They know that they could wind up there themselves. And so usually when that happens, these folks are encouraged to, in the organization, the residents is encouraged to work with them to find another alternative. So if they need a more medical oriented facility or residence to be in, they really have to go and start finding it or using the resources available like Arlington Home Care or Cambridge Home Care, whatever to help them find a nursing home or a nursing facility that can handle their level of disability. Because they can go on her on. I mean, they can go on my own personal life. My mother-in-law was in assisted living and she had to leave because she couldn't move or do anything anymore basically by herself. And she wound up in a nursing home and she's been there about eight years. So there's just nothing you can do about it. No further questions, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Revlack. Are there other questions from the board? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. Yes, thank you. I don't know how to do my microphone here. And I echo Mr. Zimlicki what the others have said about we're happy to have you here tonight. I'm really just trying to get a better feel though for what the population is like. So once the building is populated with people between 65 and 80 or somewhere in that range. I think that's right. And so what I assume you see is you see people who are aging and then their ability to live independently is going to be reduced over time. And so at some point there's gonna be a threshold where in terms of the definition of assisted living and independent living sort of gets blurred. And so I'm thinking that you probably get people who are living independently and then as things start to reduce for them they start needing more services. And that's I think one of the things that interests me because I know that when the traffic studies are done there are projections made and people are saying that there's going to be less traffic, less parking as compared to other iterations of this project. It strikes me though that over time you're gonna have a situation where it builds up in terms of people needing more help coming into the building which would logically increase the traffic that you have. And so we don't know by what factor that would be. So that's one element of the parking or people coming in to provide those additional services that aren't included as part of the core services which I believe are wellness, security, cleaning and laundry. And then the next part of it too is as that same group ages, we're familiar in town with seeing people go to sunrise and you have the triumvirate of the emergency vehicles arrive each time in a police ambulance and then fire. And so we don't have a sense, I don't have a sense at least of what we would be expecting. I mean, in the beginning where you have this group of people is it gonna be one visit per week or two or three? And then over time I would think that that's going to increase as well until people decide that they can't handle the independent living part of it anymore. So I have a question and a concern that that is going to change over time in a way that would be significant and would impact both the parking and the traffic and all of that. So I was just wondering if you might be able to comment on that. Yeah, the numbers, I guess I didn't give them to you in detail, but the numbers I had for the four different facilities in the show of a Concord, Farsdale and Roxbury assume they're all assisted living facilities. So your number of parking spaces was being compared to facilities that are assisted living facilities even though this is an IL facility. And what I'm getting at is that you've got a buffer of parking spaces there because you're independent living that you wouldn't necessarily have with assisted living. In other words, you're doing a lot better. The ratios are much better, but people will get older and they will age and they will need more services. But when they get to a point where it's more than assisted living or more than independent living is capable of handling, those people really have to be encouraged to move on to assisted living. In this case would be an assisted living facility rather than staying in an independent living facility because it's just going to become cumbersome to them. There's no non-messy way of dealing with people getting older and aging and more frail. But basically you got to worry about the overall population in the building. As I said, people get depressed when they see stuff like this. And if someone's left in that situation and they're not getting an adequate level of care they really should move on to assisted living. They really should be encouraged to move to assisted living. If they don't have funds for assisted living from their own pockets there are other resources that we use. And the show of a park is 60% low income. Central Boston is 100% low income. So there are possibilities, there are options. But that will probably happen. People will age in place, there's no doubt about it. There will be ambulances, there will be fire trucks bombing the ambulances. Hopefully they don't have their sirens on. But I don't know what the options are for that if you're gonna offer people decent places to live. Thank you, I appreciate you being direct. The other, and I did have the same thought and I just wanted to follow up. So when you have the affordable component and so you have people who in the regular units the market rate units. So those people who are feeling like they can't just do it in independent living anymore can probably more easily find an assisted living place. And the people who are in the affordable units, however, if they need to move, I don't know, perhaps you do. What is the likelihood? I mean, how easy it is for those people to transition. And this may be a little bit off subject but I'm just interested to know what happens to those people. Well, there are support. It depends on the structure of their finances really. It's hard to talk in abstract but there are things like supplemental social security that the state offers that gives them, I forget what the number is now, 1300 a month or whatever to help towards their rent. So what you tend to start doing is you start piggybacking things. You take maybe a sign them up for rent subsidies through the rent section eight rent subsidies program. If that's not enough money, piggyback it with SSI, Social Security Income which is another 1500 bucks. Maybe they're family chips and some money. There are those kinds of options but then if you're very, very low income, there are other programs that kick in to help the Medicaid programs and so forth. I don't have all those programs in front of me. That's not what I do on a daily basis. I use those programs when we're structuring a facility and we figure out, should it be 60% low income? Should it be 100% low income? How can we make all that work? But the manager that you're speaking with or the team is speaking with does this all the time. They're really good at it and they manage. I don't wanna get into saying who they are because they haven't been chosen yet and we don't have a project yet. So basically they're very good at it. They know how to structure it. My mother-in-law was in Neville. She had all those assistance put in place for her because she had no money and it worked out really well. And the only problem she had was she got more and more frail and that followed her through and then you wind up and depending on the person's income, you could wind up in a nursing home and that's covered 90% by various programs. So there are programs out there. I can't get into them in detail. Now I didn't even prep myself for it but there's stuff available. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dupont. Were there any other questions from the board? Seeing none, okay. So just, so I'm gonna go ahead and we'll move on to public comment in a second. I just wanted to let the applicants for 55 Sutherland and for 10 Sunnyside let them know I'm gonna push them back half an hour so that we have some time for public comment. So with that, so now I'm gonna open up for public comment for the revised, for the discussion that we've been having here in regards to specifically the operations of independent living in regards to parking and traffic concerns. So public questions to comments will be taken as they relate to this matter at hand. In the interest of time, the chair requests that other topics relate to this project not be discussed at this time. All questions and comments are to be directed to the chair who will then seek responses from the applicant or other attendees. Our request that all in attendance please abide by these requests as the board is able to receive testimony in an orderly and timely manner. Individual public speakers will be limited to three minutes due to time constraints this evening the public comment period for this hearing and not later than eight PM to allow time to discuss planning and move on to the following hearings. As always, the chair encourages the public to provide written comments to be reviewed by the board and included in the record. This is especially true if you have specific recommendations in regards to this project. The procedure for requesting to speak be the same as for other prior hearings. Please select the raise hand button from the comments tab on Zoom or dial star nine on your phone to indicate you would like to speak. When called upon, please identify yourself by name and address. We've given three minutes for your questions and comments all questions to be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps us generate some accurate minutes. And once all public comments and questions have been addressed or the time allocated by the chair has ended the public comment period will be closed for this session of the hearing. So the list that I have the first name is Mr. Yerowitz. Good evening. My name is John Yerowitz. I'm a 53 year resident of the town. I live at the corner of Mont and Little John Street very close to the site. My question is first for Mr. Klein himself. Back in time, pardon me. Back in time when the town submitted its percentage of affordable housing based on land mass we found out from the state that our numbers did not comply. We didn't meet the minimum. So the state simply went and said, okay, go ahead and build. So a new guy and oak tree and everybody have gone and designed all this stuff. It's been a ton of money. Am I correct so far, Mr. Klein? A little off topic for this evening, but just to quickly answer your question. Yes, so the town does not meet any of the statutory limits which would allow the town's decision in a 40B case to be the final decision. Any decision this board makes is appealable to the housing appeals committee. Okay, and as has been mentioned several times prior to me speaking, the 40B topic came up at least 25 times. I stopped counting at 20. Anyway, with that in mind, does the fact that the 40B has to do with affordable housing has the complex, has the complexion of this new proposal by the applicant, the change to independent living, has that changed the requirement to meet the 40B number that was assigned before? It does not, no. It does not. So we're gonna build something, period, correct? So the board still has a decision to make. So whether it decides that the board has three options, we can either approve unconditionally, we can approve with conditions or we can deny. And depending on that result, the applicant does have the option of appealing any decision to the housing appeals committee. Okay, thank you, Mr. Klein. I'm done. Thank you, Mr. Urwitz. Next on the list is Mr. Moore. Yes, Mr. Chairman, Steve Moore, Piedmont Street. I want to compliment the applicant as others have done on the addition of Mr. Zimlicki to the team. He clearly has the knowledge and expertise to fill out the current plan in terms of being a senior living development instead of what it was prior. And one of my questions has been answered already in terms of the assisted living versus independent living. I'm glad to hear there will be a robust process to help the seniors transition when they find the need to move from an independent living situation to an assisted living situation. I would hope that there will be an office as part of the management structure that would be in place to allow for this to occur simply and easily because I think the maintaining of this as an independent senior living area is important as opposed to letting it begin to kind of morph into an assisted living causing all the attendant parking problems, traffic problems and, I don't know, approval situation problems when we try and use development for a different use than it really was designed. So I'm glad to hear that that's there. A couple of simple questions that may have already been answered but I want to make sure I understand them. In terms of parking spaces and people who can use them, are potential residents allowed to bring and store their vehicles in parking spaces? They haven't made that decision yet but I would absolutely doubt it. As a matter of fact, in one instance we set up some rental fees for bringing a car to a development because we felt like the residents did not need it. And that's the best way to get someone to get rid of their old junk or car is to charge them every month for it. So I'm sorry, go ahead. So no policy has been done that I'm aware of. I'm fairly new to the team so but I'm sure that that is something that has to be dealt with with rules and those people that should not happen. That can't be allowed to happen. You want to go ahead? Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt. That's great because one of the hallmarks of independent living is able to still be mobile and move around and even though the car may never be driven they often follow folks to storage and storage and spaces. I think that rental approach is an excellent idea for a space because truly being stored but not used. Okay, in terms of the jitney, the transportation being offered I believe I heard that it was going to be offered to all residents as part of the basic structure. That's currently the plan though I know the plan is not fully designed. Is that correct Mr. Chairman? Yes it is. Okay, so that means affordable residents who have affordable units, residents who have market rate units, residents who are part of the duplex units all can use this transportation, correct? I will ask Ms. Kiefer if she can clarify that question in regards to the duplexes because I don't know but Mr. Moore I've expended your three minutes I apologize Ms. Kiefer. Thank you Mr. Chairman and I don't think that we have discussed that as to the duplexes we can, Scott may want to weigh in on that and I suppose we can consider that but the intention was as you see with typical that it's just for the senior living but I can discuss it with our team and we can provide a follow-up response to that for the next hearing. Okay, so the duplexes are not included in the senior living Mr. Kim. No Mr. Moore. Right, okay. And is that transportation arrangement also available for free for the staff who are going to be attending to the senior living residences? Residents, I'm sorry, Mr. Kim. That is what has been expressed. Okay, so this jitney is going to go not only to Aleife but also to Leahy Clinic to Whole Foods or Stop and Shop all those places on some sort of routine schedule and the residents kind of plan their day around that schedule. I'm sorry Mr. Moore, the details of that haven't been worked out from what they've said but I do need to move on to other. Okay, all right, thank you, sir. Thank you, I appreciate your questions. Mr. McKinnon. Hello, my name is Matt McKinnon. I live at Nine Little John Street, Narlington. Yes, please. Mr. Klein, this question will be directed to Alan. I was quickly researching the businesses mentioned as Alan was talking and I did not see any of them located in an already established community such as ours. They all had dedicated roads and driveways into the community for the traffic. I was curious if Alan could give me any examples of this type of development that's residing in an already existing community. Yeah. Shall I respond? Yeah. Please go ahead. Okay, yeah, existing community, Concord is in the middle of West Concord Village and it goes through the parking lot where the T is to get to there. It's right in the middle of the business area. So it's highly visible. The project I did on the Independent Living Project we did on Franklin Street in Cambridge is right in back of the Cambridge Elders Center. It's on Franklin Street 411 and it's 120 unit development. That was done three, four years ago. That's Independent Living. The project in Malden is in an existing residential neighborhood next to a school with 600 kids and parents have picked them up in the morning and dropped them off in the evening. And it's surrounded by housing. And the Chauvin Park is up on a hill. It's in a residential community, but it's not in the middle of a highly urbanized residential community. Dudley Square is obviously in the middle of Dudley Square, which is totally urban community. Those are- So the question I have is the development will be resting on the corner of Little John Street and Dorothy Road, which are each 25 feet in length. None of the roads I saw from Google Maps, none of the roadways at these communities, they all exited out onto a roadway that was much wider than the 25 feet width we have here. So I was curious if you could give me an example of a similar sized street for the entrance and exits for these developments. 411 Franklin Street is an obvious one. It's right on, I mean, you can barely make it down the street. It's, you know, right there. So as far as is- 411 Franklin, okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you for thinking. Anything further? Nope. Next on the list is Ide. Hi, Marcy Shapiro Ide. I'm at 152 Lake Street, the corner of Lake Street and Little John Streets. I am a social worker at a local council on aging. So these are my people who live in large apartment buildings. I work with many, many people who live in independent senior subsidized housing. Here in Arlington, we have four apartment buildings that are in the center of Arlington and one up in Arlington Heights that are all independent senior subsidized housing where people in general pay 30% of their monthly income as rent. I do want to say first of all, I really don't think this is the right location for a building like this. It is off the beaten path. I don't really think anything should be built in the wetlands. However, I do want to comment on what we're all talking about. And I want to paint a little bit of a picture that I think we're not really even seeing. So you have a large building. We're talking about behind a row of houses with one entrance at the side. So, and I have to say with the existing buildings that are in Arlington, it doesn't necessarily matter if you're in Arlington center, if you're five minutes from shops or half an hour walk from shops. There will always be some people in this demographic who are going to be anywhere from 60 to 99 living in these types of buildings. And some of them will walk. So you also have to think about all the pedestrians that are going to be coming out and walking through this is a lovely neighborhood to be able to walk through. So you also have to picture all of these residents, not all of them, but a percentage of them are going to be walking and walking around and a percentage of them are not going to be because they just don't walk. It's too far. There's nowhere to walk up to Kay brought it to get a cup of coffee. For some people will not be manageable. I made a list of all of, while we were talking about the traffic, if someone is in independent senior housing, this is just a smattering, a list off the top of my head of who will be coming by sometimes once a week, sometimes every single day, home health aides, PCAs, people living in independent housing have PCAs, house cleaners, family members, companions, physical therapists, occupational therapists, first responders, police sometimes on their own, fire sometimes on their own, ambulances sometimes on their own, sometimes all together. Social workers such as myself make home visits quite often. You have food delivery, Peapod. You have the Meals on Wheels deliveries. You have Uber Eats and whatever else as people age the technology and the things that we all use will be moving down there as well. The food pantry delivers to people who can't get to the food pantry. Amazon delivery trucks, nurses, that's just a smattering of who will be coming in to the neighborhood to visit and do the services that people need to live independently. Going outbound, first of all in all of the senior housing that currently exists, however many parking spaces you have there will be more than enough residents who want to park there. I think it's very ageist to say that people can't drive later in life and they're not gonna want to. A lot of people wanna remain independent. So however many spaces you have they will be filled immediately and there will be a waiting list for parking. And we are not close enough to a municipal lot as in the other buildings where people have to get an overnight parking sticker when they move in and there's nowhere for them to park their car. So you'll have in addition to all the people driving on their own the MBTA, the ride, people will be using that. People will be using this jitney that's gonna be provided by the facility. People will be using the senior center van because we have two senior center vans that take people to do errands and to market basket and to doctor's appointments. We have taxi service when the vans get overbooked and we need to provide more transportation. So we have taxis. We have people doing ubers and lifts and taxis on their own. We'll have volunteer drivers, medical escorts that take people. And so I just think that we need to have this full picture of all of these things happen every single day you can go to visit any of the senior housing buildings that exist and you can sit there and see the cars coming in and out, the visitors coming in and out, the deliveries coming in and out. It's a lot. And so just because you're saying, oh, it's seniors, the majority of them are not gonna be going to alewife. I can tell you that. There will be a percentage that will wanna go into Boston and use it for that, but that is not gonna be a huge selling point. I'm just saying that. I need to move along, I apologize. And I'm happy if anybody else has any other questions. And people do age in place through the, there's a program called the Frail Elder Waiver, which is a mass health program to keep people out of nursing homes and to bring in whatever services they need because it's less expensive to do that. And I'm happy to answer any questions about senior services in general if anybody ever has any questions. If I could ask you to forward those two lists you put together, if you could email those and that reference you made at the end, if you could just email that to the ZBA address. Definitely, thank you so much. I appreciate it, thank you. Ms. Keith Lucas. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Heather Keith Lucas of 10 Mott Street. Good evening. Recognize that tonight's discussion is focused on traffic and parking concerns. So I'll try to keep my comments focused to this as well as just a consideration for next steps. So at the last ZBA meeting, there were multiple questions from the community that clearly identified that the developer had not defined what their proposal is. And at the end, I recall the ZBA made a request to the developer to define the plan and also propose that in writing. To date, the developer has not clearly defined the population who is intended to live at the proposed Thorndike Place. So as much as Mr. Zimlicki has provided his experience on this call, I feel it's general information. It is helpful and informative. However, Mr. Zimlicki's information seems irrelevant without knowing the true population that's intended or the services that would be included as part of this development. In addition, from a timing perspective, I feel the ZBA should be afforded the respect by the applicant to be able to make informed decisions that impact our town and the prospective residents of this location. And to that point, I ask Mr. Klein for the ZBA and the applicant to give consideration for a substantive extension this time around, not just one that is a few weeks out, but one that allows for substantive discussion and to have clear plans posted and reviewed and allow for clear definitions, clear details, and allow for sufficient public comment period as well as for the ZBA to understand fully what this plan is. Thank you, Mr. Klein. Thank you. I appreciate it. Next, Ms. Shoemaker. Hello. Shoesmith, excuse me. Hi. Hello, Mr. Klein. Thank you. So I'd just like to echo a previous comment that someone made with regards to this not being the ideal location for this type of development. I agree that for the most part, the residents will not be walking to a wife. It's not very easy to get to a wife, especially if someone is in a wheelchair. Sometimes the train can be quite inaccessible if you're in a wheelchair, the elevator's not working. I think for the most part, it would benefit the residents the most to have this in an existing bus-accessible place. So for example, in Mass Hab, they could easily walk to the bakery, walk to different restaurants or religious services or use the existing bus routes that have these handicap accessibility. One more point I wanted to make regarding pedestrian safety around the neighborhood. So I'm at 53 Dorothy's, Dorothy's already mentioned that at the beginning. And I have school-aged children who either walk or ride their bikes to school with increased traffic from Uber and different services. I would be more concerned about how they're getting to and from school. So yeah, that's, thank you. Thank you. Next on the list, I had Mr. McCabe, but I don't, I think he has lowered his hand. Ms. Gibson. Good evening, thank you, Mr. Klein. This is Shona Gibson. I am at 107 Mary Street. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you, Mr. Zimliki, for your attendance at the meeting this evening. It's very interesting to hear your perspective. As a board member at Forestdale, you'll be familiar with my employer. I work for Cambridge Health Alliance PACE program. You probably know that we provide part of the on-site medical service for some of the residents of that building. I just have, again, recognizing that this evening's meeting is primarily focused on parking and transportation. I just want to reiterate my neighbor, Matt McKinnon's observation regarding the location here. I think Mr. Zimliki, you're very right to point out that the neighborhood has a lot of amenities. However, I think that the two points that it's very hard to get past with any development or proposed development in this site is that obviously the location itself being primarily wetlands is problematic for the neighborhood here, but also I would urge the board to look carefully at the location of all existing independent living and assisted living facilities in the Greater Boston area. I've looked at this quite a bit myself and I've been in and out of many of these buildings myself and I really just don't think there is another example where a building for this type of purpose is tucked away into the back of a neighborhood like this. I think a more, an equivalent might be if there were egress onto route two, that might make more sense. Or in fact, if the building were directly accessible from Lake Street or Mass Ave, that might be something more equivalent. I actually think tucked away as we are back here really isn't an equivalent to some of the other locations and I would just urge the board to check that out. And one other point which I do admit is off topic regarding parking and transportation is I really just have to say to my neighbor, Steve Moore, Mr. Moore, I wouldn't be too reassured that there will be a lot of facilitation of folks who need to move from independent living to other levels of living. Something I spend a lot of time doing in my work as I think my neighbor Marcy Shapiro I does as well is actually trying to help people manage the transition from one living setting to another. And, you know, understandably if somebody's running an independent living facility that they might have, they might want to point out to the resident, you know, perhaps you're in some way outstaying your welcome, you're no longer really appropriate here. But I think it's not much of a stretch of imagination for any of us to imagine how we might feel if we were that individual or if we were that individual's family. It's just a natural part of human nature to not really like change. People often don't really move to these types of buildings until some sort of circumstance forces them to look at it. And then they are generally very reluctant to make a second move to a more restricted environment. I think that's, I just say that that has just been my experience over the couple of decades that I've done this work and I've never seen the building, any building management step in to lay out the practical options for the person. So I just think people need to just have their eyes open to that. I think it will inevitably become an assisted living even if it's not one in name. Thank you. Appreciate that. Mr. Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. I'd like to take advantage of Mr. Zimlucki's and presence here to bring up a question that I asked at a previous hearing. Are four handicapped spots sufficient for a senior community of this size? Mr. Zimlucki? Oh, we were guided. We had a little discussion about this this morning. We're obviously guided by building codes as to the number of spaces, which doesn't really answer your question. We actually are going to look further at at the number of spaces that we have and probably can't get to the ideal spot, but we probably can get to a good spot in terms of having accessibility in number of spaces. But obviously we're required by code to provide a certain number. Thank you. Thank you very much. Not giving you a very specific answer, but I'm saying that it still needs some work. Sure, I understand four is the minimum required under ADA requirements for a general population where this is an entirely senior population. I think it would be called for to have so much more than the four spaces that the state requires for just any apartment building of this size. I'm glad that you're considering it. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. We're looking to close the public comment in just a minute here. Mr. Dbasi had his hand raised quickly. Thank you very much, Robert Dbasi, 29 Little John Street. My question is basically about the traffic as we've talked about in terms of building going up with assisted living, we're going to be looking at possibly, multiple trips of emergency service equipment coming in and going from the facility and so forth. And when you look at the distance of the road of 29 Little John Street at that point at 25 feet, if there's people parked such as an Uber or a Lyft waiting to pick up somebody for this facility and you've got cars on both sides and somebody's trying to come up the street, you cannot get an emergency piece of apparatus down the street. Now, if they have parked overnight or parked on the day with nobody sitting in them, you're not going to get through. So I'm just asking that they look at the traffic entailed here to say, okay, whether or not we can handle getting somebody in and out in an emergency situation or on something that's going to be a regular basis based on the age group. Now, I myself have a father and a father-in-law that are both in their 90s. They still drive. They drive very well too. Scary. It is scary, it is scary. And one of them can back up on a straight line, the other one gets everything in sight. So you have to take that for what it's worth as well but I just hope that whatever we're trying to push through here, we take in all of these pieces of information and kind of pull them together because you don't want to see someone, you know, unregretably pass away because an EMT couldn't get down the street because cars were parked. And especially if it was because people working in the building were parked on Little John Street or Dorothy Road or something like that. So I would like them to just take a look at some of those numbers and some of those distances on the street and see whether or not they really meet for apparatus coming and going. I would think and I don't, again, I've only been involved in this for a few days but I know that the developer will probably meet with the appropriate authorities including the fire department to make sure that their requirements are met. I would hope so. And as you've only been involved for a few days and you might not know but I am a general contractor of 32 years. So I have been involved in a lot of big developments in Cambridge, Boston and surrounding towns. So I'm well aware of the codes and well aware of what's needed. So far I've kept back and watched and listened. So- And you know when the fire department says you should do X, Y or Z, you don't argue with them because they say are you gonna be responsible? That's part of- Some guys, yeah. So we know we have to go through that process. I understand that as well. Thank you, Mr. Diviasi. Thank you. Last speaker will be Ms. Fredman. Hi, thank you so much. My name's Lisa Fredman. I live at 63 Mott Street. I've talked to this board before about my experience taking care of my father when he lived in independent living. And I raised my hand because I think that both Marcy and Shona Gibson have raised really important considerations that we should all think about. I'm sure that many of you have also been caregivers to your parents. When my father was invited to move to a dementia unit in the independent living facility that he lived in, it was in New York City, but that's beside the point. My sister, who was his other caregiver, really objected. So we did everything we could to keep him in his apartment until the end of his life. And what does that have to do with what we're talking about tonight? We were fortunate to qualify for home hospice, but if we hadn't qualified for home hospice, we probably would have qualified for another type of home care service. We had 24-hour home health aides. That meant that we had a home health aide coming in during the day, another one coming in at night. Because we had home hospice, we also had the hospice nurse. We had the hospice nutritionist. We had the hospice social worker. All of these people were making regular visits to my father to make sure that he was safe and that he could actually stay in the independent living room, the studio apartment that he had. I visited every other week. My sister visited every day. If he had been living in this facility in Thorndike Place, that would have been six or seven cars, just for one person. He had been living in this independent living facility for 10 years. He did not want to move. My sister was adamant that he should not move. Consider what this will do to our neighborhood if we have this facility here. It's just unimaginable. But I think those of you who've been caregivers as I've been, and Marcy clearly has experienced with this and Shona has experienced as a nursing, as a nurse, this is what happens. And our neighborhood just cannot support this. It's not a good idea to have in our neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Regman. So with that, I will go ahead and close public comment for this evening. I really appreciate all the comments from the public, especially those with expertise in this area. It's always fascinating during public comment period, how many people have relevant experience in a lot of these issues. I really appreciate the comments. So for going forward, on this here for Thornton Place, so we have a date penciled in for July 13th as being our next hearing date. Just bear with it. So obviously from the discussion this evening, there's still a lot of questions about emergency services access into this area. Whoops, bigger burden. And there's also questions about the amount of traffic, questions about the number of accessible spaces. And I think that the more general questions about who's in the units, the level of care they need, obviously those impact the amount of traffic and the amount of parking that's required, but as far as the regulations involving 40B, those specific questions are not entirely within our purview, as I understand. So I would ask just quickly, members of the board, is there anything else you would specifically like to ask the applicant to address between now and the next hearing date? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I think part of it is going to happen anyway, but we have a number of questions that have been raised in the materials that the peer reviewer has presented. And we're kind of at a point where we just need to know and put firmly in one column or the next whether this is something that's agreed to and that we can put that in the, it's not a live issue anymore, where something where there's a genuine issue because I think the underlying problem is that we need to, with every meeting to make the issues gross, the range of issues grow smaller rather than bigger and we haven't always succeeded in moving in that direction, which is fine because the project has generally developed in a better way, but still we're getting down to the end. Secondly, I'm interested in those places. For example, one of the comments of the peer reviewer is that the applicant should be doing more to, at least between now and construction to get a hold on what the actual groundwater levels are during the peak area. That's something that's important. The possibility of increasing the flow north towards Dorothy Road is also important. We are not at peak season at this point and so at some point we need to figure out how it is going to deal with this. We are probably not going to do it by extending the hearing date by six months or a year. So we have to kind of have a plan and so we would like to see that plan develop. It would be nice if Mr. Thornton and Mr. Derrider could look a little bit behind. I mean, to some extent we've talked a lot about, person by person who might come to an assisted living home or to a independent living, but all of those things are sort of taken into account in the ITE's traffic generation figures to begin with as an average. And I don't know that there's any reason to expect this to be different from the range of homes that they're dealing with, but obviously the traffic experts need to take into consideration the things that have been said today. And I don't think it's quite enough to say that, well, however it is, it's better than the last proposal we had on the table because this board at least never agreed that the last proposal was acceptable at all. So we need to somehow have some reasonable insurance that we understand the degree to which there's going to be, there may or may not be a traffic problem. And at this point, people are kind of talking past each other because they're talking at a different level of generality. And the final thing is the same issue we had on the so-called other, which keeps changing of course, depending upon which hearing we're at, but eventually Mr. Havidy is going to have to be writing a draft decision. That decision is going to have conditions in it. I assume that Ms. Kiefer and her team are going to want to provide comments on those things and is not going to want to have the hearing close before they have the opportunity to do that. And in order to get that done, we have to have a plan both for Mr. Havidy to produce the document that he's planning to do and enough time for people to look at it and to, and not just Ms. Kiefer, but other people as well, including the people who just spoke and provide their input on the adequacy of these conditions and so on. So we're sort of near the end, but there's going to be a lot of passes thrown at the last two minutes. And I think that we need to sort of decide exactly how those two minutes are going to be structured and afford ourselves enough time to get the work done. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Mr. Revillac. Mr. Revillac, Mr. Chair, yes. I echo Mr. Hanlon's feeling about getting receiving comments to the most recently submitted set of peer review documents. It would be, two other things I would hope to see. One would be just sort of a more formal description of how the applicants envisioned this project. And the second would be an updated list of waivers. I think it would be useful to have that as well. I agree with Mr. Hanlon in the sense that we're getting down towards the end. And not to be too blunt, but it would be nice to wrap up the loose ends and actually get to making a decision. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Revillac. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dupont. Yeah, I also agree generally with what the two of my co-members have said, but I have to say that I feel as if with the flexibility that the applicant has shown and the different iterations of the project, I just want to be absolutely clear that those concerns that I think were expressed so eloquently by Ms. Shapiro Ide, Ms. Keith Lucas and Ms. Gibson with respect to what they see in terms of their real life experience as to what the traffic generation looks like. I want to make sure that our experts are going to confirm that because I don't know what I don't know with regard to that at this point. That's how I feel, honestly. And I feel like our job is to be fact-finders and decision-makers. And I'm not at all clear on the facts. I do think that the comments of the Mr. Zimlicki were extremely helpful for background, but I want to make sure that we have enough time. And I don't want to be just doing this incremental, a little bit more time and a little bit more time. I want to make sure that we have enough time because in using bad sports metaphors, I don't want to give up the opportunity to bat in the ninth inning. And that's what I feel like is happening a little bit here. So while I agree with what Mr. Handlin and Mr. Revlax said, I'm not entirely convinced that we have enough information and I do want what was presented to us in terms of traffic and parking to be confirmed by our people so that we know going in that we have the facts that we need to make the decision. And along those lines, if I can just throw out, I mean, we're getting into the heart of the summer and we've been at this for well over a year. And I do know that people have vacation plans in August primarily as far as I understand it. And I would like to see that taken into account so that people can take a breather and be able to rest up so that we can get into the home stretch. If of course we could finish before that, that would be great. But my honest feeling right now is that we don't have the information and the time to process the information to get to that point before this meeting is closed. So I just want to throw that out there for other people to consider, including the applicant. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. DuPont. Mr. O'Rourke. I do want to echo Mr. DuPont's comments as well as the other members. I just feel like we've got an almost a new project here. We've been at this for a long time. And I just feel like it's being rushed because we all want it to end. And I think we have to resist that. With summer here, people taking vacations, I just don't know how we can fully consider all the new issues and give the town committees time to comment, the public time to comment and everybody feels satisfied by the process by getting this done by July 13th and then another week or two after that. I just don't think that happened. So really I think we need a longer extension than that, substantially along it to be able to consider this properly and have everybody come out of the process, at least feeling that the process was thorough. Thank you. Thank you. Any further from the board? Seeing none. This was key for we discussed previously continuing to Tuesday, July 13th. That's right. From that still works for your team? Yes. Perfect. Does the board have an opinion about start time? Do we want to go with 6.30 or 7.30? You're welcome, Mr. Chair. I would prefer 7.30, but could do 6.30 if necessary. Stuck at the 7.30. Okay. I sort that, Mr. Chairman. Well, with that then, I would, may I have a motion to continue tonight's hearing until Tuesday, July 13th, 2021 at 7.30 p.m. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Roll call vote of the board, Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. O'Rourke. Aye. Mr. Revolac. Aye. Mr. Ford. Aye. And the chair votes aye. So we are continued on Thorndike Place until Tuesday, July 13th, 2021 at 7.30 p.m. Thank you all very much for your participation this evening. Thank you very much, the AppPint, and especially Mr. Zemecki for joining us. Thank you all. So we will transition now to one of our local cases. Mr. Chairman, may I ask- Yes, please. What are we doing on further extensions than on Thorndike? I don't know if Mr. Havett needs to chime in here in terms of does it all have to be by agreement with the applicant at this point or- So we've closed the hearing about Thorndike, so we can't talk about it specifically, but my understanding in general on 4DB is that extensions need to be by mutual agreement of all parties. Mr. Havett, he's still on it, he already jumped. I think he jumped off fast. Okay. Okay. So now turning to local public hearings on tonight's agenda. After I announce each agenda item, I'll ask the applicant to introduce themselves, make their presentation to the board, then request members of the board to ask what questions they have on the proposal. And after the board's questions have been answered, I will open the meeting for public comment. Before I do so, does anybody need a couple of minutes to grab some additional water? I know I am sweating up a storm here. So I will ask for us to take a two minute break here just to refill on fluids. I'll be right back. That is very generous, Mr. Chair. See you in two. Mr. Chairman. Yes, please. I was hoping, we talked early, if I could sign off for the rest of the meeting you have, and you're all set with that. We seem to have a good compliment of people. I think you are all set. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. O'Rourke. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Moore. Yes, if I could make a suggestion, if you're feeling a little bit overheated where you're sitting, you might want to take a dip in that background you have there. It looks like a nice floodplain area. Just a thought. Yes, that's, I appreciate that. Thank you. I should hit, unfortunately, the limited number of air conditioners have been abortion to bedrooms in my home and not to workspaces. We check in, make sure the members of the board are back. Mr. Mills is back. Mr. Ford is back. Mr. Reblac is back. Mr. Hanlon is back. Mr. Dupont, we are good to go. Mr. Dupont, are you back? Roger, are you with us yet? Roger, are you back with us? See, yes. All right. So the next item on our agenda is docket number 3659, which is 55 Sutherland Road. If I can ask the applicant to make themselves known and explain to us what they would like to do. Mr. Glassman. Good evening, good evening. My name is Adam Glassman. She's the architect's two Worthington Street, King Mass. And I'm representing Rabitha Amarasingham, the owner of 55 Sutherland Road. It's an existing, non-conforming, modest two family. She lives on the first floor and rents out her second floor. And we are here tonight seeking relief and move an existing concrete step and place it with a larger, non-conforming, covered entry port. Should I be sharing my screen? If you can. Is that how you... Am I presenting the drawings? Yeah, that would be appreciated. Can you take care of that? Mr. Chairman, Adam is already set to go. Perfect, thank you. Thank you. So here on our cover page, you can see the existing street on the upper right-hand corner. On the left is the existing 28-square-foot, mostly uncovered landing we'd like to remove. Down on the bottom are the two elevations used. The rest of the house remains unchanged for this work. The proposed 50-foot covered entry would be consistent with her one-story bump-outs covered entries in her neighborhood on her street adjacent to her home. I should add that originally, Rabitha came to me seeking help with this project because as she gets older, these stairs are becoming much more difficult. They're uncovered, which creates often unsafe conditions. And the size of the landing is also probably above and a conforming entry, which the code does permit in some instances, wouldn't work here with two side-by-side doors, the three-and-a-half-by-seven-foot landing wouldn't work in this case. And that's part of her hardship here. The existing site plan, you can see that that is not conforming due to left-side setback, right-side setback, front-yard setback. And this next slide, we just show the footprint of the 10x5 covered entry porch in some associated improved landscaping and walkway work. Again, very simply, modest in scope, blends with the neighborhood, consistent with the character of the neighborhood, won't project shadows on adjacent properties or create a lot of parking or light pollution blow-up of our landscape work, with something more of a paper system, some low-voltage exterior lighting. And that is it, less complicated than the last project, hopefully less controversial. Thank you. Are there questions from the board, Mr. Revillac? I've basically got two, perhaps three questions. The first one is, this might be for Mr. Valorelli. And this is just more of a, kind of a little bit of a by-law question, just for my own edification. Section 539A, which we're here to talk about tonight, it applies to projecting eaves, chimneys, bay windows, balconies, open fire escapes, and enclosed entrances of not more than 25 square feet. And there's a B part to that section, which implies to unenclose steps, decks, and the like. And I'm just curious, and for Mr. Valorelli or for any other member of the board, why these sort of porch projects are traditionally taken under 539A? I can answer that, Mr. Chairman, if you like. Please. Mr. Revillac saw 5.3.9 projections into minimum yards is split into two sections primarily. C is, we don't get into that too much. But part A deals with enclosed entrances that exceed 25 square feet. And part B deals with unenclosed steps such as decks. So they're very specific in what they're talking about. Enclosed entrances, part A, and open decks, staircases, that sort of thing, part B. Does that answer your question? Okay, so in this case, where it's treated as enclosed because it's covered? Yes, and real quick, part A. So I was told historically, many people wanted vestibules for many reasons, especially get out of the weather. And so the ZBA at the time, way back when was getting bombarded with these requests, the simple little vestibules because they encroached on the front yard. So they said, okay, well, look, here's what we'll do. You can build a vestibule. Doesn't, it cannot exceed three and a half feet off of the foundation. It can exceed 25 square feet in area. If you can keep it to that dimension, you can go ahead and build it by right. So in this case here, it exceeds that. So we're dealing with part A of 5.3.9. Okay, thank you for the little history and that's useful to know. My second question, Mr. Chair, involves a dimensional worksheet. So the application lists a lot area of 4,000 square feet. So it also lists 1,369 square feet of usable open space, 2,217 square feet of landscaped open space and the first floor area of 1,104 square feet. All together, these add up to more than 4,000 square feet. So I'm just curious to know which of the parse lot areas were deemed to be, you know, usable open space and landscaped open space? Suppose that one's for me. Please, Mr. Glassman. Yeah, I'm sorry if there are errors on the dimensional. As I recall, I believe usable open space, is it 15 by 15 in Arlington? 25 by 25. Okay, so essentially the whole backyard would qualify as usable open space. Landscaping would be the entire lot aside from the driveway, the congregate area in the back, I think we consider a patio. Okay, but basically to just sort of get to the need of it because it looks like the house is set back 17 and a half feet. Is that correct? That's correct. So we know the porch isn't taking away usable open space from the front. So it's, you know, there shouldn't be any reduction in usable open space. And for landscaping open space, we need to make sure that there are, you know, you have 10% and it looks like the gross floor areas are 2242 square feet. And I'm just wondering, can you point to a spot on the plot plan that has 242 square feet of landscape space? Well, this area in the backyard certainly exceeds that. How about the side yard? Yeah, landscape space, absolutely. Okay, that looks good to me. No further questions, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revillac. Other questions from the board? Yeah, Mr. Glassman, do you know the nature of the easement on the property? I think I'd like Ravita to speak to that. She probably knows more about it than I do. Please, Ravita, please go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry, what was the question? I missed that. Ravita, can you one? I missed the question. Oh, sure. So the plan, the land. Ravita, there's an easement on the, you know, facing your house on the right-hand side of your house. There's something that's labeled as an existing easement. That's 10 feet, that's a seven feet wide that runs up your property line. And we're just curious what the easement is for. Oh, is that the right of the property is just like, it's a paved, it's tarred all the way back. And I don't know what you mean. I guess I'm kind of lost, but it's just, I think behind my house is Pamela, someone, a Weinstein. And they had closed that little, there's an e-grid over there, I think. That's it. I don't know if that answers your question. It's just an open, it is just a paved walkway on this. Yeah, it almost, it almost sounds like some kind of, like an old easement that's, it looks like it maybe goes back to the past. I don't know what that was, that was my question. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is originally for an egress or an access, but there is no impact on it. Okay. It was always like that from the start. So I had no idea what it was. I got to get back to the different things. Yeah, just do as I had to face it. I'm sorry we don't know more about it, but it's the existing conditions remain unchanged. It's outside the area that's affected. So it shouldn't be a big issue. And then there's a memorandum issued by the Department of Planning and Community Development that's reviewed the application, their recommendation. I don't think there were any questions specifically raised by that memorandum. So seeing no other questions from the board, I'll go ahead and open the meeting for public comment. As before, public questions and comments will be taken as they relate to the matter at hand. It should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision. Members of the public would be granted time to ask questions and make comments. The chair asked that those wishing to address the board second time during any particular hearing, please be patient, allow those wishing to speak for the first time to go ahead of them. Members of the public who wish to speak should digitally raise their hand using the button on the participant tab and the zoom application. Those calling in by phone, please dial star nine to indicate you'd like to speak. Be called upon by the chair. You'll be asked to give your name and address and you'll be given time for your questions and comments. All questions that should be addressed through the chair, please remember to speak clearly. So Mr. Moore. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Steve Moore of Piedmont Street. And I'm a member of the Arlington Tree Committee. I'd like to ask through you, Mr. Chair, is Sutherland Road a public way? Good question. Does the applicant know if this is, speak to whether this is a public way or private way? I mean, it's not a private way. Okay, Mr. Chairman, that answers that question. I noticed that there was a tree in front of the house, probably in line with where the project's going to go. It's a street tree, so it's protected. It's a protected tree. And I just want to ask that the applicant and their particular contractor be careful to use the proper protections when doing this project. My guess is that there will be a lot of heavy construction activity, but there will be some. This is not a very large tree. It's going to be protection. If you need to know what the protection guidelines for the trees are, they're available on the Arlington Tree Committee website. And if they are difficult to find there, they're certainly available through the public works department. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Moore. I'm going to sing, did you want to speak? Yes. I guess I'm making this request because as you know, without the covered entry porch right now, when it snows, literally I cannot open my front door to get out. I've managed to do this all these years, but now I realize I want to live here and continue to advance in age. And I think it's safe. And in fact, when I open the door, often I cannot even put a little bag on that little landing. So which is why we've gone through all of this and I'm hoping all of you would approve of this. And I've certainly provided letters of support from my immediate neighbors all around me who have been, we are a wonderful community here. And in terms of the tree, I would like Mr. Moore to know that I'm a plant and bird and butterfly lover. There's three houses around us. We all work together. We plant, we are replacing all our plants with native New England plants and shrubs. So I don't think you would have to be worried about the tree at all. Then we are trying to protect and create a better atmosphere for ourselves. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public who wish to speak on this? Seeing none, I will go ahead and close the public comment. Discussion from the board. I think it's a very straightforward application and a very reasonable request. We do have the, there's the three standard conditions that we've put on special permits, which I will just read quickly for the record. Number one is the plans and specifications approved by the board for the permit shall be the final plans and specifications submitted to the building inspector of the town of Arlington in connection with this application for zoning relief should be no deviation during construction from approved plans and specifications without the express written approval of the Arlington zoning board of appeals. Number two, the building inspector is hereby notified he's to monitor the site and should proceed with appropriate enforcement procedures at any time he determines violations are present and the inspector of buildings shall proceed under section 3.1 of the zoning bylaw under the provisions of chapter 40, section 21 D and institute non-criminal complaints. If necessary, the inspector of buildings may also approve and institute appropriate criminal action and also in accordance with section 3.1 And standard number three, the board shall maintain continuing jurisdiction with respect to the special permit grant. I would also recommend to the board a possible other condition, which would be that the area of the new porch is not to be considered within the foundation wall of the building. This just applies to future development that if there was a future expansion of the second floor it cannot be expanded on top of this new roof by right. Are there any questions about the conditions? Seeing none, may I have a motion? Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I move that the board of appeals approve this application subject to the three standard conditions and the additional condition that the chairman just read into the record relating to the definition of the foundation. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Dupont. Quick roll call vote. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. In the absence of Mr. O'Rourke, that's Mr. Revolac. Aye. Chair votes aye. You are approved. So the next step is the board will prepare a written decision, which will be voted on at our next earliest option. And then at that point, the decision is final. So thank you very much. Oh, thank you very much too. Take care. So this brings up docket number 3-6-6-0, 10 Sunnyside Avenue. I believe Mr. Endesi is here to represent the applicant. I am. And Mr. Glassman, before you sign off, if the chair could go ahead and withdraw his hosting so it doesn't accidentally close the hearing. Rick, are we okay with Mr. Glassman signing off? We are. Okay. Perfect. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good night. Good night. Mr. Endesi. Yes. Good evening. Thank you for your patience. Okay, that's fine. Am I ready to go? Yeah, I think that's more question for you. Pardon me? We're ready for you when you're ready. All right, I'm ready to go. This is a request for a special permit. It relates to an automotive property, essentially, that has been used as an automotive property at 10 Sunnyside Avenue for many years. Going back, I believe, to the year 1920. If any of you have gone down and taken a view, I think you'll see that it's been very blighted and it's been in that condition for quite a while. Now, I was involved in some prior petitions before the ARRB on this particular property. And we went before the ARRB with mixed use projects. Both of those were withdrawn, one of them because of the fact that the, my client lost the contract, so could not go forward with it. And that one proposed 22 units. And that would have been 22 additional residential units in that neighborhood. The second one was for my present client, and we did some rethinking on that project. That was going to be a bit of mixed use as well. And part of the problem is that column health, which is located at 339 mass seven, by the way, if you're not familiar with column health, column health deals with substance abuse treatment for individuals, mental health treatment for individuals and the like. So it deals with pretty sensitive issues. None of those issues are going to be dealt with at this particular property. What we're proposing to do is have a change of use from the automotive use to an office and conference shoes. And what would happen would be the individuals at 339 mass M would use the renovated space that we're talking about for the purpose of office and conference space. Now, we're talking about a fairly large sized lot. We're talking about a lot containing 16,500 square feet. The other aspect of this that I think comports with the master plan is that we are proposing to change a prior automotive use to a different use and office use. And if you look at the definition in the Vehicular Oriented Business District B4 in the zoning bylaw, the very last portion of that definition basically says, Allington has an abundance of automotive and auto automotive accessory, sales and service establishments. As these businesses gradually close, the town has encouraged conversion of the property to other retail service, office or residential use, particularly as part of a mixed use develop. Now, the reason we're not before the ARB is we're not doing a mixed use development. And we don't fall within the purview of any of the other sections under environmental design review that would trigger jurisdiction in the ARB. So that's the reason we're before the zoning board of appeals and not before the ARB. We're staying within the footprint of the building. We're not going to go outside the footprint of the building. The work that's going to be done is going to be done on the inside of the building. And I'm accompanied by the way this evening by two of the principals of the petitioner, Jim McIntyre and Colin Beatty. I'm also accompanied by the architect for the project, Will Chaiflin. And when Will takes over, I'm gonna ask if we can screen share. And I did talk with Rick Valerelli about this earlier, Chris. And I think we can make that happen because I'd want Will to show the plans and screen share the plans. So we feel that this petition comports with the master plan. We feel that it's something that can be allowed with respect to a special permit. And Jenny Rae feels that way from the planning department as well because the planning department submitted a report essentially in favor. She basically had a comment about the fact that we did not include enclosed parking. Well, I sent in a revised plan which you'll see momentarily, okay? That shows four enclosed bicycle parking spaces. In addition to the other spaces that we have when we have ample bicycle parking spaces, we have more than we need. With respect to parking, we have more parking spaces than we need as well. Again, in my opinion, as counsel for the petitioner, I feel that this particular property is going to be an improvement to the area. It's going to get rid of a blighted section down there. The work that's gonna be done on the property as you will see from the plans is going to make it very attractive in the neighborhood. And it's not going to be an intrusive use as would be the case if it was a furtherance of an automotive use. So, Will, if you're there, which I hope you are, I haven't talked with you in the last couple of hours, but if you are there, Will, would you jump in at this point? Absolutely, Bob, thank you. I would ask, I believe it's Rick to give me permission to share with us. Can I do that, Mr. Chairman? Please do. You're good to go, Will. Thank you very much. And if I could just get a thumbs up from anybody to let me know if they can see my screen, that'd be great. And indeed. Excellent, thank you so much. So my name again is Will Shelfon from Paulsa Design. We're located on Ivalu Street in Somerville, Mass. And as Bob mentioned, this slot has seen many versions, many iterations here, and I've actually been involved in the last few. And so I'm quite familiar with the site, familiar with the area in general, go to the dentist right around the corner. So I know what this slot looks like and what we're looking to do here. So just quickly as an overview, bird's eye view here of the site and question here, we're in this area, excuse me, this area here. I know I'm killing you with lots of colors, but this is mostly just to show our proximity to the different zones in the immediate area, whether that be B2 zone or one zone or two and so forth. And of course our B4 zone located here in pink. So as Bob mentioned, the existing lot here, this is an existing survey outlining the existing garage as well as what I would call an appendage that was added at some point. And then this sea of gravel and debris as it currently sits. So we're actually looking to lose some square footage from the existing building. We're gonna be losing approximately 800 square feet. Things that are dashed in these drawings here are going to be demolished. So there's this, as I mentioned, there's currently a very steep ramp that goes down to the lower level. This was obviously an auto body and a car used for a long time. So they had a sort of makeshift daredevil ramp that went down to that lower level. And so we're looking to remove that area as well as refurbish the, get rid of the existing garage doors, put some nice new glass garage doors there that are a little more engaging to the public, as well as clean up the building in general and add some, well, I'll get into some of the other things as we go forth. So from a site plan standpoint here, the building is outlined in red. The part that we're demolishing is actually, if you can see my cursor was in this area here. And I think the important things to point out here is what we're gaining from this project, not what we're losing. We're actually gaining close to 4,400 square feet of landscape space. This is currently really an asphalt wasteland, as it were, with some abandoned cars and things of that nature. And while we are adding some surface parking, we're looking to buffer that area entirely with some nice green space as well as providing space for bicycle parking. And we intend to use solar panels on the existing roof. And we may not show as many as we're showing right now. We'll defer to our solar specialist on that. But the intention is to make this a very energy efficient project, even though it's an existing building, it's an adaptive reuse, which in itself is a green practice. So we are providing more bike parking than's necessary. We're also providing a couple more spaces that are necessary. I think I don't want to speak for the applicant. I'm sure we could actually lose a couple of spaces if that was the board's desire, but really we wanted to provide ample parking for the executive staff that's gonna use this space. And I don't want people to get the impression that this is gonna be some sort of cubicle farm by any means. The intention is this is a place for the executive team of Column Health to get together and meet, collaborate, and occasionally have conferences here. This is not going to be a hustling and bustling lot with cars coming in and out of it. I mentioned earlier the Daredevil ramp that was going down to the existing basement. So what we're proposing is a much more comfortable ramp to access that space. We're looking to utilize the building as it is. So we might as well get access down to it. And we've got the ability to really shield this ramp in the back of the site and a much more comfortable grade that won't make your car bottom out if you were to go down there. This is mostly gonna be used for delivery of items. It's not much more than that. And this is that basement here. We're adding a new stairway down there. Currently there's a stair that if you're taller than five, six you're not gonna have your head anymore. So we're gonna bring that up to code. And this entire space is really mainly intended to be used for storage, not office space. So this is the ground floor level. Just to orient you, sunny side is here on the right hand side. So the column health bought this as is. So that means that they got all the equipment that came with it. So one unique thing that we're going to be doing is using the former paint booth as a conference room. So it's sort of a unique adaptive use for use of what was there. Obviously that'll be cleaned thoroughly. Otherwise those will be some pretty quiet meetings. But the intention is for that to be sort of a unique space. Within here, we're proposing a live green wall. The existing slab is actually in great shape. We're gonna polish that up. So it's gonna be a sort of an industrial feel in here. We're adding a little lobby space, a couple of restrooms. And again, as Bob mentioned, we've added an indoor bike place so that we have outdoor and indoor bike parking. So I'm gonna go through the elevations quickly. The exterior really is not changing more than we're, as I said, replacing these garage doors with something a little more reliable and attractive. Putting a new sign, which I know Bob has mentioned, I think the report mentioned, we obviously have to go for a separate sign permit for that. But the sign is as shown, compliant with town regulations. The existing building is a grayish color. I think that actually fits with a lot of column helps branding. So it may get a fresh paint job, but I think it's not gonna look a lot different than it currently does. Side elevations showing some of our proposed solar panels. They're adjusting skylights. It's actually a pretty unique space in there because it's a multi-storey vaulted ceiling, all exposed steel trusses. And we have just some perspectives here. Again, this is from sunny side, sort of a bird's eye view here. And then this is from the rear, showing this new ramp down to the lower level. And again, we're showing sort of in these images sparse plantings, but I know the members of column health are on the phone call on the Zoom rather. If you go to their office on 339, they're very much into landscaping. They've done a beautiful job at that facility. And I think it's safe to say that this will be treated in a similar fashion with drought-resistant native plants that will really revitalize a lot that has been somewhat blighted for years now. So with that, I'll return it back to Mr. Nessie. I just want to say that column health really does need this extra space. They're buzzing at the seams at the 339 Mass Ave property. And when this property came on the market, they might have wanted to acquire it for a different purpose, but as time went along, it occurred to both Jim and Colin that this would be the ideal location for them to have their office, their expanded office space, their expanded conference space. It's within a five-minute driving distance from 339 Mass Ave. And it's compatible with the use of the property of 339 Mass Ave as well. And with that, I turn it over to the board. Thank you, Mr. Nessie. Thank you, Mr. Shelfon as well for your walk through the project. I have a couple of quick questions and then I will turn it over to the forward traditional questions. So I saw you have added additional bike parking. I'm curious how a bike gets to the interior bike parking. Sure, so there's really a few methods. One, we've got these two operable garage doors here, which are intended to be not on a day like today, where we're all passing out from the heat. But I think on occasion, half of those doors rolled up, sort of do engage, activate the sidewalk, they could come in that way or they could come in through the side here. And again, as I mentioned, the whole floor is a slab. So we're not really concerned about getting like a carpet dirty or anything. And I think more than likely this storage space in the rear is going to be utilized for overnight situations rather than day to day. I imagine those will stay in the rear of the building. Okay, thank you. And that is the, which door would you sort of consider to be the main entrance? Is it coming in off the street or is it coming off the parking? Well, I would say the public entrance would still be along sunny side here. The majority of people utilizing the space though, would be accessing it off the parking lot here over here and taking this pathway in the back door. Okay. And with both of those, I know that like right now there's a slope going from the street up to the garage doors. So I'm curious if both entrances would be accessible or whether just the rear one would be accessible and the front would not. So our intention would be to make both of them accessible. The rear one would absolutely, I think the front one as it currently resides, we would need to do some reworking with possibly that sidewalk. We're looking at recessing that door slightly to get the slopes to meet ADA, but the intention would be for all access points to be accessible. Very good. And then the other thing that was pointed out on the planning department memo, which you obviously know is the exterior signage is actually not something we have jurisdiction over, that would have to go back before the ARB for approval. Correct. We do know that, yes. We intend to do that as well. Not the ARB necessarily, Chris. We applied to the building inspector initially, it then gets referred to the planning department. They look at it, okay. They then make a determination as to whether it goes further at that point. So it could stop at the planning department stage as well. Very true. Those were my only questions. Other questions from the board, Mr. Revillac. I've got one and perhaps a follow-up. So the plan showed a basement area and I'm curious as to how much of that basement area is underground. All of it. So the reason I'm asking is our by-law distinguishes between basements and cellars. So if this is completely below ground, this would meet the definition of a cellar. And the reason I bring this up is the section of our by-law that covers gross floor area regulations. It's 532, it's got a subsection 532A which lists the things that are included in gross floor area. And one of those items that's 532A6 is cellars in residential uses. And I read that as kind of an implication that cellars in commercial uses, that space is not counted towards GFA. First, and this has obvious impacts for open space requirements, auto parking and bicycle reparking. But I'd like to check with members of the board and members of inspectional services if that interpretation is in fact correct. I believe that is correct, but yes, check. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I seem to remember that we actually have had that case somewhere up in Arlington Heights. Maybe last fall, maybe the previous year and we adopted that interpretation. Okay, so just so the applicants are aware, the parking requirements in both automotive and short-term and long-term bicycle would be really based on the first floor area of 4,570. You're providing more of all three of those than you need to. And I personally have no objections, but you would have the option to provide less if you so desired. I think that does it for me, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revillac. Mr. Mills. Yes, Mr. Chair. I'm wondering, call them health. How many personnel do they employ? Yes, Mr. McIntyre. Jim or Colin, can you respond to that? Yes, happy to answer that. We have 150 plus employees across 11 sites throughout Massachusetts. Okay, so this would more or less be a regional managerial reading spot. Now, this is just gonna be for our executive team. So the four folks that are over at 339 now with offices would be primarily the four folks that would be over at sunny side. So it just seems like a large area to use just for executive meetings. I noticed her redoing the ramp into the basement. It's quite a bit of work. What do you intend to use the basement for? For storage. Of what exactly? May I ask? Because I mean, if you're just gonna store out, that's a, you know, you can have a quick little elevator going down and the ramp seems quite extensive. What, there's an existing ramp now so to regrade the ramp is not as extensive as taking out and putting in an elevator. But what kind of materials would you be stored? Just all of this materials? Correct, we'd be moving a lot of things from 339 that were currently stored over to the sunny side location. Are we talking records, medical records, things of that nature? Okay, just wanna make sure it's on the up and up. And what assurances do we have this would not be used for any clinical applications. You know, if you ran into an overflow situation because that could get the neighborhood up and agitated a bit. Sure, I can appreciate that. This is not a clinic, it's not gonna be built out as a clinic, it's not designed as a clinic. It is not a clinic. There will be no patient accessibility to this site. Question to the chair, how do we control that going forward? So I was gonna ask a question, therefore, of Mr. Valarelli, if the use of the space as a clinic would be a different use category into the zoning by-law than the use of an office. I believe it is, Mr. Yeah, I would have to... I can answer that, but go ahead, Rick. I'd have to get back to you, I believe it is. Okay. I'll defer to Bob, Nessie, as he's done. It is a different use and it's under a different portion of the by-law. And the reason I know that, Rick, is I did the one on Pleasant Street years ago, okay? Under a different section of the by-law. So I think I can say to you, Mr. Mills, that there is no way that this property is gonna be equipped to treat patients down there. And quite frankly, if anybody even tried to do it, I think the building inspector would be on my clients so quickly that they'd shut my client down very quickly. But again, it's a different section of the by-law. We have to apply under a different section of the by-law. So the use in that fashion would be a zoning violation is essentially the violation of the special permit should it be granted? Absolutely. Well, I'd just like to say it will be quite an aesthetic improvement on the site and we welcome to the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Are there other questions from the board? Seeing none, I will go ahead and open public comment. Sort of waive the reading of my longer list of things I say before, but we open public comment. But we currently have two people. If you'd like to speak, you can duly raise your hand by pushing the raise hand under the participants tab. If you're on the phone, which no one is, but you can dial start nine to the phone. Mr. Moore. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Steve Moore, Piedmont Street and a member of the Arlington Tree Committee. I want to applaud the addition of the open space that will now be landscaped as opposed to open space pavement desert. My first question would be though, is there an intention to use a permeable surfaces for the parking space? Will? If I could respond to that, I believe that their intention would be to absolutely make the walkways out of permeable pavers and possibly an apron at the entrance. I think the issue, we would have to check with the groundwater to see if we're going to possibly create a runoff problem by doing that, opposed to using a impervious surface or a pervious one if we want to maintain our water on our site, obviously, as we do. But I don't think that would be off the table by any means, certainly could do the striping out of permeable pavers at the minimum. Sometimes there's an issue with plowing in that, but I don't see that as a problem. Anything here is obviously a massive improvement, but I don't want to speak for the client if they're willing to do that. I'm sure they'd be willing to look at. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Yeah, yes, Mr. Chairman. I definitely would like to encourage permeability because the current impermeable surface is unfortunately is repeated many times over the Arlington landscape. So this would be a vast improvement that way, just permeability-wise. Secondly, I just wanted to bring up, in terms of landscaping, I'm glad that you're going to encourage significant landscaping. However, from a pre-perspective, which is of my particular interest, I would encourage you to plant large shade trees. I know you said you're already going to work towards using native species, which is excellent. There's a lot of invasive species narrowly in Arlington. However, large shade trees are vastly improvement on the use of the landscape space versus decorative smaller trees that are definitely pretty and nice to look at for sure, but in terms of shading and sustainability, the large shade trees is a better way to go. And it looks like you've got significant space that can accept trees here. So that, again, is an excellent improvement. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Mr. Seltzer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don Seltzer, Irving Street. Let me start by saying that this is a huge improvement over the previous proposal earlier this year, and I compliment the applicants for what they've done here. I do have an observation regarding ADA issues. There's a single HP space provided in the lot. Federal and state law require that it be sized for a van. That means that the access aisle adjacent to it has to be eight feet wide rather than the five feet shown. Obviously, this is a fairly minor change to be made. The other thing I was going to comment on, but it's already been addressed, is that the current front door is not accessible and would have to be brought into compliance, but apparently that's going to be done. I also want to follow up on what Mr. Mills brought up a little earlier. This application provides very little information about the basement storage area. It doesn't say what is being stored. It doesn't provide anything in the nature of the truck traffic, delivering these corporate goods and then distributing it to the various satellite clinics run by column health. There doesn't seem to be a loading dock in the plans. The driveway access is extremely challenging for any truck attempting to back down this steep slope because it's around a tight curve with very little visibility. And when it arrives at the bottom, there is insufficient level area for the wheelbase of any truck. So trucks will end up being parked at a steep angle at the entrance to the cellar level. And that's going to lead me to ask what you might think to be a very strange question, but I do have a good basis for asking it. Will this basement area be used as a garage for either storage or restoration of private automobiles not associated with the business of column health? I can say for the record, okay, for everyone to hear very clearly that that is not going to happen. Colin and Jim McIntyre have never been involved in the automobile business in their lives. They wouldn't know how to change a spark plug if in fact that had to happen. Thank you. I should explain myself for asking such a strange question. And the members of the board might remember that not too long ago, 339 Mass Ave was up before this board regarding the building of a very large garage structure behind the column health headquarters. And the building permit for this structure, which you can see in my background there, was to provide public parking for the headquarters building. And what I understand from neighbors of the area is that it instead is being used for some sort of private automotive repair on an interesting range of vehicles. I'm going to object to this. I'm going to object to this, both on relevance, okay? And here's say, Mr. Hanlon would understand that. Neighbors say something to Mr. Seltzer. Mr. Chairman, may I complete what I'll have to say and then have Mr. Hanlon reply? That's what I'm trying to do. My connection is unstable. Mr. Hanlon, if you could hold on for one minute, please let Mr. Seltzer complete and then we'll come to you immediately. Mr. Seltzer? Okay, in any case, the garage that was built there, it has been reported that there are a number of vehicles being worked on that they're actually automotive lifts in it. There are vehicles such as this old unregistered truck that has been parked in the front driveway there. And to all appearances, it's being used not at all for public parking for the building, but instead is being used for these other uses. And I welcome any explanation of why this is so. And that's why I raised the question about whether the Sunnyside Avenue building would be used in a similar way for storage of vehicles in the cellar. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. Mr. Nessie, if you could respond please. No storage of vehicles in the basement at the Sunnyside property, not going to happen, okay? Yeah, but even was on the horizon. And if I could add, it is not used as a distribution center for our other clinics. Sort of all, we're outpatient mental health, we don't have a lot of disposable goods. All the goods are delivered directly to the clinics. The basement is truly for office storage. They're not gonna be significant repeated deliveries to the basement of materials that would necessitate some of the comments that you made. Thank you for answering my questions. Thank you, Mr. Seltzer. Just to go back briefly, I want to, so the first point Mr. Seltzer had raised in regards to the ramp, just making sure that that curved ramp is gonna be, it's gonna sort of meet your needs in terms of access to the basement. It's really, it's either that, it appears it's either that or it's that radius stair coming down from the first floor. The ramp itself is a 12% slope. It's got a 7.5% depression on the last seven feet of the ramp which avoids the need for bottoming out. I appreciate the attention to the detail. I've done a 60 unit project in Cambridge which has a sharper ramp. This is more than adequate for the rare use that it will get. And I really think it's a non-issue but I appreciate the concern. Are there any concerns in regards to water coming down the ramp? There would be a trench drain at the base of the ramp that would tie into a Coltec chamber which would service the site. Okay, perfect, thank you. Other questions from the board? Mr. Revillac, Steve, you are muted. My apologies, Mr. Chair. This is just an out of curiosity question. Given that, so this by way of background I happen to live on Sunnyside Avenue. Prior to the end, as someone who goes by the area frequently I agree with the sentiments expressed earlier that this would be a huge improvement over present conditions. Now prior to the current state of the property it was an auto repair shop. And prior to that it was a body shop. This is just a silly question maybe for Mr. Valerelli but even if the owners were to do auto repair in the basement there's technically, is that use already allowed for this property? Mr. Revillac, I'm not sure of that but they're asking the board for something totally different. Yeah, okay, you're right. Specific on what they're granting. They're asking for a change of use from the automotive use to an office use. So therefore we couldn't do that. We'd be in violation of the special permit. Okay, very good. Personally, like I said, I live down the street and I think this is a nice project. And yes, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you. I forgot to ask if there are any further public comments. There were no hands raised but I just wanted to give one last opportunity in case there was somebody from the public who wished to comment. Seeing none, I will go ahead then and formally close public comment. And then anything further from the members of the board? Seeing none. So the board has the three typical conditions that we applied that we read at the prior hearing. So I'll wave reading them now. To the board vote to approve, are there any additional conditions that the board would want to impose? I am seeing none. With that in mind, may I have a motion? Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I move that the board approve the application of 10 sunny side before us with the three standard conditions that the chair previously referred to. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Roll call vote of the board. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. In the absence of Mr. O'Rourke. Mr. Ford. Aye. And the chair votes aye. So the motion is approved. So the board will put together a formal written decision that we will vote on it in upcoming hearing and then you are free and clear. But thank you very much. Thank you very much, General. Great, thank you very much. Good night everyone. Mr. Dupont, before you come off I just want to make sure, Mr. Vellorelli, can you make sure we don't get closed off? Yeah, we're still good to go, Mr. Chairman. Perfect, thank you. All right, everyone, thank you very much. Moving on then to the business portion of the meeting. We have three administrative actions to take this evening. There are meeting minutes from the March 23rd, the April 27th and the May 11th meetings that were all circulated to the board. I hope everyone has had a chance to read them and submit comments. Are there any additional comments to submit on those minutes at this time? Seeing none. And I will go ahead. We had slightly different attendances at the different meetings. So I will go ahead and just do a quick roll call vote differently for each one. So I move approval of the minutes for March 23rd. Second. I have a second. Second, Pat. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. So roll call vote, Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. Revillac. Aye. Mr. Ford. Aye. And the chair votes aye. Those meetings or those minutes are approved. I move approval of the minutes of April 27th, 2021. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Roll call vote of those present, Mr. Dupont. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. Revillac. Aye. Mr. Ford. Aye. And the chair votes aye. Mr. O'Rourke will be in absentia. And I move to approve the minutes of May 11th, 2021. May I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. A roll call vote. Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Aye. Mr. Revillac. Aye. Mr. Ford. Aye. And the chair votes aye. Those minutes are meeting minutes are approved. Okay. And then the last thing before we depart for the evening. So our upcoming schedule, just to make sure everyone's aware. So the next hearing we have scheduled is for Tuesday, July 13th at 7.30 PM, which is the continuance of Thorndike Place. And then currently Friday, July 16th is the scheduled close of the public hearing on Thorndike Place. And that is something I believe we will be discussing. And then Thursday, July, this makes no sense. At Thursday, July 19th, but that is July 19th. I thought it was Monday, July 19th. Right, it did. What did I mean to put down the, Monday, July 19th? I believe that's our date for the continuance of 1165 R Massachusetts Avenue. Does that sound right to everybody? It is. I recall it was an unusual choice of nights to accommodate schedules. Okay, that could be, yeah, because I believe we were having trouble scheduling call for that one. Yeah, Monday, July 19th. Yep, okay. And then that one is scheduled, and then 1165 R Massachusetts Avenue scheduled to close Friday, July 23rd. And we will obviously review that at the meeting on the 19th. Mr. Valarelli, are there any other dates upcoming? We have no firm dates as of yet, Mr. Chairman. However, we do have some packages that are coming our way, but I don't anticipate that until September sometime. Okay. Yay. Yeah. Very good. I'm with you, Roger. Yeah, I'm a breather. Breather of sorts. Sure. Well, thank you all for your participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. Appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting, especially wish to thank Rick Valarelli and Vincent Lee for all their assistance in preparing for and hosting tonight's online meeting. Please note the purpose of the board's recording, the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of the proceedings. It is our understanding that the recordings made by ACMI will be available on demand at acmi.tv within the coming days. If anyone has comments or recommendations, please send them via email to zdaatown.arlington.ma.us. That email address is also listed on the Zoning Board of Appeals website. And to conclude tonight's meeting, I would ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Handlin, I'm gonna second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Quick roll call of the board, Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Handlin. Aye. Aye. Mr. Mills. Mr. Revillac. Aye. Mr. Ford. Aye. And the chair votes aye. We are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Take care, John. Take care, Ray. Pat, quick question for you. Yeah. In regards to writing the decisions on these. Yeah. Do you want me to start on them? I know you had said, because you were away, you weren't sure you'd be able to get on to them. I'm going to, excuse me, I'll be back on the, I'm flying back on the fifth. So that should be enough time for me to get them done by the 13th, which is what I'd aim at. Oh, perfect. Okay. Okay. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. All right, good night, everybody. Good night.