 What is 733 p.m. on Tuesday, May 18th, 2021. Good evening. My name is Christian Klein. I'm the chair of the Arlington zoning Board of Appeals. This meeting of the board to order. I confirmed that members and anticipated a visual of the presence for the zoning board of appeals. Roger Dupont here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. All. The consultants. Excuse me. Paul. It's been a long time. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. I don't believe Marty is on this evening, but I saw the Greg Lucas is on. Laura cross is here as well. I believe that Bill McGrath is supposed to be joining from beta as well. I don't know if he's in your list of attendees. who was involved in the traffic review with data. Oh, right. Good evening, nice to meet you. Good evening, nice to meet you as well. And then on behalf of the applicant, Mary O'Connor and Mary Pippa, run down the list of who was with you this evening. Daniel St. Clair from Spalding and Sly. Randy Marin from Bowler Engineering. Let's see, we have Brian Zamolka from Niche Engineering. Joel Bargman from BKNA. Julia Mayrak. Paul Boucher. And I think that's it. Those are all who signed on. Perfect. He's up with LaSalle Jones. Thank you all for joining us this evening and thanks to the members of the public who are joining us as well. So this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive board of March 12th, 2020. The order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. Public bodies may meet 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 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 participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference. Other participants are participating by computer, audio or telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care to not share personal information. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you to please maintain the form during the meeting including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website and less otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. As chair or reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting and orderly meetings. So moving to the first item on our agenda this evening, which is the public hearing continuation on the comprehensive permit for 1165 R Massages Avenue. Here's some ground rules for effecting clear conduct of the night's business. This evening's discussion will focus on revised materials from the applicant and from review materials from beta group. We will open with a presentation by the applicant followed by questions from the board. After the board members of the public will be invited to provide their questions and comments. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Connard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Good evening. Before I begin with a brief outline of the presenters tonight, I just wanna thank the zoning board of appeals and the various town departments for all of their work and effort on behalf of this project. I particularly wanna also thank the neighbors who worked with us in a cooperative manner. And I think it was productive, but we are very, and beta and beta was very helpful. I'm pleased to report that my client and the conservation commission have reached agreement as to the relocation of Ryderbrook and a substantial enhancement of what will be the new relocated Ryderbrook. And I believe you have a letter from a chair of the conservation commission, Susan Chapnick, as to that issue. I believe that the town's peer reviewer beta group will report, particularly specifically Bill McGrath, that all sites of the issues have been addressed to beta satisfaction. And Bolar Engineering will speak to that. Randy Marin from Bolar Engineering will also report that the fire department access issue has been adequately addressed. Greg Lucas, the traffic engineer and peer reviewer at beta, has reported that matters raised by him several reviews of the traffic impact study have likewise been satisfactorily resolved. As you are aware from correspondence with the Ryderstreet representatives, and we had a meeting with Alexander T, Nicole Weber and Peter Morandos, beginning of April, we've sent a letter dated May 4th, 2021, addressed to you, Mr. Chairman, as to the issues that have been resolved, we believe, the transportation demand management plan. We do have a letter from Mr. T, that it's an undated letter, but I believe the zoning board of appeals has it, with several issues that have been raised. The first one is the parking data, and whether the parking data is sufficiently valid, and it references one data point, but I think Mr. Lucas will tell the zoning board of appeals that there are several data points. You may recall from reading his revised report that beta headers go back out and do traffic counts at Arlington 360, the legacy and Brigham-Alta, and we provided that data. So we have several data points to sustain the parking calculations. My client has agreed to make as a condition of the tenants leases that they cannot park on the public streets or on Ryderstreet, which is a private way, and to do so will be a lease violation. I think that's a significant concession. You also have a letter, Mr. Chairman, that I sent to Susan Chapnick detailing the reason that my client is seeking a way for parking spaces located within the 25-foot buffer. That letter is dated May 4th. I can review that, but you do have that information. Item number two of Mr. T's letter does not involve this project, so I'm not gonna address it. Item number three, the South Ryder Lane configuration. We have had a number of discussions about the configuration of the travel lane and South Ryderstreet. It is impossible to make it a two, stripe it as a two-way because it is not wide enough. And it's kind of a paradox because in a conundrum because it could be big enough, but for the parking on the nine Ryderstreet side or the encroachments of the yards on the other side of the street, we are not looking to change any of that. We're not looking to cause a hardship to the neighbors by looking to the town to remove the parking or to take back the land. The parking data shows, excuse me, the traffic data shows that there is no net increase of additional vehicles exiting during peak time, so there's no impact. You did raise, Mr. Chairman, the telephone pole. I believe you raised two issues, the telephone pole on South Ryderstreet and the telephone pole in the easement on Mass Ave. With respect to the telephone pole on South Ryderstreet, that's up towards the driveway of the nine Ryderstreet condominiums. If the utility company, when it relocates the utilities, does not move that pole, what my client proposes to do is to do a bump out so that they'll be handicapped access. With respect to the Mass Ave. entrance, I have spoken with Attorney Anesi and we have addressed his concerns. He wanted additional signage in his parking lot that people cannot park there, that it would be entrance only for Mass Ave. Ryderstreet will be exit only and the work bar tenants will likewise be required to follow the same path, entrance only Mass Ave, exit only Ryderstreet and there will be a speed bump, perpendicular to Mass Ave at the Quinn Road connector. Let's see, with respect to Joel Bargman we'll highlight the minor changes. As you know from what we submitted, we've gone from 130 units scheme to 124 units. The changes are minor. He will describe the reason for the changes. One of them is the utility pole that needs to go in there and revisions based on comments from the ZBA and minor changes to the amenity space. We have also reconfigured the spaces in the parking garage and will now require eight total compact spaces. As the zoning board knows, you have the ability to grant up to 20% of the spaces in a parking lot for compact cars. We're just looking for eight. So those are, I've reviewed and the number of issues and I would ask if we could to have, if you have no objection, I would have Randy Myron from Bollard review the site civil matters that have been addressed and of concern. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Yeah. So if Mr. Myron would like to go ahead and burn. Yep. And is it possible to share? To share my screen. Let me see. And you're all set. I am. Okay. Thank you. We'll be able to go. All right. Can everybody see that? Yes. I hope. Awesome. Good. So as Mary kind of mentioned, I just want to touch on some of the site related changes that were made to address some of the concerns from both beta as well as some concerns from the town. And the first one I wanted to share with you folks is the, the fire department truck turning exhibit, which we actually just received an email from deputy chief Melly this afternoon indicating that he is okay with this. And, you know, I'll just, I'll just quickly go over it with you folks. You know, it shows the Arlington's largest apparatus coming off a mass av through the site and then over the, the new wider bridge. Now they can accommodate a fire truck and then making a left down our driveway. And one of deputy chief's concerns was his ability to really make this left maneuver coming out of our driveway onto Ryder, knowing that vehicles do park along Ryder street. So what we did will be, we showed some vehicles parked within Ryder to show that the apparatus can still get by. And we're also proposing, there's a couple of signs here, one in this area right here and another one here that would indicate no parking here at a corner. And again, it's just to show, it's just to, you know, create enough room for that apparatus to make that maneuver. So there's no parked vehicles within either this area or in this area in here. And we can share that email that we got from deputy chief Melly too. On that plan, sorry, can you show the coming in off of mass av on the main plan? I'm just curious about the location of the utility pole in the right away. Oh, yep, this one right here. Yeah. Yep, there's one here. And there's another one right in this area here. Yep. And I'll speak to that a little bit more and a little bit. And then the other item, the other item I want to touch on, can folks see that now? We see the same plan. Oh, me. I just wanted to share our latest site plan and without getting into a lot of the details as to what was done to address a lot of the concerns here, we've essentially made, there's been a lot of changes related to adding some signage and adding striping to address a lot of the, some of the comments from beta. You know, as an example, you know, we're now showing some of these shared bike symbols up and down our driveway that connects to Ryder. I think these are spaced at every 150 feet. There's some other signage to direct bicyclists towards the Minuteman commuter bikeway, which is up towards the, I guess to the north, you'd say, to direct them to the right. And there was some other minor comments too, just to address some striping changes and signage changes, you know, fairly minor for the most part. And I think beta can probably speak to a little bit more, but just again, changing some of these striping symbols here, as well as some of the other signs, some of the locations of the signs here. And then that kind of kind of gets into Chairman Klein, what you had mentioned with the existing utility poles here within the Mass Ave driveway. After a series of discussions with both Eversource and Verizon, they, these utility pole service, a lot of other customers in the area, and it's gonna be nearly impossible to relocate them. So we're proposing to keep these poles where they exist today. And we're also proposing to work with the utility company to help better, I guess, make these poles more visible. And we're really not sure what that will be yet. Not sure if it'll be adding some type of reflector or illuminating the pole, but we're going to speak to the utility companies to see what can be done to help better, better illuminate those poles to motorists and vehicles. And the other utility pole, it's actually not shown on here that Joel's gonna get into when he speaks to the modified building too here. There's actually, there's another utility pole, kind of in the corner of building two right in this area, that also is gonna be nearly impossible to relocate because it services other utilities. And as a result of that, we're proposing to notch, basically put a notch in this building too, to maintain that current location of that utility pole. And that's generally it, just in terms of just some of the highlights of the site-related changes. I know Joel's gonna touch on some of the other stuff with the 124-unit plan and some of the modifications that have been made. Um, just wanna ask the board at this point, if there's any particular comments in regards to the site plan, if there's any questions or comments they would wanna address at this time. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I'm wondering, I don't actually have something that I wanna ask and have answered right now, but I wondered if somehow the flow of this could be organized so that at convenient times, you switch over to beta and get their comments because as time meeting goes on, I'm getting to be more and more senior by the day. And my ability to remember what is said at the long, after a long time when beta finally gets a chance to come up is going to be limited. So if beta could, you know, if I leave it up to the applicant, but if you can identify convenient times to switch over and let beta comment on what you've said so far, that at least would help this member keep track of what's going on. Absolutely. Mr. Revoli. Yes, I just wanted to review the traffic circulation. The driveway to Ryder Street is exit only, MassAb is entrance only, and I believe it's Quinn Road is two way. Do I have that right? That's correct. Thank you, Ms. O'Connor. Perfect. Are there, at this stage, are there any comments from beta in regards to site circulation and site plan? They're like. Dome graph from beta, Mr. Chairman. We did take a look at the revised plans. We had provided a letter dated April 22nd. Previously, and I think all the changes that have been made are positive. You know, I think the changes in the evolution of the relocation of Ryder Brook really enhances the site. That sounds like conservation agrees with that as well. So I think from a civil stormwater perspective, at this point, we don't have any further comments. I think there's some coordination that still has to happen, you know, as the, once the final design gets done before going into construction with submission of a construction management plan, I think final permitting with conservation. But I would say at this point, we're satisfied with the civil site design. Thank you. But Jmeran, did you have more or were we going to transfer? Joel Bergman was going to speak to the new design. Oh, perfect. Thank you. Thank you. I need to share the screen. Joel, you're all set. You're good to go. All right. Can you all see that? I'm going to describe the changes to the site. This is the existing site. The white boundary is the area of concern and describe the differences between what you've seen, the 130 unit scheme and then what's being altered for various reasons that I will explain, the 124 unit scheme. The first is rather benign, but in looking at the relocation of Ryder Brook and this back portion of the site, we have taken out the expansion of the building that accommodated the ramp to the second floor of the garage. And so now that portion of the building that used to project out into Ryder, what is now the Ryder Brook relocation is gone. And we think that has a positive impact on the elevation of that facade. In looking at the building, you know that from my previous presentation, we've spent a lot of time on the Mill Brook sidewalk, the landscaping there, the landscaping along Mill Brook to the right side of the site by the historic building three with the goal of making this a very pedestrian oriented development and bicycle oriented as well with cars being sort of the tertiary method of arrival. And in keeping with that sense of scale, we began to look at the building a little bit more critical about how that might get adjusted. And there were three things that we did in that. The other aspect of looking at this from a big picture perspective was we evaluated the right corner of what is building four. And we were within 10 feet of the property line between this property and the Myrat parking lot. And the team felt that it would be better urban design longterm to provide a little bit better buffer zone between our property and what may happen and who knows when, if at all, but it provided a little bit greater opportunity for neighboring development without impacting the development on this side of the property if we were to shorten building four and provide a greater setback. The reason that that also came up is that we were all a little dissatisfied with this courtyard that was the private courtyard for the property. It's a very narrow space. It's anchored by two stories of garage and four stories of building. And we felt that by cutting off that corner of the building we would, in addition to what I previously mentioned we would significantly improve the outdoor space. And I'll show you how a perspective of how that happens. The third, so here you can see the building is cut back 30 feet and now our edge of the building is actually 40 feet from the property line. Mary mentioned that the amenity space was modified. And we'll say that with the improvements to the site and the bridge there's quite a bit more to this project than our typical multi-family housing project. So we were really looking to economize the building as best we could so as not to have to compromise any aspect of the property. By reducing the second floor of the amenity space we are able to save some square footage construction cost and really right size the amenities to a 124 unit project. And then use that savings for the amenity space on some of these improvements that we're doing such as the relocation of the Ryderbrook. One of the other changes was to bring the green space closer to the edge of the property here and as shown here. So there's quite a bit of landscaping. You can see there's some new landscaping on the sides here that's quite extensive and we didn't want to short change that by just trying to do everything so that the decision was made to focus our energies on a few spaces that were super important and take out the second floor of the amenity space. And I will show you that. So it's the technical introduction. As was mentioned, building two, the telephone pole is on this corner that utility pole services more than just our property. So we've allowed 10 feet from the edge of the pole so that other properties can put transformers on that pole as need be and we'll still have the proper dimensional clearance between the pole, the transformer and the face of our building to meet the utility company regulations. So that's a 10 foot plus setback cut out of this corner of the building. That caused us to move the stair and the elevator. The stair was in this corner of the plan. So there's a minor change there to pick up some of the square footage and to address one of Chairman Klein's comments about the length of the arcade and the sort of commercial feeling about it. We brought out the residential end of the building. Previously, the arcade went all the way through and this sort of makes it a little bit smaller scale and enhances this corner unit and makes a more residential corner on the building. We're able to get a balcony in that unit out to the brook. So those are minor changes on the building too. And then here you can see the difference between the 30 foot area that we cut off the building. It's quite a significant change and you can see relative to building three, we're pulling the building back almost to the third point from where it was it used to align with the outside edge of the building and now it's cut back to the third point which we think makes that historic building free. And I think you'll see in the perspective a little happier in the landscape. You also notice that this extension that connected the lobby to building three is gone by eliminating that you actually go outside now to do what's a small fitness area and a small amenity space in building three. But that's an issue maybe four months of the year. It really has a tremendous impact on the outdoor space. It has a really nice impact on the historic character of building three. And we think it's, it also solves some handicap accessibility issues because the floor of this portion of the building is not the same as this portion. So as you saw in our landscape plan, we have a sort of easier landscape transition from the lobby space to the building. And then there's another crisscross handicap ramp that brings you to the outdoor space that we did not have in the previous. So it sort of connects the lobby to the whole Milbrook side of the building in an accessible manner which is we think an improvement given the focus on the outdoor space of the property. So with that, this is coming into the site. And I mentioned that we really tried to focus on the pedestrian scale. One advantage we thought of lowering the amenity space was that scale of that building driving to the entry was more in the scale of a person. So it was just a little bit less two stories, four stories and hierarchically we thought the entry showed up better and that building was a little bit tamer compared to building four, which now has more freedom against the facade as opposed here it was sort of half and half against the new construction. So we thought the corner of building four, I mean building one, excuse me, was enhanced by that move as well as the scale of this entry. The entry is also bigger. So it's almost the same width as the drive aisle whereas in the previous it was about two thirds to a half. Whoops. Here you can see the arcade went all the way through and it was clad metal. Now we only have the arcade going through for a portion. It's clad in the same siding material as the upper portion of the building, but instead of clabbered, it's a smooth panel. So it still has a little bit different scale and it's brighter so it really calls out the entry as you're coming down into the site. That entry is the first point you see here. You have the work bar walking to the entry on this side. So this is a very important crosswalk and we appreciate the suggestion to take a look at this arcade area. Here you see the previous courtyard design and here's the new courtyard design with the lower amenity space. We've changed our program in here. There's now a package storage where this wall is. That blank wall sort of helps to define on one side the bike room. There's our bike room and bike repair area here and then the entry to the building between building four and building one on the middle of the image. The rendering of the facade has been changed a little bit. We've actually put a cornice in between the lower portion and the sort of mansard roof portion of the building. Here's what I was focusing on on the courtyard when we previously had the connector link and the two-story base to the building. And here's now the one-story base and the link eliminated. You can see now that building three is free of any new. It's a historic building standing in the landscape which is really part of the idea of the design is this ensemble of buildings that were built at different times. So you have building three, building one, building four and we've articulated the different facades to carry through that idea of industrial architecture being assembled over time and in different manners and different materials. So I think we're all quite excited here with this new space and here you see on the far side that's that handicap ramp that connects now the backside of the lobby down to Millbrook which is an improvement that we did not have. You can see in these elevations here's the previous elevation of the building. I know elevations are tough to look at but you can see how much shorter 30 feet makes on the building. What's really interesting is we've been able to take 15,000 square feet of space out of the project. In a normal project that would be the loss of 15 units which we really don't want to do. We wanna keep the heart and soul of the project with his apartments and affordable units. So we're only down six units and the rest we've managed to take out of parking garage space, the amenity space and really just tightening up the project as much as we can. Taking the ramp out, I thought really improved the backside of the building. It's quite a bit shorter by having it be shorter. We have these sort of four, five bay windows that happen across the back and help articulate the volumes. But the whole idea of the facade is that it's now broken up into smaller pieces. The end of the building that's by the garden, the outdoor spaces is green cement board, the entry courtyard is the gray. So the building and the coloration changes with the outdoor spaces and we think that's really an exciting concept. And that breakup of the facade happens on the sides and we think help mitigate the larger new building with the large existing buildings. And building two hasn't changed other than for the fact that this arcade is only a portion of the building as I showed in the perspectives. So the changes in summary are we were increasing the pervious area on site by 275%. That's now up to 284. The number of units is from 130 to 124 with still 25% affordable. The parking spaces are 135. And I'm sorry, this is incorrect. It's 128 not 127, which allows us to maintain a similar ratio between bedrooms and parking spaces in the old versus the new scheme. And then as we've talked about previously, we have the 44 bike spaces as a waiver request. Those are designed for Arlington standards. We obviously have other storage systems in the garage to handle additional cars. And with that, I'll pass it on back to Mary and questions or on to Brian for the traffic. Thank you. Thank you. Are there questions from the board about the, or just questions or comments from Beta Group? Just again, Bill McGrath from Beta, Mr. Chairman. Just one question on the 124 unit concept. I noticed that there's some additional surface parking in the back by building four. Correct. I'm just wondering how that's gonna be drained. Where's the runoff from that go? Randy? Yeah. I believe we're gonna be collecting that as part of the garage, Bill. And we can certainly share those plans for your review. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And then I just had one quick question with you had referred to get from, I believe it's from building four to building three, that there was a series of exterior ramps to go from one to the other. I just wanted to ask, are they ramps or are they just a slope sidewalk? I'm sorry, they're slope sidewalks. So it's a less than one in 20 grade. Yeah. Thank you. Perfect. Mr. Chairman. Yes, please Mr. Hanlon. I'm enthralled by the pictures and I was wondering if the applicant could make these slides that they're showing us tonight available so that we can go back and review them and appreciate the matter of the year. Absolutely. We can email them. Thank you. Thank you. Well, this is anything further from members of the board. We'll proceed with the updates to the traffic design. So, I mean, with regards to the updates, we didn't really have many updates as much as just addressed what Bate is concerned for in the comment letter. Circulation, as Randy had mentioned, is being maintained as we previously submitted. So aside, maybe if Greg wants to address anything that he saw, but for the most part, what everybody read in the previous report and what we've been discussing has helped through. Greg, did you have any? Yeah, I can add to that as Brian indicated. In our previous review, we had asked for a lot of additional verification of some of the numbers regarding demand for parking, the comparable sites as Mary alluded to in her introductory comments. Some of the data was inconsistent between the sites and it wasn't, we weren't collecting the same times. And so we just wanted additional data and they went out and got new data that confirmed the conclusions that they had already made. The data was essentially the same in all instances. And so now Bate is satisfied that those conclusions as to the necessary amount of parking and confirming that parking demand is met where we would agree that that's satisfied. Thank you. Were there any other outstanding questions in the traffic review? There had been sub-site comments which were responded to by Niche and so, and the site revisions have also helped address those. We had noted in our response and in our email distribution of those responses that the compact spaces as has been discussed are allowed by by law. And they're well below the 20% threshold for compact spaces in the current configuration of garage parking. No other, no other outstanding issues from our review perspective. Any questions or comments on the board? Ms. O'Connor. Chairman Klein, we had nothing else to add at this point. We're just excited about the project and we think it with all of the input is going to be a beautiful development of that area. Well, certainly on behalf of the board, we really appreciate all the work that your team has been doing and the work that they've been doing to review this through multiple iterations to get it to this point. So we very much appreciate it. Are there questions, other questions from the board? Mr. Mills. I just have one really minor one, Chairman. They speak about enforcing the parking regulations by a lease violation. How are they going to put teeth in that? Who will actually do the enforcement of that? Who are they going to complain to? They'll be a on-site property manager, Mr. Mills. And if a resident sees someone parking there, if they call the on-site property manager, they'll take the property manager, we'll take care of it. But it will actually constitute a lease violation subject to them to eviction. Thank you for your answer. And I do want to commend you for some substantial improvements in your design and working with the locals. That's very much appreciated. Other questions from the board? I did have one other question in regards to the bicycle access from Rider Street where the shadows are shown in both directions overlaid onto a one-way traffic lane. Is that something that has been done elsewhere and is that something that works successfully or is that something that leads to altercations? Not sure. Sorry. It is, it has been used before and it's primarily done for this application to respond to concerns. There has been comments along about bicycle access. Is this going to be two-way for bicycles? Is it going to be only one-way? So we have included those pavement markings in response to the neighborhood concerns and comments. And we decided to add shadows to the Rider Street connector as well as a bike signage. Is there enough width to have a one-way bike lane heading into the site and then have just outgoing shadows with the car direction traffic? Or is there not enough width in there to do something like that? I believe there's not enough width. Okay. Yeah, that would be our impression as well. There isn't enough width, especially because there's parking a lot along that connector. Okay. And then the only other thought I had was at the very end of that connector where it enters Rider Street, I know that there'll be signage that that last effective space is not, you know, there's no parking here to corner. If there could be some form of striping on the pavement as well to reinforce that. Or we can add some striping. Unfortunately, if it is the size of a parking space, somebody will try to utilize it as such. Other questions from the board? Being none. Okay. I think we're ready to move on to public comment. So in a moment, I'll open the public comment period on the revised design for the proposed project, the 1165R Ministry Avenue. Public questions and comments will be taken as they relate to the matters at hand. It should be directed to the board for the purpose of informing our decision to provide for an orderly flow to the meeting and to allow inclusion of many voices to chair as public speakers to limit their comments and encourage you to use your time to provide comments related to the indicated topics. Additional time will be provided at the discretion of the chair to provide time for questions to be answered. Chair encourages the public to provide written comments to be reviewed by the board and included in the record, especially through if you have specific recommendations in regards to the project. Procedure for requesting to speak will be the same as for previous hearings. Please select the raise hand button from the comments tab on Zoom or dial star nine on your phone to indicate who would like to speak. When called upon, please identify yourself by name and address. You'll be given time for your questions and comments. All questions will be addressed through the chair. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps us generate accurate minutes. Once all public questions and comments have been addressed, the public comment period for this evening will be closed. Board and staff will do our best to show documents being discussed. If you would like a specific document pulled up during your comments, please do ask us to do so. And so I have here hands up already. I will start with Mr. Moore. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Steve Moore, Piedmont Street. One quick question. Actually, first for you, could they describe please the access to the bikeway? Describe the intersection of this project and the bikeway and access to the site from the bikeway? Sure. Just to be clear, you're talking about access from the Minuteman Bikeway, correct? Exactly. Access along Rider Street north of our driveway is going to remain the same. What we will provide is the signage and the striping at the intersection where the Rider Street driving makes Rider Street. We don't have the right. I'm sorry. I'll share it. Thank you. So the owner does not have rights to do anything to the north of our driveway. So we're doing everything within our means to provide that bicycle access. But aside from what we can do, it's the access to the Minuteman Bikeway is going to remain as is. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Another question. Along the Minuteman Bikeway, these access points, the major access points have traffic in and out, some more than others. And honestly, personally, I don't have experience with the Rider Street access currently in terms of how much on and off bikeway traffic there is at that point. I just want to make sure that the the proponents of the development are taking into account bike traffic, considerable potentially bike traffic along the edge of their site and any safety concerns or signage is great. That's good. That's real helpful. But I'm just thinking if there is a significant amount of traffic, are there safety concerns being taken into account for bike access to the traffic along your site? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Mr. Svalta, I don't know if there's any further comments on that one of those lines. I don't really have any further comments. We kind of went through that with as limited in that area. So we are providing accommodations as we feel necessary to accommodate the neighborhood. Thank you. Mr. T. Hello, this is Alex T to Rider Street. So I have a two-part question. One is really appreciate that there's more data into the parking than I realized. First part of my question is I guess I want to understand from our traffic professionals if there's absolutely no risk, some risk or lots of risk to this overflow scenario as even one or two cars on our street can make a big difference in terms of daily parking. And then the second part of my question is, again, data is as good as the data we have, but there are still assumptions. And so I kind of want to better understand what happens if those assumptions don't hold true. I certainly appreciate the spirit of the lease, but again, that's a kind of a big burden to police that for us, it's a constant stress and strain and it's just kind of a constant source of conflict which feels like a disproportionate burden on those that will have to police and enforce that. I'm kind of curious if there are also other measures. Again, I think eviction is certainly one potential answer, but is there something on the lower threshold where there's some kind of towing policy for respondent in a certain amount of time or if it becomes a more perpetual bigger issue, is it on the table to reduce the number of occupied apartments? Again, I just, a one-size-fits-all solution doesn't always necessarily work. So thank you for the time. Thank you, Mr. D. I could put those on to Mr. Zmolka and Mr. Lucas in regards to both the questions about what's the, what's the sort of the risk of parking overflows and then I can go back to Mary in regards to what would happen if those still hold. So, you know, as we have shown, we've done numerous parking studies, three different data points and, you know, our research based on local apartment complexes is that there's going to be adequate parking. You know, with what the development can do, you know, we've reiterated that we have a transportation coordinator and it'll be built into the lease. You know, aside from that, you know, there's nothing physical we can do. Mary, I don't know if you want to add to that. No, and with respect, we could not tow off of that right of way. I can tell you that as a matter of law. We could not do that. That side of the right of way is actually owned by the town of Arlington and we would not be in a position that we could tow legally. I understand nothing is ever 100% foolproof, but we have done the studies and we have looked at the data and based on the other three developments, we feel very comfortable and secure that there's adequate parking there. I mean, frankly, eviction is a serious penalty for violating the parking requirement and the property manager will review that in the lease with the prospective tenants at the time the lease is signed. If a tenant sees, you know, it's just like anybody, you know, our own houses, when you see somebody park repeatedly in front of your house, you might call the Arlington police and say, you know, there's a strange and different person parking in front of my house repeatedly. I guess, you know, if you're concerned and you see someone repeatedly parking there, a call to the property manager will resolve that. Thank you. The other point I would add and invite either either Ms. O'Connor and Mr. Zmolk with a comment on is that these parking spaces will be leased. And so there's control over the number of tenant vehicles that will be allowed access to the garage and to the parking provided on site. Thank you. Ms. O'Connor deserve almost a side question, but for residents of Ryder Street, who do have street access rights, what is the current procedure that for them to have cars removed that are from their property that are not theirs? From the right of way? From the right of way. I would have to check the statute. I know that we wouldn't have that ability because on that side of the town right of way, but I could check that. I don't think the residents could have them towed. I used to help manage a property in the back bay and I'm trying to remember what the procedure was for towing a vehicle from a private way. That's been a while. Yeah. I can check that. Appreciate that, thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Hanlon. Has anyone had, I take it from what's just been said that the town is a major owner of at least half of Ryder Street and that presumably is part of the area that people are parking on. Have any conversations happened with the town about controlling what's going on under property which I assumed that the town has control over? We've had no conversations with the town. I think Alex, were you gonna have some conversations with the town manager? Yeah, I did reach out to Adam three or four weeks ago. I had not heard back. So that was gonna be a follow up with mine just to see if the ZBA could make a warm introduction for us so that we could be as collaborative as possible. I mean, it does seem odd that this should be just a wild west venue that nobody seems to have control over what goes on there. And maybe that's just what happens when everything is all fractionated like this. But generally the select board has control over parking policy, at least on public streets and owns part of this one. And you would think that there's something that could be done now other than just calling the police department. And I'm not quite sure what it is. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. DuPont. So I would like to follow up on this as well. And maybe if I might direct my question to Miss O'Connor I'm just wondering if you're saying essentially that there's no parking offsite as part of the lease and should you do that then you're in violation of the lease? Is that correct that understanding? Yes, Mr. DuPont. So the other part I wonder is I do understand I think that you're saying that as a right you wouldn't be able to go and tow somebody who is on rider nor would the residents be able to tow as a right. But I'm wondering if you might not be able to put in language into a lease and maybe this is a stretch but put language into a lease where the tenant is essentially consenting to your authority to tow in the event that they violate that prescription. So just a thought. I mean, it might be by agreement as opposed to by right. I will look at that. The issue I think is because it is owned by the town the town would have to consent to such a process. All right. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hammond. Can I just one other question? I do understand that eviction is a pretty big is the pretty big penalty for these violations. And it seems to me that that's actually a flaw rather than a feature here because when it was like in the old days when for every minor crime, the only penalty was to hang someone. There weren't that many hangings that there were a lot of hangings that took place but not a lot of effective law enforcement and it is often better to have a more certainly applied lesser penalty than to have an extreme one that you'll be very reluctant to do. And I'm wondering if there's any way of dealing in the lease. Maybe this is just a more general statement of what Mr. Dupont was talking about but some kinds of things like forfeitures or fines or some elements that fall short of sort of the equivalent of capital punishment so that there could be more confidence that the sanctions will actually be imposed. I think a fine is a good idea, Mr. Hammond. A hefty fine. Thank you both. Mr. Chairman, if I could jump in here. Yes, Mr. Havity. I just think that whatever you wanna put in for provision regarding this needs to be run by the subsidizing agency because it obviously would be applicable to the affordable units as well as to the market rate units. So we wanna make sure we're not running a follow with any requirements of the subsidizing. So if the provisions were a part of a sort of a, you know, the regulations for the applicant that's not something that would impact our decision that would be something that they would have to take up with the agency afterwards. Well, again, if they're gonna impose this as a requirement, it's something the subsidizing agency may want to be able to review and may have some feeling. Certainly if you're talking about an eviction provision for not paying parking fines, I think that the subsidizing agency is gonna have a significant problem with that. So again, in terms of the board's decision, you don't necessarily need to include it as a specific condition. You can have a provision that requires it to be addressed in the management's contract. And the board would have the opportunity to review that management contract prior to the issuance of certificates of occupancy. But you just wanna make sure that at some point, it gets reviewed by the subsidizing agency so you don't run a follow. That's very well taken. Thank you. The next hand up was Ms. Contreras. Hi, can you hear me? We can. Great. So first to somewhat piggyback on Mr. Hanlon's comment, as an abutter who would be placed in a position to report someone knowing that their end result might be eviction would be an awful moral position to place a butters in. I can't imagine doing that to someone for a parking violation. So the idea that burden on the abutters is then also this really kind of traumatizing moral one. It seems it's very off-putting now that I'm thinking through this as the reality of reporting mechanism that's been proposed. I'm also, I'm curious. So it's not that, well, there is an issue of the tenants actually not parking but with such a low parking ratio, parking to unit ratio, it's actually more, and then we see this now with the larger nine rider and certainly my household has been guilty of this. Just when you have gas over where do they park? Currently, I'm not sure if the four spots along the mill are counted toward the space to unit ratio or if they're excluded because they're supposed to be for non tenants. But the idea is that when guests come over and we're talking at a scale of 120 plus units, where do those guests park? And those people, those are not people whose leases can be marked against or the, so it's just, it's hard to understand the procedures around if parking overflows even by a couple of cars on rider, it disrupts a system greatly. And we experienced that and on our street, we have certain solutions, but it's fewer and far between but we don't have the presence of 120 plus units right now. So that's more thinking, I don't mean to ask for an answer, but that's something that's really at the top of my concerns. I also want to echo Mr. Moore's concerns about the experience of going to the Minuteman Bikeway for the tenants. Again, I think when we think about the scale of what is being added to Rider Street, if every unit becomes a cyclist, obviously that's a really positive thing. Even if a third of them are cyclists, that's a really positive thing, that's less cars being used. But currently, I really don't see how the cyclists commute to the bike path has really been taken into consideration. I don't understand how pedestrians have really been thought through. This still seems like a very car-centric plan. And as much as I want there to be guest parking, those four guest parking spots along Mill, I think that they're actually, they're, we're making a lot of choices to preserve those four parking spaces when really they could be used to enhance the safety and travel and wayfinding of pedestrian cyclists and motor vehicles. So I, this feels like a double-edged sword, but those four parking spaces, I mean, I know that the Conservation Commission had concerns about them. Obviously they've, they felt that it wasn't to the point of not approving them, but just why are those four parking spaces so important and or why are they more important than making that way much more safe for the huge influx of cyclists and pedestrians? Thank you. Did I answer that, Mr. Thank you. Yes, Ms. O'Connor. First of all, those four parking spaces are part of the parking ratio that we need for residents. And I believe the traffic engineer has testified, has provided information as to the safety of the sharers in and out for the, for the bicyclists. My client is not going to do anything to the north of Rider Street. That property will get developed at some point and that will be for this board or for the planning board to make them do the improvements. We're doing them from the Rider connector all the way to Rider Street and making it a handicapped accessible walkway. Ms. O'Connor, what are the provisions for guest parking? There's no, there's no on-site guest parking that have to park on Mass Ave. I don't know if it's, if it's fair, is guest parking, would guest parking be allowed at the rank? I have no idea. We didn't look at that issue. Yeah. And the tenants would be notified that all guest parking has to be accommodated on. Yes. We'll put in the lease that accommodated on Mass Ave. So all the spaces on site are either for residents or for tenants at work mark. That's correct. Okay. Can I ask a follow-up? Yes, indeed. I was just going to ask. Okay. Thank you. So this is in my public comment for the meeting as well, but there's also been, so I think instead of just, I'm not trying to demand something. I'm asking the applicants to think about the very large number of cyclists and pedestrians that are, because of this project, are being added to this small ecosystem that's a very currently an unsafe ecosystem. I'm also concerned about, I mean, I like the fact that the corridor will be revamped and improved and will be wonderful to look. We enjoy the raccoon family that lives in the moat and the ducks are there right now. But what about, like that also means that pedestrians and cyclists will be, and that's the point of this, is to be encouraged to come visit the Millstream corridor that's been revamped for public use. And so just a group of people that we have not talked yet about or I haven't heard about yet, are the people that this project will bring to the site who do not live there, who typically might go through Rider Street or go past Rider Street, but are now entering Rider Street from the bike path and coming and seeing the Millstream. I'm very curious about what is that actual commute and experience look like? Where do their bikes go? I know there's bike racks, but in reality, what do you anticipate the numbers being and where are people going to be following? Like the rules are bike path, there's just a lot of experiential care that I haven't yet really understood from the applicant. And I see so many close calls. I'm very concerned about the pedestrians and cyclists that we have not talked about. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. O'Connor, has there been any? Well, the pedestrians would come down to the South Rider Street, New Handicapped Accessible Sidewalk. And I've already spoken to the bike path issue. Thank you. Ms. Lina, I don't know if the planning department has done any research into what improvements to the Millbrook corridor might do in terms of bringing additional visitors to the area. Do you know if there's any research along those lines? We did some Millbrook corridor report, but I think another thing to note is that we are just putting out, if it's not already out, an RFP for Minimum Bikeway Planning Study, which will study the entire length of the bikeway specifically and look at improvements to connections to the bikeway along several key points. And I know this was listed as a potential area for more in-depth study by whatever consultant is selected for that project. So that RFP doesn't look like it's up now, but it should be going up this week. And we would begin that planning process very, very soon. And that will have a significant public engagement portion to it as well. Is there a particular committee that's overseeing that? So that is funded through the Community Preservation Act. And then that will be, I believe, overseen with ABAC, Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee, with input from various other transportation-oriented committees in town. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Ms. Condrast, was there any further questions? Not right now, thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Ms. Weber? Hi, good evening. 14 Ryder Street. So I have a couple of different things to ask about. The first one is safety. I think that's one of our main concerns. And I would like to add to the people that are using this is as a mother of a middle schooler, the middle school population, this is a migration corridor for middle schoolers from the bike path. And it needs to be central to the town's worry, basically. And Mr. Hanlon mentioned that we need to put this more in front of, as a town, of how we're gonna address this. And I think our middle schoolers need it because there's a lot of middle schoolers traveling through the street every day. And I've, like many of my neighbors have seen some very close calls. Mine is homeschooling, so I don't have to worry about mine right now, but they'll be out there next year. Sorry. I guess my dog's upset about it, too. So, and another thing is, like, if I'm biking, I'm also a biker, if I'm entering that street, it would feel like it would be very unsafe to be going into oncoming traffic. You don't let me talk. So I just wanna put that out there that entering an oncoming traffic with a bike would be feeling very unsafe for me. The second round of things I wanna talk about is conservation, and I'm a conservation biologist. So I wanna know if, Sable, if the older trees are going to be considered to be left alone with this new plan, the new design in hand, and also if the parking services and services in general can be pervious rather than impervious so that there's not a huge runoff into the brook from all of the services at hand. The 30-foot decrease in building height, is that gonna impact the shade of Rider Street, or is it gonna be more affected to Mass Ave? And the third section is, you mentioned a parking waiver. I wanted to know more about that. What does that mean? And I also am worried about parking along the street with people coming to visit and just in general and also coming to visit the neighbors in the building. And we wanna be welcoming, but we just wanna be, we don't wanna be policing our neighbors. So we wanna put more of that back on the people that are renting to them, or you know what I mean? So my first question, Rebecca, you said that the middle school are sort of coming through this area. Did they eventually cross Mass Ave at Appleton that where they're crossing, you know? They're kind of flowing through this area, so they could go up one way and over the other way, but they generally go across Mass Ave in that area. So. Mr. Chair, Steve Revolac, I bike through, well, outside of pandemic times, I would bike along Mass Ave towards Lexington in the morning. And there'd usually be a crossing guard with middle school students, typically. There's a crosswalk where Appleton and Mass Ave intersect and that's usually where I've seen them cross. Okay. So they're not trying to sort of jump across Mass Ave more in line with Forest Street? Not that I have observed, but, you know, no, I generally see the crossing, where the, see the kids crossing where the crossing guard is located and that would be at Appleton Street. Okay. Hey, thank you. Can I say, I don't know if there's a question to hear from Mr. Marin or not. So what is, I know there's not very many trees on the lot to begin with, but I know there's a row of trees just across Mill Brook, which are not involved in the project because they fall outside the project's boundary. But are there other, and I believe the only other trees that are existing on the site are in the Ryder Brook corridor, is that correct? Are we talking about, I guess, existing trees? Existing trees. I think those are the only areas where there's anything right now. I believe so also, yes. Okay. And then the older trees that Ms. Weber is referring to are not on my client's property. Those are the ones across the Mill, correct? Mm-hmm. Right. And then could... Randy, can you answer that parking surface comment? Yep, I guess, Chairman Klein, are you... Please continue. Now, I was just gonna ask you to do the exact same thing. Sure. For the surface drainage question item that was raised, yeah, so under existing conditions, the entire site is just kind of sheet flows to Mill Brook and we are proposing a new stormwater management system here to really collect the runoff, treat it, because of the increase in landscaped areas or pervious areas, there's a significant decrease in runoff rates for all storm events. And it really should be a big benefit over what's out there today. And it should be an improvement to the surrounding area. And I know Beta has reviewed our stormwater design and I don't wanna speak for them, but I believe they are generally comfortable with everything, so. And my understanding is that the system doesn't have any particular stormwater retainage on site. It's more treatment and discharge, is correct? That's correct. And then I think there wasn't, Mr. Klein, a question about the decrease in building height, yeah. Question about the shadow impact, yeah. Joel, can you take a look? That's a disturbing question, or... Nope, you're on mute though, sir. And so, can you repeat that? So there was a question raised about the changes to the height of the building and what the impact would be on the shadows, whether they would. The overall height of the buildings unchanged. The only change to the height is at the amenity space that was 28 feet to the top of the roof and is now 14 feet to the top of the roof. Okay. And Chairman Klein, the only thing I would like to just emphasize is as the traffic impact study has established that there is no increase during peak traffic times in traffic coming out of the Ryder Street connector for my client's property. And I understand the concerns of the neighbors, their frustration, I would suggest, is to the businesses to the north of Ryder Street and the trucks and the speed of the trucks, but we cannot control that. Perhaps the town could control that. Ms. Webber, would those all your questions? I'd like to actually follow up on a couple of those. With the new landscape added to the land around there, is there going to be a lot of pesticides used that could be also in the runoff from the building in treating the land? I want to think about that. Also, why couldn't there be a graywater system from some of the runoff? If you're treating it, why couldn't you reuse it in the building from that point of view? And I disagree with the middle school migration corridor because as it's an exit point for the building, a lot of people will be leaving in the morning to go to work around the times that the middle schoolers use that space. Thank you. Ms. O'Connor, is there, I don't recall, I don't know if Ms. Landema maybe know as well, whether there were particular conditions that were being discussed with the Conservation Commission in regards to pesticide use within the Riverfront zone? We didn't get to that yet. I'm sure that'll be in the order of conditions. Okay. Karen Klein, could I just answer that question? Ms. Chapnick, I didn't realize you were with us. Yes, please. Yeah, I'm just not on video. It is a standard condition of the Conservation Commission that pesticide use is prohibited within areas near resource areas and pretty much the entire site is within a resource area of Millbrook. The Ryder Brook feature that is being moved is being treated as considering that it will be protected and we have discussed some permit conditions around that too. So pesticide use will not be permitted. Thank you. And was there any consideration of a graywater system for the building weather for irrigation or for other uses on site? Ms. O'Connor, I'm not sure who can address that question. I have to leave that to Randy Merrim. Yeah, Mary, we might need Kyle for that one. I'm not sure what the plan is for watering of the landscaping. If there's an irrigation system or there was other methods, I don't wanna speak for Kyle. I think there is an irrigation system. I remember there being some initial questions about irrigation in regards to the relocation of Ryder Brook, but I don't recall a wider discussion about the remainder of the property. Ms. Crosst? I did, I just wanna bring up that we did discuss the fact that they would not be irrigating the Ryder Brook restoration area so that those plants would need to establish with the natural and native groundwater elevations. So at least in that area, it wouldn't be irrigated. Thanks Laura. Thank you. And Mr. Zick's not with us this evening, is that correct? No, he's not. Okay, if you wouldn't mind following up with him. I will, I'll follow up with him. That would be great, thank you. I think those were your questions, Ms. Weber. Last one was the timing of the middle schoolers using the area and the people leaving for work. Okay. Yeah, because I believe as I kind of, you had said previously that the studies of when the traffic will be occurring, you had said there was no appreciable increase during. No increase during peak hour over existing conditions. Correct, Brian? From Ryder Street? That is correct. On Ryder Street, driveway, there's a zero net increase. Do you know what the current, the current flow, the current traffic volume is? I do not know it off the top of my head. Okay. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I wonder if it's just to Mocha can just clarify, when we're talking about peak hour, are we talking about a particular hour within the peak morning commute or more generally? And I'm just sort of interested in whether or not the peak hour for purposes of the traffic generation study is the same as the peak hour for kids going to school at Ryder, whether there's any disjunction there. So Mr. Hanlon, those are good questions. So when we study traffic, we study two peak periods. It's the seven to nine in the morning and four to six in the evening. And of those times we determine the peak out one hour. And that is the focus of each study and the impacts. So when we talk about the seven to nine period, that's the commuting from the apartments out and the four to six period is the commuting times in. So the middle school, when the middle school lets out, we don't expect any project related traffic to come in along those times. But in the morning, in the morning and presumably would, they'd be going to school at eight o'clock or something similar to that. And that would be within your peak hour or closely adjacent to it, but. Correct, but you have to also understand that we're not going to have a net increase. What is experienced today is what is going to be experienced in the future or once the project has been constructed. Well, what's generating the traffic that's flowing out of there in the morning today? Currently there's nothing flowing out of there flowing in would be the existing office building. I guess, I mean, I'm sorry, I don't want to, my understanding is what the concern is, is that there are a lot of kids on Ryder Street. And what we care about in terms of the morning peak hour is whether or not there's an increase in traffic on Ryder Street. So if there's a lot of increase on Quinn Road or something, that's really not important for this, for this discussion. What's important is whether there's an increased number of cars that are leaving the site on Ryder Street and conflicting with the kids who are on the street. And that's what we sort of need you to address because it could easily turn out that there is a danger to the kids that is missed when you're doing the kind of comparison about traffic generation that we've been talking about. So in the morning, there's actually going to be a decrease in traffic at that Ryder Street driveway. We're anticipating, well, we've calculated a reduction in eight vehicles. So you're actually going to have a reduction in number of vehicles during that morning period. And then- So I wonder what the, I mean, the chairman had, what started this last interchange was the chairman asking what it was that was causing the exit of traffic from the site onto Ryder Street. And my understanding from your answer was that that would be the same, that there isn't anything now that's exiting on Ryder Street. And I'm a little unclear, I mean, if you're just looking at what is the exit going on in Ryder Street, is there going to be more cars on there or eight fewer cars or something else? But I only care about Ryder Street right now. I don't care about any other way in or out of the site. Right now you've got them going in and out on Ryder Street. If I can add, I'm looking at the most recent revised report and there is an increase in traffic exiting onto Ryder Street as a result of the site. And Greg, can you tell me how big that is? So the existing volumes, and again, I'm just looking at the traffic impact report. The existing volumes exiting are three vehicles in the morning, 10 vehicles in the afternoon. Again, those peak hours that the Brian spoke of. And then the site generated, site generated trips are an increase of nine vehicles in the morning and one in the afternoon. And so then the cumulative impact, the cumulative effect is 12 vehicles exiting in the morning, 12 in the afternoon. Correct, but when you, just to add to that, it's going to be a decrease because currently it's two-way coming in and out of Ryder Street, but now we're having it exit. So although there are nine more vehicles exiting, there's eight less vehicles entering. So when you think about it, there's a total number of vehicles on the roadway. There's a negatively increase. Does that answer your question? I think so. Yeah, so the changing of that roadway from being two-way to one-way is less primarily driving. Even though the outflow, the outgoing traffic will be considerably higher, it'll be offset because there won't be any incoming traffic. Yeah, that is an accurate statement. Correct. There's an increase in exiting traffic and decrease or elimination of entering traffic. And the entering traffic has to come off mess up. Correct. Mr. Chair. Please. So just to rephrase what Mr. Luke has said, there's not a net increase. The traffic is just going in a different direction. Yeah. Along, Ms. LaRoyer. Hello, yes. Anne LaRoyer, 12 Pierce Street. I just wanted to comment on a couple of things. There is a lot of traffic at the intersection of Pierce, Ryder, and Mass Ave, both pedestrian, bicycle, and cars. A lot of students do cross at Forest Street from across Mass Ave. They don't all go across at Appleton where the school monitors are. A lot of them just walk down part of Mass Ave and then cross over Forest Street, as well as adults and other people that are just around the area. There often are problems with cars slamming on their brakes to stop for people crossing at the Forest, Burton, Mass Ave intersection. So that is an area that's of quite concern both in the morning and in the middle of the afternoon from 2.30 to 4.00, roughly, when the students are coming out of Addison, it's over a spread of time. I think the students leave at different times and it seems like it's over quite a long period. The other question I had about visitor parking, visitors to the new site, they may be assigned to park on Mass Ave, but there is no overnight parking on Mass Ave. So what about overnight visitors? Where are they gonna park? And there undoubtedly will be overnight visitors there. So that's a question that I don't think has been addressed. I'm still also very concerned about the whole safety of both pedestrians and bicyclists in this whole general area. It's kind of a crazy zone. People speed down Mass Ave and they speed through that forest Mass Ave intersection without really realizing what's happening and there's a turn there. Cars have driven into the laundromat on the corner. There have been close calls and one death just farther up at Appleton, as you know. So this whole area is a difficult transportation site. Thank you. Thank you. Just following up on the question of the Mass Ave crossing. Ms. Lyman, I don't know if you know that the group that is currently researching the intersection of Mass Ave and Appleton, do you know if that extends down as far as Forest Street? Yes, it does. I know it's called the Mass Ave. It's Mass Ave, Appleton Design Review Group, but they have extended the purview of that study. I believe it's all the way to Forest and Lowell and it does include this entire area. Okay. And I believe they are meeting next week on Thursday night. And if that is not posted on the time calendar yet, it will be in the next few days. Okay. Because they would have more influence over issues on Mass Ave than we will have. And then Ms. O'Connor, how would the question of overnight guests be handled? We can't, we will not have overnight guest parking. This isn't a hotel. It's a residential apartment building. If people stay on Mass Ave and park overnight, you'll get ticketed like anybody else in the town of Arlington, that parks on a public way after a certain hour. There's nothing we can do about that. So if somebody has relatives in from out of town, is there what kind of advice can the, can we offer to those residents, to those residents asking what they can do with their- They can park the car at Alewife and go pick them up and bring them to the site. I don't know what else could be done, Mr. Chairman. I know that's what I do when I have guests. I have very limited parking at my house. And I know that the town allows for eight overnight parking waivers per year, but it's specific to the abutting public way. But I don't know if that would necessarily apply to this property. Do you have a sense as to whether that would apply here? I don't think it would, although the Mass Ave connector goes out to Mass Ave. I don't know that that would be considered abutting. The property would be considered abutting a public way. The easement abuts the public way. Right. But I don't necessarily think that the property abuts the public way. I may go ahead and forward that question on to the, slide forward to see what their interpretation is on that regulation. And then, yeah, we have discussed sort of how to, you know, how to try to calm some traffic in this area. We obviously have the traffic table at the intersection of Rider Street and the outgoing driveway from the project, but in regards to the other aspects of speed and whatnot in this neighborhood. You know, a lot of that is existing and is not something that necessarily falls under the purview of our review having almost been hit by landscaping trucks myself in this neighborhood. So there's something that needs to be addressed a little bit more by the town in general, rather than as a part of this process. Mr. Morris, you have your hand back up. Yes, Mr. Chair. Thanks, Steve Moore, Piedmont Street and a member of the Arlington Tree Committee. I'd like to applaud this developer for the extensive landscaping and tree-focused landscaping that this project has added. I had mentioned this before at one of the earlier meetings. This is very much in line with concerns of the town and town residents lately in terms of the caring about the impervious surfaces that was mentioned earlier. I think it might've been by Ms. Contreras or maybe it was Ms. Webber, I'm not sure. And the fact that they are working along the lines of an irrigation system to maintain where possible, maintain the plantings is a smart design. I would make one suggestion that as much as possible that the project has large shade trees as the plantings as opposed to small, more decorative flowering trees because this building will of course create a lot of reflection of sun and light and the large shade tree should help mitigate some of that in time when they grow large. I know it wouldn't take a while to get there but generally I just wanted to give kudos to the folks for having done such an extensive landscaping work here. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Moore. I know Mr. Zick isn't with us. Mr. Conner, do you know or I don't know if Ms. Kraus can address some of the tree selections? I believe the last hearing when Mr. Moore raised this that Mr. Zick mentioned that there were shade trees and not ornamental trees. Okay. I will add that there are some ornamental trees but there are a large number of shade trees as well in the mix, yeah. Great, thank you. Are there further questions from the public? Yes, Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes, sir, I'll add to the record, please. Yep, Peter Maradiano, 17 Back Road. There's a few things that I actually been thinking about but also wanted to bring up to the board's attention. Over on Back Road, I know that they have mentioned that they're gonna try to enforce not allowing vehicles to take it right on to rider leaving the building and then making way down back, but also takes somebody to visit traffic jam, somebody to punch it in their GPS and they're gonna say, oh, take it right on back. I know we have talked about mentioning like, why don't we put up a camera or something or enforcing that? Or why won't the developers allow the tenants to have identifying markers on their car, like a sticker or something, something so I could say, hey, somebody was driving down back when that's supposed to be, and it's otherwise it'd be extremely difficult to identify those newer vehicles coming down the road and such. So I guess my question is, can they provide something like that or have them make the tenants put a sticker on their vehicle or something? Is that correct? I think we said told the right of street residents that we would put up no right turn signs and my experience is that people generally obey traffic signs. So that's what we're proposing to do. I work in Cambridge every day and I drive down Mass Ave every morning and I see more people running red lights than I'd like to see. So I mean, I think it'd be very easy if it's someone to just take a right and really not care, but and also a part of like the traffic study did the traffic study include the DPW vehicles coming and going? Sorry, it's having a hard time getting off mute. At the time of the study when we took the counts, there were construction vehicles and landscape vehicles coming down the road. So we captured all vehicles at that time of the study. Is that include DPW vehicles? That includes all vehicles that were on that on Ryder Street. Okay. I don't know if it specifically includes the temporary relocation of the DPW onto Ryder Street or not. Because they show up in the morning and the landscaping company in the corner, Masioli leaves every morning. So there's about 10 plus vehicles leaving, then you've got all the DPW trucks coming and going. So I just wanted to know if those were actually all included because there's seems like there's a lot more vehicles leaving than just, what was it? 15, 12? So that vehicle count was specifically coming from the site onto Ryder Street, not traffic for other butters onto Ryder Street. Okay. Because also I know that you know that the DPW has reclaimed that area and I guess they're gonna be there for about three years. There's now a recycling program that got moved there. I went down there. It was this past, it was May 8th. I believe I went down there and I, because I saw there was a huge traffic jam of cars. There was about five vehicles on Beck Road waiting to get into the DPW. And then there was about three vehicles on Ryder trying to get in. And so there was quite a bit of a traffic jam going on down there. And I ended up talking to somebody down there and they said they expect 240 vehicles every recycling program day. So that seems like a lot of vehicles to be coming up and down those roads, you know, especially on one single day, you know. So I just don't know if this traffic study has per se been, you know, accounted for everything that's really going on down here. I like Mr. Hanlon's analogy about this being the Wild West down here because it really is. There's a lot more going on down here that I would love to discuss that. I just won't bring up, but. And then let's see. I'm just actually, I'm really glad though to know though that I don't know if it was niche engineering, but whoever was trying to design the two way traffic when we went and met with Julia Mayrak and Brian and Brian gave me some of these graphs that they were trying to show us that now that they realized though that like I've been saying the whole time that the road wasn't wide enough. And actually it's ironic, we're all standing on the corner after that meeting and we saw Mr. Brian driving up the road and he had to stop because another car was trying to pull on and the other car pulling on the rider had to back away to let him out. So I'm really glad that that was addressed, but so then the fire department came in and said that they're going to have to keep the road wide to be able to support the fire to support EMS leaving, correct? At least I believe the document we saw was for the ladder truck. Okay, yeah, and so I mean, yeah, I guess other than that, I would like the order to be some more, I guess some, you know, I guess I would like to see more enforcement as far as, you know, being able to keep track of tenants, whoever that do take a ride on to, rider on to back because I just know this is going to happen because unless this, unless the, is there still going to be a speed table there? Yes, there is. So there's going to be a speed table. Is there any way to put like almost like an edge on the speed table or like an arrow or like a do not enter sign going to the right or something? Cause like I said, especially today's day and age, I see more people run red lights going down Mass Ave and people don't, people are always in a rush today and it's just, you're seeing that more apparent everywhere. So to me safety is very important, but also I'd like to, you know, not see, you know, people take advantage of our area because I organize my neighborhood to have my road, our road repaved and it came out of our pocket. And now the towns were using the area down here and now we've got all this brand new foot traffic. So, yeah, I guess I'd like to know if there could be anything else further down about that. Thank you. Yeah, certainly I would bring your concerns about the use of the temporary DBW facility to the DBW director and the recycling team because that is certainly something they should have in mind when they are scheduling events at this location that it is nowhere near as easy to access as Grove Street was and will be again. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I have a question for Ms. Lynam if she will. One of the things that is happening here is that everything is happening here. There's a study about traffic at Appleton and Massachusetts. There's a Mill Creek study that's going on. You would sort of have to be a full-time Arlington Gadfly to be able to keep track of all of the things that are happening where people are looking at different slices of the problems that this area has. We have a very small part in that. If this project were to be abandoned tomorrow, most of the problems that we've been discussing would continue to exist. And they have to be solved by the town working together with citizens in various committees. And we think of outreach largely in terms of the committees that we have. But we have here at least a group of citizens who are energized and interested in all of the things that are going on. And I'm wondering if the town has any way of being able to sort of steer people into the various things that are happening here and to let Mr. T or others who are willing to take the lead really keep up with what's going on. Because the truth is that neither the applicant nor the board is going to be able to address all this, that it's a town-wide problem that has lots and lots of different aspects. And the people who are talking to us need to be talking to others as well to make it work. And I'm wondering if the town has any way to help them do that, to let them know what the things are and when the meetings are taking place or somehow create a connection so that the people who are interested can keep themselves informed and influence the groups that are studying the problems that in one way or another are affecting them. Absolutely. So, I mean, we, I think there are a number of current planning efforts going on right now. As you mentioned, the design review group for that section of the MASAP corridor has begun. They're studying it right now. I haven't attended those meetings, so I don't know exactly where they're at. But I do think I'm happy to put the residents in touch with Daniel Amstutz. He's our transportation, senior transportation planner and he is our contact for that group. There are other planning efforts that are going on. So, we are just embarking on a housing plan. I would love to add the residents from this area to the contact list. We're conducting focus groups and we have a planning event. We have an event coming up on June 9th about that plan. We also are starting an open space and recreation plan and there's another event on June 10th for that. So, there are different events that are, there are different planning efforts going on. And then as I mentioned, the Minuteman Bikeway Study which is going to cover the entire length of the bikeway. That's another plan that, because we are just putting out an RFP we don't have a consultant or a plan or a timeline for this project. Yeah, but these are all sort of concurrent things that getting directly to residents and getting feedback from residents on these plans is always a challenge. And I'm always happy to talk with community groups and inform people on when things are coming up with the process so they can participate either remotely or in surveys or in actual community events. I had one other comment that I was going to share and I'm sort of losing my track. I thought, oh, the one other thing I want to mention is that we do advertise all of these things through the town notice email system. And so if people are not, find, now again, that's a very passive way of getting news out about these things but I do, I would encourage everybody to sign up for the town notice email system because that is how we, that is another way of sharing when community events or planning events and planning processes are going out. So I believe you can go to the, if you go to Arlingtonma.gov and under connect, you can find up for email subscription lists and then town notice emails are an option. That is a really good way of doing it. And we also promote all of these things on the town's Facebook and Twitter accounts as well. But I will put my email address in my profile picture here. So if somebody, if a number of residents from the neighborhood wanted to reach out, I'm happy to make sure that we reach out to you as these different events are happening. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Moore, just to piggyback on what Ms. Lennon had to say, I would also suggest folks take a quick review of the annual report. The annual report just gets sort of a general focus of what various committees and groups are doing. And of course the focus is looking backward. However, they often talk about plans for the next year. So it's not a bad one stop shopping kind of place to get info. Thank you for that. Ms. Contreras? I mean, I appreciate what Mr. Hanlon just spoke to and asked for us all to receive more information about that. I don't think that the ZBA and the applicant have a small part. I don't think this is a small part. I think what is really determined for us here is that this is an influx of 120 plus units. And I don't know how many people that will be. My guess is somewhere in the range of 130 to 300 people who then become residents. But then my concern is that we've only talked about residents. We haven't talked about what is proportionally the appropriate accountability and responsibility of the developers or the people who own those units because we're just talking about residents. And so, I know that Ms. Contreras like put us in touch with various people but I'm very concerned about the longer term responsibility and accountability measures that as in a butter, I can't hold these developers too. I can't hold, when people sort of misbehave at nine rider that's only like 20 units or so. I have no power to do anything about that. And so on this private way, it's really concerning to not have the applicant thinking through the experiences of the daily life and traversing of their tenants and their tenants' guests and the people who will be visiting the sites and the abutters. We've heard so much about car traffic. It does not matter if it only matters if they greatly reduce car traffic here and they're not going to be able to do that. I'm really concerned about the status quo not being acceptable and not being safe. And I have not heard in an appreciable way like how the developer, how the applicant has thought through the experiences of their tenants, their tenants' guests, the delivery services, the caregivers for the young and old who come and have to park somewhere during the day, their work bar tenants and the community members who are visiting the new corridor. And I think that's just, that is something that is still really not sitting well with me, not just as in a butter. I am here at my window every day worrying about people I do not know when I probably should be worrying about some things that are under my control. And so I just, that's my plea at this point is that I really want to have people, I wanna see the developer walking through here and asking us questions on the ground about the experience at this unique ecology because it's not safe right now. It's not gonna be safe when they put in 120 units. And that is of deep concern. We had a death occur a block away from here. It's, this is just not, it's so serious. And I'm just hoping that the board can assist us in addressing this concern is extremely local. I mean, I can't, it's 400 feet. It's so local. Thank you. I really just wanna express my concern here. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you. There are other public comments at this point being none. I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment for this evening. So moving forward, the next time we would be gathering be Tuesday, June 1st. I would like to ask the board sort of the issues that were raised this evening and things that we have seen up to this point where are the points that we need additional input and clarification from the applicant in regards to helping inform us about what we would want to and need to include in a possible decision on this project. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. I've been sort of impressed by the discussion that we've had tonight about guest parking. And with all due respect, I don't think that if you're in Arlington Heights being told that you can park at Alewife and have somebody come get you is a completely adequate answer to that. And we're looking for limited parking here on site. And I would like to the applicant to at least think a little bit more as to another way of dealing with the guest parking. I think that many of the people who commented tonight know in their hearts exactly where the guest parking is going to be and it's not going to be at Alewife. And it's the town with their overnight band that kind of creates the problem. But that band has been there for a long time and is likely to stay there for a long time. And I just, when we're looking at giving parking waivers and getting the parking down, I think having zero consideration for guest parking is not very realistic. And I hope that some more thought can be given as to a reasonable way of accommodating that concern. I'm first to the board. I know from my perspective, I know there's a question, I think I'm a broken record here, but the utility polls that are in the rights of way, that to me, those are sort of the things that really make me concerned, especially where we are going to be increasing volumes on these interior roadways. I just wanna, I know you're working with Eversource on making the polls more visible, but I would like to see some more information about how they can be made visible and how they're going to be made more crash-worthy, both in terms of the utility poll and in terms of the vehicles that possibly could be impacting them. And I did like the recommendation about the speed table and possibly the surface of that, reinforcing the left turn only. I think it'd be good to see, and I had mentioned before the adding some additional painting to the pavement in areas where there's to be no parking to help reinforce that there will be no parking in those areas. I have in mind notes to, I'm gonna reach out to Michael Rademacher, who's the head of the DPW in regards to some of the issues that were raised this evening to make sure that he understands them and also that the recycling and how that is impacting the local residents. And I'm also gonna reach out to the select board to ask about the overnight parking waiver and whether that would, is something that would be allowed for use by the residents here to park on Massachusetts Avenue. There's one other note here. Those are for the ones that I had on my list. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. Well, one of the things that I think we, that we need in is a revised and pretty near final waiver request. And I'm looking forward to June and the executive order that allows us to be meeting like this is set to expire is my understanding on June 15th. And we are now down to the point where when we go back to the beginning of the meeting, there were not very many points of controversy that were left between our experts and the experts retained by the applicant. And I think that we need to begin thinking about an end game here and it would be nice. I don't know if it's possible, but it would be nice to be able to finish up a little early so that we don't have to go into the uncertain era that is going to happen sometime immediately after June 15th. I don't know if we're in a position of being able to say that June 1st is our last meeting, but I think we should all be thinking that we're now pretty much near the end game and it's time to begin thinking about how to wrap everything up and put this to the point where we can close the hearing and the board can then take it as much of the 40 days it has to actually render a decision as it needs. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Ms. Cress. Chair and client, sorry. I just wanted to bring up that we have not received responses from the applicant to our April 13th letter. So although the traffic and civil and site design comments have all been resolved, there are still some wetlands and regulatory comments that remain outstanding and they weren't discussed tonight. So they didn't come up in conversation, but I just wanted to bring that up now just to ensure that they were discussed at the last ZVA meeting. I think the applicant verbally addressed a couple of them, but we haven't received anything in writing. So there still remain a few outstanding comments. Okay. Ms. O'Connor, can you follow up on that? Yes, I will. I thought there had been a response, but I will follow up. Thank you. Let's ask Mr. Havity, are there other considerations that we should be exploring in the next two, three weeks? Not that I can think of, Mr. Chairman, but obviously you're gonna have to get going on starting a draft decision, which I will do, but I don't think I'll be able to have it ready for June 1st. And Ms. O'Connor, as Mr. Havity mentioned, just the final waiver request. Yeah, I'm working on that now, Mr. Klein. Perfect. Anything further from the board that we wanna make sure we get wrapped up and reviewed in the next couple of weeks? Seeing none. So with that, we'll entertain a motion to continue tonight's hearing on 1165 RMS Tuesday, June 1st, 2021 at 7.30 p.m. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Hanlon. Second. Thank you, Mr. DuPont. Go to the board, Mr. DuPont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. O'Rourke. Aye. Mr. Revlak. Aye. Mr. Ford. Aye. Mr. Chair, vote the aye. So we are continued on 1165 RMS Tuesdays Avenue for June 1st. And then before we close for the evening, I just wanna review the list of upcoming meetings and milestones that the board has in front of it. So next Tuesday, May 25th at 7.30 p.m. will be the first hearing for, I believe it's 83 Palmer Street. And we have a continued hearing for 34 Marathon Street. Now Tuesday, June 1st at 7.30 p.m. will be the continuance of 1165 RMS Avenue. Thursday, June 10th at 7.30 p.m. will be the continuance of Thorn Dyke Place. And then Friday, June 25th is currently the scheduled closing date for the public hearing on Thorn Dyke Place. And Friday, July 2nd is the closing date for the public hearing on 1165 RMS Tuesdays Avenue. Now believe those are our only dates. Rick, are you aware of any other upcoming dates? We have nothing pending, Mr. Chairman. Okay. Perfect. So then with that, I would like to thank everyone for their participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. Appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting, especially wish to thank Rizala Relay, Vincent Lee, and Kelly Lanema for all their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting. Please note the purpose of the board's reporting of the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of the proceedings. It's our understanding that reporting 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 zbaatown.arlington.ma.us. That email address is also listed on the Zoning Board of Appeals website. And to conclude tonight's meeting, I'll look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thanks, Mr. Hanlon. Have a second. Second. Thanks, Mr. Revillac. Mr. Dupont. Hi. Mr. Hanlon. Hi. Mills. Hi. Thank you. Mr. Revillac? Hi. The board? Hi. Chair votes aye. We are adjourned. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for all your- Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. O'Connell. Thank you, Mr. Mills. Thank you all. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. See many of you tomorrow night at town meeting.