 Okay, Jack, we're good to go. Good to go. All right. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of May 12, 2021 based on Governor Baker's executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. GL chapter 30 a section 20 and signed Thursday, March 12, 2020. This planning board meeting is being held virtually using the zoom platform. My name is Jack jumpsick and as a chair the Amherst planning board. I'm calling this meeting to order at 637pm. This meeting is being recorded and is available via Amherst media live stream minutes are being taken. We're members I will take a roll call when I call your name and me yourself answer him firmly and then place yourselves back on mute Maria chow. Here. Long here. Andrew McDougal present. Doug Marshall present. Janet McGowan here. Johanna Newman here. Great and myself. So board members of technical issues arise please let Pam know technical difficulties occur we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. Discussion may be suspended while the technical issues are addressed and the minutes will note if this happened. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. Please use the raise hand to call you on on you to speak after speaking remember to remute yourself opportunity for public comment will be provided during the general public comment period and reserve for comments regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Public comment may also be heard at other appropriate times during the meeting. Please be aware of the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. If you wish to make a comment join the meeting via the zoom teleconferencing mode. And it's also listed on the town website via the calendar listing for this meeting, or you can go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda was list the zoom link at the top of the page. Please indicate if you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button. When public comment is listed if you have joined the zoom meeting use a telephone. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your telephone when called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address. Put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Oh, when finished me. Sorry, residents can express their views for up to three minutes and at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their a lot of time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. So, we can just get into it. We have no minutes as part of item one and then item two is the public comment. Good. And I'm looking to see. Okay, I see two hands raised Elizabeth verling and Susanna must read so you want to start with Elizabeth and state your name and address please. Elizabeth, can you unmute yourself. Yes, this is Elizabeth verling at 36 cottage street. And I would like to speak in strong support of the inclusionary zoning bylaw that's been discussed and will be the subject of the public hearing next week. And I'm encouraged to see this being developed, especially considering that it was not even on the list of majors owning priorities put forward by the CRC. So I want to thank the planning department and the board for this very important effort and important bylaw. I would like to comment concerns parking downtown in particular with regard to the consideration of even more high rise residential development that this mainly seems to promise to be the infill envisioned between one East pleasant and Kendrick place. The parking study by the done by the town, as documented on the town website was conducted prior to occupation of the aforementioned buildings and I'm just made to see the town even considering building another large residential building without consideration for parking. I don't understand the justification for this approach. The newly proposed building would result in a net loss of approximately 30 permitted parking spaces as a will occupy what is currently a parking lot of approximately 45 spaces, and the new building will only providing 16. In addition, there seems to be an assumption that the student population to which the building is targeted, not require cars. I provide the data that 26% of students living on campus have cars. And they do not even need to go off campus to buy food. It's not hard to do the math to determine that more than 16 parking spaces are required for a building with beds for 134 students. It seems to me as if the developer is taking advantage of the poor town parking regulations, just as the same developer took advantage of the poor setback regulations when building one East pleasant. In fact, at the last planning board meeting, the developer essentially blamed the poor streetscape at one East pleasant on the town, saying they met the standards. So both that the town requires more in the future from developers and taxes as the burden of parking will then fall on the residential taxpayers when a parking garage is finally unavoidable. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. Susanna is that your name and address please. Hi Susanna, can you unmute yourself. Hi Susanna. Am I unmuted. You are very good. I'm Susan. I'm a spread 38 North prospect street. I would just like to thank the planning department for finally getting up the website that talks about the various zoning amendments and helps us keep track of where each of them stands in the process. One of the things I would like to mention is that it would be much more useful if the various letters and public comments you have received could be sorted according to the amendment to which they pertain because it's pretty tedious to go through the whole mess of stuff to try to tease out. I'm not saying about each of the amendments, but I am glad that is there and I thank you for your effort on that. Thank you. Thank you. So, with that said we got item three zoning priorities. Any discussion about proposed changes to the mixed use buildings section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw definition standards and criteria and proposed change to parking requirements section 7.00 of the zoning bylaw for mixed use buildings. So we have an update is that Nate or. Sure, sure. Thanks everyone. This is Nate Maloy. I'm a planner with the town and I'll share my screen in a minute. I forgot where we left off honestly with mixed use buildings. Sorry for not introducing you and they. That's all right, Jack. The mixed use building standards when the CRC reviewed them recently. And, you know, they still had some comments and so we're bringing it back to the planning board for your review staff feels like the mixed use building bylaw is, is, is, you know, almost in its, in its current condition to be recommended as a zoning proposal and so I think, you know, we can go over the points at the CRC still questions and I think, you know, the, you know, what I have observed as presenting it to the planning board and the CRC is that there's some inconsistency of opinion between the planning board, the public and the CRC, in terms of what, what standards and conditions need to be in a mixed use, the mixed use bylaw. I think that's something that can be part of the discussion so let me share my screen. Is that is the bylaw visible to everyone and legible as well. Yes. Can you go to the top. You know, last time, or I think we discussed that the mixed use buildings. Really there's just, you know, a provision in the use chart that has somewhat of a definition and then a few standards and conditions and the idea is to essentially everything in red is existing and it's being removed and then, you know, what we're proposing is a new definition, an actual definition of a mixed use building in section 12. You know, keeping that management plan is required. There is a condition right now and, you know, in the BL districts, not a budding BG and commercial that if you know there's 10 units, if there's more than 10 units above the first floor. It needs a, you know, a special permit and that's something we're removing recommending removing as it seems. But right now if we have more standards and conditions, and then there's some provisions about gross floor area and what can be residential use. So, you know, with the definition we're saying a mixed use building containing one or more dwelling units. And so essentially, you know, if there's residential or parking, and then non residential so one or more dwelling unit in combination with permitted non residential and parking where no more than 50% of the ground or first floor should be a combination of residential parking. So that's where the definition, which there isn't right now in the bylaw so essentially, you know the 50% is a big one saying you know 50% and no more than 50% could be parking or residential. So right now you know we can have a mixed use building with a small office space, and the rest of it could be residential or, you know, on the first floor. And the other piece here is that the uses the residential use and parking use should be at the rear of the building or not visible from the public way or areas customarily used by pedestrians in the public. And so, you know it's not just the right of way it's also if you know the building has walkways or plazas on some of the sides of the building, if they're providing retail, we'd like to have those front on those areas. A change is saying that for sloping lots or lots with frontage on more than one right of way, the permit granting authority shall determine which floor of the building contains the non residential use or parking use. We're trying to accommodate buildings that may actually be on a corner, or where there's topography change and depending on the design of the building. It's really you know the permit granting authority now has the ability to say okay what's the first floor and then they can regulate that 50%. The parking has been refined to say for vehicles bicycles and other modes. And so there was a question previously about, you know what is the parking use. The non residential use is you know everything, you know the units themselves and incidental space, excluding bicycle storage, and then the non residential use is really any commercial retail, or other uses permitted in in the bylaw. And, you know I think the, the, the next so that's the definition so that's you know a standalone definition that could be an article 12. If there's any resource committee. You know it. I think they think the definition is pretty refined right now and okay the terms of standards and conditions. You know the product open space staff has kept it in in there that you know 10% of the building footprint including areas under upper floors be provided as open space. And it's open space that would be used by the occupants and visitors. So, it can be an areas that are driveways for HVAC areas. A change is saying that an applicant may wave or modify so decrease or increase this provision through a special permit with the permit granting authority for compelling reasons of safety aesthetics and site design and so those reasons of safety aesthetics and site design is referenced other places in the bylaw for the ability to wave a standard or condition. I think that the community resource committee feels that the 10% you know doesn't quite work. And they're not sure, you know, if, if this is necessary. You know staff thinks that there's a difference between a setback and open space. And so for instance, on one he's pleasant. You know, it's really close to the setback right but there's a plaza underneath the upper floor on the entrance to the restaurant so it actually has product open space even though it has no setback. You know, the idea here that the idea that could be waived or modified is important because with mixed use buildings. You know, there's a setback that has an implication for the streetscape and build the distance from curve to building front, but then there's also the ability to say okay well what are the uses the non residential uses of a mixed use building and do we actually want to carve out space that may or may not be in the setback to provide you know areas for dining or for extra sitting or for residents and so you know I think you know it could be that this could be waived or modified without the provision of a special permit we could say that it could just be waived or modified with the permit granting authority. And that's part of the review and not required an additional special permit so that's something to consider but you know staff feels like having this provision is important. Just because the open space is different than setback. We're saying that the developer, we move on to out to our amenities we're saying the developer is required to provide shall be required to provide out to our amenities that as benefit residents and users are the building so again occupants and visitors. So this bedroom count, we've, we've refined this a little bit and the apartments, you know the staff planning staff is also is working on updating the apartment section of the bylaw and so this bedroom count language is now consistent between both apartments and mixed use buildings, saying that no more than 50% of the total dwelling units shall have the same bedroom count. So last time was a difference between size or type. We're saying bedroom count, which is, I think, clear with the exception of a mixed use building containing less than five units so for a small mixed use building, you know they don't have to comply with this provision. And again we're also saying that the permit granting authority may waver modify this if the units are affordable. So we're allowing parking within buildings, as long as contained within building so you know, there has been a discussion do we want to have parking in a building. And if we look at the new building 11 of 13 East pleasant street that's being proposed. There's retail in the front and then there's parking, you know within the building in the back of the building and you know if you know staff thinks that that's that's reasonable that there be parking in buildings and you know there's been some discussion do we want to provide or allow parking within buildings. And I think it's reasonable it could be within the building or in the site, but given our other build out requirement you know build out standards are dimensional standards and BG. Someone may want to a bigger building and actually a parking covered. We also added another provision here with parking. And again this is going to be consistent with apartment buildings adequate parking shall be provided. The amount of parking spaces provided for each will say mixed use building or dwelling unit should be based on factors including but not limited to bedroom count analysis of traffic impact reports proximity to proximity to public transit proximity to public parking, including on and off street parking availability of alternative modes of transportation, tenant lease restrictions and shared or lease parking as regulated in accordance with section 7.2. And so you know this provision right here is saying that there does need to be parking and and we're giving the permit granting authority more guidance as to what what to use to actually discuss parking with an applicant and in section 7.7. And it would say that mixed use buildings and apartments are exempt from the requirement of, you know, two spaces per unit, but that they would have to comply with, with this, you know, providing parking studies or, you know, more information. And so, you know, if a building was what makes this building is proposed the permit granting authority could say okay we really want to know if the applicant owns other buildings or manages them. What is the breakdown of number of parking permits issued for the tenants, how many tenants do have cars and so those are things that could be asked as part of the analysis. And one thing that remains the same is that the permit granting authority shall apply the design review provisions of section, you know, the design review principles in section 3.2040 and 3.2041. And, you know, this is a change in that, before it was may be required and we're keeping this as a shall be applied and so, you know, again the CRCs discuss this and staff thinks that, you know, the design review principles and sections 11.24 for cycling review have enough. There are enough provisions about design of a building in terms of its massing in relationship to context that the permit granting authority, the planning board can, you know, discuss this with an applicant so maybe a building does need to be set back a little bit for certain things need to change based on some of these design provisions and it's something that hasn't been done necessarily in the past that strongly but I think if we're saying that it shall apply it that it becomes. It becomes a tool, a better tool that can be used by the planning planning board. And so I think that's, I can wrap it up and just take comments. Okay. Um, I have just, I have two comments. And I'm wondering about the parking being limited to 50%. Where we know that there are concerns with parking, right generally where these mixed use buildings would go, and also I'm wondering, kind of dovetail with that provisions for like basement parking. How would that work. Could, you know, should that be encouraged. You know, as was done for the. The central parking garage that we have there by boat word. And the other question. Or our comment, I guess, so it looks like with regard to the spring steep development by our co archipelago and a mere southeast street those I believe those are all kind of monochromatic with regard to the the bedrooms and so just clarifying that those buildings would not be approved with this type of bylaw in place. Right. So like a mixed use building, right, or an apartment building, you know, we have that provision couldn't have, you know, 51 bedroom apartments and so really we're trying to encourage, you know, they could have just half the one size and happy the other another bedroom count but really is trying to encourage, you know, a mix of different unit sizes. And also that could help with, you know, different tenants. The parking yeah staff has considered whether the 50% should be waivable or modifiable. And I think Jack I think it's a good discussion, especially given the new building that's being proposed, you know, would they does the new building meet this 50% and it's pretty close depending on what you count as the office and fitness room on 11 to 13 he's pleasant count as non residential space and what you know how do you add that up so you know I think the real that the the issue right now is that there really isn't any definition of what how do you know what proportion of space is dedicated to retailer commercial in a mixed use building and how is it oriented to the street or areas used by the public and so I think about the 50% is the right percentage. You know it seems like it was who would work for most, and then maybe there needs to be a provision that it could be waived. Somehow. Yeah, I think to me it seems like, you know, parking is always coming up and to make, you know, give some flexibility for adding parking within a building would be a good thing. So looking to other board members Janet please. And then Doug and then Andrew. Thank you, thank you, Jack, and thank you, Nate. You know, Jack, I wonder, can we go like section by section and hear people's comments on each, because I have sort of different I have like five different comments on different sections and like I don't want to keep jumping around and then Doug has I think so could like could we start from the beginning. Should I scroll, I can scroll up. I don't want to, I mean, I thought if we go if we go section by section and hear comments on it, and then move on to another one. Does that does that that seems easy, like more focused to me, or I can give you my big list. I'm ready for a big list. Yeah, I would say I would just roll with a big list Janet. I think it just be easier and quicker I think. Okay, so I remember voting on a mixed use amendment in town meeting in 2016 so I went back and looked at that. The, the recommendation then, which was supported by the select board playing department planning board was only 40% residential. And so the idea was the first floor would be 60% you know commercial retail office space and then also the recommendation was that 25% of the bedroom units would be 25% would be four bedrooms and I think that was an effort not to have a building kind of overcome by student housing and so that. That went through 10 meeting I think I got a majority but it didn't get two thirds and so one of my questions was for the planning department is like, why didn't, why are we like, going from 40% residential so the ground floor is mostly for retail or business or commercial. And why did we, why is it being dropped to less. I mean 60% for commercial and 40% residential like so what's the thinking there because I think, I mean Jack was even considering going, you know, less on retail if we want to have more parking so you know we're thinking, you know 50% is dedicated to you know retail commercial or the non residential piece right and 50% residential or parking so. So did the ground floor be parking like half of it residential parking the other half commercial parking. Like that was, I'm a little lost on the, like, what, what could parking be, could it just be a parking, you know half for, I mean, is that possible. No it's not possible. Okay. So anyway I'm just wondering like previously that you know you were looking for 60% being commercial retail office space and 40% residential so the first floor is really mostly for business and then the rest of it is residential so I was just kind of I looked at the old one and I thought well, everybody was on board with that and so I wonder what has shifted. Some of it is the reality of how you know, if we're requiring that 60% of the first floor be a retail use. You know that could be really limiting in terms of how do you fill that space, you know we're, you know, so you have a building that may only have a small frontage but as a big lot and so how you know, how do they fill the back part of that space with a nonresidential use or retail use and so you know some mixed use bylaws have some flexibility and they don't say you know 60% or higher because if the market is not, you know, if we don't have a market for that for the retail or the nonresidential uses, you know, what's happening there, is it just going to be vacant space and so. So, so part of the concern that I have, and you know I think that Kendrick place brought some office space to downtown but one East pleasant, like knocked out 12 or 15 businesses. And then this new 11 East pleasant, there's three or four businesses and so when people talk about viability or retail. A lot of people shop, a lot of people moved elsewhere so those businesses may have been small and you know I you know like the Amherst music supported this family for decades and they closed. You know King Taylor's is now Amherst. And so, you know, if there's no, if there's no retail spaces, you know, and we're saying oh retail is dead but we're actually use putting in basically what look almost like apartment houses replacing small houses it's kind of a chicken and egg, and I'd like to keep the retail spaces there. You know for, and if we're, if we're reducing for closing small retail shops and reducing, they can't come back they can't fit into this space anymore. And they're like oh nothing's viable well there's no place for them and so I think that we should make some more space and for small businesses that were functioning beforehand and close because either they moved or they were had no room so to that so my pitch would be, why don't we do 60% on the first floor for retail commercial professional. The other thing was I wondered about the idea of limiting the number of four bedroom units like I don't know how that would apply to 11 keys pleasant but I just thought, you know we're trying to figure out ways to make sure that we have mixed families, single people students and not like a monolith of any one type in any community, or any like area of the town so I wondered if that might be something that the board wanted to talk about. The other thing I was, I didn't think about but when you mentioned it was, I didn't think that setback setbacks was different from project open space, just from reading this. Maybe that could be made more clear. What else. And then on the exception language for making smaller project open space. I just think like, you know, I think we can just stick with the standard and enforce it and if you know the developer is always going to ask for an exception and then we're going to be, you know, giving it or not giving it and kind of creating inconsistency and it's hard for me to understand the situation where you couldn't have 10% open space on the lot like what would those reasons be so my feeling was like, let's just keep it simple and be clear and just say okay, this is not an exception sort of situation. So that those are some ideas. I think the parking is a huge issue. And I'd love to talk about it a little more separately because it's kind of rewriting our park section article seven or parking bylaw to the point where it was unclear to me when you would require two units to parking spaces per unit. And I thought that was sort of a massive change that we hadn't talked about our scene. And my recommendation would be not to do this now because we don't really have the data set that supports it. Again, you'll have the planning board, you know, waiting into like, you know, in night in 2020 who is what bedrooms and who is using what and you know these buildings are built for decades and we can't predict what the future will be and, you know, we know that more people have cars and Amerson they did 10 years ago we know that fewer people using buses. We know that we have almost 5000 more students going to UMass. We know that driverless cars are coming in EVs and so I don't know, you know, all the trends are kind of going towards more car not less. And we don't, and we know that students have lots, you know, drive a lot undergraduates at sound place. It's completely full the lot is full and so I don't know I just I just thought I had the impression from, I don't know if this is last year and COVID times but when we were talking about parking with me to that was pretty clear that we would need to have parking studies. You know, we knew the parking bylaw had to be changed but we also need, we need studies and they might be studies for different areas of town, or different types of users. I think that's like a huge issue that has kind of showed up here and if you want to move this forward I think it'd be best just to take it out. And, you know, to me I was just, I was kind of overwhelmed like it's literally the 15th or 16th zoning bylaw change, we will have be dealing with him, you know, in this year. And I just thought, I don't know, I just thought, let's not do it here. Although I did like the line parking will be adequate. I was like, can you stop there, you know, kind of thing. Jack, could I just have a minute to just, I just want to respond to one or two. Well, I would just say that with the parking, I, I, it is very debatable from what Janet says and from my observations that I feel like there are less cars. I know from my family, there's less cars there's not, you know, I just know that and then I know, you know, you know, lift and all that is a thing and people can get by on that. But Jack, there are more cars registered in Amherst than there were 10 years ago. And there's more people. Yeah. Well, that that will find out very shortly, but we know there's many more students and we know bus ridership goes down by like four or 5% a year. So on that note, I'm wondering, can't off campus folks get parking permits on campus? So I think, you know, the downtown parking permits are very inexpensive, you know, $35 $25, whatever it is, it's really, it's almost so cheap that it's not a commodity. And so there was a discussion with the downtown parking working group a few years ago to say let's make it 200 or 300 and that that totally rock the boat. That didn't really go anywhere other than a discussion. You know, some communities limit permits to people who register their cars in town. So who have, you know, who pay excise tax to the community so there was discussions about how to, you know, I mean, there's so many I think parking is a big issue and so how do you, you know, what's the right, what's the right way to regulate it to you, right, you know, I think it's there's many approaches it's, you know, a system of both the permit on street system, you know, off street parking, you know, with the university. Yeah, I don't I'm not I wasn't going to address that I was just going to say Janet to your bedroom count you know I looked at a few right the mix is building. Byla had a number of amendments so didn't apartments a few times and so actually, ironically, at one point we try to regulate the number of four bedroom units and then a few years later we try to regulate the number of one bedroom units because then we realize people were creating one bedroom units for students and I feel like it's really difficult to really dictate percentage of specific unit sizes because the market may change and so I think, you know, the CRC discussed this too and they've got like it's really difficult to say let's just say 25% for bedroom or 30% three bedroom because market conditions may change and so they were comfortable with you and the 50% be one bedroom size because you know the permitting authority may always ask about the bedroom count but I think it's really difficult to say a certain size what up in a few years you know right now people are building a lot of ones and two so if we try to limit ones and two but then all of a sudden a few you know I feel like the market does move so it's really difficult to have a really detailed thing there. The product open space. I'm sorry about that too and for instance, like on the Hastings block in certain blocks buildings are right up against the setback because they're older and if they were ever rebuilt. We may want to have or wave the product open space for that in that product in that instance because we actually want to have a consistent street front. Yes, a consistent facade line and so, you know, I think mixed use buildings are allowed and more than the downtown but in certain areas of the BG actually think maybe the project open space should be wager modified but in other parts of downtown or BL or other village centers where mixed use buildings are allowed. Maybe it doesn't need to be modified but I think requiring it could be a detriment to a number of properties that are currently developed if they ever redevelop because you know people like the way the streetscape is designed and so I think you know those are the anyways those are two points that staff had talked about about why have to have those provisions in there. Another thing about the open space what I like about project open space is that it also in both site plan review and special permit require, you know recreational space, open space and amenities for, you know, and so that could be part of that, you know. So I thought that kind of I do like that idea of having some green space, you know, you know, it can be in the back it could be you know whatever the working on the side and things like that and I like the idea of creating community space. Yeah, I feel like it's a high bar that's why we kept it as a special permit to waver modify it the CRC said you know they don't like the idea of adding a special permit to a use that may be site plan review use. But you know we modified dimensional standards through special permit now and I think that I don't find it necessarily confusing, you know that was mentioned as something but I think, you know, staff thought keeping a special permit does raise the bar a little bit so an applicant really has to make the case why they can't provide it, you know they can't just say oh we, you know that actually have to maybe show on a site plan or something why that open space is infeasible. So let's let's hear from, you know we got Doug and Andrew and then and Janet you're certainly welcome to come back in after all that so Doug please. And I had two, two comments. The first one is the requirement for the for no more than 50% of the units to be a one bedroom count. Particularly for smaller buildings. I can imagine that they're going to that they could end up with basically having two unit bedroom counts you know a bunch of one bedrooms and a bunch of two bedrooms. And say they have each floor has a uniform number of one bedrooms and two bedrooms the same number and but it's three stories. So now I've got an uneven number of units, and one or the other is 50% plus one. So, I think your limit ought to be 50% plus one, just to accommodate situations where there's two unit types, they're equal in number, except, you know, there's an uneven number of units overall. And then the second thing I was going to comment on was the requirement that the parking not be visible from the public way or walkways and areas customarily used by pedestrians. Maybe I've watched too many television shows, but parking garages and covered parking can be scary places where you're alone. It's poorly lit. And, you know, if there's no visibility. It may be a public safety issue. So, I, I support the, you know, if the intent is to have the parking not sort of broadcast itself to the street. I would support that. But I think to have it completely invisible from the street or anywhere a pedestrian might be might be going too far. And, you know, we happen to have the 11 East Pleasant Street project before us, which I don't think meets that requirement, even though there's a bunch of retail in the front and there's that leasing that are there back. You know, there are moments, there are places where you can see through to the parking. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. So I would somehow edit that to be less strict or or rigid. Thank you. I assume that 11 to 13 is positive meets this. I guess it depends on right house. I think there's there's places on that sidewalk where you can stand and see between those two blocks into the parking area. And it might even, you know, even if you're you're a little bit farther north from the building, looking along the edge where the vehicle access drive is you can probably see diagonally in there. So, you know, I think we either need to be clear about our criteria and how we define what's visible and what's not or, you know, just not be quite as broad in the statement. Doug, you have me like going like, you know, counting how many action scenes in parking lots and movies I've seen. There are a lot. Oh yeah. Yeah, the parking garages where all the fun stuff happens. Thanks Doug. That's a good point. I mean, I think, right. Maybe the definition definition is a little broad. You know, my thought is, you know, at any certain angle you might be able to see into the parking area so an 11 to 13 is pleasant is that really in an area customarily used by the public. You know, so, you know, I think that's something staff can look at and determine is this does this does, you know, with this language, change how that, you know, how that would work at this point. Yeah. Okay, thanks. So, Andrew, I think you had you hand up first and so I'll go with you, please. Thanks Jeff. Thank you for your presentation again. Some of my, my comments are were already addressed. I have so like just a real minor one. It's just in the project open space like the word landscaping to me just, it just drives me nuts because it's like catch off or just green things. But if the, if the purpose is open space like it should be like some sort of type of plaza or seating area, which could be defined with, you know, some type of landscaping but the way I was reading this like you could just plant a sea of shrubs and say that that's your open space because it's landscaping. And I'm not super worried, given given the fact that you've got waivers and things in here that their opportunities to comment on that but just maybe just projecting a personal frustration on like the idea is like some an open space you can go into. So, that was all thanks. Thanks Andrew we did have at one point that landscaping with an open space should be limited to 20% of the open space and you know then that that was criticized the bit by being too prescriptive. So, I think that would be some language in there like that just because I agree, what if someone proposed having ground cover as their whole open space and it really isn't a usable open space. Yeah, I think usability is the key and then like how that's defined could be hard scape could be greenscape. And I think there should be some flexibility in that but but more like the spirits, make sure there's somewhere for people to go, not not just to look at. Thanks. And we have your honor. Next please. Thanks so much. Nate it's really cool to see this evolve thanks for all your time and energy on it and for incorporating all the comments. You know my the stuff that pops out to me is also the parking, but I think I come down on it from a really different standpoint from a lot of the public comments and from what other people have said which is, the demographic trends are clear that younger people are excited about an increasingly driving less and looking for non car modes of transportation, and if we build it, they will come. So I think, you know, if we are successful in building a downtown that is walkable and bikeable and doesn't require cars, then there are so many great uses for that space that don't involve storing, you know, private or even shared vehicles. You know, I think 50% is, you know, like you're straddling the middle right like we're at this inflection point as a society and yes, some people feel like I absolutely still need a car and some people are ready to let them go and it to me 50% feels like acknowledging the reality of where the world is at and I just commend you for your thoughtful work on this. Thanks your honor. Maria. Let's see a lot of things have already been covered and so I guess. Thanks again Nate for a great presentation I like how like I say how it's evolved. I think things about the waivers are a good thing because it's different and then downtown is very different than everything sort of outside of downtown or even village centers so when you say when you prescribe things and have so many different kinds of sites with different kinds of challenges limitations is better to embed what you've done which is these waivers saying you know here's what we would hope you would do but if your site doesn't allow it. You know, there are ways to work around that and I think that's important because to give up valuable real estate, where there's really small lots or difficult lots to say you know you have to provide this much part where you have to provide this much open space that's usable. I think that's. So it's good to give a little leeway it's not to say you know this is a way for developers to find out. It's literally saying every site is different. And that's why we have different zones with different, you know, regulations. So I think that I do like that open space has a waiver. I'm actually leaning for not making special permit but since you were saying other things with diminished dimensional changes require special permit that's fine. Same with parking. I like that sort of paragraph you've added because I feel like this this planning board has actually done that for a lot of projects where we evaluate the site. So I think that's a good thing to do in the meantime because to hold every project moving forward to that two spaces per unit or whatever it is to her bedroom or I can't run away but it's kind of. It's on its way out. I'm thinking so we don't know what it is but it's just it's something we debate every time so to have this sort of little wiggle room is good and then the last thing I can't read my writing. Last thing, the thing what Doug was bringing up about the, you know, the parking being visible maybe it's just adding the word, not visible from the main public way, you know, obviously you'll see it from some sort of pedestrian way, but just say not from the major street or major public thoroughfare somehow defining that one sort of center point of the building or something on the street. Yeah, just just give up. Yeah, the idea is that from the main sort of thing you see on the front, you don't see the entry but maybe of course you'll see on the side and that's visible to you. That's visible to pedestrians. Otherwise, yeah, I think you're getting back here every time we hear it's like inching closer and closer to the target and I think you're you guys know what you're doing and in the planning department so really appreciate your hard work and. And yeah, I hope this moves forward I think I don't mind coming up, I don't mind hearing all these different zoning amendments it's really exciting because it feels like you know we're really getting good work done so thanks again. I know there's really good comments and discussion happening so it helps with you know going to the CRC and planning board and then being able to, you know, bring it back again so I think it's, you know, there's been some nice comments tonight and so you know with the CRC at the last meeting. You know, a week and a half ago or so now with tonight you know there'll probably be another version that incorporates, you know the next these recent round of comments. Thank you. I see Janet's hand. Janet. Thank you. It's interesting to hear what everybody has to say. I think the parking issue is might sink this zoning by mixed use building vital amendment. So, I don't know where these studies are that Americans are abandoning cars and, you know, maybe younger people are in urban areas but they're not living in Amherst. I think it would, someone give me some information because students in Amherst, you know students that are renting houses near the downtown have four or five cars parked in front of them are on the lawn. More UMass students have cars than they had 10 years ago. I don't have any data that shows what people are thinking is happening. And so I really don't want us to really amend article seven without evidence and Chris Brescher had said a year or so ago. You know, we do need to work on the parking thing but we need studies to support it. And there might be different things, you know, different parking requirements for different parts of the town, which is sort of what North Hampton has done. I just don't, I think this is going to easily sink it with many members the council. Also, a lot of people in Amherst, you know, use cars to travel to different places a lot of people are older might have mobility problems or jobs somewhere else. And so, you know, we might say, we have a no parking district downtown that we know isn't working. And we know there's lots of people who are living downtown, or either parking illegally or have these things and so, you know, I don't know where this idea is like, you know, I'm sure in Somerville mass, you know, very few less people have cars but I just think we need to stay on a data driven thing, we don't have the data. I could, you know, I could, I, you know, I, so, so we have, as Maria said, since I've been on the planning board waved, you know, reduce the parking requirements sometimes to less than one, you know, parking space per unit. Those buildings haven't been built yet, and we don't know how they're going to work in real life. We do know that at Salem Place which is filled with undergrads, those partners to parking spaces, we know that those are filled. Mr. Roblesky has just asked for a demolition permit to take down that, that white Victorian house on, you know, that on Main Street I think it's 3432 Main Street, and he wants to put parking, replace that building with parking and storage space. And so, so Southeast Street Commons hasn't been built, Spring Street hasn't been built. Main Street LLC it's already looking for more parking that we don't know how that's going to work. South, you know, University Drive South, you know, not two spaces. We don't know how that's going to work so I would really, really argue and really ask that this not be these these this language is amending the zoning, you know, Article seven, and it's actually not so clear it's going to have the planning time and time again, making decisions with the ZBA, collecting data, you know by very interested developers to have very little space. And, you know, we're increasing, you know, it's like and the developers want to have less parking so they can have more density. And I just, I just don't know how I just really urge the board not to go there I think a lot of town councillors won't support that. I think we should be careful about increasing density, the mixed use buildings, increased density we did it years ago we didn't have design standards we didn't protect historic buildings. You know the master plan tells us to, you know, look at things in a nuanced way and I think that this is just a path that we're going to go down, and I don't have any data like when I say that bus you ridership is down every year. And it says oh people are just using you know it's just, you know where's your information coming from, you know, and people are going to be buying EVs and going electric. And so there's the environmental thing we're going to have self driving cars seniors who can't drive now will be driving more Americans aren't cutting back on car use there's just no data supporting that. And so, you know, I would just say let's just pull this out of here, and let's get some information and really look at the parking issue. It may be different in different parts of town. We can do that but we need to base it on information, not just ideas and hopes. We need to see how those buildings work that we permitted we really didn't know what the effects are. You know everybody might be in the parking lot of Florence bank every night just the way people are always in the parking lot at 11 East Pleasant Street now from from one East Pleasant Street. So, is it true that the UMass students can have overnight parking. The first year freshman cannot have cars, and it used to be that yeah so I think only freshman actually no maybe freshman can because my cousin's daughter had a car. Yeah. So let me try it like graduate students can they have their car there. You know, 24 seven part. Does anybody know about that. Yeah, I mean I think you know UMass has you know number of parking lot so there's different rates for parking lot and then there's also a waiting list for certain lot so I think it's a matter of what you're willing to pay and what the convenience is how far away are you parking your car from where you're living or where you're going to your classroom building so. You know, Jen I will say that the parking piece you know Northampton actually has changed some of their parking and actually really put it on the developer to say okay here's what the demand is for this project and they have to show how they're going to meet that and so without prescribing two units for space it's really like, you know if we know how many parking permits are being pulled for certain developments. Right, I agree, you know if we look at the data for existing and new developments and say okay, on average a third of the units or whatever you know what percentage is pulling permits or have cars. Then you know we need to ask the developer to say okay. If you if you're having you know 100 bedrooms and we know there's going to be 40 cars, and we don't require parking, or we can wave it with this provision tell us where those 40 cars are parking they need to have the lease agreements, or shared parking with the neighbors I mean we allowed shared parking in the bylaw but I don't think people do a very good job of doing that. I think I think that should go to the site plan review or make it much easier but also, we're building buildings for like 50 years and so, you know we may have undergraduates at one, you know one he's pleasant now what if their families and they don't have cars so it, you know, we're taking a snapshot in time, but we don't know what car use is going to be but we didn't know what car use is right now. I mean, I don't know, I mean I know when I drive around. There's a lot of very full lots, and some you know I know that low income housing has fewer cars because obviously people can afford cars but I don't know, I don't have. I mean we need some information before we make radical changes like this. You know, and this is, and the other thing is, is this exception in apartments in mixed use. What is it do we already have a waiver in article seven and what's the relationship between those two just from a legal point of view I was just like, why, why do we have a parking requirement or waiver or language in a use table. There's an entire bylaw called article seven about parking it's just, it's kind of, I thought, the purpose of recodifying was to get the, the bylaw more organized, not more odd, you know. So, I mean, let's take this idea let's look at article seven and look at it in a coherent way but basically based on data. You know, we just don't know what you know, but I'm just looking up that article. That the housing choice. Folks are referencing and I know it was. Oh geez. That was the metro area of Boston. You're right, right. So I think you know, but that was database that was data from the area was from. We don't have this. And so you know Chris Brestrup had said this, I think a year ago I've lost track, maybe a year and a half. We need to do some studies. I don't know where I just don't know. I don't know why this popped in but I wish it hadn't, you know, and I think we have to look at this with article seven. Yeah, I agree. I mean I think when we did the site visit for 11 or 13 East Pleasant Street, you know, folks were walking from one is pleasant street to their cars in the lot that is going to be gone. So can I clarify that at least two of us arrived on bicycles. Thank you. Yeah. That's like less there, but I walked home. I walked home. Andrew likely would have walked as well. I don't know, you know, if we want to discuss more about parking, but this mixed use has, you know, a small piece in that regard. Chris Brestrup, would you like to chime in here about parking and because I guess it's it's in a woven, it's in a woven into a number of the bylaws that we're looking at. The discussion that we're having now is the same discussion that we have when we look at various developments we had this discussion at Amir's property on southeast street we had the discussion about Roblesky's property. And I think what this paragraph does is it gives us a little bit more clarity about what kinds of things the planning board should be looking at when it decides whether it's going to require a certain number of parking spaces per dwelling unit or a certain number of parking spaces per development. I think we get stuck on the idea of, we have to have two spaces per dwelling unit because that's what the bylaw says, and we don't have much guidance about how can we evaluate that for the particular development that's being proposed so I currently think this is a good idea to include it in the mixed use building and apartment standards, and I do also think that we need to study our article seven, and we can do some studies about parking or do some research to find out what what is reasonable but I think two spaces per dwelling unit is not reasonable, especially when you have some of these dwelling units that have one one one bedroom or their studios or even if they have two bedrooms. Anyway, there's a lot to be said about parking but I think it's reasonable to include these paragraphs in this mixed use. I'm also noting that the time is like, it's after 730. And we still have two other zoning bylaws that we want to hear about and discuss so we might want to move on or at least maybe take some public comment and then move on to the next item and you know you'll have a chance in the future to come to this. Jack, could I, could I just jump in for a second. Sure. Could this. Can we, can we take this language and move it into article seven and discuss that with the waiver, the current waiver language, maybe at a different time I just, I don't know why you know it just seems logical to put it there. And maybe we want to be more specific about factors for waiver than the current language in article seven. But I think this is going to create, I think it's just chaotic but I also think it's going to create a conflict between the use table for apartments and mixed use, and then the other waiver language so I think if we put it all in the same spot we can kind of. So that's my recommendation. Thank you. Before we move on, I have one last comment about the open space and its requirement when the property is fairly intimate with or very proximal to public recreation areas. I feel like we're seeing it 11 East Pleasant Street with Kendrick Park right across the street. I'm just wondering if there's there might be like a, you know, a radius. Adder, given, you know if there's your right, you know, if a park is right next to you it just seems like open space at that lot probably is not as important as a remote lot. But it's far away from from recreation areas. Anybody else have anything on on the mixed use. Okay, so we can go to public comment. And I see iris hand and Pam Rooney iris that your name and address please. Hi, I run. Hi, who are you. I'm Ira brick 255 strong street. I have just three comments. One is on the open space, which I think there was a version now the version says project open space shall include areas for occupants and visitors of the building and site. There's a lot of oppression in the beginning of these discussions that the idea of open space would be more for public ability to congregate and have, you know, just downtown be a place to meet and greet. There's probably a version where it's crossed out and areas for use by the public. So I don't know what happened to that, but it almost seems like developers are coming in and making changes here it's nothing is going in the direction of the public including. There's not a bunch of retail as one of you said before in that building. It is a tiny piece of retail I was just wondering today what percentage of the square footage. That store is, we really are turning downtown into nothing that people are going to use if you don't live there and go to college there. And as far as the parking goes. If you say that the price of gas is $3 a gallon, and you don't charge people for the fact that we are destroying the planet in the process, and the real price of gas should include the remediation of that. The real price of these buildings happening the real cost of the developers no offense to developers should include that they are taking away the parking that this town needs I would be all for a carless society I live a mile and a half from town and I walk to town every day. I don't like I don't like using my car, my car gets 54 miles to the gallon. But if I want to go and lift something I'm 68 years old, I need my car. And it seems like the developers getting quite a deal in not having to supply adequate parking I support what Northampton is doing of actually asking the developers, how many cars do you expect because we should add that to the cost of what you need to do to make this project happen if people want to build an Amherst. They can't hurt the town in the process. And I know you're working really hard to create right by laws to make us thrive, but we're not going to thrive just from tax revenue, we're going to thrive because downtown is great. So thank you so much. Thank you. Elizabeth, state your name and address please. Hi Elizabeth, can you unmute yourself. No. Yeah, we hear you. Oh you can. Yes. Yes. Okay. I'm Elizabeth Verling 36 Cottage Street. And I just wanted to speak to a couple of things one was I'd like to push back on the idea that developments can get away with using town open space instead of providing their own open space. I don't think that that's appropriate. I think that the town should not give the developer the open space that that there should be additional open space the open space in the town is for everyone and there should be additional open space associated with any new buildings. I also just wanted to comment that yes it would be wonderful. If we could all walk downtown and do everything we wanted to do there but that's we already know that's not the case. Because there aren't sufficient town amenities to serve all our needs. I just want to reemphasize a point I've tried to make previously which is about bike ability triangle street, which is right in downtown right thoroughfare into downtown is not bikeable. If you want to take your life in your hands and something needs to be considered if you really want bikeable parts of Amherst. And I'll just stop there. Thank you. Thank you Elizabeth. Next we have Dorothy, excuse me Pam Rooney. Name and address please. Hi Pam. Hello Pam. Pam, 40 Cottage Street. I have one technical question I wonder after I'm finished if somebody could address this. The section 12.341 talks about parking as a potentially a principal use or an accessory use and I would love to have some clarification of windows parking survey and accessory use and when is it a principal use. I want to add to the voices that have at least expressed some positivity for the the section on open space. Actually, Mr brick stated quite well the fact that we've been pushing to try to make sure that there's an interface for the public and you know some way to engage with these buildings. I love the idea of requiring a bit more open space. That is in fact, not only in pervious so that you've got some you've got some penetration of rainwater and you've got some ability to have some green space on the site but what I was in what I was seeing on the 11 East Pleasant Street is that there is no place for anyone visitor public or otherwise to actually sit on that in a very limited front plaza so I think this this inclusion of having some required open space is is an important one. The parking very good discussion on parking here tonight and I think I would, I would probably also weigh in on the idea of maybe rather than. Before I should say, it sounds like the same kind of parking paragraph is also being discussed for inclusion in the apartment definition and, and it does really feel like parking ought to get pulled out, and these nice factors you know what you should in fact be considered all wrapped up in the in in section seven where we can look at it holistically and again it's. We're really good at kind of trying to address specific problems and specific topics, but sometimes you, it is very helpful to step back and try to look at something as a package and holistically. I, I wanted to just double check that I heard properly, also on the on the open space that in that paragraph that it says project open space. There are areas that are not parking areas or driveways so I'm, I'm assuming or interpreting that to mean that in the future the the bone air driveway slash courtyard that was described last night at the DRB in fact doesn't doesn't meet a an open space requirement and I would strongly agree with that it is a driveway it is not a community space for the, for the residents of that building, this is one is close up the street. And then again, support the fact that it sounds like the planning board as well as the design review board can apply the standards and conditions of section 3.204 oh and to 201. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Dorothy Pam. Next, going to make going to respond to that and you don't respond at all right. We can. The principal versus secondary. Excuse me. Nate. I mean, I'll go, I'll go and not the, you know, the order, the Warner, and that's interesting, I would assume that that does not meet the product open space because it is used by cars and so you know, maybe someone is going to say that that is a model where it's both for cars and and people but I don't think it functions that way here. And, you know, I'm going through you the rest of your comments. I think staff will have to consider you know the parking issue I do think there's a lot there about what's being said and how to do a parking. As a principal or accessory use so you know, an accessory uses if there's parking provided by residents or, you know, for the business right and then we allow parking as a principal use if it's, it's a standalone use so if it's not necessarily associated with a use in the building, you know, or incidental to that use so if it's not, you know, customer parking or resident parking. So that's, you know, that's kind of the difference between principal and accessory. Thank you. Dorothy Pam please state your name and address. Hi Dorothy. Hello, can you hear me. Yes. So I just wanted to refocus your attention a little bit about the park. The park is something that the town has been working on for a long time. He's been using town money for and has put playground equipment in as well as benches and places for small performances, aiming at appealing to a large group of people who were not the residents of a few new communities across the street, but the town of Amherst. And I've been a mother and grandmother for over 50 years and I truly am an expert in transporting children. What we've been forgetting about is, many people coming to the park will have to park a car. They're coming with a couple of kids. They're not coming on a bike. At least I'm not. And we need, we're losing some parking places with the redesign of the park. We need parking for people coming to the park. The park was not put there so that the new buildings wouldn't have to have parking. All right. And we need also to think about the buildings as being flexible. Now they think we have this, this need for dormitories and people who live in dorms. It means they sleep there and they have their life is somewhere else. Okay, it's on campus. Thank goodness we're going to be totally open. We hope. But even they still need some space outdoors that's kind of half theirs, half the public to have some space. So we really must keep space and parking. You're also matching the customers for the retail. Some of them will have to park their cars. They're not going to park in the underneath the, in the first floor. So we just have to realize that people coming to the park, some of them will have cars, people coming to the store. Some of them will have cars, not so we're not just going to talk about how many people who live in that building have cars. Okay, it's part of a whole fabric of downtown. And we do have to come up and have make sure that that all the parking places aren't taken away. Because we wish that people didn't need them. We have to have some cars or else it'll be just a dead space in a dead park, and we will have wasted a lot of public money. So thank you. Thank you Dorothy. And I see no other hands raised. So any other comments from the, the board members, if not, we can move on to the apartments section. I was thinking everyone, this is a good conversation. Okay, so Nate, are you signing off or. No, I'm, I'm, I'm a, I'm a solo stay here but I'm, you know, a Marine is presenting apartments and then Ben is doing the demolition delay but I'll be in the background I'll come back in a second. Okay, yeah, so thank you very much. I'm on to propose changes to apartments section 3.323 of the zoning bylaw definition standards and criteria and proposed change to parking requirements. Section 7.00 of the zoning bylaw for apartments. Yeah, thanks, Jack. Thanks everyone. So, yeah, I'm here today tonight to talk about a proposed zoning amendments for the related to apartments, including the definition and the standards and conditions. So I wanted to walk you through what are the current, what is the current definition and the current standards and definitions, and then, and then introduce what the planning department is proposing for zoning amendments. So, in this slide this shows you the existing apartment definition. It's residential use consisting of one or more buildings, each building containing no fewer than three, no more than 24 dwelling units. Apartment dwelling units may share internal access ways and entrances. It need not have separate exterior entrances on the ground level. This slide shows section 3.323 under the use regulations for and so these are the standards and conditions for apartments. And the first bullet talks about development location, the site or law upon which one or more apartment buildings are proposed shall be located closely to a heavily traveled street or streets, close to a business commercial or residential district, or in a area already for multifamily use. And in that case multifamily use would be two or more dwelling units. And then the second bullet is units per building, each building shall have no fewer than three, no more than 24 dwelling units. There must be sewer connections for each of the buildings. And then on the, the, the apartment development would need to meet all dimensional regulations under article six. And this slide continues with standards and conditions. This shows in, there are certain additional dimensional regulations in addition to table three in the RG, the BL, the BVC and the BN, there's a requirement for additional side and rear yard setbacks per floor, which would be two feet per each floor would be applied on top of the the general side and rear setbacks. And then in the, the BN zoning districts. There is a floor area ratio requirement of point three. And that looks at the floor area ratio is the ratio of the gross floor area of all buildings on the site to the lot area. And so that would dictate sort of the, the bulk and mass of the building. And then also in the BN, there's a requirement for a minimum of 40% of landscape or natural open space. And in this slide, it sort of explains, well, what is landscaped or natural open space and, and it gets into, you know, those area portions of the lot devoted to the plantings including lawns and grass areas. Wooded land and pedestrian oriented paved or unpaved areas devoted to social or recreational use in common by the residents of the building or complex provided that such areas are kept essentially open to the outdoors in are at the ground level. And so the landscaper natural open space would, would not include areas devoted to parking access and service drives. And I would just as another note, the BN district, I believe is a new zoning district that was approved back in 2012. And so that's why you see. There's a, I believe the apartment section was amended with that new zoning district so that's why that has sort of the special added comments here. And then the standards and conditions continue on the next slide. The bedroom counts section or standard was actually it was the same language that exists that does exist for the mixed use building and spoiler alert we're proposing that that this section be amended to match the mixed use building standards for bedroom counts. So this says no more than 50% of the total number of dwelling units shall be of any one size for projects in which all dwelling units provided other than those occupied by by resident manager are affordable, the permit granting board or special special permit granting authority authorized to act under the applicable section of the bylaw for this use may waive or modify this requirement. And then the next bullet is regarding management plans. It, it, it, the section says, you know, in the, they need to submit a management plan and that's it's an integral part of the application process. In here, the final bullet here says gets into design review principles and standards, and it talks about how, how the apartment use would need, would need to conform with the design review principles and standards under article three. And then apartments by zoning district. So the planning staff and I thought it would be useful to have show a little comparison of where apartments are allowed in comparison of the mixed use building. And so this slide will show you the comparison. So, but I'll just mention the apartment section. So the in the village center residents districts, it's allowed by special permit, as well as in the general residents and the limited business districts and the village center business and the neighborhood business zoning district. It's allowed by site plan review in the general business district, and it's not allowed in the commercial district. And then at the bottom it shows districts that apartments in mixed use buildings are not allowed period. And this slide shows this map shows is a town wide map and shows you all the zoning districts that allow apartments. And so we'll, we'll zoom into each of those areas in town that allow apartments. So at the Atkins corner village center, which is along West and West Bay Road. There are some other parcels that are contained in the village center business allow, allow apartments. This slide shows that there is the business of village, the village center business. It's one parcel located at the quarter of Belcher town road and gatehouse road allows apartments. This map shows the downtown area. And so apartments are allowed in, in, you know, the RBC, the RG, the BVC, the BL, the BN and the BG. But so you can see, you know, obviously, the BG is is the downtown downtown area and the, you know, the surrounding RG zoning district and then along root nine all the way down to North and Southeast Street where, you know, Florence Savings Bank, Auto Express, Spirit House, Hadley Cleaners, those sorts of businesses are located there. And then over here on the west side of downtown along University Drive in the limited business district apartments are allowed. And then this next map shows North Amherst. Its apartments are allowed in the village center residents in the village center business, which these, these zones, or these parcels within these zones are along the Meadow Street and North Pleasant Street. And as a landmark at the North Amherst library is located at that intersection. And at the Pomeroy Village Center, apartments are allowed in the village center residents in the village center business district. And this is, you know, the parcels surrounding the intersection of West in West Street and Pomeroy in West Pomeroy Lane. And where the new intersection improvements will be located. So this is a list of recently approved departments. The presidential apartments located at 950 North Pleasant Street recently gain approval for providing 54 additional apartments. At Aspen Heights at 408 North Hampton Road, that was recently approved for one building with 88 units, which is finishing up construction. This week, self point apartments at 266 East Hampton Road was recently approved for additional building with 47 units and Valley CDC recently was approved a comprehensive permit of 40 be at 132 North Hampton Road to build one building which would contain 28 apartment dwellings. And so there is a theme here. And if you, you know, return back to the definition of apartments, you know, it's no, the amount of dwellings is, is no fewer than three and no more than 24. But as you can see these ones have more than that and so they, many of them, I think, three out of four are, you know, pre existing non conforming lots or buildings and so it provided them flexibility to have these amount of dwellings and then the comprehensive permit allowed more density. And so typically, you know, historic in recent years, you know, the planning department has not seen apartments being proposed because it is very limiting with the sort of the minimum and the maximum of dwellings allowed per per building and so these are sort of the exceptions of the rules. And other communities so I took a look at other communities how they define apartments, and I have, let's see, one, two, three, five communities that I looked at. And once one theme I noticed is that many is that these communities among others that I looked into don't actually call don't define this use as apartments but rather as multi family uses. And that was one theme that was across the board, but each of these columns there's a column about three units and what, and then what how many units would define a multi family dwelling and so in some towns like North Hampton and Greenfield, they actually have a use three unit dwelling or a triplex and in native Montague and East Hampton they don't. And then, and then these communities define multi family by a different amount of density so in North Hampton it's four units plus Greenfield also four units plus native three units plus Montague plus and East Hampton two units plus. And as a reminder, in Air Mars, it's three units plus with a maximum of 24 units. And so another theme here is a consistent theme is that none of these communities actually put a cap on how many units would be allowed per per building. And then this just gives you just the exact you know the wording of their of their definitions. And so recommendations for zoning amendments. We decided, well, there could be a lot, a lot of things to change so we would want to put this in phases. And so the planning department recommends two phases of exploring proposals the first phase would be to remove the maximum of units allowed per building, opposed to having a maximum of 24 units per building update the standards and conditions regarding bedroom count management plan, and perhaps parking, revise the permitting path to allow apartments by special permit in the general business district and by site plan review in the village center village center residents. And the reasoning for this would be that, you know, the general business zoning district, as the word would imply is really focusing on businesses. So we thought that perhaps it would be make more sense to, you know, make it to instead of doing site plan review to require a special permit and, you know, make it more onerous for the developer in the BG and for the village center departments, that you know those words would imply that we're promoting more residential uses so we would want to make it easier for applicants that are proposing apartments by site plan review. And then in phase two, we, the planning department would want to explore redefining the use and the definition of apartments to multifamily dwellings. And we would want to look at that in uniformed of other residential uses such as, you know, a converted dwelling townhouses, and you know if if the town wanted to look at, you know, providing a triplex use. And also there is a another layer of, of how that terminology would affect assessor use classifications so it, I think it might require a sort of more thorough examination of just is changing the name what is sort of the ripple effect or is there what would that actually entail or would there be any sort of effect that that we're not aware of. And then the second would be adjust the minimum number of units allowed per building from three units to four units. And to create a new use classification and definition for a three unit dwelling known as a triplex. If you want, I have, I have the draft language, would that be something that I should show. Yeah, I was thinking like, before you show that and we take questions maybe taking a break right now we've been taking a little five minute break with that be okay more in with. Yeah, sure, absolutely. Okay. Pam, you want to set that up. Yeah, so it's 807. So, five and seven is 12. Do you want to round up to 815 or do you want to be at 12. Yeah, 815 it'd be great. 815 we'll see you then. All right. Hi Jack, are we the only one. Hello. I see Doug. Yeah. I'm Johanna Maria. I think we have everyone if marine marine. We're back. Yes. So, you were going to. Yeah, did we want to go through the proposed drafted language. Or take comments. Is that in our package. No, I believe so. Okay, yeah, so why don't you go ahead and do that. Okay. So, all right. Okay, so, so this is the draft language regarding apartments. You can see that in green green lettering that's bold with italics represents proposed language. Red lettering with bold and strike through a strike through indicates it being removed. And so this first section here is article 12 is the definitions it's part of the zoning bylaw. And the planning department is proposing that we remove the maximum amount of units allowed. Currently it says no more than 24 dwelling units. And so we're proposing to remove the maximum amount. And then here as starting with article three use regulations. And then section three point three to three is the section on apartments. And this chart shows you all the different zoning districts that allow apartments. And we're proposing changing. In the, let's see here, the village center residents. Zoning districts currently allows apartments by special permit. And we're proposing that it would be allowed by site plan review. And then in the general business zoning district is currently allowed by site plan review. And we're proposing it to be allowed by special permit. And this is the beginning of the standards and conditions for apartments. And this paragraph. Where it gets into what's the minimum amount, maximum amount of building. And each building and again, we're going to strike through the language about having the maximum amount of dwelling units at 24. So there would be no maximum amount. And let's see here, we'll scroll down the bedroom count section. We're proposing that it would be. Be consistent with the language being proposed for the mixed use building. And. So the new language would say no more than 50% of the total number of dwelling units shall have the same. Bedroom count with the exception of an apartment building containing less than five units. The permit granting authority may waive or modify this requirement for project in which all dwelling units provided are affordable. See article 12 affordable housing. And, you know, as Nate had indicated, this is just cleaning it up. You know, the. The mention in red that the, the, the language that we are striking through. Is still being captured in the green. It's just saying it in a cleaner fashion. The management plan. So. We're actually, we're proposing that this section be struck through. Not that we don't think a management plan should be provided. It definitely should be provided. And it is actually a requirement of all. Special permits and site plan review. Review applications. And so this is sort of redundant and. And it's just saving, saving a little sentence or two in, in our, our, our large zoning bylaw. And, and so it, again, it's redundant. And I believe that at one time. Our, you know, ZBA and. Planning board applications didn't require management plans. And so that was why this was. Written in. And so, but since then it's actually, it's a requirement for all special permit and site plan review. Applications. And this is our, the proposed section on parking, which is the same language that Nate walked you through during the mixed use building. Section of tonight. And I guess I'll just repeat it adequate parking shall be provided. The amount of parking spaces provided for each apartment dwelling unit shall be based on factors, including, but not limited to bedroom counts analysis, and that is a significant amount of parking. And so the traffic import impact reports proximity to downtown proximity to public transit proximity to public parking, including on street and off street parking availability of alternative modes of transportation. Tenant lease restrictions relative to parking in shared or lease parking as regulated in. And as Chris had said earlier, the thinking behind this was that this gives the permit granting authority more direction of telling the applicant. This is the kind of information that we need for you to prove to us that you only need to provide one parking space per unit. And, you know, they would take this list and build their case to provide evidence to the, you know, the planning board or the zoning board of appeals. And both boards, I would say, the both boards have the discretionary power to say, you know, no, in fact, you know, you provided this information, but we still feel that there should be two parking spaces per dwelling unit, or they could say, you know what, it does make sense. You have evidence and we're going to put in conditions, specific conditions that would address any sort of concern. And perhaps maybe even come back in a year or periodically to prove and reevaluate the parking situation. And so I just wanted to clarify just sort of scenario playing of how this could work out, but I definitely hear everyone's comments and I understand that. And let's see here. And so this is Article 7, Parking and Access Regulations. And so this is where it would address Article 7 a little bit. I did not include 7.9, which is about waivers and modifications, but this 7.000 is the parking requirement for dwellings. And currently it says for dwellings including apartments. And so the proposal is that we would strike that through where it says including apartments. And under 7.000, two parking spaces for each dwelling unit excluding apartments and mixed use buildings as regulated in accordance with Article 3, which then brings you back up here because this is part of Article 3. So and that's it that I have. So I'm eager to hear everyone's thoughts. So let me take this down. Thank you so much, Maureen. I'd like to hear from Doug. All right, thanks, Jack and thanks, Maureen. Glad to have another chance to talk about this with you. Looks like we're making some headway. I was pleased to see that you included all those plans of the areas in town where apartments are allowed. And I was interested to see your list of recent apartments that have been approved because I think I'm not wrong, but at least three, if not all of those are in areas that apartments are not allowed in. And I think that's telling. We've got a lot of controversy about developers building what are essentially apartment buildings with a little bit of retail in the downtown, but we don't have a lot of other places where they seem to wanna build apartments as of right. And I think we ought to have a talk about where do we want apartments for students to be built? And we don't seem to wanna, I'm not quite sure how we get there or how I nip at everybody's heels to have that conversation, but I think it's worth having because there's clearly a desire to build apartments and the only place that they seem to be able to do it is downtown. And if that's a problem, then let's find where it's not a problem. So the fact that you listed, showed all those areas causes me to wanna talk about maybe extending the, where apartments are allowed into the office park area at the south end of University Drive. I think we ought to have a talk about the zones and I assume you don't wanna have that tonight. Maybe that's phase two or even phase three. So on the material you've presented, you had that one table where you showed us that there's additional side and rear yards, setbacks required, depending on the number of stories. I'm not sure I agree with that. It seems to me that in many areas, if we wanna have more housing, we ought to let it conform to the regular setbacks that we've set for that zone. So I lived in a building for a long time that was probably three feet from the residential building next to it and we got along fine. So I'm not sure that I would keep all those two feet that you've got. And then I think at least in your presentation, it was a little bit unclear whether the minimum landscape, 40% and whether that's only in the BN, because you said that, but it wasn't anywhere in the text. So I wanted to look at where the BN is and it's not clear that there's very much of it anywhere. So that seemed like a lot of emphasis on something that barely exists. So I'll stop there for now. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Doug. So I'll start with the BN and add that looking at the requirements for the BN planning staff feel that that deserves a discussion and perhaps that would be phase three, perhaps. And that we didn't want to explore that now because, and I'm happy to pull up the map, but it is only a small amount of parcels, maybe 10 parcels or less. And it's a long main street in Triangle where like Amherst Media was permitted and that sort of that little block right there. So it's not a big impact, if you will. So we didn't want to explore it, but points well taken about the additional setbacks. And yeah, the 40% minimum open space requirement in the BN or yeah, that open space requirement is solely just for the BN. It's not for any other district. And let's see what else. Note taken about considering expanding apartments in the office park, office districts along University Drive. We could explore that in the future. And also your first note about needing to talk about where students should live in town. That could be something that the planning department could look into in the future, not now, but in the future at some point. I would like to just clarify, I cited that office park area as one example. I think there are other areas where we could allow apartments that we don't now without too much trouble. Very good. Janet. So I agree with Doug and his attempts, the conversation that we need to have about like where the different zoning districts and where things can go. And as he was talking, I was remembering that when the planning board was asked, what are our zoning priorities? It was downtown planning, housing, and then working on recodifying the bylaw, which, you know, those are big things to bite off and chew. And we're kind of doing it kind of coming in a little bit through the back door. So I feel like I'm kind of lacking context. And I kind of want to scope back and get a bigger view is I would love some information about why there's a 24 unit per building requirement to start with. Like what was the thinking, like when was that adopted and what's the thinking behind it? And so, you know, I have guesses from looking around, you know, the different apartment complexes that are in South Amherst, that it had to be with, you know, family space, green space, liveability, not wanting to have, you know, large apartment buildings and kind of breaking it up and kind of maybe more of a village or a town style. That's my guess, but I just, I would love the planning department could sort of, you know, like what was the rationale for it? And, you know, what's the good parts of that? You know, it was probably adopted, you know, years ago and I'm just interested. And I also have like the question I always like to ask is what is the problem that we're trying to solve and what are different ways to get to, like what's your goal? What's the problem and what's your goal and what are the different ways to get there? So, you know, we're sort of taking the unit cap off apartments, which is a big increase in density, kind of like we did with multi-use buildings. And I think sort of one of the problems with that is that, you know, you gave an increase of intensity, but you didn't ask for anything in exchange, like inclusionary zoning, you know, maybe some environmental, you know, regulate, you know, additions or solar heating or, you know, different, you know, kind of different things. And so I wonder if that's going to happen. Sort of looking back, I would love to see a comparison between mixed-use building requirements against apartments currently, and then the two proposed changes, because I'm beginning to wonder what's the difference between the two? And then I'd also like to see the different, like a chart that says, here's the difference between the legal requirements for site plan review and special permit. So if we're going from A to site plan review to special permit or one direction or the other, I think we have the planning board really needs to have just the hit list. You know, there's different appeals, appeal times and there's different legal requirements, a lot of them overlap, but they don't all. And so I think that would be really helpful whenever we talk about doing that shift. And so I'd like to see that. And then I would love to see like us thinking about, like what, or the planning department or all of us thinking about like, what are the possible impacts down the road? It could be great impacts, there could be negative impacts and there might be different impacts in different parts of town. And so, you know, it's like, I can't, I would just, I wanna know like what's, you know, like what's gonna happen in two years or three years? Like what is loosening this requirement do? It may do nothing since we're actually allowing large apartment buildings in PRP and office park maybe will pull apartments into the village centers, but we also, we have never delineated our village centers and we've never planned our village centers. We've never designed our village centers or had, you know, design guidelines. And so I just wanna have some long conversation or some, you know, information or like speculative and it doesn't have to always be negative or positive, but like what could be the impacts? Like is there a specific impact that might hit RG or downtown differently? Like as I sit here, I was thinking, well maybe people, you know, all these people wanna build housing downtown and they're just putting in this, you know, they're doing multi-use because buildings cause they can get more density than apartments and that's why they had this little storefront, you know, and so maybe they'll just start building apartments and they will be losing storefronts as buildings, you know, turnover and things like that. And so I'd like to think about that before we endorse a change, I'd like to understand where we're going. So that's a long list, I'm sorry about that, but I do think, like, I think I wanna know like the setting and then the consequences and then the legal comparison between mixed use and apartments cause it's seeming like less and less to me and maybe that's good, you know, maybe that's where we need to head. But I just wanna see, you know, I don't kind of get the difference anymore. All right, thank you. Thank you, Janet. I could address the first question, which is the rationale for 24 dwelling units as a maximum per building. I believe that came out of the 1970s and Chris please chime in. And I think it was in response of a lot of apartment buildings being built in the 70s, sort of in a quick fashion and that the town proposed the maximum to sort of limit the density of the buildings being built back in the 70s. I don't know if Chris has anything else to add to that. Are they specific buildings in town that, do you think? So like Colonial Village, well, the presidential and self point apartments. So in essence, sort of the buildings that I had mentioned in that slide, some of those examples were about adding, it wasn't starting from scratch, it was actually adding more buildings. So yeah, self point presidential in Colonial Village would be sort of your classic apartment buildings being built back then. And let's see here. Yeah, about what's the difference between mixed use in apartments for the proposals. We could certainly show you a comparison in a chart or whatever would make sense for you to see the difference there. And again, it's really, the differences are about standards and conditions. The use obviously would be different. And what's the difference between, the requirements for a site plan review versus the requirements for a special permit? We could certainly provide you a comparison. And what's the impact in two or three years? Or 10, or 10, or 10. Oh yeah, no, yeah. Well, we're hoping that there'll be more ideal apartment buildings that have stronger design standards and as well as the mixed use building section as well. We've noticed that there's the classic example that I've been giving about where I wonder if the developer could have built an apartment would he have. So there's a 70 university drive which was recently improved and now built as a mixed use building with a very small retail space of about 300 square feet. And I don't know how many units is proposed but it is more than 24. You would make sort of, you would question, I wonder if that developer would have proposed an apartment building there, but he couldn't because he had the maximum of 24. So that was not to his advantage. So that's why he built the mixed use building with a 300 square foot retail or office space. And that location would have been fine for our apartment building. It would have fit in with the surrounding neighborhoods and would have been fine to be located there. But yeah, that's interesting. So impact, we could certainly take a look at how could we analyze that forecasting that in the future? I can't really comment of how that could be done right now but we could certainly explore what are the measurable ways to indicate change to 10 years, 15 years, et cetera. You know, one thing I thought about was when you do the... Oh, sorry. Jen, let's get some other of the board members to get their thoughts and you can come back around if that's okay, right? All right, so we have Tom and Maria. I said, thank you for the presentation. I just had a quick question about the phasing and wondering, I mean, I understand that you can't do everything at once and I see things like creating a new classification and definition being a challenging project. But I'm wondering if the moment to change, you know to redefine apartments as multifamily dwellings is now while these changes are happening or whether adjusting the minimum number now is not a challenging prospect at this point. And I guess I'm wondering what the rationale is for those things to be in a phase two as opposed to since they seem like smaller bites to be part of this phase to sort of speed up that process. Yeah, no, that's a good question, Tom, thank you. So about the minimum, in order to adjust the minimum, currently it's three and say if we wanted to adjust it to four units instead, we would then need to create another use classification for a triplex. And then so then you need to ask yourselves, what does that look like? And so for duplexes, we have three categories for a duplex in the bylaw, which is about owner occupied duplex, a non-owner occupied duplex and affordable duplex with a triplex looks similar. And so then you're starting to get into the weeds of all those having, that's a whole other conversation. Although I mean, I personally, I would love, let's just do it all, let's just do it all, I love that. And multi-family use, we haven't had an opportunity to really reach out to our assessor about this topic. And we would be very curious of how, if at all would that impact the way that she classifies uses for tax purposes? And so we would just wanna make sure that we have all the ducks in the row of how would there be any sort of ripple effects of what other residential uses in the bylaw need to be adjusted as well, if we were to do that. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Tom, Maria, please. Maureen, I miss all your spreadsheets, all those little ties last. No, no Excel's worksheet this time, or graph. That's really useful to see the areas where this is possible. And I liked the idea of starting to break off the smaller sized multi-family aspect because then that allows for more, like you said, triplexes and maybe one day, if we further split it even more, quad flexes, because idea of adding multi-family infill into our residential areas is probably less impactful and scary than like apartment complexes. So I think the more you can sort of loosen the way we can bring more multifamily into our neighborhoods is great. And just that, I know it does open a can of worms because suddenly, like footnote B, you would have to bring that into there and make sure it doesn't trigger, it falls under the same sort of like it ignores the basic lot minimum and lot area per family. But yeah, I think that I would love to see it relax more as far as, you know, the Village Center makes a lot of sense to make it an easier permit review process. And if there are other areas that can follow suit, I mean, because right now a lot of apartments have been built, I think it was an overlay area or something where, you know, it was an RN basically, a lot toward number nine. So it seems like there's a lot of opportunity, it's just right now there is the bylaw won't allow it. So you're right if people are using your mixed-use building to get an apartment building, basically. So it would be great to unlock that more in other zones. And but your first steps make a lot of sense. These sort of small fights at it, I think the only sort of thing I would think more about is that point that Doug brought up, you know, why give it less density if we're trying to encourage, you know, these to be built more in certain zones, why do that two foot every floor? Most of the zones only allow three to four stories anyways, where they're currently allowed. So it's not like they're, you know, five to six story buildings anyway. So, but yeah, I'd love to get this loosened up so that we're not seeing all these sort of mixed-use buildings pop up and just have them be what they are, where they should be. And this is a great step in that direction. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. Jack, we have Mr. Marshall and Ms. McGowan. And Jack, you are muted. I noticed when I was coughing that I would, yeah, so. Okay, so now you can hear me. Doug, please. Yeah, I just wanted to say that my earlier comment in the conversation with Nate about doing 50% plus one, as opposed to 50% might be applicable to this type as well. Since we may have an odd number of floors that yield odd numbers of total units that can't divide easily by 50% if you've got two types. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and Janet. In my, so I'm actually wondering about changing the unit, increasing the unit number of units and how it interfaces with the additional lot area, like how it interfaces with the dimensional table in terms of additional lot area and family, like square feet, that requirement. And so will that requirement still limit the number of units in a building? I know that one of the limiting factors about building more additional units in the RG were the parking requirements and maximum lot coverage. So if you're reducing parking requirements, does that mean that more units can be built in the RG, good or bad, but just to know that it's happening? And also how the dimensional table, like the changing, like what Maria just said, like, oh my God, I just looked at footnote B and I'm like, how does that figure in and be affected by changing the unit count? And things like that. So kind of the inner workings of our by-law. So if I get a better understanding of how they relate to each other. I also just wonder if we should also talk a little bit about the greens, or I would like to understand the green space requirements. Because I know, obviously the pandemic made us all realize, like if you're trapped in a Manhattan apartment building, there was nowhere to go. At least in Amherst, you can walk out your door and go somewhere. But I wonder, when you describe those different apartment complexes that are in South Amherst, they all have a lot of places for people to go. Some of them don't have particularly much recreation on site and things like that. But maybe we should ask for some more green space so that there's more places for the tenants to be. Or maybe we should just design our apartment buildings and even our mixed use buildings realizing primarily they're for people. But I would love you to help walk us through those different, how it interrelates with the dimensional table. Sure. I will say that as these proposals would not impact the additional lot area per family. Or it wouldn't impact any of the other dimensional regulations under table three. And if we were to say, let's do the triplex now, that would actually then we would also need to discuss the different footnotes and possibly. So that's like another reason to postpone with the triplex. But so again, with these proposals, the dimensional regulations as is would not be impacted one way or the other. Working requirement would, right? If it was reduced, would affect. Yes, so yeah, correct. But yeah, I was just talking about table three for the dimensional regulations. Those wouldn't be impacted. But yeah, so we have the proposal about the parking, which would be parking, adequate parking shall be provided. And again, that would be at the discretion of the planning board and the zoning board of appeals for that, for, you know, for each application. And the proposal gives you a sort of, it would give the applicant and the board's guidance to help determine is that adequate or, you know, or whatever the, whatever the situation is regarding if it's close to downtown or et cetera. Great. So let's take this to public comment. Right now I see one hand and two. Okay. So let's start with Pam Rooney, Pam against that your name and address. Hi Pam. Hi Pam, Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. Good presentation and good information. Asking the same questions, what is the relifence between a mixed use building and the apartment buildings? It sounds like if the unit count can go up, in fact, you can build a bigger box, call it an apartment and fill it with as many blocks of one and two and three bedroom units as you can. It will be, in fact, it'll function very much like the mixed use building. The feels to me that the reason that we have this, you know, though, obviously this flood of mixed use buildings is because there is so much flexibility in both the unit count that they can stuff into a box and therefore it's just more advantageous. Having a comparable apartment by law feels to me that, you know, with some of these other questions that need to be answered, but still it feels like it will take perhaps some of the pressure off mixed use only and have an alternative development opportunity. That said, it occurs to me that because there is mixed use and apartment buildings are really so similar or could be very similar that perhaps there ought to be greater emphasis on the commercial aspect of the mixed use building since that is what we really do want them to be functioning as we want them to add to the commercial base and availability of business space in town. And if we can take the pressure off the housing by making apartments a little more flexible, then we perhaps can accomplish that. I was curious if, and I think I heard the answer, but if there's still an open space requirement for apartments that is not actually required for the mixed use. So that might be a difference between the two types. Thanks. Thank you. Maureen, do you want to respond to any of that? Sure. So the apartment section in the BN does have a open space requirement of 40%. That's a very small area of town. I should have counted how many parcels is probably, my estimate is like 10 parcels. But so that's the only zoning district that does have open space requirement. That being said, there are maximum lock coverage requirements and building lock coverage requirements. And so the remainder of the land in parcels throughout the zoning districts do have a requirement for providing open space when you take the total land area minus the lot area provides a pretty significant amount of open space in a lot of the zoning districts. There are certainly exclusions from that, especially in the downtown. But if I take a look here now, the BG zoning district, the maximum lock coverage is 90%, which that means only 5% would be for pervious surfaces. But other than that, throughout all the other zoning districts, it really provides a ample amount of pervious surface throughout a lot of the residential districts. So while again, there is an open space or a plaza section, the lock coverage requirement under the table three does capture those topics currently. And that's all I had to say. Very good. So we're on to Dorothy Pam. Dorothy. Hi, Dorothy. Hi, Dorothy Pam 229 Amity. Well, you're talking about something I'm very interested in because I gotta block that out. Can you hear me? Something just popped up on my screen. No, we can hear you. Okay. It's Adobe Flash wants to come in. Okay. I'm very interested in departments because I do realize that there will be more apartments coming into the RG, particularly, because if there are corners or near commercial areas or whatever. And so I went and took a look and drove through Aspen Heights because from the road, it was actually looking attractive. And I thought, oh, wouldn't this be exciting? A nice looking apartment building. And I do think it looks nice, but it had absolutely no space of any kind. Even around the back, it was the teeniest, most narrow sidewalk, I think maybe like two feet. And there was no green, no gathering space, lot of parking, which I've said I want. And I thought, oh, this is just not a place that you could have children. And I've been struck that you've been calling them now not apartments, but multifamily dwellings. I just want to say remember that there will be families and families do require some green space. Now, I live next door to a converted multifamily. It's a big monstrous historic house. I don't know how many students live in it, but there are 16 cars parked most of the time on Lincoln. What I see is a big, beautiful green lawn and I get along fine with them because of their space. They have some space where they can hang out, they can walk around. And then when they're sitting and talking quietly because these are very well behaved students next door to me, it's not like they're coming in my ear in my bedroom window because there's space between my house and where they're hanging out. So it's still a living space for people. There's no children there, but it's pleasant. And when I looked at, well, you know, 132 North Hampton Road, it has beautiful outdoor grounds. I just think apartments, multifamily dwellings, you have to make sure that there is the green space around it for people, whether they're students or whether they're families, whether there's children or not. And I didn't totally follow Maureen's numbers, but she said there would be. So I'm hoping that's true. Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. Yeah, and that is a point well taken, Dorothy, especially for, you know, apartment buildings, sort of communities and creating communities and thinking about families and whether play equipment or community gardens are provided, things of those sorts of nature is provided. And, you know, we could certainly look at, looking at providing sort of recreational amenities, making that a requirement or plazas. I do feel that under section 10.38 and section 11.24, there are sections within that that get into providing recreational amenities and open space. And I also would add that Aspen Heights is proposed, has constructed a play area. And I know it is there. I can't really speak to the open space. I wasn't there a part of the approval process for that, but I do know that they are proposing a play area structure. Good, thank you. Chris. I was gonna say exactly that. What Maureen said, that Aspen Heights is going to have a play area for children and families to gather outside. And I believe they're also going to have a dog walking area and other places for the people who live there to gather outside. Thank you. So I think we've covered that and we can go on to item C. Proposed changes to demolition delay for structures of historical or architectural significance, section 13 of the zoning bylaw. And I assume that be Ben. Ben, yep. Okay. Hello. Hi, Ben. Hello. Introduce yourself. Yeah, hi everyone. It's good to see you all again. Ben Bregger, I'm a planner in the planning department, colleagues with Maureen and Nate and Chris. So I guess I just wanted to check in. It's, you know, nine o'clock. I have a presentation. This is a, you know, will be a brand new topic for the planning board. Do I kind of give a quick overview or, you know, or what we did with the CRC yesterday was just offered members the chance to ask questions rather than giving the presentation. But I guess I'm just wondering where to go. How long is your presentation? Would you guess? Yeah, I mean, it depends if I can, if I go through like all of the changes in detail, it could take, you know, 15 minutes. But if I kind of just give an overview of what the demolition delay bylaw is and then talk about the changes broadly, it could be quicker. Quicker sounds better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. May I just say something? The idea with this is that it's going to be taken out of the zoning bylaw and put into the general bylaw. So in the end, the town council is probably gonna be more involved in the details of it than the planning board, but it's worth hearing about it anyway. Yeah, that's a good point, Chris. Have we ever really been involved with, I don't recall. No, part of the zoning bylaws. Oh, just, it's part of the bylaw. Yeah, but never really comes before. Not really been involved with it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Ben. Yeah, here, I'll get this open now. So are you seeing the full slide or like the viewers? We're seeing the notes. Okay, I never know how to, If you, yeah, swap presenter. Is that, there you go. Okay. Yeah, so let me just start here, kind of a little bit of an overview of what the demolition delay bylaw is there. It's not unique to Amherst. There's 160 municipalities in Massachusetts that have a demolition delay bylaw. The idea is that it's an authority granted to the historical commission to place a delay on the demolition of a historically significant building. And so the demolition delay bylaw is used as a means to save a building from imminent threat, from an imminent threat from being lost. And so essentially it's to work with a property owner who's proposing to demolish their building, to ask them to step on the brakes, take a pause, let's think about alternative ways to save this building, relocate the building, reuse the building, rather than just moving hastily to demolish the building. And there's a lot of the makeup of a demolition delay bylaw is pretty standard, but there's a lot of different components of it that can differ slightly in different communities. So, you know, there's things that are as simple as how do you define a building and how do you define demolition, which you would think would be straightforward, but it can actually get fairly nuanced. And as we'll see in Amherst, those have been two of kind of nagging issues is how is the definition of a building and how is the definition of demolition interpreted and applied. And so that's one thing we're proposing to do is to clarify that language. There's also kind of this threshold for what buildings actually get reviewed. And so in Amherst it's 50 years old, if a permit for demolition is submitted, it's flagged if it's older than 50 years and then sent to the historical commission. And that differs from community to community. There's criteria for how the historical commission determines if a building is historically significant. There's another kind of set of criteria to determine if a building gets, the term is preferably preserved. That is analogous or the same as synonymous with a delay being placed, preferably preserved is delaying the demolition. There's the length of the demolition delay and Amherst is 12 months. It's as high as 24 months in some towns. Others have 18 months, but 12 is kind of smack dab in the middle. There's the role that the commission plays during the demolition delay period, often to take an active role to work with the property owner, to find an alternative to relocate the building possibly, to restore the building for some sort of adaptive reuse. Or if truly there's no viable option, the applicant can come back to the commission and have the delay lifted to take down the building. And then there's the role of staff during this whole process, which we'll talk about. So a little bit of the history. Article 13 was adopted by town meeting in May of 1999, subsequently amended in 2005. And the main change that happened there was to extend the delay from six to 12 months. These are just two examples of buildings that have been saved due to the demolition delay bylaw. The Bertucci's building was saved. A delay was placed on that building. And I think that was before it became Porta. It became Porta, which didn't work out so well. And then now a new restaurant is moving in to that space. So that was probably gonna be demolished for a taller mixed use building perhaps. And it was retained and is still a functional restaurant. And kind of has, it's a 1946 automobile shop, which is kind of unique. And it's been, it's a good example of adaptive reuse. Similarly, just earlier this year, a delay was placed on the demolition of this 1862 home on South Pleasant Street that Amherst College owns. And currently there's a proposal to relocate that building by to University Drive South in that region. And I can't say for certain, but Amherst College could have taken that down, taken that building down without a demolition delay placed on it. There's other examples, but these were the first two that came to mind. So kind of getting into the weeds a little bit, the overview of the bylaw on Amherst. Again, the definition of demolition, it's paraphrased here a little bit, but the crux of it is destroying, removing, or raising a structure or a portion thereof. So it's that or portion thereof that gets is a little bit certainly vague and can mean different things. And it's often unclear kind of like, if someone's taking out the windows, is that demolition? If they're redoing their siding, is that demolition? Cause it says portion thereof. So it puts the building commissioner in a position to kind of have to interpret something that's pretty important and could be clarified. So the definition of a structure is similarly a little bit vague. Any edifice object or building of any kind that is construed or erected and requires more or less permanent location on the ground or attachment to an object with permanent location on the ground. So that has been determined, it could mean fences, it could mean stone walls, statues, garden, you know, where pergolas, things like that. So clarifying that the age threshold, it's 50 years, that's what's kind of flagged by the building commissioner to send it down to the historical commission. If you go into the bylaw itself, we have 11 criteria that are used to determine significance. And they get very quite detailed and you only need to kind of hit one of those to be for a building to be determined significant. Similarly, there's very little criteria for how once a building is determined to be significant, when is it actually determined to be a delay should be placed on it. There's little guidance for the commission to work off of other than that, the proposed demolition would be detrimental to the historical or architectural resources of the town. And surprisingly, actually in our reaching out to Massachusetts Historic Commission and representatives there, very few towns actually have criteria for determining whether a delay should be placed. They kind of all have this vague language about detrimental to the architectural heritage or historical heritage of the town. So we're proposing to add a little bit more guidance there. Whoops. Again, like the length of delay is 12 months, we're not proposing to change that. Right now the role of staff is really just to facilitate the review process. And also we end up carrying out research on these properties and giving the commission more information about the historical who lived there, when was it built, how has it changed over the years? And then currently there's no appeal process. I wrote in here possibly ZBA question mark because I think because it's in the zoning bylaw that's the default route. And I'm not sure if that's occurred before but what we've discussed as staff is because this is now moving to the general bylaw, we're proposing to treat this kind of like the local Historic District Commission where an appeal is brought, a third party is brought in such as like PVPC to kind of help arbitrate some of the disagreement. And also there's the actual action that the historical commission takes is essentially a recommendation to the building commissioner to not issue the demolition permit for a year. And so like that is what we're proposing is a new kind of certificate which I'll talk about which is like a more official action than a recommendation. So here's the little flow chart I made to kind of show kind of the current system where the demo permit application is submitted. We review it internally as staff. We determine if it meets the definition of demolition and if it's 50 years or older or not. If it's not the issue, the demo permit is issued assuming it meets all the other, it's a complete application and they have utilities sign off and all of that. But if it does meet this criteria then it is sent to the commission and the commission then has to hold a public hearing and at this public hearing they have kind of two tasks and they first determine is the building significant by running through 11 different criteria which certainly which takes a while. And then second, if it is determined to be significant is there a delay placed on the building? And so a building can either be not significant and it's the demo permit is issued. It can be significant, but no detrimental impact of the demolition. There's been a few examples of that. The demo permits then issued, but they can also be significant and the impact of demolition is detrimental to the town and then that's when a delay is placed. And so just briefly some of the issues with the demo delay by-law and Amherst that we're looking to change. There's a really high case load for the historical commission next Wednesday. We have four demolition applications that we're reviewing and I think only two of them are pre-1900s farmhouses that frankly should be in front of the historical commission while the other two will probably be reviewed fairly quickly. And so cutting back and the historical commission takes on a lot of work, different projects, CPA funded projects. So giving, freeing them up to do more preservation work and planning work would be great. Currently there's no role for staff to play in reviewing projects for significance. Yeah, and like the definitions of demolition and structure are vague. There's also this issue that maybe is a little bit nuanced down here that it's our timeline, I call it like our timeline basically where because the application for the historical commission and the building department are the same, like we, when someone applies for historical commission review, they're arbitrarily starting the timeline for the building department which they have to approve that permit within I think 30 or 60 days. And so that we also have our own timeline. So I don't need to get into too many details there but just wanting to separate out the historical commission review from the building department is something we wanna do as well. And then adding an appeals process. So I just wanna also mention this bylaw has been in development for many, many, many years. It's not something that's been worked on in the past. Certainly there's been a big push in the last year but I think Nate and Chris and Rob can attest to the fact that there's been many, many versions of this circulating for maybe at least five years. And the historical commission has taken a very active role in drafting the new bylaw that we're proposing. And so I think I'll skim through the proposal and maybe I'll just bring you to the flow chart that it's a bit more graphic and easy to understand but what we're proposing for the new kind of process for how this would work is that the demo permit is submitted and then staff working with, we're gonna say like a historical commission so that could be one maybe the chair of the commission. They work together to quickly review whether a building is found to be significant and if it's not then the demolition permit is issued and if it is and it also meets the definition of demolition and it's 50 years or older then it's sent to the commission. And so that kind of takes out, that filters out a lot of projects that meet the definition of demolition or a building that's 50 years or older but just don't have any historical significance or architectural significance. And we've changed the criteria to make it a little bit more concise kind of what the significance criteria is but we're proposing this two-step process to filter out cases and only send cases to the historical commission for truly buildings that have historical significance. And then the commission is really looking at should there be a delay placed on the building? And I guess maybe I'll just stop there. We did a lot with the wording to kind of refine the definition of building and demolition but maybe we can save that more detailed conversation for another time but that's kind of the broad overview of how we got to where we are now and some of the bigger higher level changes that we're proposing. So here's some nice pictures. Great, thank you. And do we have any questions for Ben from the board, Andrew? And then Jenna. I have a real quick one on the last slow chart or the second slow chart. Sorry, I'm trying to pull it up on my. Yeah, I can do it. Okay. The, I would just like the third sub bullet under the public hearing, consider owner's plans for reuse, reconstruction or restoration, like what if they have no plans? What if they just want to demolish it? Is that considered a negative or a positive? I guess I sometimes struggle with sort of the intent of this if the purpose is to keep, it's like a state of execution for a year, right? And if like someone wants to demolish it, they can afford its upkeep and we're just sort of maybe complicating things for it and soon as year's over, they're gonna demolish it anyway. I don't know what necessarily value it has, but I was curious to know specifically, like is there, is it considered a negative thing? Would it impact the demolition or preservation distinction if the owner didn't want to do anything other than just demolish it? Thank you. Yeah. Ben? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say if it would how, in that example, how it would impact their decision. I think it's the plans for reuse and reconstruction or restoration, that's just one consideration during their deliberation on placing, deciding to place a delay and I think it's, yeah, it's, I think that their main focus is on kind of like what is the value of the building as it stands now, but I think for them to make a fully informed decision, understanding kind of what, if they do place a delay, if they don't place a delay, what is going to be in that space is something they're going to, they want to be able to consider as a commission. I see that Nate can speak to this. Oh, sure, thanks, Jack. Yeah, so that's a good question. I think currently the way the bylaws written, the commission is not supposed to consider at all what the future use of the property or site is going to be. So it's really about, is the building significant? And the staff at that was a little short-sighted with respect that there could be a reuse potential, whether it's the same building or not, that may keep some of the same historical architecture or replicate some of the same character in a new building. And so oftentimes the commission has kind of left asking, well, they'd like to ask what are the plans because maybe if the owner is thinking about a building that may actually contribute to the architectural streetscape that demolition could be okay. And so it's, as Ben said, it's only one new criteria, but it's kind of significant in the respect that right now the commission is really not supposed to ask that at all. And it also, I think it's important because it's really, the commission has a role during delay to help an owner, but with the new bylaw, we're really trying to encourage the commission and the town and the applicant to look at, take steps to try to reuse structures. So at the time of the hearing, they may not have an idea for the property. And that, and maybe the commission will say, we would like to explore what could happen with this. If you don't have any plans, then what's the rush? Let's explore some alternatives. And so I think having this type of provision just allows the commission to ask a few more questions of the applicant that they really can't ask right now. Thank you, Nate, Janet, and then Tom. So I found this presentation and the draft really hard to understand because it was hard to compare it to the original language. So it's like a, you know, it's a revision, but I was hard, I always find myself flipping back and forth between the zoning bylaw and then looking at the presentation, it wasn't that clear to me what the changes were. And there seemed to be significant changes when I looked at the details, but they weren't really highlighted in the PowerPoint. So I think it'd be important to compare the current bylaw, zoning bylaw, to what you want. And so anyone who's reading it, especially as a lay reader with probably less patience or than me could understand where the changes were because there's changes for timing and different things. So it wasn't clear to me from this presentation what the changes were being made. There was changes in timing. Notice who the decision makers are. I actually liked the original significant structure definition. It was very detailed and it was much more clear. And the new definition was kind of less clear and kind of shorter. And I just thought the old one really would lay out for anybody exactly what would be historically significant. And so I thought stick with that one, it was so much more easy to read. And it seemed to encompass more and put the buildings in the physical content or geographic context. It wasn't clear to me where in the new revision where the historical commission could add conditions to the demolition approval. Like it was referred to in this presentation but I couldn't find it in the draft. So maybe it's somewhere. I don't really understand why the building commissioner is involved in making the determination of historical significance. I know there's somebody, someone from the historical commission will also be doing that. But it struck to me if there's a lot of buildings coming in, you want people with a background in history and architecture to make that determination. And maybe if there's a lot coming in it could be a subcommittee of the historical commission. I know from many historians that I know everybody has a specialty in a different area. And so it's, you know, having extra people in would be helpful. And I just didn't understand like the background of the building commissioner, you know, nothing to say against Mr. Moore but building commissioners of the future like making that determination. But another question is about definitions. In the notice of the hearing, it talked about parties and interests but I didn't know who they were. It seemed like a lot of people could be really interested in the building. I didn't, I just had no idea who they were. In the appeal provision, I didn't know who a person agreed would be in much the same way. It seemed very, it could be very broad. At one point the draft referred to town staff and I just thought, you know, hopefully I just had no idea who that could be. It could be somebody, you know, sitting at a desk or somewhere. So I thought that could be more specific. You know, I actually, and the improvements I saw in it, I think were to the timing and how the process went. It was more clear, but there were also timing changes that were hard to track and figure out what are the difference. And I began to wonder why when you did this, you just didn't work off what we have and kind of fix up what was there and things like that. So it's hard to compare two things that aren't set up side by side, but I could see how towards the end of our current bylaw, zoning bylaw, there were improvements in clarity in the appeals process or the hearing process. There were some changes in timing. I didn't know if it was too fast or too slow because they weren't really next to each other. So I think in the presentation of this, maybe that clarity for that. And then, you know, there were also like sort of scriveners or kind of little confusions in it. I don't want to go into that all that detail, but I did kind of go through it really detailed for one hard look. And I'm sure if I looked at it again, I'd find some more. So that's a lot. Nate, you have your hand up. Yeah, sorry, let me lower my hand. I was on just over, but I want to, to Janet, to one thing for Janet, I just want to say that the previous bylaw had so many inconsistencies, you know, it was within zoning, it mentioned chapter 40A, but then the notice requirements didn't actually match 40A. And it said, you had to hold the hearing in one place, but in another section, it didn't. And so, you know, staff and the commission really felt that the model of the current article 13 wasn't worth trying to change because it was so much was changing. And so it was actually cleaner to start with a whole nother draft. And I know that makes it difficult to do like a side-by-side comparison, but sometimes it's just more difficult to try to, you know, track change a document to the point where you're just deleting everything and starting over. So the decision was made to actually just start a fresh, you know, article 13. So I think, you know, we could probably do, you know, have some way to make a, you know, comparison more, you know, more legible, whether that's, you know, some call-outs in the text or something, but it was really just, you know, a ease of working a new draft rather than just, you know, track changing something so much. Great, thanks, Nate. Tom? Oh, Ben, do you want to speak? Yeah, just building off what Nate said. There's also the fact that we, I put this in the format of the general by-law. So it was, which isn't really consistent with the zoning by-law formatting. So that made it also difficult to do like a direct track changes version of this. I will just say quickly to one other, another of Jenna's points is the building commissioner is not the one determining significance. That would be a planning staff work, so staff liaison to the historical commission, whether it's myself or Nate working with the chair or a small group of the commission members. Thank you. Tom, please. Sure, thanks, Jack. Thanks for the presentation, Ben. I think I put my hand up and then I took it down and then I put it back up and I took it down again. I have, I feel like I keep harping on this, but I feel like some of the language here is just incredibly Eurocentric and I'm interested in how we imagine preservation in regard to indigenous populations and other landscapes and structures that might not be considered buildings that are in need of protection and where that falls into these categories in both public and private land and how that's considered in relationship to this. So again, I don't know where it fits in here and how one brings it to the table, but it seems like it's part of demolition and it might be something we want to consider. Thank you. Okay, we'll go... Yeah, I mean, just quickly, Tom, I will say that mass historic, this has been kind of a tried and true method for preserving structures and buildings as a demolition by-law. They recommend if you want to preserve landscapes or other things that there's other tools, legal tools or regulations. And so mass historic really tries to make it a distinction between preserving landscapes, which really isn't part of a demolition by-law and preserving structures. And so I do hear what you're saying. So sometimes people come and say, someone wants to cut down a really important tree or they are changing something, a historic piece of town that isn't a building. And so there are a few different tools to do that. But it's typically that a demolition by-law doesn't address those features. I mean, for me, it's like, you can put a building on a thing, which is actually destroying that thing, right? So I guess, so it seems like it's in the building purview because you're putting something somewhere that might be destructive. Again, I don't know where the nuance is and who's in charge of that, but I just wanted to raise it and make us aware that that is definitely an issue. And especially when it comes to some of our parks and landscapes and trails and structures that are being put up and things like that, should also be considered in relationship to that. Right. Right. Janet, please. So actually, I think one of, I think some of Tom's concerns could be addressed by the criteria for significant, for significance. And so a significant structure because it does talk about geographic importance or importance a group of people and the importance that they had some influence on society. So there's this definition, the original definition is very detailed and broader. And the new definition is more kind of fuzzy, but actually seems more narrow. So I would stick with the original. I think that's, it's got good stuff and it could encompass sort of less traditional, it's a beautiful church or a house of a wealthy person kind of thing. It could, it's a broader definition and more detailed. So I would, and maybe even those issues could be added to that. Thank you, Janet. Maria, please. I remember years ago when this came to us, one of the big hot buttons was the 50 year thing because right now, 50 years ago was our lovely 1970s era of the Contempo houses. And so those are considered historic now. So I was just wondering if there was any headway on that definition of the time set for what it's considered historic. Was that still being looked at or is 50 something you guys have just settled on? Thank you, Ben or Nate? Yeah, I'll make up an answer. No, the commission in last July, we had Chris Skelly from the Massachusetts Historical Commission give a presentation about what are some elements of a demolition by-law and there's a few different ways to capture what could be reviewed under this. And one is setting a date like 50 years old or 75 years old or something. 50 years is the National Park Service standard and so that's something we kept, some communities will have a date certain as of 1935, anything that's built prior to it and then maybe with some language for exceptions if it's a unique structure or site or something. And then others will say if they've done a really thorough inventory, any house that's been inventoried, only those properties that have been inventoried are subject to a demolition review. I think what the commission thought at the time was that we still have so many properties in buildings, help buildings, especially accessory buildings that haven't been inventory, that really wasn't a proper threshold. And then in terms of using a certain calendar year date, they thought that that could miss something. So at some point, maybe those contemporary homes or the post World War II Cape, maybe there are just a few left if everyone's demolishing those. And so at what point, what's considered historically significant, even sometimes, it's not just high architecture, it can be something that is emblematic of a certain time period. So the commission fell 50 years for now, but it was a discussion that they had in terms of what is the threshold for reviewing a property or structure. Guggen, thank you. I see no other comments from the board and open up to the public. We see any hands and I see none. So let's close that up. And I guess we would go to Chris for an update on the other zoning priorities and work plan. We're continuing to work on the zoning priorities and on Monday, we're going to be presenting accessory dwelling units and well, the planning department will be presenting accessory dwelling units to town council for referral to back to the planning department and the CRC for public hearing. And a group of citizens is going to be proposing some changes to the converted dwelling section of the bylaw to the town council for the same reason. So those are two things that are going before the town council on Monday. And then on, I think on May 24th, depending on how far we get with it, we may present the mixed use building to town council on May 24th. But again, it depends on how far we get with it. And I think that the next opportunity to talk to the CRC about it isn't until May 25th. So we may need to postpone that. And it sounded like you all had a lot of questions and comments about it. So we'll have to think about what we do with that. As far as other things go, we're continuing to pursue the list of things that we were given to work on. So more to be said about that in the future. Good, good. Okay. And then we're meeting next Wednesday for that joint hearing with the CRC and the moratorium and the inclusionary zoning. That's great. Yeah. Any other old business you wanna bring up at this point? Any other things to bring up? Okay, or a new business? Nope. Nope, okay. So thank you all. Excellent presentations by Nate, Maureen, and Ben. Thank you. And everyone have a good evening. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck guys. Thanks Jack. Thanks Jack. All right. Okay.