 Okay, Mr. Marshall, you are good to go. We are live. We are recording Amherst media is here. We have okay. All right, we're off. Welcome to the Amherst planning board meeting of May 18, 2022. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst planning board I am calling this meeting to order at 633pm. The meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Amherst media minutes are being taken. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, and as extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This planning board meeting including public hearings will be conducted via remote means using the zoom platform. The zoom link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town websites calendar listing for this meeting, or go to the planning board web page and click on the most recent agenda, which lists the zoom link at the top of the page. No in person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological means. We are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship, or despite our best efforts. We will post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings, as soon as possible after the meeting on the town of Amherst website. Board members I will take a roll call. When I call your name unmute yourself answer affirmatively and then place yourself back on mute. Maria chow. Jack gem sec we know is absent tonight. Tom long present. Andrew McDougal present. I dug Marshall and present. Shannon McGowan here. Present. Board members if a tech if technical issues arise we may need to pause temporarily to fix the problem and then continue the meeting. If the discussion needs to pause it will be noted in the minutes. Please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment. I will see your raised hand and call on you to speak. After speaking remember to remute yourself. The general public comment item is reserved for public comment regarding items that are not on tonight's agenda. Please be aware the board will not respond to comments during general public comment period. Public comment can also be heard at other times during the meeting when determined appropriate. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by clicking the raise hand button when public comment is solicited. If you have joined the zoom meeting using a telephone. Please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star nine on your phone. When called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking residents can typically express their views for up to three minutes, or at the discretion of the planning board chair. The speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time their participation will be disconnected from the meeting. All right, so first item on our agenda is approval of minutes from our past meetings, and the only minutes that I see on the agenda for tonight is the May 4 minutes from our last meeting. All right, board members. Any discussion about those minutes. Andrew, I see your hand. Yeah, I did want to call out on page seven, the adjournment time of 752, just as a reminder, how nice it was that we finished up at 752, but not kidding aside, I am, I'll put a motion out there to approve minutes. All right, thank you for that motion. Would anybody like to second the motion. Yeah. I will second the motion to approve the minutes. Thank you, your honor. Board members any other any comments on the minutes of them. How nice and short the meeting was and how complete the minutes are. All right, I don't see any hands. We'll go through and vote the minutes up or down. Starting with Maria. All right, Tom. Andrew. I. Janet. I'm going to abstain because I wasn't there. Okay. And your honor. Approve. And I'm going to prove as well. So the motion passes with looks like five votes in favor, one abstention and one absent. All right. So the time now is six 38. And we'll move to the second item on the agenda. This is the general public comment period. And as mentioned earlier, this is for. We're open to having comments on items that are not on our agenda for this evening. If you have comments on items on the agenda, please hold them until we get to that item. In the meeting. We'll move on to the second item. We'll move on to the, uh, nine in public attendees. Does anyone want to make a public comment at this time? Okay. I see no hands for public comment. We will move on to the third item in the agenda. The time is now six 38, I guess. And let's see. All right. So this item was advertised for six 35. In accordance with the provisions of mass general law. Chapter 40 a this public hearing. Has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted. And is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding. Zoning bylaw article 13. Demolition delay for structures of historical or architectural significance. For the purposes of adopting a similar bylaw as a general bylaw. So just to clarify. This is, this will be a vote to. Resend article 13 of the zoning bylaw. Uh, with a historic commission. To see if the town will vote to amend the zoning bylaw. By rescinding article 13. Demolition delay for structures of historical or architectural significance. For the purposes of adopting a similar bylaw as a general bylaw. Uh, which makes way for a new general bylaw. Uh, on the same topic. Are there any board member disclosures? Not seeing any. Uh, Chris, would you like to introduce this topic? Yes, I would. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Chris Brestrup. I'm the planning director. And we're here tonight to hold a public hearing on the removal of the zoning bylaw. And I would like to present to you the report. The zoning bylaw 15 demolition delay for structures of historical or architectural significance. For the purpose of adopting a similar bylaw as a general bylaw. I regret that Ben Breger, the planner who's been working with the historical commission on this amendment. And Jane walled chair of the historical commission cannot join us tonight. They're attending the historical commission meeting. That's occurring simultaneously with the planning board meeting. The planning board and the zoning bylaw. The planning board and the zoning bylaw. Have been discussing this zoning amendment for several years. And the commission supports this change and is ready to move forward. The planning board is familiar with this proposal. Having heard about it last spring. And again, earlier this year. The demolition delay bylaw is proposed to be repealed from the zoning bylaw. And a new preservation bylaw is proposed to be added to the general bylaw. And again, I'm not going to go into the general bylaw. Include. The practice in most cities and towns in Massachusetts is to have this bylaw in the general bylaw. Another one is Massachusetts historical commission recommends this as a general bylaw rather than as a zoning bylaw. Another reason is this. The preservation bylaw is similar to or akin to the local zoning bylaw. A fourth reason for general bylaws, any appeal of a general bylaw is made to the court system rather than to the zoning board of appeals. And the last point is that preservation of existing buildings is relevant to zoning, but it's not a core focus of zoning. And therefore it's more suited to being in the general bylaw. So the planning board is being asked to make a recommendation to the zoning bylaw. While the planning board does not have a formal role in the adoption of a new general bylaw, the board is welcome to offer comments to town council about the new general bylaw. In your packets, you have the existing article 13 proposed to be rescinded. And the new article proposed to be added to the general bylaw. The planning department has reviewed the language of the new general bylaw with our attorney, the new general bylaw. The general bylaw. The new general bylaw is based on the AP law on at least two occasions in September of 2021. And in April of 2022. And the recommendations of attorney Bard have been incorporated into the new language of the general bylaw. With regard to the general bylaw, it does the following. It creates a new certificate for applicants. That will help to separate the historical commission process from the general bylaw. And it also creates a two-step review process. The building department grants a demolition permit. It also creates a two-step review process. And the first step is a determination as to whether a building is significant or not. And if it is found to be significant, a public hearing is held to determine whether the building should be preferably preserved. Once that decision has been made about whether the building should be preferably preserved or not. And if it is not, it is issued or a preservation order is issued. The CRC or community resources committee has reviewed the proposed rescission and the new language. On April 14th, 2022, the CRC held a public hearing on the rescission of article 13. And the addition of the new general bylaw. The CRC voted unanimously unanimously on April 14th to recommend that the council rescind the zoning bylaw. And the new general bylaw was approved on April 13th. With an effective date upon the effective date of the adoption of a similar general bylaw. They didn't vote on the new bylaw at that time because the historical commission was still working on some final language. So. The planning staff met with two members of the historical commission during that time period and worked out the final language. On May 12th, 2022, the CRC approved the revisions to the new language and voted unanimously to recommend the town council adopt the new language of the general bylaw. And the planning board has the new language in its packet. Town council will be holding its first reading on the repeal and replacement of the demolition delay and preservation of historically significant buildings bylaw changes on June 6th. And then hold a second reading on June 13th, which is the new language of the general bylaw. And then hold a second reading on June 13th, which is the new language at which they hope to take a vote. I would suggest once you've had a chance to. Talk about this. That I have a motion that I think might be appropriate. I won't read the motion right now, but when you get to the point of voting, I can read the motion. I think I sent it to Doug this evening. So thank you for listening. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. If you have a question. Right off the bat prompted by your statement that town council is going to be reading this. In the near future. Since this, since what we're. What we're to deliberate tonight. Is a change to the zoning. Doesn't. Town council need to. Refer this to us at some point. It was referred. It was referred already. Yes. Okay. So the hearing we're in this evening is. Within the. Time duration. Yes, the referral occurred on March 21st. Okay. So we're still within the time period during which the public hearings for. CRC and planning board need to occur. That's correct. Yep. Okay. So we need to. Make a recommendation to town council. Up or down. Or with changes or something else. On the recision. Yes. Okay. You can offer recommendations on the other part too. If you choose to. Right. But those are, those will be. Sort of advisory. Okay. Thanks. Janet, I see your hand. So you may have just answered my question. Okay. So because it's a zoning by-law. And we're voting on whether it should be rescinded. We can vote. I mean, presumably we're saying. We're okay on that because we approve or like the new language of the new amendment. So are we going to vote on that also? Or is that just up to us? Okay. Okay. I think the new language that's in the general by-laws. The approval and adoption of those. General by-laws does not go through the planning board. Okay. So I would be, I'd be very comfortable if we also tonight voted to recommend. And I guess I could make a motion to recommend that. This. New version of the demolition, the preservation of historically significant. Buildings by-law be. You know, passed by the town council. So I'd like to see these, those things paired. Okay. All right. Oh, it looks like Nate has joined us. Welcome, Nate. I hope your athletic event this afternoon went well. All right. So. You know, board members. Any, any conversation about this? I do know this is. We've talked about this a couple of times. We have. Reviewed the proposed. General by-law. Previously. And there were comments made. And I know Janet met with. Planning staff about some of the concerns she had. So. We've been through this. We've been through this. We've been through this. A fair amount, but it's been a little while since we talked about it. Does anybody want to talk about it more tonight? Don't all raise your hand at once. Okay. Janet, I guess yours is the hand. Thank you. Thank you, Doug. So since we discuss this at length in our last meeting sometime in the dark winter, I think the, I think there's only been one major change, which is going from. You know, 50 years to 75 years. Are there like, and I was hoping Chris could, or. Nate could talk to us about that. Are there any other changes to this language? Like significant changes in this draft that I'm holding. From our last draft. Chris, go ahead. So there have been a few minor changes. One of the changes was that. The determination of significance, whether building is significant or not has been. The language has been made more flexible. So it's really up to the historical commission to decide whether it's the whole commission. Or a designate from the historical commission or a designate from the planning department. Staff makes a determination as to significance. So this by law doesn't spell out that particular thing. It leaves it up to the commission. Everything that this by law does is that it removes the third. Portion of the definition of demolition. So initially we had demolition in three parts. The first part was initiating the work of total destruction of an entire building with the intent of completing that. The second part was any act of pulling down. Destroying. Removing or raising 25% or more of the front, back or side elevations of the building. The gross square footage of each elevation, including wall area, roof area and exposed foundation area, calculated separately. And then the third one was for buildings listed on the Amherst inventory of historic buildings. Accepted by a vote of the commission. And updated periodically. The act of changing, modifying or removing important architectural elements from a building, which elements define the historical integrity of the design, including building, which elements define the historical integrity of the design, including, but not limited to doors, windows, stoops, porches, chimneys and similar elements, except for exemptions as found in section C three of the bylaw. So what the planning staff and the historical commission agreed to was to remove that part C for now. And there is no. Authenticated inventory of historic buildings. We have pieces here and there, and they might be able to speak to that better than I can. It includes about, I think 1200 buildings altogether, some of which you would not recognize as being historically significant. So the board, the commission felt that it needed to spend more time, the commission and the planning staff developing the inventory and voting on the inventory having embedded by the commission before we relied on it in any way. And if we don't have the inventory to rely on, we're also opening ourselves up for, you know, potentially hundreds of reviews because, you know, we could be reviewing things like Echo Hill houses that have been around since the 1960s. So we don't really want to get into that at this time. So we've decided with the historical commission to remove that section C. And the CRC thinks that's a good idea as well. And so that, that was also a change. There were any other changes. The delay period for the demolition delay remains at 12 months. So that hasn't changed. Can you think of any other changes? No, I was just looking through the packet. I don't see any, I mean, there's still the same, you know, we try to streamline definitions, the process and everything. And so all those, you know, there, nothing has really changed there. But from what was, you know, what's in the bot, you know, what's currently there towards being proposed is a big change, but not the different versions that the planning board reviewed. I think the declaration of policy or the purpose, I think there was some minor changes, but. I don't see anything. Nothing else. Yeah. Okay. Thanks Chris and Nate. Janet. So does the CRC support adding that back the sec, the. Once there is a historic authenticated historic inventory that you can't remove like iconic pieces of it. Is there support for that idea? You'll be fine. Excuse me. Raise my hand. Thanks, Janet. Chris. The CRC really didn't discuss whether they would support that addition back again. That was really an idea that the planning staff discussed with the historical commission as something that could be done in the future when the inventory is, has been established. Thanks Chris. And thanks, Janet. Thank you. Okay. Board members, any other. Any other discussion? All right, so. I guess we'll move right on to a vote. Chris, shall I read the motion that you, or do you want to read it? You can read it if you have it up. Yep. I do. All right, I'll make the motion on behalf of the board. I move that the planning board recommends that town council rescind article 13 demolition delay for structures of historical or architectural significance for the purpose of adopting a similar bylaw as a general bylaw with an effective date upon the effective date of the adoption of the similar bylaw as a general bylaw and so this is so our recommendation is contingent on town council adopting the general bylaw and we won't have a we wouldn't have a period where there is no bylaw on this topic in town would anybody like to second that janet i see your hand should i take that as your second yes yes okay thank you sorry yohana you'll get another one okay um no further ado we'll start at the end of the alphabet which would be yohana hi thank you and janet hi uh andrew hi tom right maria and i'm an i as well so that's six in favor no opposed one member absent thank you all all right so we'll move on to item four in the agenda i believe it is yes i'm dug yes janet i was hoping to make a motion to recommend the the version the draft version of preservation of historically significant buildings um that the planning board would recommend adoption of this version to the town council before we move on okay um i don't have a date on this though so i'm wondering i'd like to be a little more specific well you could say the version that was part of the planning board packet on may 18th okay so i will say that so does anyone want to second that uh maria i saw your hand next i still have a question for janet why why is he bringing this up i don't understand why this motion is happening oh because we've been reviewing it over and over again and i think it's a really strong version um i think it encompasses a lot of concerns that everyone's raised and i i think the board you know we're kind of letting go over a bylaw and i i think it'd be great for the board to recommend this this draft i think it's been six years in the making when according to jane wald okay thank you janet maria did you have any further questions yeah is that the standard thing that we usually do chris or i just i've never it's like is that necessary chris um it's really offering um your comments to the town council on this matter um so we haven't been through this very many times where we take something out of the zoning bylaw and put it into the general bylaw um but i i think it would be it would be appropriate although not um required for you to do this you're required to vote on the rescission you're not required to vote on the new bylaw but you're offering your support for the new bylaw i would say that's what you would be doing if you voted for this motion okay thank you chris um so we have a motion from janet did anybody um andrew i'll take the motion okay thank you um any any discussion from board members not seeing any all right uh oh yohanna i was just gonna say i don't have a problem with it it feels a little i don't know there's part of me that feels like it's a little bit redundant given the motion that we just passed but you know no harm no foul okay thanks yohanna i i will say i'm gonna abstain i i think this is an unnecessary act on our part and it's not you know it's it's really kind of irrelevant to the town adopting it janet um so i think you know part of the reasons for it is that you know we've all worked on it and looked at it and i think most of us support it i also i'm just very cognizant that jane walth had said they've been working on this for six years and i thought if we can give a little heft to it and help it get through the town council and support the work of the historic commission they've just worked really hard on it it's a good draft and it you know it kind of incorporates a lot of people's different concerns and also it just makes the whole process more clear to somebody who is a property owner or somebody who's in a butter or somebody in town hall or the historic commission so i think you know everything's less confusing it's a stronger more flexible thing so you know i'd love to see us support that and help the historic commission okay thank you and chris you said that the crc had discussed both the rescission and the new amendment yes and the crc voted to recommend the new amendment okay all right janet i'll assume your hand is now a legacy hand um any other any other discussion okay we'll do a roll call um and starting with maria abstain tom hi andrew hi janet hi and johanna abstain and i will abstain also so chris we have three members voting in favor three abstentions and one absence thank you sure chris since we did not achieve four am i correct that the motion failed or or is we have three out of six a 50 percent result i think that's the case i think what you said is the case all right all right thank you so i don't see anything else on that particular topic could we have a motion do we need to close the hearing that's a good idea yes and having gotten to this chris i'm going to ask another question which i'm a little embarrassed to ask um we got we went all the way through that in a public hearing and we did not ask for public comment oh and um you can reopen the public hearing it's the same night and you're the same group and you're doing it in the same meeting so i think you can reopen the public meeting hearing well we haven't closed the hearing but we've had to vote right so that's true yeah well i think uh before we close the hearing but i think you should right so you before you close the public hearing you should ask for public comment right and uh so members of the public uh my apologies does anyone want to comment on this rescission of article 13 of the bylaw i see one hand from jennifer tau we could bring her over and once again name and address no can you hear me i can't help him we can't hear you i'm muted okay um so i'm jennifer tau but 259 lincoln avenue i guess it's a little late um you know i'm um speaking as a resident but i'm also on the crc um and um i you know would have i i think a vote um in favor of that motion you know might have just been helpful to the council and in ensuring that um that stronger bylaw would be the one that prevailed so i know i'm a little late but i would have spoken in support um before the vote thank you okay thank you jennifer i don't see any other hands from the public uh tom i see your hand you are muted i was good i was gonna move to close the hearing okay well chris uh we've now had uh public we've had an opportunity for public comment and a little bit of public comment uh do you think it's appropriate that we go ahead and close the hearing i think so i don't see anyone else's hands hand up in the attendees all right uh i i think before i do that board members having heard the public comment would any of you want to change your vote uh not seeing anyone who is saying they would want to change their vote so in that case i'm not gonna try to get into doing a revote and uh would anyone like sounded like tom you wanted to close the public hearing yes so move thank you tom and maria i think thank you maria uh if we could have a vote to close the public hearing we'll start with yohana proved all right thank you uh janet sure approved uh andrew hi and tom right maria and i'm gonna prove as well all right so that passed six in favor okay so the time now is seven oh six and we'll move on to the next public hearing on the agenda this evening all right so this is a site plan review in accordance with the provisions of mass general law chapter 40a this public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding spr 2022-13 umass five college credit union 398 to 406 northampton road request site plan review approval under sections 3.358.0 and 5.0431 and 8.5 of the zoning bylaw to redevelop 398 and 406 northampton road into a credit union branch including drive-through facilities the project includes 34 public or 34 parking spaces bicycle racks wall signs landscaping and an oversized monument sign the parcels are map 13d power parcels 47 and 48 in the bel zoning district is there any board member disclosure concerning this project uh andrew yeah my wife works for the credit union and and she she had shared information with this as the news is starting to come public but that's all thanks okay thank you any other disclosures yohana i'm a member of the credit union i don't think that gives me any material influence so i don't think i need to abstain from anything given the ethics laws but just wanted to put it out there okay thank you i'm a member as well okay tom don't mind andrew we've almost got a quorum here okay uh christ do you want to introduce this or should we move right on to mr reedy and the design team uh you are muted sorry um yes move on to the applicant and natus the person to go to with questions on this because he's more familiar with it than i am okay all right all right mr reedy thank you very much mr chair members of the board for the record tom reedy attorney with bacon wilson out of amherst here on behalf of umass five college federal credit union in a very exciting application for the redevelopment of a couple of parcels as the chairman noted 398 and 406 north hampton road here in amherst zoned limited business and so a meeting site plan review approval from the board hopefully this evening excited to introduce the development team um so we've got alon tyrney from q nordall architects the architect for the project we've got chris chamberlain and rachel lawfler from berkshire design who are the engineer and landscape architect for the for the project i guess a little bit of background and i'll share my screen just to orient everyone to to the sites and i know that the board or at least some members of the board had a site walk i believe it was monday um us five is very excited about this project being cited properly on route nine north hampton road i think you'll see a lot of sustainable aspects porous pavement rain gardens a lot of landscaping i think you'll see a wonderful building design um from cune riddle and we have started the process with the conservation commission as i think miss breast drop circulated to the board uh that we had started the process the commission did close the hearing they're working on their conditions for the order of conditions and we expect to get that order of conditions issued i believe it's may 22nd we've also submitted because the site has two more in buildings and then a single family dwelling on it the single family dwelling is of an age that requires a historical commission approval for its demolition and so that application had been submitted to the historical commission we were on for hearing this evening but we have to continue the historical commission hearing so that we could be here with you uh this evening so what i'll do just somewhat quickly to orient everyone is share my screen you'll see the amherst gis map you've got the parcels so this is where the morton buildings are route nine moving in the southwest to northeast direction you've got the yep uh we can't see as you have started hearing the screen at least on my screen it hasn't come up yet okay oh i had seen it i saw the screen share oh did you i saw it too okay maybe it's just me go ahead again sure i'll i have i have the drawings in front of me so no don't need to see it yeah and we'll and this is this is more for just general background just to give folks a sense of context for the sites that we're dealing with this is just your amherst gis ariel you've got hawkins meadow to the east green leaves drive to the west the new aspen development a little further west the town line is this line right here you know moving further east you've got this is where that one university drive south development is ginger garden on the corner gas station vacuums across the street and then johnny's roadside diner you've got i think liquor store pet store grocery store maybe a marshals i haven't been there in a while and so then here i just wanted to show you the google street view just to give you a sense this is that single family home that we're talking about going through the demolition process with the historical commission and here is the zeblit motorworks current operation and then as you pan there's fencing that's i believe owned by hawkins meadow and then you've got a row of arbor vities and about their maturity of about 15 feet and then you've got you know if i was able to move a little bit further here additional arbor vities in this jog and these will actually get to be about 60 feet in height so they're they're green giant arbor vities so as i'm sure rachel will talk about a little bit later with site screening from a landscaping perspective you know we believe that the the proposal with the downcast lighting and the siting of the building will prevent any light trespass and then if you see as you probably saw on the site visit there's existing vegetation to the to the rear and then also to the west so this is a nice spot a little bit on an island we've we're fortunate to have existing vegetation already on that easterly side i'll bring it back here once more and just turn around and show you you know where this is and how it's already screened from hawkins meadow give you perspective of what's around that commercial to the northeast and then we've got commercial right across the street you can see the size of the signs in the general area here right up along route nine and then as you know route nine is a divided highway with lanes in each direction so you know with that i'll i'll be back to kind of talk to you about use operation traffic a little bit but i think probably make sense for us to turn it over to rachel to dive into the site plan and so i'll stop sharing my screen and i'll let rachel walk you through the site thanks tom rachel welcome thanks can everyone see my screen i'm here i'm joined my name is rachel afler i'm with berkshire design group out of north campton and i'm joined here i'm a principal there and i'm joined here with christopher chamberlain also a fellow principal in the office and we're we've been working together with k r a architects who will also be speaking tonight about about the building and with a wider team of an arborist and a signage consultant and a lighting consultant so this is an image of what we envision the project looking like from route nine a new building along route nine set set back from from the road and i'm going to talk you through what that how that fits on the site when we started thinking about placing placing the building on the site we started thinking about at what point along route nine could you see the see the building and know to turn in and we really really got into site distances at travel speeds and what that at what point along the time when you see so this is a this is our site that we're talking about today this is the garage portion and the residential portion of the site this is route nine university drive the green leaves development back here and there's an existing stand of vegetation along this corner blocking views of the site so around 45 i'm sorry rachel uh andrew i see your hand is this uh urgent question or i'm just going to ask if you could zoom in a little bit more on that yeah that's all thanks i don't have to go that much but just so we can there's no dense space yeah thanks um so a car traveling 45 miles an hour along route nine has about a 60 degree cone of vision and so as you're coming along route nine we don't anticipate actually starting to see and recognize that it is a bank that you can turn into until you've until you've gotten about midway down midway into the site so that really informed our placement of the building and our entry and exit onto the site so this is a survey showing the existing conditions as they exist today this is again route nine this is the garage building and the residential building today there's an existing curb cut driveway for the residential building and existing curb cut into the garage that's right up against the property line and as tom mentioned there are arbor vitie which screen the site from its adjacent neighbors in addition there are about 200 square feet of wetlands on the back portion of the property and a significant portion about 30 percent of the property is within the 100-foot wetland buffer the project did go before the conservation commission last wednesday and and we closed the public hearing and next at the next meeting they're going to grant grant the orders of conditions in addition there are some mature trees along the west side of the property and our arborist has walked the site and tagged them individually and given us advice as to which trees may need to come down which trees may need to be route spate air spated which trees may need to be trimmed we also met with the neighbor uh the leaves neighbor and walked the site with them as some of these trees are on their property um and talked to what we would be doing and rachel um i noticed that the arbor vitie are not on your property at least that's the way it looks on the lc 100 i think some of their branches come over a little bit yeah so as long as that adjacent owner decides to leave them they'll be effective as screening correct okay thank you also existing on site in 2013 the the owner put in a subsurface infiltration system uh which outfalls into into the area out back there's an additional stormwater collection system that actually connects to the mass dot system so when as we're looking at the site we're thinking about how to balance those two points of release um the demo plan the service is the demolition and erosion and sedimentation control plan shows the limit of work during construction that we anticipate we anticipate fencing off the site having a tracking pad having a gate a lockable gate putting down erosion control barriers around the property to prevent sediment from running off and then um we've detailed each tree which tree may be removed or which tree may be aerospated the conservation commission requested and these are some of the changes that they requested we add to clarify that then based of species removal on site will be performed by a certified remover um and that they prefer a method of cutting and dabbing rather than foliar spray so to help orient you the proposed project and how that relates to the new new work in red is that survey information that you just saw of the nine area the existing drive into into the um garage parking service the existing residents and their existing driveway this black line thick black line is the new footprint of the bank and as you can see it's located right in between all these different buildings in addition instead of coming into the site and having a turn in right when you right when you enter the site and moving moving around around this way um we we decided that given the sight lines and the access that it made sense to actually place the entry point into the site at the furthest eastern portion of the site so that as people are driving down route nine the divided highway the becoming this way they would have a chance to see see the sign see the building and then turn into our project and the project proposes one way travel around around the site so as you come into the site there are there are 25 parking spaces that are for visitors to which are ADA with the fully accessible direct access to the front door you'll be around there are three ITMs those are interactive teller machines that during the day someone has a video interface with you as you pull up and then after hours you can use as a standard ATM there's a drive a drive through lane to buy pass all that and then continues and you can continue on out with the right turn only onto the nine there are nine additional parking spaces which are anticipated for staff with an accessible parking space for the staff only in the front of the site we are we're we are um devoting a large portion of the area for rain garden for LID stormwater infiltration is also using it as a way to showcase UMass 5's commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship and all the asphalt on site is is forest paving so instead of having to have a subsurface infiltration system or a large basin we're actually handling all the stormwater within the profile of the paving which we're pretty excited about I should also say that we are there's an existing bus stop here on the corner right on the property line which is used quite a bit every time we've been there we've seen people standing waiting and we're proposing to move the bus stop further down past the entry drive to actually help eliminate the particular conflicts and allow people coming passing by to have time to let the bus know they need to stop and make the stop here so this is about 38 feet from the intersection the drive to allow a bus the length to stop utility wise we have it's a great site to develop there's a lot of municipal utilities really close right up in the road we'll definitely be after this process be going to the MAST DOT to get the highway access permit for the curb cuts and then a utility access permit for connections to water sewer and electric in the right away but there is a water main along along Northampton road we did a fire flow test for it and we have sufficient water pressure for the project we're proposing a six inch water line that connects to the back to the mechanical room and we have a separate a separate stub for fire water suppression system and a potable water system we're putting in a new sewer line connection we actually investigated the sewer line existing sewer line onsite that is in a different location but it it it was not it was clay and it was not in good condition so we decided to go ahead and and provide a new sewer line connection and then any of the storm water storm water from the roof is collected is split in two some of it goes to the front rain garden and some of it goes into the back level spreader area the areas that are any overflow or just the overflow for the rain garden the front we will reuse the existing connection to the MAST DOT to handle that and an extensive storm water report has been prepared for this project and Chris can speak to that more if you have questions but we are reducing we're improving the site significantly we're reducing both the velocity and the volume water leaving the site on this location and this location from where it is today during initial review with the fire department they suggested that they would like to have another fire hydrant for access if there were in case of emergency and so we've been working with Chris Vaskham back and forth and this is the location that he's comfortable with and we're comfortable with placing up the fire hydrant for his access for trucks and this is a diagram showing the movement of the largest Amherst fire truck coming into the site making that turn moving through the turnaround and then exiting the site planting wise we're super excited to be able to work with UMass 5 and develop a wonderful planting plan that features natives and works with rain gardens and provides habitat for pollinators so we have a mix of different different types of plant mixes some that are pollinators for sun some that are pollinators for more shade we have a rain garden planting with a lot of carats that sedges and carats and some flowers and then we have some areas of ferns and birches and screening trees of balsam fir some good natives in the back during our site visit with the neighbors at green leaves they they really like the image of their sign with green vegetation behind it and they they asked if we would be willing to consider adding worse screening trees along this property line and our client is thrilled to help to accommodate them but we would like to take some time to review that those species options with both our client and green leaves the whole finalizing that lighting we we heard comments from you it's very hard to read the lighting plan so we have two options here for each of them we've taken a asset the lighting plan provided by our our lighting designer having color coding what what what what image goes where we also have an illustrative rendering of the photometrics where the lighter the lighter color yellow is the less dense light and then the darker yellow is the more intense light so the lighting strategy on site is to use a range of different fixtures for to provide to provide safety um and security for the bank we're using a mixture of full full mounted site lights around the perimeter of the parking lot we have some shallow downlights that are in recessed in the canopy of the building we have a couple of wall lights that are in the ocean stone walls and several baller side lights along pedestrian pathways where the lighting levels were low enough that we needed a little bit more support and then there are some additional wall mounted some additional lights of the building to enhance the rival experience so on the plan the red dots for all the pole mounted lights pointing in towards the parking lot so this arrival day of parking is is illuminated by the pole mounted lights as well as this visitor's area and there are a couple more pole mounted lights along the periphery at the front of the bill along the sidewalks along the front the purple colored lights are all baller lights eliminating the pathways so that's the same for both this entry and this entry over here and then the magenta colored lights are the the wall lights that are inside the ocean stone walls i should have forgot to mention that the we do have some curved ocean stone seat walls that create outdoor seating areas at the front entry so that will be a really nice cascade effect for those lights all the lights are dark sky compliant and a shielded shielded from overhead and then on the second floor there is a there is a deck space over top itm's it's both the canopy to protect the itms but also an overflow space which alon will talk a little bit more about the building plans and that area also has illumination with a couple with a lot of these magenta lights are lights recessed in the railing so it's a very subtle dot to light and then there's some additional lights right at the edge of the building we also got a question about the dumpsters and we have been working with usa recycles to accommodate the the dumpster movements and just last week so our original design is based upon is based upon a rear loading dumpster truck which usa recycles does have in its fleet currently but just last week they informed us that they actually would love to discontinue that truck and they'd like us to they'd like to go to a front loading truck on all new projects so we have looked at a possibility of taking looking that dumpster enclosure at 90 degrees so that a dumpster front loading dumpster truck can come in the main entry move around pick up the pick up the dumpster and then continue on its way so i'd like to reiterate this is the project is a 1.4 acre site um we we meet the we comply with the lot coverage and setback requirements it's a two-story building we're promoting four bike racks 34 bike spaces we have 3d a 380 spaces and a new bus stop location all right thanks rachel um i guess the i guess i'd like to know would you guys like to move on into the architectural drawings now or should we take questions on the site drawings and talk that through first as far as we're concerned whatever whatever the board wants it might be good to go through architectural in case ilan mentioned something that might answer a question about the site or she'll probably talk about the site a little bit so it might be better to go through it and then come back and talk about site architecture and then we can talk about traffic signage and the use if that's okay okay then ilan you're on all right can everyone see my screen yes okay thanks so much um my name is ilan tirney i'm president at q and riddle architects located right here in downtown amherst um i'm really excited to share this potential project for the umas five college credit union as rachel mentioned q and riddle and berkshire design group have been working with umas five for a couple of years um to find a more prominent invisible location a long route nine for their flagship branch and this is a really great location for them um in addition to the increased visibility some of the primary goals that are driving this design are sustainability um creating a welcoming place for members visitors and staff um and a building and site design that represents the umas five mission its vision and its principles so just a reminder the architectural design is still in schematic design while the site design is closer to construction ready so just keep that in mind we are not 100% done with our design so this is the um the main image that we've been sharing with you here we go okay so as rachel mentioned um visibility is really important and so we looked at it how people would be able to see the building going in both directions on route nine and this image is when you're pulling out of university drive onto route nine it's highly visible which is really great um considering it is umas um even though it's five college it starts off with umas so all the folks coming from umas will see this flagship branch um as they come onto route nine on the other hand as you're coming from the west um or from hadley going towards amour center um as rachel said there's a lot of plantings right on that corner and so visibility of the building is difficult and um what we've done to try to make it visible is bring the monument sign closer to the sidewalk and the road um so it is highly visible people are traveling at a higher rate of speed and as rachel said it is one of the reasons why we decided to put the entrance um on the far side of the site so people have time to see it and make a turn into the property as you turn into the driveway this is the image that you will see the front of the building faces north and then the side is east facing we've got a really nice glassy corner that shows the vertical circulation or the main stair of the building the pergola on the front the wooden pergola is meant to draw people in and also representative of the timber structure that we hope to use inside the building we are hoping to have a robust envelope uh with energy efficient systems low flow water fixtures healthy materials that have a low carbon footprint and an ultimate goal of a net zero energy building not a hundred percent design yet but those are our goals um we haven't selected all the materials yet but uh we are looking at a composite siding material and energy efficient windows that look substantially like what you're seeing here at the front of the building you this is showing the um signage that's on the building the large sign at the top of the building the letters will glow at night um when it gets dark out and then there's also the mission statement sign that's right near the door and there will be a um wall washer light that's in the ceiling that washes light across that mission statement sign um as rachel said all of the fixtures are pointed downwards dark sky compliant um the light fixtures in the front here are tucked up in between the beams in these three beams underneath this roof area and headlight down onto the walkways so this building is ideally situated and um oriented for solar exposure we've got this little butterfly roof and that southern facing roof we hope to cover with pv um and get to that net zero goal we did keep the form of the building intentionally simple both for energy efficiency and uh cost effectiveness as you come around to the back of the building you can see those um ipms you can drive in underneath to the three ipms that are below and as rachel mentioned we're showing a roof roof deck over those itms that is spilling out from the main conference room it's meant to be used by staff for uh lunch or meetings or when there are occasional um networking events uh they may have people out on that those that deck but it would be limited um mostly during date hours mostly for staff um and a couple times a year would guess be invited to use that deck um and then as you leave the site on the west side of the building as rachel was saying there's some really nice birch trees on the staff entrance is tucked in the back uh corner here um so private and secure and i'll bring you inside on the floor plans so the front of the building route nine can you see my cursor let's see my cursor this is that pergola that's out front there's a vestibule with two itms as you come in and that vestibule will be uh open for use of the itms or atms 24 seven but this door obviously locked into the main bank area as you come in there's a concierge desk or a breeder's desk and then walking through into an open lobby space which has an open area up to the second floor above there are offices that are ringing that area it's very similar to what their current branch is like at west gate and at the back there are two teller pods as well as a booth a private booth teller station um and safe deposit public bathrooms and then uh the private secure uh areas for staff there's a back stair this is the staff entry um it is used as also as an emergency egress and um as rachel noted it is an accessible entry and egress um and there is a accessible parking space for a staff person at that location the second floor is primarily for staff or for appointment only um engagement with members someone would come up the stairs and land at this landing which can be used as a waiting area or informal um uh meeting space and there's also an elevator from the first floor just as you come in the entry it opens out onto both sides this is a a loop around that open area down to the first floor again offices on either side the back has the large conference or community room that spills out onto that roof deck there's a big break room a couple of bathrooms and again that um back stair of course a janitor's pocket this is a section uh through the building just kind of giving you an idea of uh that relationship between the first floor so all the way over to the right is that vestibule where the itms are you come into that uh greeter space the greeter's here that's the elevator tower upstairs is that informal um meeting or waiting space this is the um mezzanine sort of wrapping around the first floor the offices of the bed this is the teller station in the back um the teller pods and then the community room and spilling out onto that uh deck with the itms below this is an image of what it's like to walk in you'd meet the greeter you'd see the teller pods beyond the offices to your left would be that open stair with some plantings another informal waiting space as you walk through that open um waiting space you can see up to the second floor to the community room and the offices above and to the teller pods in front of you um displays of art and community artwork is important and so there are places where we've identified uh to share that in the waiting areas and then as you're leaving or turning around to leave the building looking back towards the front um that's the vestibule at the very end a large glassy area to the front the elevator tower above and you can see in this image some of that exposed wood structure that we're proposing as you come up to the stairs on the second floor level this is looking back towards the conference room and you can see down to the first floor level and here's that conference room and you can see the roof deck beyond and then looking back from the conference room towards the front of the building now I turn it back to Tom do you want me to leave this up or you want me to take this down yeah I I think that's great uh thanks very much Elon um Mr Chair if you want to talk site or architecture now would probably be a good time for us to to chat okay um why don't we bring the site drawings back up I don't know if that's Rachel yes um so board members uh I guess prepare your questions there are comments if you have any Andrew thanks Doug uh thanks for the presentation um yeah so a couple of quick site ones um I did not go to the visit um oh yeah actually good point why don't we do the site the site visit report first sure and uh I know there were two or three members of our board that were there who would like to make that report you know Hannah I always get nervous doing this but I can take a crack at it so we met Rachel and um one other representative at the site we started near the green sleeves corner and then walked around the garage and the warehouse to the back and um you know looked at essentially where the gravel part drops off and then there's kind of a lower vegetated area we poked around the back of the warehouse and looked at the residents that's there that will be before the historic commission in June and then we looped back around to the front and talked a lot about the entrance and egress and the rain garden um it was very helpful to see the site at one point we had a brief visit with the owner of the garage um who's going to be moving his business to the Fort Hill Auto Body Shop on Route 9 on the south side of or sorry the east side of Amherst College um I think that's it I don't know if anybody else has anything to add all right thanks Johanna Janet would you like to add sure um it things I think we talked about were the permeable pavement which was exciting for at least me I'm sure everybody else um that the the pavement you know will take the rainwater the site is not you know sitting like a foot above the groundwater so that's possible and then also we it was really noisy in the front like where those people are standing and sitting from traffic but particularly from the car wash it was just sort of incessantly noisy when you go to the back of the building it's really quiet and um the Arbor Vitey are like a complete screen you could not even see the apartments next door um it would um I think Rachel noted that the roof garden they're they're building the deck strong enough so they could do like a green garden on there at some point and um I think that's about it for me to add all right Tom yeah I know that was about it yeah I mean we we talked a little bit about the house um that it's on the site the residence and its current state and what um how it will be up for review by the historic board but um there was some commentary about that as well all right very good Andrew why don't we come back to you next site questions okay yeah um the first so just seeing how you've sort of reversed the the the entry point and the egress I was just wondering and I understand the logic behind it um is does the amount of vegetation impact your sight lines from the egress I couldn't tell yeah um okay sorry um there will be some some trimming that takes place so one of the things that the arbor is identified zoom in real close here there are three trees that are growing together is one dense mass uh one is a hickory I think one one was a Norway maple um and he recommended that we actually take them down um and the neighbors were okay okay with that also we're going to keep one of the three trees in the stand and then prune this up so that as you are leaving the site at the exit and you're queuing up here so sorry um as your car queues up here you have those trees are back back at this location so with with that removal and the pruning we're going to open up really good sight lines for people that are leaving the exit area provided also you can move the bus is it a bus shelter no it's it's just a sign yeah and the existing sidewalk is the two minutes and there's a little concrete pad where the pvta bus stop is now and we will be providing a shelter um it's a covered shelter in this area okay um a couple other just quick ones is what's the snow removal plan um we had provided it provided this plan with the submission package um first I will say that what we've seen with and with porous asphalt is that the snow removal and winter management is this a lot easier just because the sheer fact that the water permeates into the lower layers and so you have much less standing water on the surface of the pavement so what we're anticipating is a reduction in the amount of salt that's needed for the site as well as the amount of plowing that's needed but we will need to plow on those heavier snow events we do have some areas uh where snow may be stored um but we also got comment from the conservation commission that they they do not want snow stockpiled in these areas so we'll um UMass 5 will be working working to manage the site to keep to keep it clear and open to keep the drives open um and that may be you know looking at if there are spaces that are not being used for parking then maybe that's where snow gets stockpiled and as a last resort we're moving snow from the site if you need to okay yeah and that so that actually tied in with my first one is just that on the western edge of the property that that if that is a spot where you're putting snow that that also seems like it would impact the site lines um so if that if if the plan is to not use that that seems reasonable but I would certainly not want to see a snow bank on the top of the page yeah that's true they're right um and having never drawn driven a plow I don't know how uh how you get this just know out of that um the and then the other question I know you'd mentioned it was the last minute change which is the dumpster configuration if you opposed it it looked like the corral was kind of hanging in the and I couldn't quite make this out it's like the corral door sort of hanging in the roadway there um it looks like maybe it's 14 feet I'm just wondering if you're swinging through um coming out one of the lanes whether you might clip that dumpster given the it's it's kind of a 90 degree turn yeah um I think we have about 15 feet clear but they're the shorter the shorter gates um I mean we can submit another diagram that shows traffic through um if that would be helpful I'd be curious yeah I mean also just I mean aesthetically too not that that's a huge concern here for me but you know your as your passengers are queued up they're going to be staring right out that dumpster so I imagine you'll want to do something to make it look kind of nice is which is going to add maybe some additional bulk to it so yeah we're proposing a six foot high cedar enclosure around around the dumpster so we'll be looking at that okay thanks Rachel uh that's it for me on this part Doug thanks sure Andrew uh anybody else Janet so um I I have to say I I was really impressed with the thoughtfulness of this design and the sustainability features and I just wanted to put in a pitch for the porous um surface because when we asked it was only 20 more but you save money over the like 50 year life cycle so I I just hope everybody does that um when my I think my biggest criticism or hope for change is the seating area it was just inconceivable to me that people would really be sitting there given the amount of noise from the street from route nine and sort of unattractive view of route nine and then the loudness of what seemed like maybe a 24-hour operation of people vacuuming their cars and so I was thinking I I appreciate that you've made this beautiful rain garden you're trying to draw people in I thought that replacing some of the benches maybe with some native shrubs and flowering shrubs would have that really pleasing entryway people would maybe from the street would see these you know medium-sized shrubs and their eyes would be drawn toward or you'd just be very happy when you walked in I just thought the seating area was like a great idea that no one's going to use it might just kind of look odd or be odd um and so that was my probably my biggest um issue with the the design I do have one quick question about the colors it sounds like it's native woods and gray is that stone a stone look because I might my packet made everything look sort of um kind of purpley gray and pink and so I just wondered if the colors are what we're looking at are they going to be different the colors of the building are intended to have sort of a cool gray color the sign is the umass five purple color and then sort of the wood tones would be also that warm wood tone color so it's a a mix of cool and warm colors like I said we haven't selected the materials yet they'll probably be composite siding not necessarily wood siding all right thank you Janet Maria um thanks everyone for the presentation it's exciting to get uh improvements on our sort of entry into amorous I love that sort of whole corridor to get uh cleaned up a little um so this is a great project right it's definitely doing it um so I'll keep my comments to site I guess that's where we're we're focusing on now um if you go back to the site plan um any one of them really is fine of your proposed project um okay so um I don't know are the hours nine to five as far as the access to the what you keep calling the itms the one the three in the back um I'm just yeah those three just because um you know when they're sitting there the headlights will be going west and I know there are some existing trees there so making sure that doesn't you know trespass because even though all your sight lighting is great and it's dark sky and it's pointing down shielded they should be cognizant of you know the cars idling and their lights so I'm sure you know your landscape design has considered that but just that um you know it was hard to tell from the planting plan if um all those trees would take care of that trespass um I think uh yeah that greenish one I think maybe had some food and I I'd like to should I respond to your yeah sure yeah um I'd like to point out that on that east side this is actually the drive so this is green leaves drive and then there's another island of vegetation beyond that another layer of screen so there's a lot of layers between the lights and the cars pointing this way and actually it's one of the advantages of this plan is that by flipping flipping the entry and coming through here we're not we're not really directing a lot of headlights parking at the itm and neighbors here so there are many layers of protection that go beyond the site so this is a wooded area we do have two balsam fir along this side um and then we do have two sour wood trees which are um deciduous trees in that area and then we will be adding not not directly up the itm we will be any more here also if we do rotate the dumpster that will also be another layer of uh training where the actual enclosure both sides of that fencing and the dumpsters themselves will prevent the lights from the cars getting right 60 high sure okay super um and then the other comment was the entry from route nine um is going through the visitor parking and so you know how to slow those people down so that you know as people are crossing from the the east side to the west to get to the front door the people walking from their cars that you know people zooming in from route nine have a way that slows them down i don't know if you have like a a bump or something exactly yeah there's a crosswalk that's painted but you know the people coming in route nine are coming in at like you know what is that like 40 miles an hour and they gotta slow down really quickly and just making sure that that pedestrian and car intersection is mediated so that there's a safe way for the but is that like 12 parking spots for those people to get across the front door um but otherwise can i jump in for that for a minute because i it is um we have talked about potentially that portion of parking being staff parking and that the parking that's closest to the buildings um being four um members or guests so that you know when somebody's working there all day that's where they park their car so guests aren't necessarily having to cross as much it's not i don't it won't it won't be marked as such but we've definitely thought a lot about how to make it safe pedestrian wise well i like that a lot harder yeah that's a great idea um then the only other thing about site stuff um yeah i love like jenna said the poorest paving i really thought about um not just making it like you know durable and long lasting but that's a real symbol for umass about the commitment to you know greener initiatives and i think that's great especially since it's such a you know prominent site that you know really make a statement so i think it's fantastic um but those are all my site comments should i hold off on architectural dunk or yeah why don't we do that for the moment okay thank you um any any other andrew thanks just one last one um how many employees are are expected to be here at any given time just seeing the number of offices inside um i believe it's about 12 full-time employees but so fte's that doesn't necessarily mean that it's there might be eight actual full-time employees and then eight that are half-time employees if that makes sense so the offices up on the upper level are not used 100 of the time it is appointment and by appointment very good thanks all right um i had i had a few questions on mostly on on a site plan i'm looking at lc 111 if you wanted to turn to that and some of these questions are not really specific to that drawing um first of all there's a sort of dark rectangle in the lower left corner uh what is that yeah that is that is a level spreader okay what what is that i saw that term on another show yeah we let me pull up a detail for you um to show you what what that looks like so it is a it is a way it's where the all any extra storm water that has um that has gathered in the subsurface in the porous paving or any of the roof water that's excess that's coming being released gently back into the wetland area and it's a way that we manage the flow of water to make sure that there is an erosion down slope of that pipe um so what happens is uh pipe pipe outfalls into this level level lip spreader level spreader um it's basically a long depression in the ground was reinforced with stone and allows the water to to fill in this area and then eat excess water then sheet flow over uh over a curved line so what it does is it distributes water coming from a pipe which is really forced in one point and it spreads it out gently across across the level lip of the spreader um we've we've used this on a lot of projects and it works really well and it prevents erosion from the downstream areas okay and is the bottom of the swale uh does it percolate into the ground too it can it's not it's the uh a functional level lip spreader doesn't necessarily need to infiltrate it just needs to hold the water and allow allow it to spill over the top over the top of the spillway a lot of times it does actually infiltrate as well as evaporate and spill over okay all right uh so let's go back to a site plan in the southeast corner of the building there's a pad that has a t and a g is that a transformer and a generator correct yeah and these are also enclosed with a with a screening fence okay um let's see and then um you've talked a lot about the sustainable planting uh but I did see on one maybe on the planting plan that there is some lawn I wondered if you could just clarify the extent of lawn since I thought it would be great if this was so sustainable that you didn't need to bring lawn mowers in and uh you know have those emissions from maintaining the site yeah we're we're using um our lawn is actually a a no-mow lawn mix so it looks it looks akin to lawn um it requires mowing once a year in November after the seed heads appear um it takes a little bit longer to establish and it has to be cut at a higher rate but it it looks like lawn but it it's a much more sustainable alternative it uses less water than regular lawn and it's well adapted to our area and how high does it grow it grows to eight it grows to 18 inches but it's main characteristic when it reaches that mature level as it flops over and it looks like little waves in the in the grass okay all right thank you okay so um on on the exiting and entrance off of route nine uh having a car exiting at the same time another car might be slowing down to enter is there any sort of conflict between those two vehicles that's imagined since one is sort of pulling out in front of the other or is the traffic uh you know the density of traffic so small that it's not really an issue I would say that um the the the condition and I'm going to answer it a different way maybe not directly but I could say that the condition has improved upon upon what there exists today um in the fact that you know we have only one one point of exit from the site there are two sites being combined into one there's one point of exit instead of three points of exit as it exists today with the residents and then two entries and exits for the garage um this distance here is very similar to what happens in multiple places along route nine um so I can let Chris speak to that more or or Tom or others and our team talked about this more also yeah I'll I'll just add that what's unusual is that that um conflict which I'll put in air quotes exists within two driveways in the same site but it's a condition that's repeated up and down route nine any driveway you're exiting you're exiting and heading toward the entry to a different property typically um and then also to answer this question and and sort of address a couple of the concerns earlier is to keep in mind that because this is a state highway we will be going through the mass dot highway access permit process which includes demonstrating sufficient site distance and separation from other conflicting movements okay great great so then I just had a couple of comments um the first was that the bicycle location uh if you expect a lot of customers to come there it might be nice if the bicycle location were covered uh and potentially closer to the entry um then secondly I noticed the sidewalk along route nine is dimensioned at five feet and I wondered whether that is a requirement of DOT or whether you could be the first to make this a more pedestrian friendly environment and widen it to maybe eight feet or something like that it is that dictated by DOT or yeah Chris and I don't know if you want to talk about that as part of it looks to me like that's in the DOT right of way and so that's going to be under DOT it'll certainly be entirely their discretion um I think that one issue with for instance an eight foot sidewalk here is that either we'd be widening it toward the road and putting the edge of the sidewalk that much closer to the fast-moving traffic or we'd be widening it into the site and then you've got a situation where DOT owns five feet of the sidewalk and we own three feet of it and my suspicion is they would not necessarily like that um but it's certainly we have we have multiple rounds of reviews with them so it's something that we could discuss but uh my strong suspicion is that they'll want to keep the keep the standard and consistent with the width up and down until they themselves come through and and change everything okay uh and then the third one was uh regarding the bus the bus stop uh do you expect that that will eventually be a pull-off for the bus to get out of the traffic way uh or is it going to just stay where the bus is slowing down in in the in the travel lane so that's I mean totally up to PVTA I think our expectation is that it remains just as it is and not a complete pull-off so uh if it became a pull-off uh would a pull-off be long enough that it needed to extend into the adjacent property or is there enough room here with it I don't know you know whether they care whether they're uh you know affecting two properties or one but it looks like it's pretty narrow you know it's not a very long distance if you were going to try to do it all within one property my sense is that they would have to extend it onto a second property but it's likely and Rachel I don't know if you have an existing conditions plan to show where the existing bus concrete pad is um so that's where we're talking about right now Mr Chair and so if they were going to do a pull-off there given the proximity to the Greenleaves Drive they're probably already looking at impacting two properties because if they were to go back further then you know that's quite close to that Greenleaves Drive so up to PVTA though all right um all right I don't have any more questions maybe we should go on to the architectural drawings would you like me to share my screen again yes please can you see that all right board members any any comments or questions about the architecture of the project Maria thanks that um I did not have time to read all 166 pages what are the hours of operation as far as employees coming to this building is it nine to five nine nine to five Monday through Friday and then I believe it's nine to noon on or wine one o'clock on Saturdays no and then the itm is 24 seven or no no the itm so the itm is where there's an actual teller that you can contact and they will be available till 6 p.m and then after 6 p.m it's just a regular atm but so an atm is available 24 7 365 okay so the lights um on the front will definitely be on all the time but maybe not necessarily or are all the lights going to be on even after the the site lighting will be on um you know for safety and security because the the atms or itms in the back will also be available so all that all everything that's an atm becomes an everything that's an itm becomes an atm after 6 p.m if that makes sense so you can either drive through or you can park and go to the vestibule got it okay okay um okay sorry that was kind of more of a sight to ask um well going back to my earlier thing about the the whole symbol and i i i love this building i i hope it gets built in that valley engineer too badly um and i really appreciate all the you know um putting solar and attempting to hit net zero and um uh uh what i wrote it down um the only thing i would maybe suggest architecturally not that planning board really i don't know if we have pervy on it but just that um on that south side where that really cool roof terrace is um maybe there's more opportunity for more pvs if you provide shading because that's going to be a really hot terrace especially with their weather lately um like i i don't know that i would hang out out there on that bright open exposed space so maybe there's more opportunity for um tv similar to the way you guys have shaded a lot of parking you know not not saying to cover the whole thing and you know um those those panels but um but yeah i really appreciate the sort of risk and the sort of um looking forward sort of aspect of the architecture right i really um i think hopefully it will set a trend and help things sort of um um tie together better at that whole corner um with you guys already doing the other building closer to um university tribe um i kind of agree with janet that you know don't feel something that no one's going to occupy and so you know the pergola looks great it really marks the front entry and i wonder if there's a different way to animate the front whether it's through planting instead of places where people might occupy might not occupy um so i guess you know that that's a really good sort of comment about will people really use it and um if i if over me i probably would hang out on that roof terrace and have my lunch back there where it's more quiet and as long as it wasn't you know 95 degrees and um you're in complete sun um so anyways i i really appreciate the building and the risks it's taking as far as just being really um modern and uh i i hope that uh yeah it stays pretty close to the rendering it looks fantastic and um and i yeah i really like that all the uh sort of uh thought toward um you know it's not it i mean even if it gets val engineered out it i can tell you you know your intentions are like we're going to keep pushing as much of it as we can because this is a statement for you guys so um yeah so really appreciate that um i think that's i think that's all i have for architecture thank you thank you maria um we have definitely thought about that southern exposure on that rooftop and as rachel may have mentioned our hope again you mentioned value engineering um our hope is that eventually we are designing it so that it can have plants and and potentially even trees someday um to provide some of that shading but the idea of maybe a solar pergola back there is also an idea that we'll discuss with you mess up all right thanks maria tom hi everyone uh thank you for the presentation and i like maria i appreciate your building um quite a bit and i like the um the double height space i think it's a really you know well executed experience inside there so um i applaud all of that i really do enjoy the the back balcony as well as the private space i'm going to have to agree with um with my colleagues about that front space um from the site visit the whistling and howling of the site exposure to the car wash it was really really hard to even hear people talk and so i'm just wondering if there's a way to kind of maybe i mean and i appreciate the values right this is about building community this is about sustain about it's about all those things and showcased here but i think you know if those seating areas are kind of pushed back more close to the building um along this kind of left side here um and then maybe there was some low shrubbery or something that could actually block some of that sound um so that might feel a bit more intimate and a little less exposed i think people might actually sit there you know people who work there might go out there for a break um but i think right now it's so exposed and the noise pollution is so immense um that i think it's it's not serving you very well that to use it for just seating when i think it could be a wonderful opportunity for plantings and other things to really showcase the values of umass five well while finding maybe a potentially slightly more secluded spot or build some seclusion for that particular seating area so just my thoughts on that thanks tom um that is more site related but i value what you all experienced there and i think it's certainly something we would review with us five i don't rachel do you have any comments or thoughts about that i do say i didn't didn't really go into a lot of detail about the planting plan but we we do have a lot of shrubs um integrated in that arrival pathway experience and we were playing and i also didn't explain we're playing with some of the grades along the side to get create more enclosure on the on the east side um so we are we are trying to do what we can um to to showcase plants and make it a really lovely experience along the way and i think even if we do remove the seating area having the goshen stone walls as a reference to our area um and as a figure in a way to ground the building is really important visually and also to create that separation and clarify where the rain garden is and where the walking spaces are so i i do think that the design can still hold its own and achieve all that you guys are pointing out and talking about even if it's not used for seating i think it still works really well thank you all right thank you tom yohana thank you thank you for the presentation um i want to echo that i appreciate a lot of the sustainability elements of it from the onsite solar to the really thoughtful storm water and just water management plan the impervious surfaces the native plantings um there's just a lot of really thoughtful work that goes into this one question that arose for me as i was looking at the images was just um how much great daylighting there's going to be in the building and it made me wonder how you're planning on dealing with bird strikes on all these wonderful glass windows or if they're you know what kind of consideration or factors you're taking into account there um thank you for that uh yes well on the east and west side we have solar fins on the windows so in the office areas um that'll cut down on glare into the offices but also obviously hopefully not confuse the birds um your point is well taken on the the north facing um front facing and we have discussed that uh there are things that you can do with the glass um so that birds are not confused by it and it is something that we will we have discussed and we'll take into consideration thank you chris i have a question and it's really more of a cure curiosity which is inside the building on the second floor you have some rooms that are labeled hotel and what does that mean the staff have to stay overnight sometimes no the telling is a term that's used when it is actually sort of a touchdown space so it's not designated to any specific employee but it's a place where um you know sometimes they have auditors that come in um sometimes there's some a staff member that's usually located somewhere else that needs to spend the day there so it's a touchdown space much like a hotel is a touchdown space thank you well since we're on the on the subject of room names i will ask about the rooms next door which are kuso what does that mean oh boy i knew somebody was going to ask me that question and um okay so it's insurance it's an acronym um i'm looking to see if somebody is sending me credit union service organization it's a company that services credit unions exclusively that's coming from units five okay thank you so this is i think also not in the purview of planning board but i will say that i was a little bit i guess misled by the use of the term community room by the way you described it where it's basically a room for the staff and very rarely would be a community space is that i would i guess the way that i would phrase it is that on a day to day basis it's for staff but community organizations could use it through the credit union um um so maybe after hours uh yeah i think i think what i was starting to be concerned about was the segregation of the public from banking spaces uh when the community came and used that room um you know we we've reviewed a library proposal uh from your office for the north amherst library a year or so ago where the community room was right off the main entrance so you could have the main entrance and the community room open at the same time you were you did not have access to the library and so if this were a community room that was going to be used after hours uh i would think that the the bank might want to be able to segregate the public and keep them out of the banking spaces when very little of their staff was there yeah so we did um let me get to the floor and give me a second here um we have thought about that and there are we're proposing that there will be security screens that uh or gates that roll down from the ceiling and block off this lobby space so uh someone coming in after hours would be able to use the elevator or the stairs we'd also have a security um screen that comes down right in front of the IPM area so if anyone decided to catapult over the railing down into the lobby they're they're basically stuck in this space um yeah so that is a good point and we did think about that um and so we are trying to make it secure but accessible we really felt it was important you know on that second floor level to be able to see the community room um so that people know that that you know there might be trainings there or um there might be community events like an arrive at five or an organization might use it as a board meeting place and and having access to that deck um just we really wanted to use that the ITMs are located at the back of the building for precisely the reason you talked about in terms of noise at the front we wanted to block the route nine noise as much as possible so yes we thought about it and I understand what you're talking about okay all right uh Andrew thanks Doug I um I just thought and wasn't sure who would be the best person to answer this but you know with with the current layout with the canopy and the ITMs in the back are there any additional like security precautions that are made just for customer safety um if you know you're back there after hours can you can you be seen from the road at all it is um so I don't have the site plans it is slightly at an angle I mean certainly you are shielded from the road at some point there will it will be well lit there will be cameras in those locations for security okay but I'm not sure that even somebody going by on route nine would notice if something was happening on the side of the building necessarily so I think the cameras and the lighting is what makes it secure all right I had sort of a similar reaction to the floor plan on the first floor which had no windows on the south side of the building um and and given the way you've done the circulation um and and that there is no actual drive up teller window so you know just the fact that there are no windows on that end uh just made me sort of wonder how secure I would feel about doing my banking back there uh without anybody available to to see if I had a problem well uh the ITMs are people um much like we're having a discussion right here there would be a person in those boxes speaking to you um and there aren't any windows on the south side because that is primarily the mechanical spaces the IT there is a a work room space where cash is handled so and the bathroom and the stair there's no need for um windows there and so that the teller it is not the traditional teller window that you are used to going to it doesn't work with that circulation loop to have a teller in that location right right okay all right um any other comments from any of the members of the board if not we'll go on to public comment and I guess I guess I just wanted to add to that that if you weren't comfortable going to the ITMs at night um you can always park and go to the vestibule ITMs or ATMs at the front which will be very well lit and very visible from right now great thank you I will also say I appreciated the the completeness of the site drawings and and the architectural drawings uh you gave us a really effective picture of the project thank you are there any members of the public that would like to make a public comment in this hearing okay I'm not seeing any Chris have we received any all the feedback from all the other town departments so that might need to comment on this uh are we in a position to vote and close this hearing this evening or do we really need to continue it I think you're in a position to vote and close it I think you've received comments from the town engineer and from the fire department but I would like to ask my colleague Nate Malloy to confirm that okay Nate sure yeah you know conservation commission will issue the order of conditions and um the town engineer and fire have looked at it provided comments I will say in the development application report I did call attention to the size of the monument sign is is larger than it um you know than the bylaw allows so there will have to be a waiver requested there or granted for the size of the sign um and then the you know interestingly enough with the new dumpster location there is a you know there's was a retaining wall with a six foot fence on top and so the effective height was um you know say at one point it was about 10 feet about you know maybe six or seven feet from the property line so there needed to be again a modification of that setback um you know through 6.29 given that the building commissioner would you know because the the the fence is really right on top of the retaining wall so we're considering that you know one structure in terms of height within the setback and so um maybe that's changed given the new dumpster location that the overall height meets you know the you know that dimensional standard but um I think everything else is all right you know um I do think that you know in my application report there were you know some questions about the amount of screening to Hawkins Meadow and if there is sufficient screening for car headlights or after-hour use or if the you know how much illumination is is being provided over the ITMs and ATMs at night and so um you know the hedge isn't on their property that's like there are a few shade trees planted along that edge but um you know I just want to make sure that that's you know there's sufficient screening there I think that's about about it okay so would the uh conditions or do do we have the conditions drafted we do all right um maybe we should may I just say you have findings and conditions drafted by by Nate so he may want to walk you through those yeah I think we're going to want to do that Janet um and and at some point if we're gonna and we may want to take a break go ahead Janet so I was wondering about the snow storage issue that Andrew had raised earlier because that wasn't really answered um I think I'd be interested in hearing what the conservation commission says especially if it changes how the site is used and then I haven't read the draft conditions at all and so I don't know if it seems like if we start going through that in including some of the things that the town engineer I don't know if they're in the draft conditions he seems to have a lot of comments and so I just put that out there and then also I'd like to look at the lighting around the ATM just to see I didn't really pay attention to whether the light would be going to Hawkins Meadow or what so yeah I mean one question I had which wasn't answered is you know sometimes on drive-thus they have like a marquee sign you know whether it's like just a symbols of green checker you know green red yellow just to let you know that it's open you know led signs and I don't I don't know if that's if that's um you know wasn't mentioned or you know what kind of signage and it might be to say that the lane is open or closed or you don't know how bright that would be if it was on 24 hours a day but is there something proposed along above each drive aisle to indicate or is it just you know it's always open I guess they're always on correct yep no no led signage so you wouldn't find out if it was out of order until you got up to it correct okay we'll try to always order road cones are always an option yeah you're right okay Janet is your hand legacy or yeah okay so um how do how do folks feel do you want to continue through this uh the findings and conditions this evening or would you like to do that at a later meeting not seeing any any volunteers to respond to that uh Tom anything it depends on what we still have in the agenda because a lot of times reading through all of those things can take quite an epic amount of time um especially if they're subtle word changes or um amendments that are made throughout that process so um I think it's a it's a question about how how much time we want to dedicate to it and and whether or not there's an immediate rush to make sure that this gets approved prior to our next meeting well the primary thing left on our agenda is the site plan review and special permit for the other project on Main Street and we do have members of that team waiting in the wings for their presentation um and so I I mean I guess I'm inclined to think we should probably uh stop for this evening uh or sometime soon and continue this hearing to a later date uh maybe when we can get we can all review the findings and conditions a little bit more in uh yes from our perspective yeah I I think um you know we're on we're under agreement we've got certain contingencies we need to make but we also want to be respectful of of your time we gave you a lot of information this evening we don't want you to rush it um I think we see where this is going so I guess we would have two requests if we were going to continue maybe three requests one hopefully to that first June meeting that you have second let us know tonight if there's anything else that that we need to provide to you in order to get an approval and then third if you are going to approve it at that meeting just turn around the decision as as soon as possible thereafter and I think you know Nate and Chris have done a great job of preparing the findings and the conditions so I think to actually put it into a decision won't won't be that much but that's not my work to do it's there so I just want to be respectful of all that so that would if it's something that the the um board would like to do is to continue it I think you know with those things in mind we'd be fine with it okay uh Chris what do we have on the agenda for the beginning of June for the beginning of June mark uh June first you have um flood mapping which is kind of a big thing but I'm not sure how much detail you want to get into on that um then we have Ron Lavertier with a kind of a small change to a property on west street um he's presenting his entire site plan because it's necessary to show it to you but I don't think the changes are significant and then you have the Mr. Roblesky's subdivision plan which was coming back before you on June 1st um which does have a lot of detail related to it so um so those are the three things flood mapping Ron Lavertier small project and the center eastway subdivision plan right right and and we're also going to be talking this evening about Mr. Roblesky's main street project that's right kind of separately from the subdivision plan and I think there's a good chance that's going to come back too I think if you were just reviewing um findings and conditions that night maybe you know getting some small amount of information that might be additional that the applicant wanted to submit that you could get through it on June 1st okay I think I I mean how does the board feel uh I think I'm inclined to continue this evening I think we should be clear with Tom and his his group about what else we want and that includes what the staff wants as well as what the board wants so maybe you could ask Nate if he feels that there's any further information that needs to be um submitted sure so you know I can I'll run down the notes that you know wasn't you know the board members mentioned and then I can just go over some of my questions you know we had you know it can be either a condition or it could be if it's ready for next meeting you know new plantings along the green leaves um property line um you know plans for the back deck both in terms of planting or use I do think you know if the community room in the deck are used publicly or for events it could impact parking or could impact noise or light if after hour so I mean you know some clarity there um you know I I'm still you know I'm still curious to know about like how that evergreen hedge would be maintained or a few mass five could have an agreement with Hawkins Meadow just because it is not in their property but it is really significant right now um I don't know is snow removal um you know it sounded like that was kind of in flux from the conservation commission well I was thinking that that could be achieved without changes to the site but perhaps we can leave that up to the applicants um or in the in the management plan right because it could be just that it could also be trucked and removed as necessary right so there's some snow storage removed areas and then it just is you know hauled off site if necessary right Rachel had mentioned that you know I think you know the permeable pavement is great one of the conditions where it was that it would be maintained in an annual report submitted I mean because it's not supposed to be sanded it needs to be vacuumed twice a year um you know so it works if it's maintained um so that you know possibly would be a condition um you know perhaps traffic coming when entering but that's not um perhaps necessary I mean I like that you have maybe moving the the staff parking so I don't know if that needs to be formalized you know to that east side um you know I still think the lighting whether that could be dimmed or you know some explanation of whether you know is there it could have been at 11 or you know how does that site lighting work after hours if there's any changes to the front you know there's a number of comments about that the front may not be used for seating so is you know would that really be changed in terms of a site design with plantings and then um you know the bike location so it would that be moved to the front or have be a you know have a shelter cover to it so you know those are the comments from the board kind of a summary of those I see there's hands I'm gonna say for my comments just you know we need to just clarify the distance of the dumpster location to the side yard setback I think it was noted on a plan but not I didn't see that distance um and I think that's you know they covered most everything else all right um the findings and conditions that have been drafted I didn't see those in my packet did those come as a later email that I didn't open before this meeting yes those came as an email today I think in the middle of the day is that right Nate or was it yesterday I can't remember if I said yesterday would have been yesterday all right so we can all look for those so Alon I'll call on you you may have some sort of responses to those that list uh the only one I just wanted a little more uh clarification on is the use of the deck and but so we can specifically respond to that you know after hours might be two three four times a year and wouldn't ever go past like eight or nine p.m. at night what specifically do you want as a response regarding that well surely for instance is it associated with the umass five college credit union or would it be you know could it be an outside organization that's renting it for an event but somehow associated with the bank you know a credit union so or is it just you know anyone could you know for instance like a nonprofit could hold a fundraiser event there that isn't somehow related to the credit union so you know that I guess you know kind of more of the programmatic element of it okay well we'll we'll review that but my understanding is that there will always be someone from the credit union on site when the building is in use so it's not like it would just be open to the public without uh representative there sure my my thought would be just you know in terms of noise or other things for the neighbors you know if they're you know having a condition about right it's um you know how whether it's there's an end time or how it's used in terms of you know it's an it's considered an office use right the zoning category these categories office use so just how that those two interact um and and it could impact parking if you were you know if you had if you filled that community room and the deck with people standing you could have probably a hundred people in there yes and we've talked about that with UMass five and they would be providing a shuttle service from their west gate location which has um much more parking reach where you're going to chime in about that's exactly the same thing yeah all right so so maybe those types of responses acceptable and and I think they probably ought to go into the management plans um because that's kind of where the where the bank uh essentially commits to sort of the conditions of the operation of the property right so revised management plan I think that's good Doug right so if there's an end time to the event or parking overflow or potential conflict with banking hours right or maximum occupancy of an event um okay that's helpful thank you all right Janet um I just I wanted to add um in terms of you know things to consider is I Jason skills had a long list of items I'm not sure if they made their way into the conditions or into changes in the plans so it has like a May 11th letter um also I think the community space can actually be a very positive thing especially for the different apartment complexes nearby they may not have that kind of space for themselves um maybe for traffic calming a change in surface as you come off of route nine and it's kind of bumpier and you kind of automatically slow like cobbles or something and then also I am interested in the dimming of the lights at night because I can I'm sure it's not going to be looking like you know um an air you know a spacecraft going up into the air but I would think especially near the wetland in the ATM area you could just I could see a million moths coming in or animals coming off the wetland um you want it safe but you know if your lights are on all night it's not good for the animals and I'm sure the people next door may be noticing that and and things like that so just those are my ads also on behalf of Jason skills all right thanks Janet you know one thing we didn't discuss was all the signs you know there's the you know the the kind of commercial signs you know so there's the monument sign and then the signs on the building and then there's a number of site signs right entry exit HP parking a number of those and so you know it looks like a lot of those signs are illuminated from within right so the entry and exit signs and some others and so I you know it was in the packet and it was discussed in the development application report but it wasn't discussed much tonight so I don't know if there's any comments or questions about that but yeah we can we can run through that if you want yeah I you know I I don't know how many people from your team you would want to bring back at the beginning of June but it might be helpful that we went through it tonight so if everybody can see my screen we've got the site which you're familiar with right now along with the proposed signage so you've got entrance sign directional sign directional sign ATM video teller and clearance signs above the ITM ATM directional sign which may be relocated depending upon where the the dumpster enclosure actually gets located and then another directional sign along with the do not enter and a no left turn and also another do not enter and a stop sign here so for traffic signals and then a not an exit sign on this side just so folks who by whatever reason back out of sparking spikes think they can come out this way they would have that not an exit sign here you've got the building signage and so you've got a backlit sign at the top of the building that was shown on the renderings I think that's 50 square feet so that's compliant you also have this mission statement sign the one that's going to be externally illuminated that Alon mentioned you know the the I'll call it a can is going to be up in this pergola shining down onto the the mission statement I think that's about 28 square feet then I'll skip down to the monument sign and so in in Rachel I may ask that you get the site plan back up so we can show the monument sign in relation to the traveled way but a lot of the comments that we heard tonight I think you know Maria had brought it up I think Andrew had brought something up about just sight line sight distance traveling speed of travel on the public way so one of the things that that we thought was important was to get a sign that fit into the neighborhood but was pulled up a little closer to the street not not right on the property line but closer to the street so that the motoring public would be able to know what's there and then where the entrance is so we're proposing a 60 square foot sign that's about seven and a half feet high I think with this nice stone base and stone backing and then you've got that you know it shows us probably a little bit brighter purple here and I think only the letters here are what is going to be illuminated at night it's not the whole backing it's just those letters that are illuminated and what I'll do is I will well I can stay on here if you have questions specifically about the signage but I'll turn it to Rachel to show the the location of the sign because it was all thought out in in you know that initial scoping analysis they did all right thanks Tom Chris I had seen your hand until just a moment ago oh my question has been answered thank you okay all right Rachel as as Tom mentioned this is the location of the monument sign so as you're coming down route nine you have time to see it and know that you are that you've arrived and you have time to turn in and then the comment about this the setback for the fence the setback from the fence is shown on the plan that we that we have so the fences in this plan is 7.67 feet setback for that 9.73 foot tall wall plus fence overall height the wall being 3.7 feet and even if we rotated it it's likely that it would still because I think in that that future condition and before we come back I will probably have that location in the plan showing the side yard setback distance I didn't see that paved the area pavement changing in the revised condition for the dumpster so I would expect we do still need that that waiver all right all right so um does anybody want to make a motion oh I'm sorry Alon I just wanted to add in um if I can quickly share my screen in terms of I know one of the questions that came up with context and uh I quickly comes through what you experience as you're coming down route nine and you can see over on the the left side of my screen is the FL Robert sign which is about so we have an intern who went out and measured all the signs surrounding this area and that one is about 78 square feet and the proposed sign I think was about 61 square feet so just for context it is at least balanced on both sides of the street all right thank you all right um does anybody have a motion to continue the hearing to uh June 1st Chris do you have a date or do you have a time we should put in there yes I think you should put in um 7 15 I think the um Mr. Robleski is coming back at 7 35 then we have flood mapping at 7 45 and we have around the birdie or at excuse me 6 45 and around the birdie or at 7 so if you said 7 15 or 7 30 that'll probably be fine all right so we need a motion to continue the hearing to is it June 1st at 7 15 yep PM Tom so moved Andrew so seconded thank you both and uh thank you Tom and uh Rachel and Alon and your teams for being with us and we'll hope to see some of you in on June 1st thank you thanks a lot we need to vote need to vote oh yeah sorry about that um all right so board shall we vote on our continuation Maria yes approve and Tom hi Andrew hi Janet hi Johanna uh looks like we've lost Johanna well I'll vote hi and um Johanna was absent do we know just for point of clarification do we know when she dropped off I'm just thinking of quorum her ability to vote at the next hearing Mullins rule all of those things so maybe if we could just see if she heard all of the substance then she would still qualify to vote at the next she certainly made comments fairly far into your presentation and but of course the the recording will tell us exactly where she dropped off perfect okay I think she probably heard enough to vote great you might guess but Pam and I will put our heads together and figure out the time okay um board members uh the time is 8 56 why don't we take a five minute break we're only running one hour behind our usual break uh and uh we'll see you back at one minute after nine please mute and turn off your camera Johanna you're back we noticed you left I am back sorry about that I had to sing my kids songs well we thought you didn't leave very long ago I sent you and chris an email so that we have the timestamp for okay then let me look at my email uh-huh 8 51 so that was only 10 minutes ago I'm a fast singer okay yeah well we we wanted to be sure you heard enough of that earlier presentation that you can continue and vote on the final approval but that seems like it was plenty of participate participation to qualify great we were all supposed to come back from break at 901 so here we are now I'm going to start moving the other folks and for the next public hearing okay mr. Marshall yes that'd be great mr. reedy with such a surprise um I'm unable to start my video but I think I can speak uh we can hear you Janet and are you able to see all of us I can see everybody but Andrew Nate and um yeah and you can see you can see the screen you'll be able to see when people share screen yeah but where did I go well I've had trouble with my video it worked lately and it seems to be just where the camera plugs into the laptop back I'm back there you are okay good I think I hit the wrong button okay I left it when I set it up all right uh so we're waiting on Andrew Chris uh is is Nate involved in this one I saw you shake your head but you're muted so I'll assume the answer is we could start well you can start without me yep okay and I see Andrew's back so we're all here okay so the time uh at least by my clock is 904 and we will continue our meeting with item five in the agenda for this evening all right so in accordance with the provisions of mass general law chapter 40 a this public hearing has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and is being held for the purpose of providing the opportunity for interested citizens to be heard regarding site plan review 2022-14 and special permit 2022-05 center east LLC 446 and 462 main street request site plan review approval under section 3.325 of the zoning bylaw to construct 17 000 square foot 27 unit residential mixed use building including three affordable units with site lighting and landscaping and to request a modification of the total number of parking spaces required for the mixed use building under sections 7 000 and 7.9 of the zoning bylaw and seek small car parking under section 7.104 of the zoning bylaw to collocate with the existing mixed use building known as 446 main street and the mixed use building known as 462 main street which was authorized by site plan review 2020-01 and site plan review 2020-05 and any subsequent amendments and request a special permit to extinguish all special permits associated with parcel 14 b-66 from map 14 b parcel 66 and 68 in the BN zoning district first of all are there any board member disclosures for this project I do not see any all right let's go right into the presentation Tom you and your new team for this particular project you have the floor and take it away perfect thank you very much Mr. Chair members of the board for the record Tom Reed and attorney with Bacon Wilson here in Amherst here on behalf of center east Mr. Robleski owner of center east 446 462 main street for as the chairman mentioned a site plan review approval for the new proposed 17 000 square foot mixed use building to complement the other mixed use buildings on the site as well as a I guess modification by extinguishment of the existing special permits with me this evening so John Robleski who I'm sure you're all familiar with by this point Mike Lou from Berkshire design and then also Pam if you could let in Rachel Stevens I think Rachel's she's our architect so Mike's the site designer and Rachel's the architect who can who can really walk you through designs by way of a little bit of background I'm sure you've all been to the site numerous times for Mr. Robleski's initial site plan approval for the newest mixed use building and then for the modification of that approval to increase the number of dwelling units we've also as you all know we've we've proposed a we filed a preliminary subdivision plan we followed that up within seven months with a definitive subdivision plan that we are working through that process literally simultaneously with this application that has the effect of freezing zoning and like we had talked about in that hearing but I'll mention here the mixed use zoning bylaw which we think is a great bylaw but probably more appropriate to downtown South Pleasant Street North Pleasant Street Mr. Robleski's in the the BN zoning district it's there's only a couple of parcels in town that's in that BN zoning district and the mixed use zoning bylaw changed to increase to require 30% of the first floor floor area and so just Mr. Robleski's thinking was given this site's location not necessarily in the commercial corridor like the North Pleasant Street South Pleasant Street area he looked to free zoning and we're like I said in the process of freezing that zoning so that he didn't have to provide that 30% of the commercial space for this new mixed use building so that's a little bit of the context you know as I mentioned it's a 17,000 square foot building 27 proposed units including three affordable units 330 commercial 330 square feet of commercial space if approved there is the existing mixed use building that you most recently approved that has 24 units in it 10 one bedroom 9 2 bedroom 1 3 bedroom and 4 studios as long as well as commercial space there's the existing mixed use building at the corner of gray and main uh maybe I'll just share my screen quickly so you can so this is obviously this building's no longer here this building's no longer here there is a building in this area where my mouse and cursor is this building will remain and that's uh it's mixed use there's about 1768 square feet of commercial space there currently and a three bedroom residential unit and then what we're proposing as you'll see through through both of the designers presentation we're proposing that 17,000 square foot 27 unit we'll have 14 one bedrooms 13 studios and 330 square feet of commercial space so at the end of the day you're looking at as I don't know if I've mentioned it but a wonderful infill development a total of 65 beds on site and 52 dwelling units and so you know with that I think I'll turn it over to Mike to walk you through the site and then we'll turn it over to Rachel to talk a little bit about the design and then we can come back and talk a little bit about management maybe to get a little bit ahead of ourselves we don't have as you saw in the project application report final sign off from Jason skills so town engineer fire department so we completely expect this to be continued so this isn't one that we're asking you to rush to close this evening so if you do have questions and we can't answer them tonight we'll be able to answer them for the next hearing so uh with that I'll turn it over to Mike um and let him present uh Tom um to butt and ask procedural before you go to your presentation and that is uh since you're doing this set of app can parallel with the final subdivision plan uh what incentive you have to submit the final subdivision plan carry that process through to completion if we prove this project so because the the way that the the law works is um any building permit or special permit issued after the first publication of notice for a bylaw change is under that new bylaw and so if we didn't freeze the zoning I think we might have lost the chair if I'm looking at the screen correctly I don't know if that's the case but it looks to me to be the case looks like we lost him temporarily I hope there is there he is mr chairman yeah I don't know what happened there zoom just uh kicked me out you had gotten a little broken up in your question okay um sorry Tom I missed most of your explanation there we we noticed that you had dropped off so I stopped talking um so the comment was that the way that the law is written it's any building permit or special permit issued after the first publication of notice of a new bylaw um is subject to that bylaw unless what we had done is attempt to free zoning so we'll have to go through that subdivision process to get the endorsement in order to actually freeze the zoning otherwise we'll be subject to the the current zoning bylaw so the incentive to actually follow through so the so the incentive to follow through is that you won't get a building permit unless you follow through correct not for what we're proposing now we would have to comply with the new zoning bylaw right okay all right so I just thank you all right go ahead okay Mike I'll turn it over to you to walk through the site okay let's see whoops hold on a sec I gotta find my right screen here where's my folder there we go all right um can you all see that okay so I'm just going to use this um to present the site layout and design and I have the um black and white uh plans that were submitted to you if we need to um look at anything in detail or go over that but basically this um outline here that's colored in represents the extent of the site currently it's two parcels um here next to gray street in main at the corner is 446 this is the existing house um you'll see um Rachel from maple street architects um yeah they have some very nice renderings of the proposal so you'll see that picture later and also for those of you who have gone on the site visit you you familiar with um what that looks like Mike yes would you mind minimizing the bar to the right so that we get more image oh okay hold on just on that little yeah there we go okay I can blow that up a little bit too um so and then on the east side is 462 or the building that kind of we refer to a center east um the center east building phase one which is this which you approved um recently um the proposal um the current building sits approximately right in this area it had or it had been demolished or taken down um the proposal is to maintain basically 462 in its current state which includes this driveway that comes up into this parking at the north end and there's a an additional seven spaces here um along the east side there's three spaces uh here on the west side of the driveway um change the configuration of the existing parking lot that was kind of in a in a north south orientation changing it to an east west orientation to make room to fit this new L shaped building into the site the footprint is 5500 square foot plus for the new building it's on three stories and and there you get that approximately 17 000 square foot of space on the on divided on the three floors um what's nice about this building and Rachel will talk about it a little later but this building includes an indoor bike storage um space and an indoor trash collection uh and recycle uh space so that you know there's we're not there's no dumpster or outdoor dumpster proposed on this site it'll all be you know picked up with the truck entering the site and wheeling those um those bins out to the truck and getting them picked up that way um but the idea was to try to maintain the view along gray street and main street you know especially as you're traveling down main street from the center of town so try to maintain this green space in the front uh we had actually looked at some ideas of of you know being able to add parking in the front but you know ultimately we um John primarily decided that you know we wanted to try to uh get as much as we could in here and maintain this green space and it's pretty much in its its existing um condition um let's see so the um I don't know if you want me to go into the zoning and coverage in that but we we do fall uh under the um maximum allowed building coverage and site uh coverage the the way that the drainage works is where this parking lot the new parking lot is actually about 1400 square feet smaller in pavement than the existing parking lot so we are actually reducing the uh the runoff from paved areas or or that dirty you know water um we will be catching that in a storm scepter or storm water treatment chamber before um it's currently the design calls for it being discharged into a underground detention base in which we're going to be putting in this lawn area to the um to the southwest part of the site but we wanted to obviously maintain that as green space um the way and the drainage on the former um a formerly approved project here it's it's not being changed water is still from the parking lots primarily drains uh north to south there's a storm water treatment chamber let me increase this a bit um there's a existing storm water treatment chamber right here water is caught here it it's pumped it's uh piped back into an underground detention basin that's in this green space to the south of the building um this also catches roof water runoff from this uh building and then the overflow is piped back through a an outlet control structure and then back into the street uh town's drainage system so we're not touching that and we're trying not to direct any of the um runoff from the western part of the site all this primarily is being um the the drainage or the storm water runoff from the parking lot and the new roof as well as this existing house is being funneled to the underground detention basin in this area and we can look at that layout on the um on the black and white plans if you'd like but it's the same it's the same system um it's called an r tank um people kind of refer to them as milk crates but um they're basically open um structures that you can stack if if needed to increase volume um but they're they are rated h20 so for vehicular loading but in this case obviously we don't have they're not being put under paved areas or or vehicular ways um they're under both under green um spaces um they're easy to maintain they have uh typically they have um observation ports that you can open and kind of do an inspection to make sure that you know water's draining out siltations not being collected within within that structure um but the underground detention basins are are used for infiltration attenuation of of the peak flows um and then obviously to release any overflow slowly um back into the city system if if they overflow um in terms of the um the landscaping these trees along the street along gray street and these three um at the front at main street are existing trees there's a cluster of four maples there's one right here you can see it kind of in half tone line right there near the uh new curb cut we thought we would that we would lose that one but we actually want to try to save it um and that might involve some air spading of this existing tree it might involve shifting this curb cut a couple of more feet to the north if if you know that'll help um i think that um we'd like to try to save all these the four maples here um these two are large crab apple trees and these three along main street are um beach trees which are an interesting choice um but you know those those have the potential to get quite large as you might know and um there's an existing wood rail fence right here you can see that in the shaded line that runs up to the um existing curb cut to the parking lot which is right here um we want to maintain that obviously um originally we thought we take it down but we changed our minds and decided to keep it you know in keeping with the uh the visual of the the aesthetic the view you know of this um kind of important corner of the uh the property um not sure we have um we don't have a snow plan but um seeing how that kind you know comes up um there are places that snow is uh stored now uh in the newer part of the design we have um this swale where snow snow could be plowed to there's green space here along the edge there's green space along here um along the existing pavement which is um the majority of that uh paved area and parking there's significant green space to the north here there's um spaces to pile snow along the edge of the driveway and then off to the edge of the parking spaces here on the east side and obviously um as you probably know in severe cases a lot of times you know some of these corner spaces if you will are used to pile snow and haul it off site truck it off site as needed. John has done a lot of research and parking counts at this existing building as well as other developments in town and I'm going to let him do a presentation later about the parking the numbers and figures but um in total there are 47 parking spaces um within this site and I believe I can't remember what was the I forget what the unit count was but I think there's 51 total units not bedrooms but units um and um John's going to present the justification for the for the number of parking um that is proposed but again this is as Tom mentioned this is a great infill project it's I think it's just over 2000 feet to the center of town so that's an easy you know five minute walk it's it's within walking distance to to the university obviously it's very close to Amherst college um it's on a bus route there's a bus stop right here you can see the shelter um and pull off on main street um the site is about the the railroad tracks are about the midpoint between um you know south south pleasant north pleasant and um southeast street northeast street intersection to the east uh so this you know this site this property here it's also you know within walking distance to you know to the east to the village center um to south or I should say um I guess you call it the southeast village southeast street village center area um that is you know obviously slated for development um you know in the village center district there um I probably missed something so some questions will come up but we'll be happy to entertain those I guess uh at this point I like to turn turn it over to either Rachel or I'm not sure if John wants to talk about the parking before we get into the architecture um I'll leave that to you John and Rachel if either for you want to um go there and uh obviously we can come back to the site plans uh if and when needed I think we should probably let Rachel do her thing on the architecture and then address questions as they come along unless somebody disagrees. All right are is everyone seeing my screen now? Yes. Great so um we prepared some initial renderings again as the previous team mentioned we are in schematic design so we're still making changes this is um a new version from the plans that we submitted a month ago showing some different coloring as requested by the planning board and um we are looking at the different views of the project as you move through the neighborhood and you see the building in context with the previous um building that was occupied in August last year which has been a nice addition to the neighborhood and has been appreciated by the neighbors in the town so this is looking to build on that success and and add some more density of housing for the town of Amherst which I think is a great addition and still maintaining the um the existing historic structure on the corner as well so um here are some views looking at the building from across the street and you can see how it wraps around this existing two-story structure on the corner and relates to the other building um the the first building of center east commons um and then here's a view from the north side on gray street um this is this is a bird's eye view a little bit so that you can see both buildings in their entirety it's very shielded from this side as you can see in the first page rendering there's a lot of vegetation on this side protecting the larger buildings from the more um the single family residential that's a little bit further north on gray street um so you can see here how the building is taking a lot of the same language from the first phase um similar coloring but in a contrasting style um to blend in as a sort of a neighborhood feel for this unit and in fact this building does provide some of the site amenities for the first building that are currently housed in a temporary shed while this building is being designed so looking at the first floor plan you can see some of those site amenities um the indoor bicycle storage and um the trash and recycling that will be shared for both buildings um there's also a common laundry that is planned for this building only um and mechanical room on this level that um that is not residential space and then the um commercial space is an office here on the front corner that is closest to the parking that is nearest to main street um and it has a door access from the porch um so it it has the front facing commercial um access um there's also a studio on that end of the building and um the existing building here also provides a doorway that faces the um the sidewalk to that existing parking as well so then you have um three main entry points for the other groups of apartments um there's an entry point here that goes upstairs to all second and third floor units there's an entry point here that serves three floors of units and an entry point here that serves three point three floors of units there's an affordable unit on each floor and there is um an accessible unit on the first floor and all of the other units on the first floor are designed to be adaptable which means they can be made more accessible should the need arise for any of the residents on the first level they have a little bit of extra space their doors are a little extra larger um and then on the second floor many of the layouts are repeated and some of them um are different where it's over the office space um here you can see the affordable studio unit and um as you can see there's a mix of studio and one bedroom which seems to be the most popular um type of unit in this area given a lot of housing for young professionals and students and um professors and like so here we have the one bedrooms are highlighted in yellow the studios are highlighted in green and again on the third floor very similar layout um so the elevations don't show the new coloring but if you have any questions about that we can talk about that as well we also have a sign plan this is the existing sign that um has been on the site since before the first project was completed and now that we have many fewer businesses as businesses are going more and more remote these days we're finding um we think it's more appropriate to have a larger sign that announces the complex as a whole and that would be center east commons as a more monument style sign um and it would be um slightly shorter than the existing sign but with the larger lettering that you can see and it gives people a clear idea of where they're accessing the site that would be located here for the main entry here to the parking on both sides of the complex there's also a sign at this location for the previous project's commercial space and then a sign here that would likely be similar um on the front of the office or commercial space at the south end of the new building um so that is the overview and architecture and as mike mentioned also happy to answer any questions that come up okay thank you thank you all it's great to see these renderings and give us a good sense of what's what you're proposing um um board members are there would you like to make some comments this evening i think we will probably be continuing this hearing uh would you like to get into it a little bit or should we move right to a continuation uh not seeing any hands i'll make a couple of i have a couple of questions i guess um my first question is on the site plan and uh and the distance between the existing house and the new building in my work for institutional clients uh the distance i'm seeing between the north end of the house and the south face of the l looks like a lot less than would typically be allowed by the building code um and it also looks rather unpleasant for the people that might be in the units that look right out at the end of the house so i wondered if you could talk about that i can give you the distances and um maybe rachel can talk about the the building code um issues with that but um basically can you can see my screen there yes um from the existing um building here to the new wall that's uh five feet i believe it's 13 feet from the main wall which is here this is kind of like an entry um portico or that uh elongated vestibule if you will um and then from the east wall of the existing building to the new uh building wall is also 13 feet so we've kept 13 feet from the main walls and this area within um between the two buildings is is going to be um or plan to be like um uh kind of a mechanical space there will be air handling units here we are proposing that the um the surface just be treated as stone mulch for ease of maintenance and um you know it'll it'll just be more difficult to try to keep up grass or maintain vegetation uh shrubs certainly in that area um along with the um you know the the mechanical um units that would be required um to be put on the ground there so those are the distances um i wouldn't be able to talk about the um code implications with that and maybe i can all right so um rachel uh are there any issues with the the short the small distance between those structures sorry i was sharing my screen i couldn't find the mute button okay so the the um fire code is something that we started to work on at the very beginning of this project and we made sure to look at all of the different um distances and the implications on the buildings and this approach that we chose is trying to maximize the um it's trying to maximize the visibility of the existing building on the corner of the site to allow the new building to take a second stage to that building and um by wrapping it around it allows um that new building to have a sort of a smaller presence on gray street as well as main street and um we're maintaining five feet from the north of that shed which will allow us to provide a one hour rating on that shed wall um and that will give us the um the ability to have windows on the south side of the new building and then the 13 foot distance um allows us to have windows on both buildings and to maintain that airspace there as required by code so we have looked at that very carefully and um and have a setback plan in place to discuss with Mike Roy for the for the fire department um we we do recognize that that's as the chair mentioned it's um maybe not the best view from the south windows of that one particular unit that's right up against the shed um but it is um a really nice view up on the on the other units towards the south and so we wanted to make sure that we provided some of that south view for the upper units and um the lower units will be looking into the courtyard and that's something that if somebody is looking for a unit that may not be more publicly facing they might choose a unit that has more of an interior focus um we've noticed that we do a lot of residential design for a lot of different clients and um some clients are more inwardly focused in their residences and some are more outwardly focused and a lot of the residents at the first building um don't ever open their curtains and that's true of other multifamily residential units that we've seen so there are a lot of people who prefer to have a more inwardly focused um residents to begin with okay thank you I guess the only other question I had was on your your elevation uh I guess it would be the east face uh where the I think the the was it the trash or the uh bicycle storage was uh I didn't see a porch over that door in the elevation is that going to be covered or not yeah that that that door right in that little corner there doesn't look like it has a roof over it you're on mute Rachel you're muted or else whoops thank you sorry I'm having trouble finding that button one I'm screen sharing um so the there's an overhang in the building itself there's a two foot overhang from the upper stories over this door um so it's possible um that we will in as we find you in the design um that we can provide an additional overhang for that um entry point but um it's something that we feel is already quite protected by the the building architecture above that door okay thank you um Maria um I know this will continue so maybe I'll just make some comments so that maybe for the next round we can see more um information um as far as the architecture all we had was a gray L shape so I'm seeing all the architecture for the first time so it's hard to sort of digest all of it but um hearing what you're saying Rachel about how the L building is sort of secondary to the historic front building I don't really get that sense I felt like it was looming and I wonder maybe it's because of that space you were talking about that you know it's because of the site constraints you know in order to get enough parking and all the other things that building had to be that close to the historic original one I do feel like it's not quite doing what you're saying um I'm not sure how to resolve that but um I really appreciate the project because we so desperately need infill housing and more mixed use buildings um close to downtown on bus routes walkable you know an environment radius that's fantastic it's just like I do feel like it is sort of hovering over the original building and um the historic building I assume you aren't able to alter the colors or anything maybe I mean that that's probably part of the commission's purview um but if they could tie together better so that the whole parcel is a little more cohesive maybe it won't feel so jarring but again I'm just seeing the architecture for the first time in your presentation so it's hard to kind of really um so maybe at the next round if you see a little or if it's in our packets or something or we didn't get in our packets right Maria the we've received the PDFs of the drawings yesterday maybe oh day maybe it was a it was a link to a Dropbox site oh okay I so they were late arrivals okay I I'm so far behind on emails okay sorry so that's on me um well so I guess yeah my only comment is from maybe next round if we can see a little bit more like perspective view just so I feel a little more comfortable that you know in reality I won't feel like this big hulking thing hovering over this original little historic building that you work so hard to preserve so um but otherwise uh yeah I know we're continuing so I won't say too much more can I respond to that briefly sure um so we did submit plans um a month ago for this project these are just updated renderings the the previous renderings had a different color and um what we sent recently was um an updated color scheme so uh and I also misspoke this this existing building is um it's I don't think it's protected by the historic commission I think it's um I'm sure it's sorry I I'm not sure if it is or not but it's something that um that John is preserving to to preserve the fabric of the neighborhood and to preserve the look of the corner of the site um and he is interested in changing the color um at some point and um that's something that we can certainly show in renderings if that would be useful for the for the board to consider um it's it's certainly I mean as a two-story building it's certainly always going to feel a lot smaller than this new um three-story building thanks Rachel um Chris I just wanted to suggest that if you made the color of the front building the old building more similar to the color of the new building it might appear to be part of the new building rather than something that kind of sticks out in front and that might help with the image of something looming over something else okay thank you Chris Janet suggestion um hold on why don't we Janet why don't we let John share probably respond to that thank you yeah in fact um when the doctors converted that corner building 446 from uh two family I believe it was into commercial on the first floor to have their doctor's offices there that building was actually kind of a light blue if you look at some of the old file photographs uh light light blue and some darker trim I think when the Gadara family bought it and it became Spanner studies um a broad building they wanted to you know have more of a look for their European look I guess so they painted it the color it is now so that's how that color came about I agree I'm trying to blend everything there I did get a lot of positive comments on the color of the the building that we did last year and the way it looks in general so that's why we kind of blended the two just I wanted the opposite color of the front of the one we did last year was kind of blue on the front so this one here I want to have the green color in the front and then kind of have the bump outs mimic different colors like the other building okay thank you Janet so um I do appreciate the infill and residential density in the business districts it's like we're sort of filling in the core um and you know with the goal of you know obviously meeting housing needs and also supporting businesses um people can walk to I am concerned that we're that the original goal is that we're residential business units we're going to support businesses is now they're replacing them and so you know we're going from having seven or eight commercial spaces down to three and they're all except for one is the new one is quite small and so I'd like to talk about that later be it a different meeting but I do want to support um the comments that Doug made is that I don't know anybody who would want to be staring at a building five feet away with gravel and then maybe some heating or you know cooling units it's it's sort of it feels sort of tenement like to me and um that built those buildings seem way too close and I don't know people who want to be staring you know I know in New York City that's the kind of wall you don't want to have and I don't know it seems really far from our kind of usual situation in Amherst so I would think that it just has to move back um to give some space um it looks like you're trying to pack a really large building in and it does have a very looming feeling it feels like the the the smaller building is completely surrounded I think part of the problem so I feel like it has to be sort of reduced in size or maybe the front of the building look more like the front of a building on Main Street with more details like a deeper porch some more details around the windows a small like smaller size it does it just feels like that building is surrounding that little house and you're just trying to put in as much as you can and the details on the window or on the house itself it's just very flat and plain and very blank to me so I I just think there has to be some a better kind of fit in terms of the vibe of Main Street I mean Main Street is now full of sort of a lot of you know different houses kind of different sizes and different you know designs a lot of them are kind of falling apart but it still has like a nice vibe and I feel like this house this new building doesn't have that feel of it's not different enough it's not detailed enough but it it feels way too big to me and it does feel like it's looming um and it seems really close to the house and I it's hard for me that the tenants on either side would really want to be just staring into the windows of other people so those so I do have that kind of initial like it just it feels like that house is surrounding and almost you know not the house the building is surrounding and almost eating the little house or something I don't it doesn't look right to me thank you Janet John thank you yeah and you're going to realize that that bump out area so to speak and behind the original house the only section of that that's five feet away is eight feet wide by 22 feet long and that was added on when the doctors did the conversion of the house also just to gain a handicapped entrance with a ramp and handicapped bathroom so that is like a shed roof on the back of that and I think Rachel's trying to bring up the actual photo of the uh existing house in the back there showing that shed roof so most of that building is 13 feet away and the way the roof is on the existing building the second story we'll get plenty of sunlight coming down the roof line there and the first story we arranged the bedroom windows on the corner unit to be facing that's about the only window that really faces that five foot separation area the other areas will either look down to the west side of this house down where that gutter and the pressure tree to wood is or down the 13 foot alleyway looking out to main street on the other end that's a studio unit there and the HVAC units are not big ones like we have next door they're going to be like a suitcase size 11 inches wide 33 inches I'm sorry at 33 inches wide 11 inches deep and 22 inches high so they're going to be below the windows for the most part or in between the windows so I understand what you're saying there I tried to work everything around that so tenants were impacted you know negatively there okay thank you John are there other board comments this evening or I'm wondering it's just a short of 10 o'clock maybe we should call this uh the presentation for this evening and continue until a later meeting would anybody like to make any more comments this evening all right um uh would would you know are there any members of the public that would like to make a comment I do see five public attendees who are still with us okay not seeing any hands from oh there's one from Pam Rooney Pam could you give us your name and your address hi Pam hi Pam Rooney 42 Cottage Street I have a question about the number of parking spaces and I'm curious what the uh the math is to um to come up with the number that you have because it sounds like um you have I think I heard someone say 47 parking spaces I didn't catch the number of dwelling units and I definitely didn't catch the number of bedrooms and just wonder if you could elaborate thank you thank you Pam John do you want to address that yeah did you want to get into all the data and so for tonight or kind of give a basic rundown why don't you give us a basic rundown and you know we can study some of the material and yeah talk about it in more depth at the next one all right yeah I appreciate your you're asking about that um when we built the building that was uh constructed last year I did a lot of research early morning hours to find out how many parking spaces were actually used in the area of similar complexes and then I did it again this year and did the same complexes plus a couple more newer ones that are of similar size with the combined thing here so the building that we did last year has 35 bedrooms and it turned out once everything was leased there's only 16 cars for the 35 bedrooms and there was 32 parking spaces when it was approved uh so we used kind of that same ratio in the average ratio of the data that I collected you know to come up with this number of spaces it's actually about four more spaces than that number comes out to be so next meeting I can certainly go over all the details on that but it was through research and and looking at the way people work from home now and so forth and and that type of thing and it's the location itself with a bus stop right on the premises right out the front door so it all comes together to to verify that 47 spaces should work all right thank you john all right so we will pick up pick this up uh at another meeting uh chris do you have a suggestion for a date for this continuation I would suggest June 15th June 15th you have kind of a light load among which are possible review of the dog park possible discussion about article 14 and how to carry that into the future um legal ad fees and the subdivision issue that will come up later in this meeting for a brief discussion okay so what time would you propose there's nothing scheduled so far so you could propose this for 635 okay so no chance of getting it on a June 1st no June 1st is really packed unless you wanted to switch your subdivision to June 15th Mr. Marshall Mr. Malloy also yeah yeah I see his hand I'm Nate why don't you go ahead sure thanks I mean I was going to just ask you know there are some suggestions about reducing the massing facing Main Street whether that's like a two-story building or more articulation and if that's something the board would want to see for the next meeting you know even a change in the building what if it were you know wasn't in L shape but some other different shape um my two other comments are that the the interior walls of the new building right so that courtyard with the old building there's no articulation on the facade like there is on the other facades right stepping back and other things so that really is just a a wall facing the old historic house you know on the west side and the south side of the new building and so you know if there is more relationship to the current existing house whether it's you know window patterns or you know the facade patterns of opening closing windows whatever it really is just a you know a really big wall facing the old building and then just you know the board didn't look at it much but the sign along Main Street I just want to just call attention to it and how it is different than the existing sign and it you know is that a type of sign you know we'd want to see as we're coming up Main Street is it you know is the style and design um you know is that is it also representative of of say the vicinity in the home so um you know I just wanted to call attention to that you know some site details just if the applicants are coming back if there's any comments like we did with EMS 5 you know things that could be addressed next time right well thanks for bringing up the massing of the building um I have to say that one of the things that went through my head was why are we keeping the existing house um you know should this be a project that replaces the house and flips the L diagonally so it fronts Gray Street and Fronts Main Street um you know then you've got a interior courtyard behind it and plenty of room for your parking obviously that would change the the look of the of Main Street with you know what has been a series of small houses but we're we're losing that too I'm not sure I'm really arguing for that I'm simply saying that went through my head it does feel like it's a site plan that is just too cramped so if you have some other ideas John and team you know I think we probably would like to think about that well I think you know my my whole goal was I did think it's here in the house down and I went through that with the first one next door and I thought you know it was more important for the neighborhood to kind of maintain the look of what that corner is versus something that's totally different and as far as the sign on Nate the Amherst media sign is very similar to the one we're talking about here nothing unlike um the post signs it's a stone sign with the sign in in the center of it so forth and that's going to be built right next door on the corner the other corner gray so I understand the massive look that you're talking about and that's really when you're looking front on from Main Street when you're coming down Main Street or up Main Street it kind of blends you know coming especially coming down with the building we did last year the roof line is going to be about the same the house is on the west side of Gray Street or higher yet once the Amherst media building goes up it's going to kind of mask this whole thing so it's it's a massive look from the front I think but it still has plenty of room and I think it'll blend in nice the way it is so that's kind of my thoughts when I was going through everything I I did have a plan with putting the building in the front of the existing building and I played with all kinds of different ideas and this seemed to make most sense with trying to keep with what's there so the neighborhood doesn't change that much and blend it with some new so all right thank you John Chris I just wanted to point out that if there was a proposal to take down the existing house I think there might also be a risk of having a 12 month demolition delay on that and I actually told Mr Robolesky that I thought it would be better to keep the existing house so that he would be able to keep some of the streetscape that already exists so I just wanted to offer that but there were changes made to the existing building to in response to comments that were received from the planning board such as making the piece that faces Main Street be a smaller size and so you can see that in this image here the piece that is closest to Main Street is smaller and then it kind of steps up and steps up more or steps out more as you go towards the back then maybe that's something that could be considered some kind of diminution of this facade that's on Main Street and would help that to feel less monumental thanks Chris I think that's uh those are good good points Janet so I really hope you don't take down that building and change I appreciate that you want to keep that the kind of rhythm and the look of Main Street and part of it is like every building on Main Street you know they're small they're not really small there's lots of really big buildings on Main Street they all look different and I think part of the thing is if you look at the building on the left it has all these interesting and quirky details and the new building has really almost none and then the building next to it actually has some more but it looks too much like it in a way and so I just think you could do a lot more details I do think it's way too big but to make it an interesting front so you're you know it's a it's a building on Main Street it should have a cool look it should have architectural details and it just looks very flat and I don't know I just you know and you know so that so I really do think it could fit in more and I would urge you to do sort of more details I don't have the right you know language for that but I'm kind of in that I know when I see it but every building on Main Street almost has some interesting thing and the building that you tore down was one of the more interesting buildings and so I don't want to lose that rhythm of different buildings and these two side by side don't have that rhythm and this building particularly doesn't have enough detail or interest you know to me um the other issue I have is there's like is with the site there's really no space for people to sit or gather or there's no um you know I don't know there's you know I thought that and the building that you had built that people could do um be in the back yards and you know have some places sit and put a chair until I realized when I went to the site visit that there were no doorways out and so nobody really was using that kind of green space in any way and with this design there's really no green space left for people except maybe the front lawn and it made me wonder if the buildings the new building could have like porches so people could sit on porches you know along the side in the front like a deeper porch or have a seating area in the front that invites people but there's you know there's going to be hundreds of people living here and there's no communal space um you know Leveny's Pleasant had a workout space inside they had this very tiny courtyard but is there some way to create a community out of this site and um provide some recreational facilities and amenities for the tenants it just looks like you know it looks like housing and there's nothing really for the tenants to have to live in that is drive up or walk up and go in the room and come out and I just I felt like it could you could create some more communal spaces that would create a good spirit um thanks Janet um I did want to say I liked Chris's suggestion of looking at perhaps reducing the mass of the wing that faces main street particularly on the end um I'm also I've also been kind of uh puzzled or concerned about the two doors that that are on that elevation one of which is an office and the other which is a residence there they look basically indistinguishable from each other and um you know it seemed like it might be appropriate to have a more more of a distinction between the commercial entrance and the uh the residential uh unit uh that that unit looks like you could probably move the front door around to the uh west side uh which would which would help with separation and and might just save the resident from having a few people that are looking from the business uh from knocking on their door um so those are a couple more thoughts that you might consider before you come back Rachel I do see your hand why don't you go ahead um so just responding to a few of those comments um I think that's a great suggestion about the entry to that unit um there was some consideration about having that unit be the option of having a second business space there um should there be more demand for commercial space um I think what John has found recently he has the the existing commercial space in the other building has not been filling and um you know there's one of the wonderful benefits of having a lot of commercial space downtown is that you know people who want to have commercial space can be downtown and people out in this more residential area are looking more for residences um but um but that said I think that is a great idea to move that door um and it still wouldn't defeat the option of having a second commercial space there if need be um and then in terms of the sitting area I actually um spent a good deal of time at John's property that's around the corner on high street um we were good friends with one of the residents there and um I only once sat out in that backyard and never saw anyone in those backyards and those are all built with very lovely back decks that have rear entrances to the backyards and um John created some really nice courtyard spaces there and there's just really never anybody in those outdoor areas and um you know I think there's there's a lot to be said for creating community as as Ms. McGowan mentioned and and creating space to create that community um but you know as was mentioned also with the um seating areas on route nine you don't want to build something that nobody's going to use so I think um one of the things that John is um thinking about and creating this site here is that it's very um very much allowing the building to protect the back portion of the site and um and then to create these green areas here that are um and that are taking advantage of the existing large trees that are there and there could be some very nice sitting areas here if people did want to sit outside um there's nice planted areas on that side of the building as well as um the you know the backyard areas up here that are much quieter and away from all of the street views so I think there are options for the tenants should they decide to change their ways and be more outward facing all right John thank you yeah and as I said you know from kind of day one on this we saved a lot of the granite type capstones from the foundation that we demolished so my thought was to use those number one on the front sign for a planting bed around there so we had that aspect of part of history so to speak and also same thing I did next door 22 high street I used some stones from an old barn there for plantings planting beds and to make a couple of stone benches the other thing to keep in mind and I'm talking from a police perspective now and I saw it just about a week and a half ago before graduation further up Gray Street where they had a nice big backyard there was about 30 people back there playing beer pong and so forth so when you think about creating areas that people can congregate and I think you have to kind of keep that in mind but again as Rachel said I've never seen anybody use those spaces over on high street a couple people might have a grill now and then that you just put out back those have been an issue with the melt and the vinyl siding and that type of thing they never clean them up initially on high street I had two picnic tables or a picnic area they basically busted and fell apart and stuff we tried to maintain them it just I think people nowadays especially like their privacy and they have places to go and they go out the door and they just go they're just the way it is so I think having some areas like this and maintaining a nice shaded area where they do have an opportunity to sit is fine but having too much I think is probably not a good idea all right thank you very much so thank you John and your team I think we will use probably time to go ahead and continue this hearing would anybody like to make a motion to continue this hearing to June 15th at 635 Tom thank you and I'll go ahead and second that any further discussion from the board Rachel you could stop sharing okay not seeing any more a roll call vote Maria Jack or Tom rather hi Andrew hi Janet hi you know Hannah hi and I'm an I as well so John thanks very much I hope you'll take some of our comments into consideration and we'll see you in I guess close to a month thank you very much thank you all thank you okay the time is 1013 and we will go up to number six on our agenda old business Chris SUB 1989-9 the meadows you want to have any introduction to this sure I'll give you a little rundown on this so the meadows was built around the same time that Amherst Hills was built and built by the same developer the meadows has had similar issues with getting their infrastructure finished and you know they're hoping to have their roads accepted by the town eventually what I've heard from Tafino associates and Ted Parker is that he definitely intends to make that his next project now that he's finished Amherst Hills and yet the residents at the meadows are anxious to move the project along more quickly so they've had their attorney Felicity Hardy submit this letter to the planning board in hopes that the planning board can help them to have a positive result like Amherst Hills had and so I wanted to make sure that you saw this letter in a timely manner but obviously you don't have time to really discuss it in depth tonight so I told Ms. Hardy that we would put this on the agenda for June 15th and that's really what I wanted to say tonight okay and you know we you did send us some correspondence from I think it was Mr. Parker and maybe his attorney will you be consulting with the town council at all on this before we talk about it or not I wasn't planning to there's a lot happening in the next couple of weeks and I wasn't planning to get the town counselor involved unless you want me to I think that Mr. Pill is probably correct that there's no mechanism by which the planning board could tie a decision on the Amherst Hills subdivision to a decision on the meadows subdivision so he's probably correct in that matter but I think it was you know right with Ms. Hardy to bring this to your attention and hopefully we can help that neighborhood group you know move towards success as well okay all right do any board members want to say anything about that this evening or are you fine with waiting to talk about it in about a month Johanna I just it seems like we got so Chris I appreciate you saying that we can't kind of make one neighborhood decision contingent upon another decision it you know I do feel like we got that letter I think either the same day or the day after we voted on the Amherst Woods decision and I don't know it just it seems like you've done a great job ushering that one to resolution and I hope we can do the same thing here and if we had been able to use Amherst Woods to leverage action on this I don't know it seems like it could have been an opportunity but timing wise we missed that and then it sounds like you're saying that that just wouldn't be kind of okay one way or the other okay Chris do you want to comment it was Amherst Hills right Amherst Hills yeah I just wanted to comment on the timing of this because you know we look at the planning board email before planning board meetings to make sure that we've caught everything and so we looked at the planning board email before the meeting on May 4th and this document didn't show up and for some reason it came to us like the following Monday and so that was very strange and we let Ms. Hardy know that and it turned out that Ted Parker was copied on the email and his arrived several days after May 3rd so for some reason this did not arrive in the planning department email on May 3rd as it was indicated to have been sent so that is a mystery how that happened but in any event we could not have tied Amherst Hills to this because they're really two completely separate situations they're similar but they're separate so thank you okay all right um any other old business that you want to bring up this evening no no thank you all right how about new business item eight on our agenda I can't think of any new business items okay uh item nine any upcoming form a and our subdivision applications we have some upcoming um there are two upcoming that you'll see on June 1st one has to do with a property on Pelham road and the other one has to do with um archipelago investments property at 11 and 13 east pleasant street um so you'll be seeing those on June 1st okay how about ZBA applications we actually do have uh some to present to you okay anything I'm just I made a couple of slides because it's always so much for me to try to remember so um these three applications have come in very recently they are going to go in front of the ZBA on June 9th the first one is property at 103 Pelham road and they are requesting an variance to allow subdivision of a parcel of land um and it looks like this and what they want to do so there are existing buildings on this property now so one and two so they're going to actually divide the property a little different so this is it currently right here so here's parcel one here is parcel two so this bottom piece is going to become part of lot two and then they're just going to have this little piece up here it's going to be lot one so that's the first one uh secondly is property at 82 Pomeroy lane and um these folks are seeking a special permit to create a lag lot so here it is here this is the parcel as you can see over here the proposing that the building circle would go here this one also is pretty straightforward and last but not least is property at 77 North Whitney street so this is a request for a special permit to allow a new non-owner occupied duplex and it would be a complementary principle used to an existing one family detached dwelling that's already existing on the property so here's the property here here is the existing one family residence and what they're proposing is to add this duplex plan here and it would be in front so it would be up here in the front so that's what's going to go in front of the ZBA on June 9 and so if you are interested we can ask these applicants to come in um and provide you a presentation on any of the applications that you are interested in so chris uh this would need to be june 1st yes it would need to be and june 1st is already chock full yeah this is already pretty pretty full um i know board members at at 20 minutes after 10 you know the invitation to take on more for our next meeting is not particularly exciting um does anybody feel strongly that we need to get a presentation and make a recommendation to zba uh chris i see your hand i just wanted to suggest that if people do feel strongly that they want to see this presentation they could attend the june 9th zoning board of appeals meeting and they would be free to comment as a member of the public at that time so that's just a suggestion okay thank you jana um i'm interested in the first one and a third one both because they're sort of weird and they sort of remind me of the um college avenue one where you know building extra units on increasingly smaller lots but i don't particularly want to pack the agenda um of the next meeting could we hear it even though the z could get a presentation i'm sure the zba is not going to decide number one and three quickly i i don't know if i'm presuming that but i think that could we hear it at a different meeting chris um we couldn't guarantee that the zba would continue the public hearing but if you wanted to i could make a suggestion to mooring pollock that if it is continued past june 9th that you have an opportunity to hear a presentation yeah that would make sense yeah i mean it's just the first one just seems weird but well you're going to see the first one as an a and r okay so i don't know if you want to see it as a and that's and that's essentially what it is the zba would be granting a variance to allow um the applicant to a and r the lot so there's not going to be much more to the first one than that is it is it is it dividing it to two houses there's two houses so one house would be on a very very tiny lot that's right yes but they're not adding anything to it it's just an existing building that is going to be um on a different size lot yeah interesting i just want on 77 whitney north whitney that could potentially be an interesting site design for you to look at and comment on all right so chris why don't you go ahead and have that conversation with i'm blanking on her name maury thank you that would only be for the first one and the third one for one of the you know just have her keep us in the loop and uh if they do not decide on their june 9th meeting we can we'd like to talk we'd like to hear about it okay very good all right um upcoming well let's see i'll just give you a time check the time is 10 25 uh upcoming s p p s pr s u b applications none that i know of yeah all right uh number 12 planning board committee and liaison reports jack is absent so we don't need to hear from about pvpc uh andrew anything on cpac we're trying to schedule a meeting um the chair throughout a couple of dates i don't know if he'd landed on one yet but if we were looking at early june okay so no updates other than that all right uh tom design review board no updates all right janet solar bylaw you are muted as far as i know the committee has not formed but i think they may get appointed on june 9th by the town council but i'm not i'm not super firm on that okay thank you and then chris anything else on crc crc um is talking to the building commissioner about the rental registration bylaw and trying to come up with a new updated version of that and that's what they talked about on may 12th and as i told you before they also voted to recommend the demo excuse me the preservation of historically significant buildings so okay great all right i'm not going to have any report from the chair tonight uh chris any report from staff well i just want to say that this length of this meeting differed substantially from the length of the last meeting well and it sounds like we're going to have a busy summer yes i think so yeah yeah that's unfortunate there's a lot happening in emerson all right well so thank you all for sticking with us and uh yep i'm feeling like yawning also thank you everybody the time is 10 27 and we are adjourned thank you pam thank you bye everyone you all in june all righty bye bye good night