 Okay, Mr. Marshall. It is 631. You have a quorum present. You are the co-host. The attendees are coming in. Amherst media is here. Okay, thank you, Pam. Welcome to the Amherst Planning Board meeting of August 3, 2022. My name is Doug Marshall and as the chair of the Amherst Planning Board, I am calling this meeting to order at 632 p.m. This 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 extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 and extended again by the state legislature on July 16, 2022. This planning board meeting, including public hearings, will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town website's 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 meeting, 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. In the event we are unable to do so, for reasons of economic hardship or despite 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 return to mute. Bruce Colvin. Yes, I'm here. Tom Long. Present. Andrew McDougall, I believe, is not here yet. I dug Marshall and present. Janet McGowan. Here. Johanna Newman. Present. And Karen Winter. Present. Thank you and welcome. Board members, 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 re-mute 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. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, their participation may be disconnected from the meeting. All right. So that's our intro for this evening. And first item on the agenda, the time is 6.36. And we'll go right to review and approval of the minutes from our last meeting, which was July 20th. So board members, any comments on the minutes? Johanna. First of all, thanks. The minutes are easy to follow as somebody who wasn't there. I feel like I have a good handle on what was covered. There are two spots where I noticed typos. So on the first page, there's an extra comma in the attendees. And I'm sorry. And then so, you know, at six, like after Ms. Winter, there's an extra comma comma. And then the word town council is misspelled on pages five and six. But other than that, I think these minutes look really good. And Doug, if we're ready, I'd be happy to move to approve them. Well, I'm going to ask you where the extra comma is because are you talking about on the first page under present? On the first page at 6.34 p.m. The second line opened the meeting and determined call that. Do you see it? No. No, those both of those commas look appropriate to me. The after Ms. Winter. Yeah, well, that's a it's a clause. The clause. With the exception of all. Oh my gosh, you're right. Yep. Okay, that one is resended. So then it's just the hominem of council and council on pages five and six. Five and six. Okay. Yo, Hannah. Where do you see the, I, is it? It, hang on. Isn't it spelled correctly at the bottom of page five? It is. And then there's another spot where, where is it on Connie Krueger's comments? Oh, yes. Count sell. Yep. Sell. And then it's again at the top of page six. And it's also on page five with your under Ms. McGowan's comments. So when, may I say something under Connie Krueger's comment, it should be council, because that refers to the lawyer who weighed in on the topic of how does a roadway get accepted by the town? So that under Connie Krueger is correct. And what was the other one under Janet McGowan's. That one's probably correct too. Yeah, that's correct also because Janet McGowan asked to see the town attorney's opinion. And then this morning is the same above. Yeah, is there another one page six? Those are the attorney as well. That's great. As a non attendee, that's, yeah, I thought they were typos, but apparently it's all accurate. So nice work on the top of page six. It should be CIL because the people have to submit a petition of acceptance to town CIL council. Yeah. And the second paragraph also has town CIL in two places. And then the next paragraph has town SEL. And that's right because I forwarded something that the town attorney had sent. So. OK. Well, I'm going to thank you, Johanna, for reading it so closely. All right. So, Chris, I see your hand up. Do you want to say anything else? Yes, I was wondering if people didn't have a chance to see the latest version of the minutes, which went out this afternoon. I wanted to ask Pam if she would bring up the minutes. People may have seen the one that was in the packet. And Janet emailed me, I think it was yesterday, pointing out a few things that she felt needed to be corrected. So I did correct them. And the first one is on page three. And it is under Hilda Greenbaum's comments where she was commenting about students in North Amherst and many students rather than any students was the correct terminology. And then moving down the page, Mr. Marshall said that he wanted a chart to describe the changes that were being proposed to make Article 14 a permanent situation. So there was some back and forth. I came up with what I thought was a version and I sent it out to Doug to see if he agreed with that version. And he didn't think he had been as specific as I made it sound. So I revised it again to say that Doug Marshall would like a chart with the five categories of uses and he would like the chart to contain how these uses are approved now and how they are proposed to be changed. And then Janet wanted a more full explanation of how that would be done. And so in brackets, because that wasn't really said at the meeting, but it was in my head, I laid out a pathway to create this chart. And this is going to help my staff in creating the chart. And I think it's a reasonable summary of the steps that need to be taken. And since I had it on the top of my mind, I just included it in brackets, indicating that it wasn't actually said at the planning board meeting. But this is what planning staff understood would be needed. So I hope that you all think this is OK. And there was one more change, which was to. On page seven, under new business, we were talking about the scope of work for a consultant to help us determine whether the parking garage could hold another story. And I believe that I did say that we would also be assessing other sites for a parking garage, as well as the Boltwood garage. And that would be planning staff would be doing that, not the consultant. So those are the changes that that we've made since you received your packets. Thank you, Chris. Bruce, I see your hand. Just to say, Doug, that I like what Christine has done adding something in parentheses. I wonder whether a useful convention for doing that might be to put the text in italics as well as putting it in parentheses so that it's very clear then that it's different. Just a thought, I think we'd be happy to do that. Great. Thank you, Bruce. Janet, thank you for doing that, Chris. I know we had made a bunch of comments about what we'd like to see in the chart, so it was kind of confusing. I wonder in the in the bracketed part, you could just write staff note you know, and that will be just kind of it is a staff note, you know. And so I just I thought it was important to kind of highlight just because I thought it was important information that we wanted at the next hearing. But everybody like had, you know, a little version of what they wanted to see. So I think that does capture it. All right. Thank you, Janet. Andrew, welcome. I think I saw you come in at six forty one p.m. I wanted to put that in the record. Yeah, just want to let you know is here. Thank you. And I this is the first time seeing this. I did not get a chance to look at myself. OK, thank you. Thank you, Andrew. All right, Chris, so you've gotten a couple of comments about the revisions you made, and I assume you're OK with those and can incorporate them into the record copy. Yep. All right. Board members, are there any other comments people would like to make before we go to a vote? All right, Johanna, you had sounded like you wanted to make a motion. I moved to approve the minutes from July 20th. Move to approve. Thank you very much. Janet, is that your second? Yes, peace symbol second. OK. All right. Thank you. Thank you both. OK, we'll go right to the roll call vote. Have a new new list of participants. Bruce, you are muted. Still muted. Usually hitting the space bar on mute, but it didn't do it that time. I approve. OK, thank you, Bruce. And Tom. Approved. Andrew, I'm going to stay in just since I just on thanks. OK, Janet, the proof. And Johanna, I. And Karen, I approve. And I'm going to prove as well. So six votes in favor, one abstention and the minutes for as revised for July 20th are approved. All right, the time is six forty six. And we'll go on to the next item on the agenda, which is the public comment period. And let's see here. So at this time, the public is invited to comment about something or a topic that is not on tonight's agenda. We have two items on tonight's agenda. One is a sign down on University Drive. And the second is a proposed project, you know, Olympia Place. And so we are not taking comments on those two topics at this time, but comments on other items are welcome. I see one hand, Pam, could you bring Pam Rooney over? Pam, could you give us your name and your address? Hi, Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. Thank you. Since you're on the topic of meeting minutes, thank you very much, Pam, for putting those all together. They're very, very helpful and and comprehensive. I was trying to, since they since a meeting minute is posted, obviously, after the meeting, there's a very nice what appears to be a an interactive link sending someone to the recordings of the meeting and or to the meeting minutes themselves. But of course, as a PDF, they don't work as a as an interactive link. So when I go to the meeting minutes and I click click, I am not able to, in fact, pull up the meeting minutes from that. Previous two or three meetings back. And it gives a listing. Now, it could be I'm doing it wrong, but it gives a listing of the number like 1492 one. So then I had to go back into town documents 1492. And it was probably the fourth or fifth or sixth item within town documents that actually was the packet for that week. And I just wonder if it might be possible to include I know that I'm not trying to make this harder. I know that for several of the council committees, there is actually a listing of the items that are in a packet for that evening to give, you know, so you could quickly scan through and say, oh, yeah, that's the archipelago, you know, 11th Pleasant Street hearing. This is a kind of an easy reference. So give it some thought. And maybe that it can be worked out that it makes it a little bit easier for folks trying to track things. Thanks. And thank you. We've worked really hard on those links. Are you finding that consistently they're not working for you? Oops, am I still on? Yeah, yeah, I thought I had I thought I had muted myself back. I just went to the ones that were presented for this week. OK. And and the I guess because it was because it was a PDF, maybe, and it just it was an opening for me. That's interesting. Thank you for letting us know. But if you control click, I'm going to take a look at it and I'll get it to take a look at it with me. So thanks for bringing that to our attention for this one. You know, with it, things can work, work, work, work, work. And then all of a sudden there can be an oops, like a little flaw. So thank you for letting me know and we'll take a look at it. OK, thank you, Pam. And I'll say I'll try it with other meeting minutes as well, just to see if maybe I'm I'm the one that's not working. It could be. We'll see. We'll check it out. Thank you. Thank you. OK. I don't see any. Yes, Janet. I wonder if I can chime in that people have complained to me about that problem where they haven't been able to get to the packet through the link and I should have told you earlier. Sometimes I just send them the packet. OK. All right. Thank you, Janet. All right, I don't see any other hands from the attendees of the public. So I will assume that we are done with public comment period. Yeah. All right. The time now is six fifty one. And I know that the next item on the agenda is public hearing for our capital ago investments project. However, we received a request from the from the folks who are representing Papa John's to to to go on to the signage review for their new for their restaurant over 181 University Drive. So I wondered unless any to do any board members object to going to the signage before we go to the archipelago project. OK, I don't see any hands raised. So we will do that. So the time now is six fifty one and we'll go to item four. This is S.P.R. two thousand five dash zero zero zero zero one Amherst shopping center. Big Y Plaza. And this is a let's see. Let's see if I've got the text for this. I do not. So yeah, this is just a review of the signage for the new Papa John's restaurant in the in the mall or the shopping center. Chris, do you want to introduce this? Yes, I would like to. There were two references to approvals for this site, the big shopping center. The first one was in I think it was nineteen eighty five and then this latest one was two thousand five and both of them contained a condition that signs for this big white plaza would come back to the planning board for review and approval before they're installed. So that's what this is all about. So Papa John's is putting in a new store where supercuts used to be, which that was like a barbershop. And now they're proposing to have a restaurant there and they want to put a sign over the door of the restaurant. And they also want to put a sign on that big monument sign that is a freestanding sign out in the parking lot. And we have Rosalind Holderfield here tonight to describe the signs to us. And she's from the sign manufacturer. OK, thanks, Chris, and welcome, Rosalind. Hi, good evening. How's everyone? Very well. So do you have do you want to show us some images? Yes, let me see if I can screen share. OK, Rosalind, we can we can see your email at the moment. Oh, I'm you may need to select a different screen or move. We go. Now we can see your desktop. Yeah. OK, there we go. Good. Let me apologize. This is a bird's eye view of the shopping center. And it shows where our proposal for the Papa John's is going to be. And then where the existing monument sign is going. We are going to be taking over the old supercuts. OK, and we're proposing to add a Papa John's better ingredients, better pizza sign that is comparable to what the supercuts used to have up there. Our building height up to the bottom of the quarters is about thirteen nine. So actually, there's probably about another eight or twelve inches there. We've got a lease space that's about fourteen feet eight inches. So our signage is at seventeen point sixteen square feet. And our allowance is a little over a twenty square feet. So this is within code compliance for that. And y'all just stop me if you have any questions. The next exhibit is going to show the freestanding sign, which is existing. We're still in negotiations as finding out from the landlord if we'll be allowed to take over a half panel spot or a full panel spot. So what we want to do is go ahead and present both options to you. Let you review it. See if you have any comments about that. If and whichever one that the landlord will allow us to go with, obviously, that one would be already approved to be you, hopefully. So that is it pretty much in a nutshell. All right. Thank you. Yes. Is this is there any lighting integral with either of these signs? Yes, sir. So the Papa John's will all be internally eliminated, and that is via LED illumination. The freestanding signs, whatever illumination is currently for that sign, this sign will also eliminate at night. All right. Thank you. Board members, any questions on these these proposals? Talkative bunch tonight. So so is the sign on Oh, sorry, is the sign on the freestanding one inside within our code requirements? I know we have a lot of detailed sign requirements and I haven't memorized in any way. So I'm I'm sure if there's any restrictions, as far as our size, we would be taking over what the supercuts used to have in this exhibit here. Right. It would be matching up what was preexisting before. This one, obviously, we would be taking over a full space. So we're not encroaching or increasing the physical structure of the sign nor that particular panel. Right. Chris, I see your hand. Did you want to comment on this? Yes, I wanted to comment that the monument sign as a whole was approved by the Planning Board when they approved the Big White Plaza. But figuring out exactly whose names are going to go in those slots is really up to the people who own the the plaza to have a conversation with their new tenants and figure out how big a sign should be there. So there aren't any regulations, as Janet asked for. Yes. OK, thank you. All right. Any other comments or questions from board members? All right. Chris, do we need to vote on this or if there's is there any action, other action needed? I would like you to vote on it, if you would. Yep. OK. All right, Andrew. Motion to motion to approve the signage package. Thank you. Anybody want to go on record seconding, Tom? Oh, second. No, OK, fine. Thank you, Tom. OK, any further discussion? Any comment from the public? I don't see any. All right, we'll go through another roll call vote. Bruce. Vote to approve. Thank you. And Tom. Right. Andrew. I. Janet. I. Johanna. I. And Karen, it looked like an eye, but you were muted. I. Thank you. And I'm an eye as well. The vote is unanimously in favor. Great. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. May I make a request? Sure. I believe that the images that this holder field showed tonight had dimensions on them that I don't think I have. So I just would ask her to forward those images to me so that I have the exact images that you approved. OK. Yes, ma'am, be happy. Thank you. All right, thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening. OK, at this time, we'll go on to our next towards really the previous item in the agenda. Number three. The time now is seven o'clock. So this is a joint public hearing and I'll read the intro. In accordance with the provisions of Mass General Law Chapter 40A, this joint public hearing has been duly advertised and noticed 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 twenty twenty three dash zero one and special permit twenty twenty three dash zero one, both with archipelago investments LLC forty seven Olympia Drive. This is a joint public hearing to request site plan review approval under section three point three two six of the zoning bylaw to construct a private apartment style dormitory with sixty eight dwelling units and associated interior and exterior spaces and associated site improvements, including waiver of onsite parking requirements and a special permit to modify maximum building coverage and height requirements under section six, table three, footnote A of the zoning bylaw parcel is on map eight D parcel number eighteen in the RF zoning district. So we'll start by seeing if there are any board disclosures. OK, so I am actually going to make a disclosure I obviously work for University of Massachusetts and I believe that I can be fair and impartial in my deliberations with you all, but I wanted to put that on the record and I have submitted a disclosure form to the town council president and to the town manager as required by the state law. So with that, I guess we have the disclosures completed. All right, Chris, I don't see there's your image. Do you want to introduce this at all or should we go right to Mr. Wilson? Why don't we go right to Mr. Wilson and also you might I don't know if he wants to bring in Dave Williams as well, because Dave is a kind of partner on this project. I'm trying to Chris and I can't. I don't know what what's going on if he's on the telephone. OK, one has come over. He brought him in, Pam. He's he's here. He's listed twice, though. Piled deep. Can you shed any light on that for me? There he is. There he is. OK, there he is. Yeah, anybody else, Mr. Wilson? OK, it looks like he said no. Oh, thank you. That's OK. Kyle and Dave, I guess it's your show to go ahead and share your slides. Great. Thank you. I will share the screen to get started. Kyle and Dave might want to introduce themselves. Sure. Thank you, Chris. Kyle Wilson from Archipelago Investments and Dave Williams also from Archipelago. I could get started here with the architectural presentation of 47 Olympia, so on my screen is the architectural set. This project is next door to the 57 Olympia project that we opened in fall of 2016. It as that was a former fraternity. This is a sorority site. It's all part of the fraternity sorority part from the 60s and 70s. South of us is a matter building for UMass, which was UMass Admissions, and this is the rendering, the front rendering facing street. We've got, as as mentioned, it is 68 apartments. It is a site that is about the same size as the site that we developed next door, 57 Olympia, which is an acre. You can see this site has two residential bars and a connector bar, which is all the amenity space for the building. And there's a service bar on the south side of the building. The south side of the building is the highest part of the building relative to grade, so all the grade drops as it heads down towards 57 Olympia, and you can see the access into the courtyard. The two residential bars have a strip of solar panels facing south and the electric air source heat pumps and a hot water and facing behind that on the north. We've got two diagrams showing a lot and building coverage. You can see the lot coverage at 56 percent. And then you see the building coverage at 45 point three five percent. So that's our one of our dimensional special permits is we're point three five over. And you can see how those sit on the site relative to setbacks. This is the basic floor plan, the first floor plan. You'll see two stairs that face the courtyard. You'll see an entry that that caps the courtyard in the amenity amenity connector, as we're calling it. The two elevators are in the middle. And then you've got residential that that is in each of the bar buildings. And on the ground for south wing, we have storage, plumbing, trash, electric, fire pump, because the water pressure is a little low, et cetera. All that occurs on the south side and you'll see the gray box that is our generator that is just outside the fire pump and trash container room. Second floor, all the residential stacks. There's some apartments above the storage below. And then you'll see in the amenity space, there's a stair that comes up. There's a meeting area. There's fitness on a number of different levels that is yet to be programmed, but some will have machines, some will have places to stretch, et cetera. You see electrical data on each closet. And then the unit layouts, again, on the upper four, the only thing that changes is the amenities. There's some breakout rooms in a fitness room on four three. Same thing on four four and on four five, there's a fitness room and and no breakout spaces. You can see the corridor. This is the roof plan showing the ERVs and the mechanical mechanical and solar, the elevator overrun and where we're sorry, where we're estimating the roof trains to go over the corridors. Here are the elevations. So the building is wrapped in wood cladding with a very large glazing to cladding ratio as much as we could take it and still meet all the energy goals that we have. You can see the height of the building relative to the average grade at the street. You can see on this upper elevation, how the south side on the right is higher than the north side on the left and how that grade pitches down. Where the grade where the foundation is exposed, that's the elevation that's facing our building next door, 57 Olympia. And you can see on the rendered elevation to the north, that's the facade that faces 57 Olympia. Again, you can see the rendered elevation on the south where we're cutting into the grade to make the slab work. There's one unified slab for accessibility across the whole 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th floor with no ramps. And then you can see the back elevation that faces the conservation land on the rendered elevation to the east. This rendering makes the facade look black in the middle. It is horizontally mounted wood that is stained or has the burned finish to it. But it is a wood finish in the center of that east elevation facing the conservation area. A couple more elevations of the courtyard and the other the interior courtyard elevations that show the stairwells that will be lit will be active, engaging people to use the stairs to drop down and occupy the courtyard on both sides on the north elevation, south elevation within the courtyard. And then we've got a couple of renderings. This one is from the street. Again, you can see the building standing tall, the wood cladding, the large glass windows. You can see all those great steps, the entry to the courtyard and how the building as it goes back in the courtyard opens up and goes back towards the amenity connector. This is from the amenity connector. Looking out, this rendering doesn't exactly match our landscape, which we hope to update for your next meeting. But the intent is the same as that we have this landscape courtyard that is accessible and usable by all the folks and the tenants in the building and creates an amenity space that allows people to gather, come out of the stairs, come out of this connector corridor. If you're connecting from one residential side to the other, if you're using the elevators and crossing over, you always look west into this courtyard or look east into the conservation area. This is a view to the back where you can hopefully kind of see the horizontal wood represented in the rendering, which shows the step down and the elevation facing west. The next is some basic materials for the cedar wood screening and the blackened metal panel that we use around the windows. I will take you into, I'll leave this open, take you into the civil quickly. Existing conditions from SVE. So this is the existing Kyle Mega sorority that sits on the site. This is the parking across the street to the north is our 57 Olympia Drive building with the bus stop and then the parking to the northwest. You can see, and we can discuss, as you can see the wetland location as it relates to 57 Olympia that we previously developed and as it relates to this building, you can see that we 50 foot buffer just touches the northeast corner of this property. The 100 foot buffer comes in about 55 feet, much less in both cases than the building before. This is the site plan showing where that building sits, that that building does go into the 100 foot buffer, but does not go into the 50 foot buffer as 57 Olympia did, shows the site, the paving layout and some of the grading challenges that we're looking to meet and make work on the site. Again, some additional topo to show how we're dealing with the stormwater and making all the grades work. Don't need to get too far into this, some of the more civil and stormwater issues and then some of the ways we're dealing with retaining the stormwater on site. And then I wanted to show you a couple more, not the least necessarily. I did want to discuss parking and I wanted to show this in the chair. So these are a couple of Google images of the site. So this is looking towards the site past the Mather building and you can see 57 Olympia in the background. You can see the parking spaces that are along Mather Drive on the left-hand side of the page here. Looking up from 57 Olympia past the transformer that is on the 47 Olympia site, you can see how the one-way street comes down the hill towards 57 Olympia. And then this is the view above showing Mather in the center, showing 57 Olympia and between that would be 47 Olympia. And this shows the overall layout of the previous fraternity sorority park which has Olympia Drive, Authority Way, Mather and the sites that are used and deeded for parking and recreation. And then I want to show this which we presented a while back in 2014 about 57 Olympia and it's the same for 47 Olympia. These are the one, two, three, four, five sites that are used for parking right now an approximate number of spaces that are used there. It's location relative to 47 and 57 Olympia and how they lay out and this previously developed fraternity sorority park location. I think with that I wanted to, actually let me pull up landscape roll. I'll come back to landscape because that represents the renderings rather than the plans above. So if there's landscape questions we can refer to that. I know we still have some lighting and photometric plans to update. So that'll be a part of it. But I think with that, I'd like to open it up to questions and do more answering and let's talk. All right, thank you, Kyle. Thank you. Chris, I noticed in the development report development application report that you mentioned there were a number of town individuals and entities who had not commented on this yet. Is it your expectation that we will continue this hearing this evening until we have all that information? That is my recommendation that you continue the public hearing until you hear from the town engineer, the fire department and the conservation commission. Okay, so I'm gonna kind of consider this hearing this discussion this evening as basically an introduction to the project for us to get familiar with it and ask whatever initial questions we have and then we'll continue when we have more information from the town bodies and we may come back with additional questions on the later meetings. All right, so Kyle, okay, Johanna, why don't you go ahead? Sure, thanks Doug. Kyle, this is really exciting. There are a lot of elements of this that I think are really just elegant and beautiful. I have, I feel like I'm a old dog but I have two questions. So I'm excited that you have solar on site. I'm curious what percent of the building's projected electricity usage actually will be produced on site. And then I'm also curious about whether there are other fuel sources besides electricity because I know at some of the projects downtown there was a need to be hooked up to gas for the kind of peak in water heating. And I wanted to just see if that was gonna be the case with this site as well or whether you've managed to figure out a way to do it using all electricity. Sure, and thank you. One of the things I did leave out is the construction type of this building is a hybrid mass timber. We're gonna do panelized wood walls, which are little sticks and then we're gonna do pre-manufactured CLT decking for the floor system. The connector itself will be more of a traditional post and beams, heavy timber, mass timber building. So with that and the mechanicals, all the heating and cooling for our buildings is all electric already. The domestic hot water has been the lag on that. We've always needed gas or propane to solve for everybody potentially taking a shower at the same time. There's a new technology that we're deploying downtown that we wanna deploy here as well, which is CO2 based all electric heat pumps for domestic hot water, which is great. We're excited that that technology is finally available. It's likely that we have one big couple of hundred thousand BTU hot water heat pump on the roof of one bar and one on the other. It increases our storage needs in the ground floor. So that's why we've got a one more space on the ground floor in the south for that to hold those tanks. So we still do have a generator shown on the south for life safety, which will be fossil fuel based. But our hope is that everything else, the heating, the cooling and the hot water is all electric when we open this building. With the solar facing south as the roof screen, it is a, and all of the heating, cooling, domestic hot water all being electric. The solar makes a small dent in the overall electric needs of the building in order to provide for all of them, we'd need more, there's not enough roof space to accommodate for all of that. So the hope is to continue what we do here where we buy, we're fortunate in Massachusetts where you can buy green energy very efficiently. So to supplement the solar onsite with some fact that we purchased energy from the other source or similar. All right, Johanna, does that, you have any additional questions? Nope. Okay, thank you, go on to Andrew. I mean, thanks Doug, thanks for the presentation, Kyle. I have two quick questions. I guess starting with the comment also, I mean, looks stunning, very impressive, very creative, I think in terms of how using the connector space between the buildings. There's probably materials and I just overlooked it where there's a lot of pages in there. The intended tenant is going to be students or it's open to the UMass community or it's open to anybody. It is students, matriculating students. Okay, all right. And then I was just curious if you could go into a little more detail on the parking because I know you're looking for that waiver. I see there's a lot of spots. Do you, I guess have you connected with the university yet any sense of whether those spaces would meet the current capacity plus this new capacity? So we're fortunate that we've been able to operate 57 Olympia since 16. The university has been great to work with in terms of the lots across the street. There've been improvements to that. There've been improvements to the street lights and some rocks gone down and paving and plowing and all that stuff, which is always tricky. We also have three bus loops that now pass through here 34, 35 and 36 on PVTA. So in addition to the campus loops, now this also links up to the loop that brings it out to Atkins, which is great. Our sense is we have had no problems with the parking here whatsoever. That the UMass has retreated somewhat from Mather relative to what we've noticed in terms of parking loads up on the Kyle Omega, the upper lot here. And we think that there's plenty of parking as it stands and that the relationship that we've set up with a unique history here between our buildings and the property that is, we have data rights to, but that UMass is maintaining and the tenants purchasing UMass parking permits seems to work very well. Okay. I mean, happy to see or hear that great relationship there. It seems to me like there would be enough capacity, but I think certainly for the next time we connect would be great to have a little bit more definitive statement from the university on how you can make this be a bit more codified, I guess, right? In terms of what you'd actually have access to. But again, exciting projects. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Andrew. Tom, you're next. Thank you. Thanks, Kyle. I'd actually really appreciate this building as well. I did have a question about parking to follow that up, but to move on, my other question was in regard to this connector, I'm looking at the west view or the view of the back looking west in our packet. It's PR 40.03. And what I love, I love seeing people in the ground outside here in this connection. I'm just wondering if this is accessible and how, you know, because of the grade change, I see stairs, I see a railing. And I'm just curious if there is a way for people to get out here in an accessible way. So all of our buildings are pet friendly and what we've noticed at 57 Olympias, there's a lot of pets and there's a lot of folks that do a loop. When we developed 57 Olympia, it was shortly after Blarney blowout and there were a lot of concerns about access to a courtyard and all the consternation that may come from that. We're fortunate, obviously none of that's occurred at Olympia and we don't see that occurring again. So the thinking here is that this is for tenants. If they want to access this back area, that there is an ability to do so. And that if there's an informal loop that wraps that building, that you could also come out to this back patio or come down to the backyard. Kyle? Yeah. I interpreted Tom's comment as, is there an actual accessible route? Yeah, handicapped, you know, people in a wheelchair who are your tenants to get to this exterior area? I think that the, I think that the accessible access to that is either on the south side, which we would do through the landscaping or would be on a ramp from this back stair in the rendering shown here. So Tom, would you like to see that illustrated? Yeah, I think I'd like to have a better understanding of that. I mean, cause I do think it's, you know, I like the greenery in the interior courtyard. I think it's quite beautiful, but it's a kind of manufactured landscape. And in a way, this is probably one of the more beautiful views of your building and from your building. And I, you know, if some people have access to that space, I'd like to see all people have access to that space in some way. So this is something I would hope to see. I agree with that. And I think on subsequent, our 45.36 might be a little larger as we look to integrate a ramp into that. Okay. Thanks, Tom. And the discussion reminded me that we skipped over our site visit report. And I know that Bruce and Janet and I were at the site visit yesterday. I don't think I missed anybody else who was there. Bruce or Janet, do either of you want to give the overview of the site visit report? I'll defer to Janet. I was just about to nominate Bruce. I actually, I thought this backyard was more sloping. So I was kind of hoping somebody could jump in on that. But so we did visit the site yesterday. And the first thing that was noted was that the address of I think it's 47 Olympia Drive. The building is actually on Mather Drive. And so a lot of us were in the wrong place for a while trying to get to that. And so I was hoping that would be remedied some way, but that's not a site visit. We saw the old building, which was kind of very 80s looking, you know, we talked about the slope. And I think Doug had some comments about, you know, handicapped accessibility from the parking lot right in front and where the building, where the slope would be corrected. And then we talked about the length, the size of the retaining wall. My recollection, which might be wrong, is that the site slopes down in the back, down into the wetland, into a conservation area. And it was hard to see the ends of the property because they were sort of far away and mapping wasn't great. So anyway, so that was that part. The site is filled with mature trees. I think it sounded like most of them would come down. It's very close to the building, Mather building. And it wasn't really that visible to see. It's right, I mean, it's right next to Olympia Place. So obviously very visible to the residents of Olympia Place. It looked like people in Olympia Oaks, which is an affordable housing community in back would not see this building and can hardly see Olympia Place during the time of green leaves, but it would be very visible when those leaves were down. There's also another community on the street next to, which somebody has to help me with the name of, that is fairly well-screened both by deciduous and evergreens. Bruce, please jump in. Yes, I could add if that's okay, Doug. Sure. Everything that Janet says, and then I'll add a couple of things. First, I think I was struck by the, as Janet said, we went around the existing sorority building, which is really abandoned pretty much. So it was a bit like walking around a ruin. It's a smaller footprint, but it's a big enough building that you get the sense of a big building, a big foot, a building on the side with the perimeter. I was struck by the conservation area, which is on the diagram we're looking at now to the right. And there'll be a potentially, I think a very interesting contrast between the, what will probably be a quite groomed landscape contained within that interior triangle and quite a wild landscape that will be connected to the side through the end that the rear that Tom was asking about accessibility to. And I think I would really support the introduction of a ramp so that it truly was code compliant, accessible, even for folks who can only get down into that level to experience the conservation area and for others who can walk into it. It's really a, it's an open space amenity here. So one of the questions that I would have later is it has to do with open space, but we have to, I think, remember that we, there is this protected open space out behind the building. The other thing that we did, I think that Dave's invitation, we went into the neighboring building. And that was quite an eye-opener for me anyway. I guess because of the concrete pavements that I had seen around, I hadn't, I wasn't really ready for the rather elegance of the upscale interiors which I imagine now will be similar in this building. But it is of all that glass that Karl was talking about earlier that you can look out. And there's certainly something to look out to here. So those two additional experiences from the site visit were influential to me in helping me understand what's being proposed here. All right, thank you Bruce. And thank you Janet, anything else? I wanted to throw, to also add the parking lots. I don't know, Kyle, if you can put up the picture of all the parking lots again. Going down Olympia Drive, it's kind of an eccentric space because as you go down, there's like a lot of lots that are owned by UMass, I mean just lot lots and kind of looks like a storage area, some different construction equipment. But the area does have a lot of very large parking lots. There's one right across in the mather, there's parking spaces across in the mather building, there's parking certainly behind that. There's a dirt parking lot to the left of Olympia Place. Yeah, and then there's this giant one which also looks like dirt. So there's quite a bit parking. We talked about what I found very confusing and couldn't follow in the documents, but this was a subdivision where all the lots were deeded access to the parking lots, the land for either parking or recreational use. And Mr. Wilson felt like that would guarantee parking for the people of Olympia Place and 47 Olympia Drive. And so that was an issue. So there's like a legal right of access in use of those, but currently the residents of Olympia Place are applying to UMass for parking permits. Okay, thank you Janet and thank you Bruce. I think you've covered everything and I really don't have anything to add. Bruce, you had your hand up next with another comment I think for a question. I've got some questions Doug. I think Johanna asked whether there was fossil fuels on site and Kyle said yesterday evening and a moment ago that the answer was yes, but it wasn't clear whether that was gas or whether that was diesel or some, what was going to power the generator. I think we understand correctly that the only device that will be fossil fuel powered or energized will be the generator. Is that a diesel or a gas? What are we, storage wise, what are we dealing with? So it's the first time I've done a generator that would be the only fossil fuel fired device. So previously it's always been propane, which we'd like to maintain. I don't know if that's a hundred gallon propane tank for a thousand, I can't imagine it's a thousand because we only have 2000 for all of Olympia next door. So I'd like it to be propane. I haven't done all the numbers to make sure that it doesn't turn into a diesel generator, but our intent would be to make it propane. Thank you. The next question has to do with the height. You're asking for a height waiver and the image that was put on when Tom was asking his question about accessibility to the rear, that and the diagrams, it seemed to me that you're only asking for one foot eight, I waive it for an additional one foot eight inches of height and it seems to me, we can see this from this diagram where in the bottom left-hand corner, there's about 10 feet of exposed wall at the back. And my guess is that you could grade this building to make it comply, but that would mean diminishing the utility of that backspace that we all, I think feeling is potentially quite a lovely place. So would I be right in understanding that the one foot eight inches of additional height would be mostly or entirely due to wanting to maintain a relatively level area at the back and not put a grade in that would maybe comply with the height restrictions, but render the rear of the site, well, not useless, but it would subvert the, it would impede the general utility of the rear of the site. Yeah, yes, and I think you've got it exactly. And I think making sure that that courtyard also doesn't become a pond as we drop down to a lower slab height that would lower the ceiling height. With the CLT members, we are gonna have to have some intermediate beams in some way, shape, or form. There is a thickness to the drip creek that goes on the CLT deck. So we've got a little bit more of a four structure and structural entity that we're balancing. So we've got a four to four that accommodates the new mass timber framing. And then, like you said, once we make the grades work in the front, it creates a nice situation in the back that we'd obviously like to maintain. So broadly, I'm going to, it sounds like I'll be correct in understanding that the additional one foot eight inches of height gets us a more usable rear area abutting the conservation. And it sounds also like it is enabling a rather, well, I like this CLT, the cross laminated timber technology and the advantage of that is pretty much the only regret I have from retiring when I did that I didn't get to build buildings using that technology, which I've seen in other countries and chased after, but it's really lovely. And that leads to my next question, which is, is this cross laminated timber that's going to be used for the floor decks? Is the timber going to be exposed as a ceiling in the floors below, or are you going to put some kind of acoustic tile and cover it up? The goal is to do all the acoustics from above and expose the wood from below. So there's like four inches of drip creek that go on top of these. And then, but you'll see the wood from within the unit at your ceiling. Yeah, well, the drip creek is going to give you the structural noise separation from one floor to the next, which sounds like you've really got a good solid shift there. And the airborne noise will be, you won't put acoustic tiles in, which is so you'll be able to see the woods while I'm after it. It sounds like that's what you're trying to do. And that's all to the good as far as I can see. As much as we can expose, we will. Even in stairwells, if we're able to make the code work. Good, okay. There's a question that has been posed by the staff that we might wish to inquire about the, your plans so far as bicycles are concerned. So what provision, what support of bicycles of people who want to, because how many people here? We've got 68. 230 tenants. So 230 bicycles, if you've gotten room for 230 bicycles. We do not have room for 230 bicycles. Well, let's go back from there. Yeah, I think we have to look at that. We have to figure out where we can accommodate that. What we've seen at Olympia is there is some use on the bikes that are stored on the north side of the property. And we, I think for our next visit to you, are going to look at that either on the south side or on the north side of the residential bars. Oh, I think I'll stop there for the moment. Oh, finally, the traffic impact study that you're asking for a waiver of that is that because the traffic impact study that was done what six years ago is considered to be current? No, I think that the, obviously the traffic and the parking are all part and parcel of the same conversation. I think it's part of a recognition that we've got a history of a very similar project next door and that we haven't seen any traffic or parking issues as a result of that being an operation for six years. But that being said, Ben asked associates who did the last one, I've talked to Sean, he'd be willing to do another one if we saw fit. All right. I'll pass, I'll stop for the moment. All right, thanks, Bruce. Andrew, I see your hand, but I had a couple of comments related to the height and thought this would be a good thing to follow up on right after Bruce. So, Kyle, the first thing I is it, my understanding is that the measurement of the height for the zoning regulations is along the street elevation. Correct. So what is done in the back of the building, whether that's graded or filled or sloped or stepped or whatever really has no effect on the measurement of the average height along the street. So I know Bruce thinks, he was hoping or thought that there was a connection between the height and the grading in the rear of the building. I guess I view that as kind of a tenuous relationship. I mean, you could drop the front of the building in order to lessen the slopes at the back, I guess. And that would reduce the height. Yeah, and I think to Bruce's point, the elevation as it relates to the conservation of the back is not negative, it's positive, I think. So it's a positive thing. We wanted to show this line all the way through the back so we could discuss the front and the back together and show the average street at the street because there is a bunch of pitch, couple of feet difference from one side to the other. But you're right, it is 56.8 from the average grade at the street to the top of the roof. Okay. Only relative to the street. So then the second question I had was, you've labeled your dimension line to the top of the roof. And I noticed that the dimension line doesn't go to the top of the parapet. So is there in fact a parapet of, I don't know, two or three feet or something, 18 inches at least around the building? Because if you blew up your rendering, it looks like that dimension line stops short of the parapet. So that's- Yes, this goes to the roof rather than top of the parapet. Okay. And there is a parapet above this. So I guess I'm gonna have to defer to Chris as to whether when we measure the height of the building along the street, whether we're measuring to the parapet or to the roof. And I gather it's your interpretation, at least that it is the roof. Correct, that's my interpretation. Okay. That's my interpretation as well. Okay, great. The top of the roof. So it really wouldn't matter how high the parapet was. If we could have a 10 foot parapet around this building and it wouldn't affect the dimensional legality. I believe that that is correct. Okay. All right, thank you. So those were my two comments about the height and I'll go back. We'll go back to you, Andrew. Thanks Doug, excuse me. And mine's actually really, really quick and easy. Your renderings are, you know, the photo realistic renderings are great. They're in really tight. I wonder if, you know, for the next time, if you, we can kind of zoom some of them out, especially given, you know, the kind of striking architecture here. And at 57, given there's also questions about height, maybe if we could get like a more of a zoom out and understand this a bit better in context would be a- A useful visual. Thanks. Good, Andrew. Janet. I have a bunch of questions. I have no question about height too. So I understand that you measured 56 feet, eight inches to the roof height, but how high does it go beyond that point if you count in the solar panels? I mean, how tall is that? I don't know. The roof, the elevator overrun is usually the tall list thing. One of the stairs has to go up the roof and extend beyond the roof plane. The height of the solar panels and that roof screen is just high enough to cover the mechanical system. So four or five feet from the roof rather than from the top of the parapet. Okay. The other question, I had a bunch of other questions. One of them was about the space, like, you know, what was common space and what isn't common space? Like during the site visit, you said that you're adding more common space. And I was wondering if that open terrace in the back would be shared by anybody and the inner courtyard. Would that be like group space? I think the tenants have access to the whole property. And then the intent is all this purple is shared common space. So you'd come in, there's reception on the right, on the left, turn to the right for the big stair. You can go out the back to the covered area. All of that is all publicly accessible to every tenant. And then all the upper floors connect basically the elevators to the northern bar and obviously glass on both sides so you can see the courtyard and the conservation. All accessible to everybody then. Is there an outdoor terrace or is it just, was that glassed in? Maybe I just missed saw it. This covered porch is outdoors and covered. And so that's all accessible to everybody. Correct. I wanted to see a traffic report because when I read the old one, which was just a few, we just got a few pages, it wasn't clear when it was done and it was sort of speculative. The engineer was assuming, only 30% of the people would have cars and that, obviously there's bus service and people would use that to get to UMass since everybody in the building is a student. What we've been learning in the planning board is that off-campus students, like when people do, when people land management companies, property managers are assuming one car per bed per student. And so I think that if we did a traffic report and also looking at the parking, like how many parking permits do your tenants at Olympia Place have? How full the lots are now in, you know, say in September will have a more accurate view of how many people own cars and how many trips are made. So I would look for the traffic report because I think the world, I don't know if the world has changed but I do know that, you know, most of us in the planning board understand that off-campus students have a lot of cars despite our bus service. So I would like to see that. Are you gonna have like substance-free floors? I've been reading through the old permit and findings from the Olympia Place and I was wondering if you're doing similar stuff here. So the question's about substance-free floors. We have not gone that far into the management regarding substance-free floors. Do you have that in the Olympia Place? Everything's non-smoking, you know, the whole property. Substance-free, I can't tell you. Okay, I just read that in the old report. And then in Olympia Place, you have an on-site, live-in building superintendent and then you have 24-hour reception. Although I was told by the receptionist that that's not true in the summer since the building is quite empty. So Olympia Place has two people there all the time usually. Is that correct? Olympia has a lot of staffing associated with it. I don't know how many, I think when we walked in there for the site visit we saw two of our staff that were there currently. I don't know the scheduling from Alex on that. But the intent here is that we don't have an on-site manager that lives here. We do have obviously since Olympia Place has been constructed we've built a property management business that manages all of our properties. And I think we have a partner with Alex who has done an amazing job. And I think that we've got some scale now that we can continue to manage these things as well as we've managed the ones that we've built so far. Okay, so I think you're saying that you do have 24-hour reception during the school year and then somebody living there as a like superintendent or something. Is that right? I'm saying I don't have anybody at 47 Olympia living on site and the intent is that the management here is that we would staff the reception as needed and then there is we have 24-7 on-call management available for all of our properties. Okay, so there's not 24-hour people at the Olympia Place. Relative to 47 Olympia, there is not proposed 24-7 people at 47 Olympia. I'm sorry, I'm talking about the building that you already have. Cause that was in the map. I'm talking about the one that's before us today. Okay, so, okay, so, all right. Anyway, so the reason I'm asking this question is just to figure out how you're the building is operating and I know that that was a requirement and a condition from the planning board and as well as a requirement that they be all students. And so I have been struggling as the other planning board did or a previous board in the application report is what is a private student dormitory versus private student apartment building. And so I have looked at dictionary definitions. I have talked to people who lived in the building. And I think that what, to me, if there's no, what distinguishes an apartment building filled with students like Aspen Chase and this, a student private student dormitory would be supervision. And so I think most parents like most dormitories on campus have an RA. You might have a family living in the building or some other adults with eyes on the students 24 seven and people who come into the building. And so I'm wondering at Olympia Place if you have that in place and the building is well run and quiet that seems to fit the definition to me of a private student dormitory. If there is no supervision I don't see why this would be any different from just an apartment building filled with students. And then I actually went as far to talk to the people at housing office about Birch Hall and another complex you did at UMass and they all have, they all like some of them are just suites without kitchens and kind of like more conventional on-campus housing in the form of apartments or suites. So that is why I'm asking all these questions at Olympia Place because it seems to me that that kind of supervision makes it a dormitory and it actually makes it safer for students and people who are visitors. So I would love to know that the management plan for your other building is being implemented since it seems so successful. And I would love to see 24 hour reception and someone living in the building in that and make it into a dormitory not just an apartment building. That's a long statement but I think that's a really important issue that we need to grapple with is how do we distinguish this from just an apartment building filled with students? And if you're in that category your building has too many units and I think none of us want you to be in that category. So I was asking for the substance free floors could I say that? Can I give you my perspective on that phrase? Sure. I mean, I think we have to talk about it. Well, yeah, I guess we're gonna have to. I view this as a dormitory because it is limited to students who are enrolled or matriculated at a university. Whereas the other projects that Archipelago has done with the exception of that one next door they are open to anyone that wants to rent from him. So the market pool is different. And now I realized that some of those buildings may be predominantly students because that's the market that he's attracted. But I think the difference here is that it's limited. I mean, he is statutorily limited to only having leases from matriculated students. And I guess when I look at a lot of the residence halls at UMass they don't have on site supervision 24-7. So I don't view that as a condition for becoming a dormitory. At UMass, do they have RA's on the floor? Oh, yeah. So there is some of that. I don't know if there's an RA in every building. When the RA's are student, sorry. Yeah. Okay, so I mean, we can come back to that I guess or we can continue now if you want. Well, I would look for a condition of it's matriculated students and then also 24-hour reception and maybe not in the summer because it's buildings almost empty but also an on-site live-in supervisor. And I think that Mr. Roberts has done that on much smaller projects. And I think in this case it's a building filled with students and people could have substance issues there could be some situations where having an adult in the building would be good for everybody and also particularly make it more like a dormitory. I looked up, we can look at the dormitory stuff but I was struggling with the legal distinction and I thought, well, if it's a student, a private student dormitory the expectation would be that it's kind of run like a dormitory, not an apartment building. And so otherwise I'm just lost. I know there's lots of student apartments in Amherst. I'm not sure if they limit to students. I'd have to look around to the different aspens and things like that. Or if they're all students, but if they're like that and this is like that then I don't see really the difference. Let's see, I had another question about actually I'll just hold for a minute. Okay, Janet, thank you. Chris, do you wanna comment on that conversation at all? Well, when Olympia Place was first introduced to us we did struggle with this issue. The Olympia Place model was likened to the dormitories that are on Eastman Lane and I'm not exactly sure what they're called but they were then the new dorms on Eastman Lane. That'd be the North Apartments. Yes, so Olympia Place was described as being like North Apartments. So there may be some way that we can find out how North Apartments is managed. There was conversation during the Olympia Place review about having someone on site 24 hours. That was early on in the what? Work of Archipelago in town and at that time they didn't have a company that was managing their property. So there may be some need to change how they describe what they're doing at Olympia Place if they don't have 24 hour live-in manager. In the end, I think the planning department and the planning board became comfortable with the idea of an apartment style dormitory in this RF zoning district. It's really a place where it's probably the only place in town where the town meaning people in town hall and also many of the residents that I spoke with felt like, okay, this was a place that was originally set up for students so it makes sense to have students be here. There's often a resistance to having buildings built purposely for students and that was a reaction that we had to Aspen Heights when that came along that the zoning board of appeals didn't want it to be just for students. They wanted to be able to offer it to whomever came along and part of it is that when you have an open building like that you're required to have affordable units as part of the building. In this case, we wouldn't be requiring affordable units because we would know that the tenants here actually wouldn't be eligible to have an affordable unit because students are not considered an eligible class of people who's allowed to have affordable units. Now, of course the family can have an affordable unit and then also have a student who's a member of the family but as general rule, students are not eligible to rent affordable units. So that's a way that this is different from the average residential use that we have in town. So, yeah, I think this is an ongoing conversation but in the end, the planning board and planning staff became comfortable with this idea when Olympia Place was presented and we think it's a good model and we think it's been well managed and we are not aware of a lot of complaints about it. So I guess that's what I have to say. Okay, thanks Chris, Janet. So I read through all that material about the planning board deliberations and it seemed to me that the management plan was quite extensive and taking care of the students who were gonna be there with the on-site 24-hour reception because students are gonna be coming in late as well as their friends and I think that safety issues for people and then there was gonna be a live-in superintendent. So if that has changed, then the management plan has changed and I'm not sure if they have to come back for that but I didn't realize that there was a possibility of change and if I don't know it, I guess I don't know if anyone else does know that. Also that leads to an issue which is I would be really interested in the experiences of people who live near this project like Olivia Oaks, which is right down the way and I know that Pathfinders runs that affordable housing community, which is actually quite lovely and filled with little kids and bicycles and trees and cookouts and things. And I wondered, but notifying Pathfinders isn't really notifying the neighbors. So I would like to have the planning board, the planning department reach out to Pathfinders and just notify the neighbors that another building is going up and if they have any comments about how things are working, what they would like to see. All right, all right. Thank you, Janet. I see that it's eight o'clock. We customarily take a break at this time. So unless anybody objects, I was thinking we would do that and then come back in another five minutes. Anyone object? All right, so the time is eight o' one and we'll reconvene at eight o' six. Please turn off your camera and mute your microphone. Hey Karen, just wanted to say hi. I haven't been on a call for formal introduction yet but anyhow, I know that'll happen again, but just hello. I apologize to Karen for not introducing you to everybody in the beginning of the meeting. I kind of feel comfortable with you now and I feel like everybody knows you, but that's not true. So maybe Doug would like to make a formal introduction when he comes back. And sorry for the mispronunciation. Okay, eight o' seven. Doug, a topic arose while you were gone which is that we never formally introduced Karen to the rest of the board. And so I wondered if you would like to do that now. Well, okay, I think I should just say we welcome Karen, Karen Winter to the board. This is her first meeting with us. Karen, do you want to elaborate on your background or why you wanted to sit with us on this board? Anything you'd like us to know about you while we get to know you? Yeah, thank you for taking time to introduce me. I really look forward to working with this group. During COVID, I started to watch planning board meetings and other meetings and being part of the local historical society. I was just so impressed with the caliber of the people that work in the Amherst government, both the staff and the volunteers. Always how carefully you weighed everything, how thoughtfully you listened to the people that from the public who chimed in. And I just wanted to be a part of it. I also, I think through my experience living in Europe and being related to people who develop all kinds of magnificent, wonderful places in Berlin, I thought that maybe I could offer a kind of a unique sort of something that comes from far away and maybe a different way of looking at things. I realized many of you travel and have this too, but I just wanted to be a part of it. So thank you for introducing me and I look forward to working with you. Okay, thank you, Karen. Okay, so we were discussing Kyle's project. Janet, do you have some additional questions that have come up? Well, I just wanted to sort of explain a little bit what I was talking about other than the legal issue, which of course is super important. So I did some reconnaissance. Like my son has been over to Olympia Place. He is a friend from Amherst High there. I talked to the friend. It's a, you know, you go inside, it's beautiful. It seems very well cared for. There's a lot of public space. You're expanding in this building. I'm not anti the building, but I want to, I'm very pro zoning and pro zoning by law requirements and making sure they're interpreted correctly. To me, Olympia Place seems to be very functioning. The former tenant said it was kind of a quiet building, partly because there's a lot of international students and, you know, and then the, you know, and it was just kind of a quiet place. And, but he could have friends over, he could have parties, kids could play pool and stuff like that. And so it seems to me, this is a very functioning building. And so when I was looking at the management plan for it, I was like, well, that's the special sauce. Let's look at that and apply it next door and make sure we continue that. I'm beginning to wonder though about, you know, what projects we have in Amherst and when we require onsite site management 24 hour. I sort of remember when Kendrick Place was going in that they wanted to have a receptionist 24 hours. And so I would love to get a list of those, you know, different management plans and requirements in different parts of town. I know in Barry Roberts most recent Fearing Street, which is just 24 units, he was planning to have onsite live in management. And so I just think we need to, I just think it's an important issue. And, you know, if one place is working really well, why not do it next door? And if we're not going to do it next door, how does that not just turn into an apartment building for students? So. Okay. Thank you. I don't see any hands. So I will ask a couple of questions that I had. Kyle, the first one was, I wondered if you could go into further detail about the stormwater management. You know, I didn't notice where you had a, you know, a reservoir you were going to collect runoff and obviously having the conservation lands at the bottom of the hill. We want to be sure we don't damage the town conservation land. And Kar, and I do see your hand. I think I'll wait till Kyle has addressed the stormwater. Do you want me to share the screen to show the civil? Yeah, if you don't mind. No problem. Can you see that? Yeah. So this is sheet four of six on the civil and it shows our, the stormwater structures. So you can see that in the courtyard, we're making the grades work. We end up with piping. So we have low points, one, two, three, four, five that come out to the street. And there is a structure that is out towards the street. And then you'll see in the back, we're catching roof drains and putting in cul-tex that are out towards the bottom of that, the steps and future ramp that collected on the west, the east side of the property. So on the east side, we've got cul-tex, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, 12 of those stacked together that we would grade over. We have another five down here. And then the low points in the courtyard go right out to the storm sewer. And then we are able to keep the flow off site below existing, at or below existing conditions. So in terms of structure, the majority of those are on the east side as you look out towards conservation. And could you tell me what a cul-tex is and what happens to the water after it's all collected in there? The cul-tex retains it, they call it retain it. It flows in and it drops and so it slows. And so the embed to 100 year storm, it takes a while for that to flow out or go off site. So it slows anything in the event of a large storm. And you can see the arrays up on the top of the screen. And where does the water go from the cul-tex? Is it discharged into ground and it's percolated in or is it piped up to the stormwater? So the portion of the stormwater that goes to the east and goes into the retain it cul-tex then goes out to a level spreader that is on the northeast part of the site. Okay. And so anything that comes out hits gravel and gets dispersed on the site. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yvonne. All right. And then the other question I had was about the leasing arrangement. Chris had noted that you, it looked like you were leasing by the bedroom rather than by the unit. And I wondered if you could confirm that and just talk about if you've done that in other buildings and how that works. At 47 Olympia, we would lease by the bed. And that works quite well. It allows each parent, if all of us are parents and two, three or four of our children live in one unit together, the liability for each of us as a guarantor of our student is limited to our student and not the entirety of the lease. So a better situation for tenant and guarantor. And have you had situations where there was irreconcilable conflict between people in the same unit? And how did you deal with it? I would defer to Alex on that. Absolutely, there have been some property management requires a lot of engagement. So I would say that Alex has been able to manage that very well. Okay. Haven't had any problems arise from that, that I know of. All right. Chris, I see your hand. Do you want to comment on any of what's come before? I wanted to comment on the stormwater design and to note that I spoke with Erin Jock who's the wetlands administrator. She's the staff liaison for the conservation commission and she noted that there was no information about soil test pits, having been dug in the locations where these retainant structures are to go. So if you have that information, that would be useful information to give us and also to give the conservation commission when you go before them. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. All right, Karen, you're on and you are already unmuted. Oh, I'm already unmuted. Okay. Bruce brought this up a little bit. So with my European background, I'm honing in on encouraging bicycle use. This seems like the perfect building, the proper distance from UMass to really think about how you're going to encourage students to bring their bicycles and to have their bicycles if possible in a covered safe place. I know my kids who have really good bicycles want them someplace where they're safe. And I know if this building were a dormitory in Europe someplace, they definitely would have some sort of a locked space where people could safely access their bicycles. We want to encourage bicycle paths. We want to encourage people to get away from the idea that everybody has a car. So I'm sure you thought about this, but I would encourage you to really look at the space and see if there's anywhere where you could really maybe fit in a storage place for bicycles so that students feel safe bringing them and keeping them there. That was one point that I had. The other is pretty a naive question. Looking at this building, are these windows that open up? So I mean, I'm hoping, I'm assuming they are. Yes, they are. They are, okay. Casements, so they open. Yeah, that's wonderful. Okay, that's great. So those were just my two little comments. And I do second, or I want to also, what Janet McGowan is saying about the management plan, I myself was an RA graduate student in an undergraduate dorm. I know how many things happen in undergraduate storms that happen quickly where it's really important that somebody be there to address that. So I am concerned about just a property management that deals with lots and lots of properties that can be called, because there are so many things that come up in the life of an undergraduate dorm. Okay, that's all, thanks. Okay, thank you, Karen. Janet, I see your hand. I have a very quick question. I think in the two questions, actually, you didn't show, like you showed the different layouts, but there were, I assume there's kitchens in those, right? Yes. Okay, it's just up front. And the other question I had was about rents. Like what is the one bedroom going to be? What's the two bedroom? What's the three bedroom? Good, but we haven't set rents yet for any of the units. We usually do that about a year before it opens. Any other questions, Janet? No. Okay. I don't see any other hands on the board. Maybe at this time we'll see if there are any public comments from attendees. So I see Pam Rooney's hand. Let's bring her back over into the panel. All right, Pam, where you are here, you should be able to unmute. Pam Rooney, 42 Cottage Street. Thanks for letting me in. Have a couple of questions. I wonder if it would be possible. I would ask the board, since I can't ask for things to happen, I would ask the board if you could ask the applicant to provide a cross-section of this building to show the height of the wall between the Mather building and this site. It appears to be roughly 10 feet in height, which is kind of a really awkward height change of elevation from the UMass property down to the entrance or lower south side of this building. We, you had a conversation about the height of the building. I was also going to talk about that. When I look at section 6.170, the diagram shows measuring the height of a building to the top of a flat roof, but in fact it is indicating to the top of whatever is visible on that facade. And I know we have had conversations in the past about the height of parapets and that a parapet is clearly integral to the facade of a building. Therefore, a parapet should be what is measured, not the roof itself. In particular, if we're talking about a parking garage that's obviously very different than the parapet height. So it would be, I think it would be wise for the planning department and all those who have to deal with this discrepancy to clarify it. On the grading plans, the build of the site plans, it's really difficult to figure out what the grades are on the surrounding properties. And the elevations are very clear on the property itself, but I would encourage as a developer, you to also include the grades and elevations surrounding it so you can actually see what's happening. Therefore, my request to see a cross-section. You've had a good conversation about management. I would just note that in, I think almost any apartment building in Amherst, we have asked, the town has asked for management plans that show either an onsite manager or clearly the name of someone to call in an emergency. With 230 people in a building, it seems irresponsible to not have some kind of onsite staffing. Let's see, anything else? Yes, finally, when you are talking about 47 and 57 Mather Drive, not Olympia Drive, I think it would be very helpful for the board and for anyone looking at these projects to understand how the two projects are linked on the ground if there is an extension of sidewalk, for instance, or site amenities that link the two parcels together rather than having them two separate blip on a map. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Kyle, anything in there you wanna comment on or respond to? Sure, a cross section is no problem. Just wanted to make sure it was clear there's no, the retaining wall is not 10 feet. We're reconciling 365 and 361, 362. So it's about a three-foot wall on the south side to Mather. Am I still on? You are, Pam. Okay, can I just follow up? And are you gonna provide some kind of fencing on the Mather office building? So that there's protection for them on a four-foot wall? I think we absolutely could. Okay, I guess the only comment I'll make, Pam, is that earlier, Chris seemed pretty clear that they measure the height of the building to the top of the roof and that the parapet is not part of that calculation. I would counter to say that the diagram on in section 6.17 is not very explicit given that these are mostly residential-type buildings or structures shown. It does not show a modern building with a flat roof with a parapet. And I think... Okay, I don't actually know how to find the section you're referring to. Well, it's on page 76 of the zoning bylaws. So... Okay, you're not looking at the archipelago package. No, no, I am looking at our bylaws. Okay. So may I say something? Sure, Chris. So the building commissioner is the Zoning Enforcement Officer and he has determined that the top of the roof is the height, the place where you measure the height to not the parapet wall. He said that several times in several different arenas. And so he's the Zoning Enforcement Officer. So that's who we go to if you want a question answered. Yep. Okay. Thank you, Chris. All right, any more discussion? Thank you, Pam. And Kyle, I hope you can provide some of the material that Pam was asking about. Bruce, I see your hand. Yes, further to what Christine said and what Pam was observing, it does seem to me to be odd that the height is determined by the roof. At some point, not now. It would seem that we should examine the logic of that and whether we might want to consider some kind of change or some kind of explanation that would help us understand why that roof plane is determined, because roof planes aren't even flat. So I suppose it's the top of the roof plane. But it seems odd to me. And I just suggest that we might want to spend some time at some point finding out why it's that way. So maybe, Chris, maybe it would be worth having, I mean, I don't know if we should take a lot of time from Rob, but see if he could maybe join us at some future meeting and talk about that. I can kind of see it from both sides. One side is, well, you can see the parapet from the street. It looks like the building goes all the way to the parapet, so that's the height of the building. The other thing is that that kind of rule would discourage people from putting parapets on a building so that they can get as much height without being penalized. And I think from a life safety point of view, you probably want to have a parapet on a building just to keep minimize the likelihood of somebody falling off. And then when you look at the top of a building, you've got all kinds of things that are higher than the roof plane and higher than the parapet usually. So what are you gonna measure to? The highest thing that's 100 feet back from the street or where do you use? So that seems to be what Rob has concluded is the most consistent thing to do. So let's see if he can elaborate at all. Okay, Janet. So in terms of things for the next time, I had just these, I got a set of diagrams that were like really poorly, like it seems like somebody's really out of toner, but they were kind of small. I'm not even sure I have a landscape plan. Maybe it's L1.0. But so I just couldn't read it at all. And I couldn't read the legal documents either. I mean, I was trying to kind of filling in the blank of what I thought the word said. And so I would love to get a more detailed landscaping plan with the plantings seeing some evergreen screening from other buildings. And then also a photometric plan for the lighting and then just a better explanation of the parking situation. Cause I couldn't see any documents that guaranteed parking to this lot. I saw they think these legal instruments were conveying things to UMass that wasn't coming back. So I just, I think I need a better roadmap. And if there isn't a way to guarantee parking to the building, I would like to see a condition that requires if the thing with UMass goes south that there will be some kind of parking and the numbers of that. So, but I just, I just, actually, I just need plans that I can read. Yeah, I know at the site visit, we, Kyle, you had mentioned you had a Dropbox that we could maybe get access to to see better resolution images of the drawings. And Chris, you were gonna send us a link if Kyle could provide that. So I think it would be helpful to follow through on that conversation. I can, I can resend on that. Thanks, Chris. I just wanted to ask Pam a question. Pam, are you facile with creating Dropbox from our, from our end, because we have, we have drawings that Kyle sent us. The mechanism that we use to send them out is to print them and then scan them, which is not a good mechanism, but it's the only one that we have figured out to date. So I wondered, Pam is very smart at technology and she may have the ability to create a Dropbox from what we have. Alternatively, Kyle can send me a Dropbox link and then I can forward it to everybody. Maybe that's the best way to do it, but as we receive more and more things in the future, maybe it would be good if we could figure out how to do the Dropbox. And maybe Pam knows all about that already, but I don't. Well, I think in the immediate thing, Kyle, if you have a Dropbox link, if you want to forward it to me, that would be really helpful. And then we can get it out to the committee board and in terms of what we receive coming forward, we can work out a plan. I'll make sure to copy you. Thank you. Thank you. And Chris, if you're worried that this link really is where the public needs to come and that they ought to have access to the link, if you get the Dropbox link from Kyle, Pam can download those files and then put them right on her Dropbox and that can be where the public comes. The problem with Dropbox is that it is limited to an amount of time. In my experience, it usually goes away after 30 days or something. So having it be the source of information for the public is challenging. So Pam and I can talk about it and we can talk with IT and try to figure out a way of getting clear images online for the public to see. But the most immediate issue is to get clear images for the planning board. So Kyle, if you can help us out with that, we'd appreciate it. Okay, great. Janet, you're back. So one of the things... You're muted. One of the things that was mentioned in the development application report as a potential issue was does UMass, I think last year UMass was asking the town of Amherst for 500 extra parking spaces. And so I wonder are there... Were these lots filled up during the academic year and is there space for an extra 100 or 200 cars? So is there somebody at UMass who would be on top of that, that could be consulted? Were these lots filled to the brim? And then I guess we'll have a live example in the next month or so too. Chris, is there someone we can ask at UMass? I can do some research and find that out. Chris, I think Nancy Buffon would be the person to talk to and she pretty much all communications from the university comes through her. Thank you. Okay, the time is 8.34. Let's see, I don't see any hands from either board members or panelists. Kyle, I will mention again, something I mentioned at our site visit yesterday and that is, I do think it would be worth trying to fit a drop-off in front of your building, particularly for ADA drop-off, rather than relying on ADA parking spaces across the street to get everyone over to your building. I think, I don't know how you dealt with that at 57, but I think it would be worth trying to squeeze that in at 47. And then I guess I do also think if you were able to get more clarity about your parking arrangement with UMass, that that would be worthwhile. And I think it would make all of us more comfortable with giving you the waiver on the parking counts. All right, so remind me, Chris, do we need to vote to continue the hearing? You do, yes. Thank you. I would suggest September 21st as a date. It's possible that the Conservation Commission could hold a public hearing on September 14th if Kyle gets an application in pretty quickly. And then you would know by September 21st what the Conservation Commission had to say. Your meeting on September 7th is pretty heavy, pretty filled with things so far. So anyway, I would recommend the 21st and you could say that it would be at 635 if you wanted to do that. And by then we should hear from the town engineer and from the... From fire department, right? Yeah. Okay. I would move to continue this hearing. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Janet, Janet, hold on. Janet, no. Bruce, I see your hand. You are muted, Bruce. Sorry, my screen just went blank. Something happened, but I found it again. It's just the matter of the site coverage waiver. It's a very, very small item that we haven't discussed at the door and I thought we, I mean, it seems to me to be almost perfunctory, but I wanted to just put it before us to see whether we have any questions or comments on that. I don't, but I wonder if others do. Well, thank you, Chris. Thank you, Bruce, for bringing that up. Do others, does anyone have some concern about it? We're talking about a fraction of a percent, as I recall, all right? Bruce, I think you've got your answer. I don't think there's too much concern about that. Chris, is it likely that the conservation commission will be focused on that percentage? No. Okay. All right. So, Chris, have we covered what you hoped to cover this evening? I mean, we could start through the development application report. I know there were a number of items you were saying the board may wish to ask about or continue or consider. Would it be worth us starting in on that tonight? If you have the energy to do that. Okay. Well, maybe worth at least acknowledging what those things are. Right. Well, it feels like we have a relatively light agenda this evening and you've just revealed that we have a heavy agenda at the beginning of September. And who knows what it's going to look like by the middle of September. So I see, you know, Johanna's got her water. She's hydrated and she's ready to go the rest of another hour if we have to. All right. So why don't we turn to that? Chris, I will say the special permit that we are considering as written at the beginning of the development application report is actually for this 2023 and it's not for 2014 which is probably the template you use to save as or something. Where is that written? That's very unfortunate. Second line. Yeah. Page one. Second line of page one. I'm so sorry. Now you've known, now you know my secret. Okay. So I went through and sort of marked where you had suggested things for the board to consider. The first one I found was actually several pages in. Here we go. So under use category on page four, sort of a third of the way down, the board may wish to impose a condition that would prohibit the units becoming condominiums if the property changes ownership in the future. Is that a danger, Chris, that we ought to be aware of? Have we done that on other projects? You did it on the Olympia Place project and I think that someone feared that that might happen and the way the other conditions are written that the tenants need to be students who are matriculating at one of the local universities or colleges may or may not preclude the building turning into condominiums. So someone was afraid of that and that's why we put that condition on there. So there are people who are equally afraid in this group then it's probably worth putting that condition there. I guess I'm gonna have to ask the silly question, what's the problem if it becomes a condominium? Other than that, nobody likes condominiums, I guess. It wouldn't be managed in the same way. Condominiums are managed by a condominium association. Well, it certainly would take it farther from being a sort of dormitory relationship. All right, the next one, the board may wish to require a new management plan if the property changes hands and that seems pretty reasonable. Chris, let me know if I forget or miss something that the next one I saw was at the top of page five under parking issues to consider. The board may wish to require that the applicant submit information about walking routes and bus routes and information on on-site bicycle parking, both inside and outside. Seems like we touched on that pretty heavily earlier. I think a number of us are interested in bicycles as a very practical transportation for the students in this building. Doug, sorry, sorry to interrupt. Could you tell me what page you're on in the packet? I'm trying to figure that out. No, I can't because I'm working from the hard copy. Oh, you have your hard copy. Near the front or... Is there anyone who else? Page 15. 15. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Johanna. All right, so still on page five, the next one down says the UMass parking lots may not be formally engineered with defined pavement and parking lines. These parking spaces may not have handicapped parking spaces clearly delineated. And these parking spaces may not be lit for nighttime use. So the board may wish to ask the applicant for information on these matters. That all seems reasonable. And Kyle, is that a difficult thing to provide? We can show the current state of everything that's out there in terms of the lots and the lights and what's been improved since it won't be open and what's stayed the same. Okay. Chris, as a part of this review by the town, would Rob be involved in seeing where the handicapped spots are in relationship to the building? I can't ask him. I can't ask him. If Kyle can provide the information that he just agreed to do that it would be worth reviewing that with Rob just to make sure we're not letting Kyle get into a situation where he's not going to get a building permit once Rob sees it. Well, that's why we brought up the issue of the drop off because the last time Kyle wasn't providing on-site parking and building commissioner said, well, if you don't provide on-site parking then you have to have a drop off. So I think they reached a compromise because the archipelago was able to provide handicapped spaces on an adjacent lot. And I don't exactly know how they managed to do that but that seemed to suffice and not require the drop off. And so there needs to be a conversation about this and a resolution of it. Well, I think especially because the parking is being provided on property that's not controlled by the developer, I think it's good for us to have that early. All right, the next item you had, the last item under issues to consider for parking did have to do with the drop off area. So we've covered that. All right, so now we move to modification of dimensional requirements. I didn't see any issues for us to consider there. We've talked about the height variance. I guess you want clarification from the building commissioner about the measurement of the height. Well, it seems like it seems like it's clear. I think the question was sort of the justification. So then on page six, under lighting, there were several items here. You know, submission of catalog cuts for all exterior lighting, the requirement that all exterior lights be downcast or shielded and dark sky compliant. I think we would do that as a matter of course. And then some questions about discrepancies of the lighting on the lighting plan, questions about the existing lighting from UMass parking lots. The next poll at the street lights that were proposed to have been installed along Mather and Olympia. Chris, what did you mean by that? Were there street lights proposed as part of 57 Olympia that may not be there? No, they never have been installed? I noticed the other day when we did our site visit that there were lights that were installed as part of Olympia drive, Olympia, yeah, 57 Olympia. And the question would be, is the applicant proposing to put similar lights in front of this new building? And so that would be one item and we would want to see a picture of those to be able to approve them. And then we wanna know, there were two large Cobra headlights on Mather drive that looked like someone else had put them in, perhaps UMass, but those were very, Janet noticed this, I think they were sodium, high pressure sodium lights, they were really yellow. And we don't have any control over what UMass does with their lighting, but that's not a look that the planning board generally likes to have. So new lighting should always be, well, we would hope that it would be LED and hope that it would be of a color that would not be, you know, glaringly white, more of a warm color. And so, but we don't have any information about these things. So we would like to have that information. Okay. And then the last item under the lighting was whether there was any other lighting such as under benches or wall sconces that we just hadn't heard about. And they did have bench lighting in their Olympia Place project. They had lighting under the benches. They also had lighting, I think they had lighting around some landscape, raised landscape beds, but I'm not exactly sure, but the lighting under the benches, I think was some kind of strip lighting. Are they gonna do that here? So anything about lighting we would want, we don't have a lot of information about lighting right now. Right. Kyle, do you think by the next meeting that you would be able to have some of that? Yes, all of it. Okay, great. All right, the next category was the erosion control plan. And we've touched on the fact that we don't have comments back from the town engineer and the conservation commission on that. Moving on to page seven, traffic impact statement. I know Janet had commented earlier that she would like to see a traffic impact report similar to what was done previously. And then, Chris, will the town engineer be commenting on whether one is required from his point of view? Only if we ask him. Okay, I think it would be worth asking. Okay. Other board members, do you disagree with asking for his opinion, Tom? Yeah, I really ask and find out what he thinks. Okay, thank you. All right, moving on to topic seven, the drainage and utilities. Issues to consider at the bottom. Board may wish to receive comment from the town engineer on the stormwater report and grading and drainage plans prior to approving. So I would agree with that. And Chris, hope we can get those comments before the 21st. And we would say, I would add to that, that we need comments from the conservation commission as well. Yes, sewer and water, town systems signage. You were suggesting that we require a sign plan be reviewed and approved as a condition of the site plan review. So that can follow. Yep. All right. Next page, management plan and proposed lease. Okay, this had to do with whether the leases would be individual or by unit. And I think we've got a clear answer to that. And then we can decide what to do with that information. Kyle, is this the only building that you've got that you do that? I'm sorry, I missed that. Yeah, the question was leasing by bedroom. Is this the only building you're doing that with? We do that at next door, we do that at next door, 571, yeah. Right, okay. And that's it, just that one, okay. Thank you. Fire department review, we need that. Town engineer, we need that. Conservation commission, we need that. So that's all of that. Moving over to page nine, landscape plan. May I say something about those three things? Sometimes it's hard for us to get comments from other departments. And so I would encourage Kyle and Dave to seek out the town engineer and the fire department inspector and get comments from them. I can encourage them, I can send them emails all day and if the applicant asks for that, maybe I'll get it sooner. So thank you. Great. Issues to consider on the landscape. May wish to consider requiring a more complete landscape plan. Kyle and Sandra. The one that was submitted has a list of plants, but there's no connection between the list and what's shown on the drawing. So we need to know where those plants are going and also how many of them, the quantities were blank. So there just needs to be more detail on the landscape plan. And I think Janet mentioned some plants that she wanted to see added. I believe she mentioned evergreens. So if they can kind of beef up the landscape plan with some evergreens and just make it clearer where the different plants are going. Janet, was there a particular area you wanted evergreens? I mean, I guess. I thought about a buffering the view of other, of the building from other residents from Olympia Oaks. So either the requirement. The South side or the North side. I think it's a bylaw requirement. And I thought that, you know, it looked, you know, it's super screened right now, but that's mostly leafy trees. And so otherwise, I think it's kind of for, especially for Olympia Oaks, kind of a stark view of a very, very tall building in what looks like a small kind of New England village, which is what they have going. So I thought it'd be good to put some plants that would screen that view. And I guess my only thought on plantings was that you avoid invasive species like burning bushes and, you know, other things that we're generally trying to discourage. Item, topic 16, bike racks. Sorry. Sure. Oh, sorry, Bruce. You missed the architecture. There was an issue to consider before landscaping related to the board may wish to require the applicant to submit a plan that shows handrails on the stairs and the garden and so forth. And actually, this is probably a building code thing, but the item that Pam Rooney mentioned was not a building code thing, I think, and that probably should be unfolded in that observation as well. And which of Pam's comments were you thinking of? Oh, the idea that maybe there should be a guardrail or a fence or some kind of fall protection on the three to four foot retaining wall on the matter boundary. Okay. I think that's a requirement, but it would be good to show it on the plans. All right, Tom, I see your hand. Yeah, I was just going to note that this would probably be a place where we'd want to see, in addition to the handrail, a potential ramp and handrails, the light for that as well as part of the architectural updates. Great. Thanks for pointing that out, Bruce. Okay, moving farther down the page under sidewalks and site improvements. Issues to consider bikes, bench styles are not shown. If they're prefabricated benches, catalog cuts or drawings of the design might be useful. Coordination of the site plan with the landscape plan. Submission of a coordinated set of drawings, that seems like a reasonable suggestion. Detail of retaining walls. And the last page, number 10, open space. Consider whether the proposed entry space and lawn will provide adequate open space and the sort of double-edged sort of open space and whether it's going to invite large gatherings and poor behavior, I guess. Then propane tank, we need a location for that and how it's filled. So that's everything that Chris noted. Chris, it's always great to have these. You're so thorough. Save us all the thinking. All right. Anybody else have some things they wanted to mention to Kyle before we see him in roughly six weeks? Not seeing any hands. Why don't we do one more opportunity for public comment? And I see we don't have very many members of the public who have stuck with us through this. Not seeing any hands there. Okay. All right. So I guess it's time to continue our hearing. Anybody want to make the motion to continue to September 21st, starting at 6.35 p.m. Johanna. Move to continue the hearing to September 21st at 6.25 p.m. Thank you. 35, 6.35, yes. Thank you. And Andrew. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? All right. I'll try it from the end of the alphabet going up. Karen. Aye. Okay. Thank you. And Johanna. Aye. Janet. Aye. Andrew. Aye. Tom. Aye. Bruce. Aye. And I'm an aye. It's unanimous. Thank you very much, Kyle. It looks like a fun project. Thank you very much. I appreciate everybody's time. Good night. Good night. Okay. It's 8.59. And we'll move on to the next item in the agenda. So we're up to item five, old business. Chris, do we have any old business not reasonably anticipated? I don't believe so. All right. Item six is new business, not reasonably anticipated. I do not have any new business. Item seven, Form A, A&R, subdivision applications. We do not have any A&Rs today. And number eight, upcoming ZBA applications. I do have to bring up some slides that will help me to describe it. It's actually two of them. All right. Can you see the screen okay? The ZBA is next going to meet on August 25th. They're going to take up a project at 1147 North Pleasant Street where there is already, so this is a lot right here, there is already an existing two family and they are proposing to add a single family of residents here which would be owner occupied. So it would be a detached single family owner occupied. So here we go. Here's a little map. This is what is existing. This is a two family dwelling. And they're proposing to build this single family residence here for the garage. And it will be owner occupied. So you enter the lot via this right here where there is already existing parking. So this is all pavement here. So they're going to add a little bit more. Yeah, that's their proposal. So the question is, is if you think you might like to see a presentation on this. All right, Andrew. Oh, just curious, is this an ADU or this is like a full on new house? It's a brand new residence. And so what it would be, it would be a complimentary principal use to this existing two family that's here. So it's just a single, this is a duplex, it's two units. And they're going to build this single family home which will be owner occupied. And how large is the lot? That's a really good question. I don't think I have the answer to that, Andrew. Sorry. That's okay. I do not have the exact answer to that. So if we look on here, we ought to be able to figure it out, right? Well, it looks like it's about. Just double checking. I don't want to mix that into the lights off the accident. Okay, thank you. Chris, can you mute? I'm sorry. So it looks like the lots, maybe 75 feet wide and plus 10, maybe 85 feet wide and about 200 feet deep. I think close to just 300. Is that right? 89, 41 and 215. Okay. Yeah. So I think an acre is 200 by 200, roughly. And so this is probably about an acre. If it's about 300 by 85, 89, it's probably just short of an acre. Anyway, so that's one you can think about. And then the next one that they're also going to hear on August 20th, that this is the Hickree Bridge golf course which they have a permit to do some solar out there and they need to, they're just coming before the ZPA. They need to modify a condition in order. So their condition number 23 says that pesticides are not allowed to be used. And the mass division of fisheries and wildlife, they have put forth their conservation management permit for plantings, which actually include, there's three things that it includes and hand pulling and pesticides and there's another one. But anyway, they want to modify condition number 23 to include the use of pesticides if needed so that it's consistent with what the Massachusetts division of fisheries and wildlife has put forth. They're also asking to extend the expiration date of their permitting, which currently is September 12th, 2022. But as we all know that the industry around construction is definitely facing some hardships. So with that in mind, they are hoping to push back the start date of anything that's significant to September 12th, 2023, so by one year. That's what I know. Chris has her hand raised. Yes, Chris, I see your hand. I just wanted to note that the reason that they want to use pesticides is to eliminate some plants that they don't want to be there so that they can add the correct type of plants. So it's really just a short-term use of pesticides to remove plants that they don't think should be there and add the correct plants in alignment with the Massachusetts regulations, so. Okay. Where are we? I can't figure out from this little excerpt. Is that the Fort River in the middle there and what street are we on? This is a great room, yeah. Sorry. So along the bottom of this parcel is West Pomeroy Lane. In the lower right corner, is that intersection of 116 and Pomeroy? So this is the golf course, right? Yes, it's the golf course. Thank you. No, I understand. All right. So how do folks feel about these two projects? I guess I'll say personally, I'm not very interested in this one for Pomeroy Lane. I have some interest in the other one just in terms of understanding the process by which someone might propose to build a third unit in the residential zone. But I mean, we don't have to talk about that anytime soon, but it might be interesting to hear that. But Chris could tell us that without having anybody from ZBA involved. Andrew? I had a similar thought, Doug. Just given how much effort and time we put into ADU and knowing that we wanted to try to free up housing for people to add housing, I think that I would be interested in hearing about that one. Okay, Bruce? I shave both your curiosity. Okay. All right. Chris, I guess the question is, when would it make sense to do this? Do we have time in our next meeting to discuss this? You do have time at your next meeting. The next meeting is August 17th and you have so far downtown design standards. Nate is coming back with that. And then I'm trying to get Jonathan Gerfine to come and talk to you about some concrete blocks that he's installed at his property at 555 University, not University Drive, Belcher Town Road, 555 Belcher Town Road. So other than that, you don't have anything on your agenda. So you could accommodate this discussion of the 1147 North Pleasant Street at that time. At that time, and then you'd be able to make a recommendation for the ZBA's meeting upcoming on the 25th. Okay. And I guess I'll sort of say that I don't know how we would get that presentation whether you would make it or somebody from zoning staff or the applicant. But I think I'll be interested to hear maybe from you to sort of walk me through the zoning code on how are they able to even make this proposal? Do you want me to talk about that now? Sure. It's only 10 after nine. So there have been other cases of the zoning board allowing a two unit building to be added to a parcel that has a single family house under a special permit. And it comes under that section that Pam referenced which has to do with complimentary principal uses. So the zoning board of appeals needs to make a finding that the two uses are complimentary to one another. And then also approve the new use. So they did it once on, I'm trying to remember. I think it was North Prospect Street at the corner of North Prospect and Halleck. There's a little property that's tucked in there where they added a duplex to a property that already had a single family house. And that was approved. And there may be other instances of this. This is kind of the reverse of adding a single family home to a property that already has a duplex. So my impression is that the building commissioner is kind of saying, well, he doesn't see anything in the zoning bylaw that absolutely forbids this. And so he's bringing it forward to the zoning board of appeals to see what they think. And they may say, this is a good idea. It's infill and they approve it and they may find reasons not to approve it. So it's a discretionary permit. So it's a kind of, I won't say, I guess I could say it's a little bit of a gray area in the zoning bylaw. So we agonized over ADUs to allow people in the general residential area to add one unit. And I don't know, I guess I didn't realize it was already sort of precedent that you were allowed to add two units. Only with a special permit from the zoning board of appeals, which as I said is a discretionary permit. So the ADUs are allowed to be added by administrative approval, essentially. And is a principal use, is that a clearly defined term or is that sort of gray? I don't think that principal uses are gray. I think they're the uses that are listed in the use category chart. So all of those uses, I don't know how many there are, but there are many different residential uses, including single family. There are three different kinds of two family houses. There's townhouse, there's mixed use buildings, there's apartments, I think that's it. But those are all principal uses. And I think there's even a case of townhouses having been added to a property that already has a house on high street, if I'm not mistaken. So again, these are special permits that are brought to the zoning board of appeals and the zoning board of appeals holds a public hearing. And here's from the neighbors and deliberates and then decides, are they going to grant this permit or not? And in this case, as I said, there's apparently nothing that says, you absolutely can't do this. So building commissioners saying, okay, zoning board, let's talk about it, you decide. And so there's precedent for one family adding a duplex. Now we've got a two family adding a single. What's to keep somebody from saying, well, I've got a single family, I wanna add a trip plan or a quad. Why are we limited in this conversation to two families? We may not be limited, but we are limited by dimensional requirements. So you have to have the amount of lot area that you need. And apparently they do have that. I haven't looked at this carefully, but I would assume that they have the amount of lot area and that they meet all the other dimensional requirements. Okay, all right, great. So we got a lot of hands up here on this one, Johanna. Thanks, my hand is actually up about the other one. Oh, okay. I was just, I was curious whether the state permit has already been granted and whether it's now just a matter of bringing the local permit into alignment with the state permit or whether that state permit is still pending as well. I don't think Pam or I know enough about this to be able to say, but maybe Pam does, but I don't. I would say that it has been issued. I would say that that's Exhibit A of where I got my information from. I could be wrong. No, because there's a permit number, Johanna. Okay. Do you want the permit number? I'm happy to read it to you. Oh, sure. Okay, ready? So it's permit number 19-340-DFWNHESP and the file number is 18-37988. Thanks. You're welcome. Johanna, does that mean you might want us to discuss it or do you want to just look into it on your own? I'm not going to be here on the 17th. So if anybody else is excited to hear this, by all means put it on the agenda, but I'm not going to push for it. Okay. Well, I haven't heard anyone else, particularly advocating for it. So I think we will probably not. Janet. I think we should hear a presentation on this at the next meeting because, you know, it seems to me that with this section 3.01 and other parts of the bylaw, it shows that there can be a lot more density in residential neighborhoods that many of us are aware of. And there's no particular requirement of owner occupancy either that I see. And so I'd be interested in hearing a presentation about this and what has the ZBA required in owner occupant? I mean, you're referring to the 1147 North Pleasant Street? Not to... I think we need to see that presentation and think through it and understand how even in RN, I think at some point, the only thing that limits is the dimensional requirements, which is why those are important for owner occupancy. I don't think it's required. So I think we'd like to see a presentation on this so we can sort of wrap our heads around what's possible. Okay, so you're the fourth member to say they are in support of getting a presentation on this. I think we've now got a quorum. And I don't think we need to go through a vote, Chris, unless you particularly want us to. No, you don't need to go through a vote. I'm noting though that there's a discrepancy in where this is located. If it's located in the neighborhood residence or in RBC, because the paragraph notes RBC and the title notes RN. And then the map and parcel numbers are different. So anyway, it's not going to make a difference as to whether you want to see this presentation, but it will be of note as to whether this is in the RN district or whether it's in RBC. Right. Okay. Johanna, you still have your hand up. Are you, is that a legacy? It's death. Okay, thank you. Oh, it is in RN. Okay. Yeah, it's in the RN. All right, so I'll be seeing you next week. Great. All right. So I think that concludes the upcoming ZBA applications. Time is nine 18. And the next item was upcoming special permits, site plan reviews and subdivision applications. Pam, do we have any of those? Or Chris? No, not up the top of my head. Right, Chris? It appears that there is one that's coming in for 51 Spalding Street. And it's another one that is complicated. It's a property that was permitted as an owner-occupied two family on Spalding Street with a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. And now the owner wants to make some changes. And I am not entirely clear on what the changes are, but I also know that they have lodgers there as well as having an owner-occupied two family. So they're gonna be coming before the planning board perhaps on September 7th to talk about that project. So that will be a planning board special permit. Okay. And then there are always things out there in the wings and I'll bring them to you as they come along. Great. All right. The next item is Planning Board Committee and Liaison Report. Chris, I know you sent a bunch of information on the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. I can't remember. Were we gonna discuss that tonight or when we had elections at the beginning of September? I sent you the information so you could see it and be able to mull it over, but your actual discussion of elections and reorganization is going to be September 7th. So if anyone wants to say anything about it now, I guess we could say what you want to say, but you've got the information and you'll be deciding on September 7th. Okay. Bruce. At my orientation with the staff, Chris, you particularly asked me whether I would be prepared to put myself forward to be the board's representative to the commission and I think I'd be prepared to do that. So that's just to announce that I will offer to take the job and happily defer to anybody else who has a strong desire. All right. Thank you, Bruce. Let the campaign begin. All right. So we don't have anyone to report on Pioneer Valley Planning Commission this evening. Andrew, anything on CPAC? Nothing on CPAC. All right. Tom on DRB. Nothing to report. All right. Janet, solar bylaw. We met last week and we're doing good work. We discussed recent Supreme Digital Court cases and Land Court cases on how to regulate solar, how communities can regulate solar facilities. The town is issuing an RFP for a consultant for a solar assessment, which will include public outreach about what the community wants. We looked at the model PV Pioneer Valley Planning Commission bylaw, which is excellent. And then we also, we had a great presentation and I can't remember his name, Chris, somebody from the town and we did an overview of the towns and state GIS mapping resources, which are extensive. And so, in terms of looking at like, where are prom soils? Just every possible question it seemed there's an overlay or a map either on the state, the state hazard or the town hazard. And so you can look at zoning districts and all sorts of things. I think that was really excellent. And we might wanna look at, have a presentation to us. And then we're working on our work plan and that's it. All right. We get a lot done in two hours. And you're typically meeting during the day, right? Yeah, and that came up because we're meeting like pretty much 12 to two. And obviously that, we haven't picked a particular day but people mentioned that it's really hard for people to, if the meetings aren't at night people are working during the day the public can't really attend. So we have to think about. All right. Thank you. And Chris, anything from CRC? I think that the last meeting was not held. I'm remembering correctly. And when is the next meeting? The next meeting is the 11th of August. And I think they're gonna continue to talk about rental registration bylaw. So if anyone's interested it's 2.30 in the afternoon on Thursday, the 11th. Okay. Thank you. Report of chair. I really do not have any report this evening. Report of staff, Chris, Pam. I just wanted to say that I'm very happy that we have two new members. All right, aren't we all? Yep. All right. So the time is 9 24. And unless anybody has anything else we can adjourn. Perfect. Thank you all for coming and we'll see you in roughly two weeks. Okay. Bye. Thank you. Good night. Bye. Good night, Pam. Good night, Mr. Marshall. We'll see you soon. Yep.